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Yeah, I don't see how this helps Republicans.  If they kept the bills together, there could be deniability for GOP House members that want to continue to be anti-Ukraine ("Look, we needed to get money to Israel and Taiwan and the cost was money to Ukraine.  The good outweighed the bad" but also "I sent money to Ukraine and helped them" - they can play both sides).  Now they have to be on record on one or the other.  If there are pro-Ukraine independents, they could be swayed one way or the other by this.

On the other hand, if the Republicans think that they can use Israel as a wedge issue, they can force Democrats to side with either Israel or Palestine.  I could see some benefit there, but I don't know.

I saw an interview with Johnson where he was saying all the right things about Ukraine.  It sounds like maybe he has some sort of assurance that he can survive any move against him.  If so...I guess that's good.

As some of these older polls age out of aggregators, Biden is starting to take small leads in overall polling most places.  Now a small lead nationally won't do it, and I'm pretty sure state-level polling still has Trump with enough states to win the electoral college.  But it's a step in the right direction.

Experts seem to think Trump is going to lose this hush money case.  I would think especially if Trump is muttering himself like a crazy person the whole time.  It won't give him any jail time, but he'll legally be a convicted felon if it happens.  We'll see, again if that happens, if it affects what independents think.  I assume MAGA and democrat voters are pretty locked in with their votes no matter the result of the trial.

I mean I told him that I think evangelicals are extremely radicalized - that if Trump told them to worship him instead of Jesus, they'd happily toss their bibles and crosses in exchange for a golden Trump statue.  But he disagrees.  He goes to an evangelical church (he's liberal) and he has a PhD in religious studies (or something like that).  He says that abortion is the one area they won't follow him down.

This is well known right wing "entertainer?" Matt Walsh.  He's extreme right wing, and he hated what Trump and Kari Lake had to say.  He has 2.2MM followers on twitter, and he's very outspoken that this was the wrong thing to do and he's not willing to budge.  It wouldn't take many people to decide they can't vote for someone that supports any "abortion rights" and either not vote or leave the top of the ballot empty.  And remember these aren't normal Republican voters.  The voters that Trump has added are low-propensity voters so it wouldn't take much for them to just not go on election day (because they won't mail in vote or vote early).

https://www.facebook.com/MattWalshBlog/ … 646268783/

Now the thing about Trump is that he's never been pro-life.  This was the issue with him in 2016 in the Republican primaries.  And it was the issue when he was up against DeSantis.  It didn't matter this year because the abortion folks went all in on Trump.  But as much as Trump brags about defeating Roe, I cannot imagine Trump actually cared about that.  He didn't pick those judges, and he probably has no idea what they stand for.  He did what the Federalist Society told him to do or he did whatever they paid him to do.

Trump doesn't want to ban abortion.  Otherwise he'd have 50 kids, and he hates the ones he already has.

I was screwing around on Microsoft Copilot, and I asked it who would win in a fight between Quinn and Spider-Man.  From what I've seen of this, AI never picks a true winner and this didn't disappoint.

This is what Biden needs to create *tons* of ads on.  They need to be properly targeted, but non-MAGA Republicans that liked the first Trump administration need to know that the second one is not going to be like the first.

Again, the tactic needs to be to very clearly articulate that Trump is not a normal Republican or politician.  He's a f*%#ing psychopath out for revenge.

Here's the thing.  I think Trump is a wannabe dictator.  I think he is extremely dangerous, and I think he's willing to use his followers to go after people that threaten him.  Instead of using the police or the military, I think Trump wants to use his loyal followers to do his dirty work because (and he's been right so far), he has deniability in his actions.  If he ordered the military to attack the Capitol, then he's crossed the Rubicon.  If he nudges his followers in a certain direction, he can defend himself.

I think the pick-up truck is obviously in extremely poor taste.  I think it's extremely inappropriate for a presidential candidate to send that image out to the masses.  But when you compare it to what Kathy Griffin did with the beheaded Trump, I think it's pretty bland.  I think Trump is pretty evil, but I assume he didn't "tweet" it to his followers because he wants Biden dead or wants them to go after him.  I think he thought it was funny and that's it.  He's a child.

If they want to investigate the owner of the truck, that's fine.  But since the imagery isn't nearly as violent as what Griffin did and since I don't think Trump was legitimately threatening Biden, I think this is something that we (meaning those that are anti-Trump) should drop.

I know Trump is campaigning off the trials, but why do these rich people even fight these cases if there's no chance they ever have to pay the fines?  Why waste money on attorneys when you can just show up yourself, plead guilty, take whatever fine they give you, and never pay?

Oh absolutely.  That's what's so tragic.  Donald Trump has people convinced that theres a two-tiered justice system.  And there is.  Just rich vs poor instead of red vs blue.

Well here's the problem.  In the current system, the 3rd party has no chance to win.  People like to win or to celebrate being a part of a winner.  They like when the guy they voted for wins.  When you vote for a third party, you're essentially writing that part off, especially in a presidential election.

But then there's the other half of it - do the mainstream parties even care?  In a perfect world, a third party candidate would be a viable alternative, especially in a year where a lot of people hate both of the main candidates.  In an optimal world, the mainstream parties would move left or right to absorb the people that decided to vote for a third party candidate. 

I just don't know if either of those things are happening.  I don't know if the Democratic party adjusted to absorb people that voted for Jill Stein in 2016.  And I certainly don't think the Democratic party will shift to absorb Democrats that vote for RFK Jr.  So what is the point in voting third party if a) there's literally zero chance they could win and b) there might be literally no chance that your vote will force either major party to shift.

I don't know.  Maybe it's pessimism with the system, but in the last three election cycles, the only candidate that wasn't openly hated by their own party is Joe Biden in 2020.  And yet third parties in the country seem more irrelevant than ever.  Of course, only about 100,000 votes in the entire election are going to really matter so it's probably much more hopeless than even I'm considering.

Yeah, I don't disagree.  I'd feel better if there was someone younger and stronger-looking on the top of the ballot.  But when they poll anyone vs Trump, Biden actually still polls the best.  The only place it seems to be better for a non-Biden candidate is Whitmer when it's a Michigan-only poll.  So I don't know.  The polling says Biden is weak but it also says Biden is the best the Democrats have to offer.

Yeah, I'm still just not convinced that Kennedy hurts Biden more than he hurts Trump.  I'm sure there are going to be people who pay zero attention to the race and then pick Kennedy on name recognition alone, but I just don't think if there's any understanding about who Kennedy is, he'd pull very many votes from Biden.

Even as a protest vote against both parties, he doesn't make sense for people who would otherwise be for Biden.  Stein makes way more sense for Biden voters who have climate change as their only issue, or even Cornel West as an African American.  Once you know what he stands for, he just pushes none of buttons that would otherwise attract a Biden voter.

I guess if the idea is that there's a DeSantis voter who hates Trump and would vote for Biden in a two horse race but chooses to vote for Kennedy otherwise....I guess that makes sense.  But isn't that guy just as likely to vote for DeSantis or Jeb Bush or something like that?

There's something really funny about Trump losing a civil case where the state says that he doesn't have as much money as he says he does, he complains about how it's unfair and how much money he has, and then he doesn't have the money to pay the penalty.

I worry about Trump getting the money from a foreign power and owing them favors, but if he doesn't do that, I think this is going to really mess with his head.  I'm sure it will make him crazier and more dangerous, but we'll see if that affects his polling.

I do wonder this - Trump keeps talking about how someone can't be president without total immunity.  When the Supreme Court rules that total immunity is mularkey, how is Trump going to spin that?  The way he talks, there's no way he would want to be president without immunity.  We know he won't drop out, but his position has been so clear.

I think you're conflating two ideas here, though.  Trump's criminal indictments galvanized his support because it rallied the MAGA base, and that base is now fairly reliable in voting in whatever election Trump is on the ballot for.  That's why he won so many primaries early.  Were non-MAGA people galvanized by the indictments?  Maybe?  But they also could've just been galvanized by the uptick in polling.  It's a perpetual motion machine - the indictments cause the polling to go up and the polling going up causes the polling to increase.

You have to remember that Fox News dominates the cable news ratings, but it's only a couple million people in the entire country.  The *vast* majority of people don't follow this stuff at all.  People aren't balancing Biden's age vs Trump's criminality because they probably aren't even thinking about it on a daily basis.  I'm assuming you'd be shocked at the number of people who don't have any idea what the Access Hollywood tape even is.  Who don't know who Stormy Daniels is.  Or even people who don't know that Trump has *been indicted*

And these are the people that are going to decide the election.  But the polling suggests that Trump getting convicted is a 10-point swing.  Maybe more.  Whichever poll you look at, it takes a Trump lead or a close race and turns it into a Biden win or a Biden landslide.

I think you're right that it would galvanize MAGA, but I'm not sure it does anything for him.  MAGA might be at peak galvanization.  Anyone plugged in enough to know that Trump is being indicted and Trumpy enough to think that the system is rigged against him is already voting for him.  I can't imagine people are going to think the conviction is political when they don't already think the indictment itself is/was political.

The people that know about Access Hollywood or whatever know that Trump is sexist (and potentially a rapist or whatever) and they've made their bed with it.  But what about the people that literally only know Trump as the president from 2016 to whatever and that's it?  People that didn't pay attention in 2016 and 2020 or now.  Polling suggests there are a ton of those people, and they're voting purely on vibes and memories.  But if, between then and now, they find out that Trump was convicted of a felony, polling suggests they switch their votes.  And the same lack of awareness that is hurting Biden now might hurt Trump later because they're not going to look into who Alvin Bragg is or the legality of the case or any sort of appeal.  They're just going to know that their choice is Joe Biden or a guy who's literally a convicted felon.

Maybe it's wishful thinking but it's showing in the polls.  People pick Trump unless he's convicted of a felony and then they pick Biden.  And I just don't think they're taking all the variables into it.  They might not even know (or care) that Trump is going to be on trial.  But for those people, the conviction matters.

Yeah between this and whatever happened in the New York case yesterday, I'm concerned that people aren't taking this seriously enough.  Trump may seem very very very dumb, but he's spent his entire life escaping the consequences of his actions.  Especially with almost four years to prepare, there's no reason for any of these cases to not be entirely buttoned up as much as possible.  I hope these are nitpicks that Trump is taking advantage of and not actual flaws in either of these cases.

But as has been said much on Twitter, we simply cannot rely on the law to do its job here.  The only way to defeat Trump is in November.

There was some poetic justice for Garland put in the AG job after the Republicans unfairly kept him off the Supreme Court.  But I do think Garland has been a terrible hire.  History needed someone bold and fearless to prosecute Trump - not because he was a former president but because he's such a threat to democracy.  Instead, Garland took way too much time.  I know the wheels of justice turn slowly, and I know that this is a prosecution that the government can absolutely not fail.  But they took too much time and allowed for Trump to a) start his campaign so it looks like election interference to enough people and b) delay, delay, delay.

Maybe Garland did everything right.  Maybe history will still remember him as the guy who got Donald Trump.  I don't know.  But my feeling is that someone else would've been better for the job.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he was just making fun of Trump calling him that when he was anything but Sleepy.

It's crazy - since it didn't fit their narrative, the new narrative is that they drugged Joe up to get him to perform like that.  Which is just so funny because *everything* related to Trump is projection.  People have been accusing Trump of using drugs to give his speeches.  I'm not nearly educated enough on that to comment so I'm not comfortable saying one way or another, but accusing Biden of it and ignoring the same stuff out of Trump is just crazy.  I mean there was a confirmed drug-running operation in the Trump White House with uppers just to keep people going.  But Biden gives a fairly-long speech and now he's on drugs?

I didn't even think it was all that fiery.  He still seemed old to me - just slightly more energetic.  Maybe because he knew it was important?  If I was giving a big speech that would determine the next four years of my life, I'd probably give special attention to looking lively and ready.  Doesn't mean I'd be using drugs.

*****

Some solid polling for Biden coming out of the weekend.  And Trump had a 29% approval rating, which was lower than Biden's.  Just a couple one-off polls but maybe the tide is starting to turn.  Polling hasn't had a great 2024, but I'd feel much better if it was leaning our way and not Trump's.

I think it was just a plain McChicken sandwich?  It was definitely just a plain fried chicken sandwich with white sauce (mayonnaise?).  It's oddly specific for me because I don't remember eating McDonalds much as a kid, and I think I ate a lot of chicken mcnuggets back then instead of something like that.  I guess I was trying to branch out.

I haven't had McDonalds in 17 years so I could be mixing up their menu.

I mean I totally agree with everything you said.  I just don't know why it's taboo to challenge a sitting president.  If he's the right guy for the moment still, the voters would support him.  If he's not, you get the strongest candidate.  Polls show that Biden is still the strongest to face Trump in November, but I just wonder if that would've been different if anyone had actually thrown their hat in the race.

It doesn't matter, though.  Biden is the guy.  I donated to his campaign yesterday.

Okay so it's Biden vs Trump.

*Sigh*

*Deep Breath*

Okay.  So on paper this matchup is really no matchup at all.  One is a wannabe fascist who tried to overturn democracy and is clearly a sociopathic narcissist who doesn't have America's best interests at heart.  One is a public servant for decades who has worked to improve infrastructure, has tried to bridge the gap, and is willing to follow political norms.

The reality is that Biden is very old, acts very old, speaks very old, and has very low approval ratings.  A lot of that is the polarized nature of our politics where 50% of the nation will hate you because of what color tie you wear (its not exactly 50% but you get my point).  Some of it could be agism.  Some of it is based on things that aren't his fault (covid, supply chain stuff, worldwide inflation, etc).

But it is what it is.  In 2024, the president will be Trump or it will be Biden.  Not a third party.  Not a white knight.  Trump or Biden.

Our goal needs to be (as the anti-Trump bloc) to remind as many people as possible who Trump is.  Not "the president in 2019 when life was better."  Not the guy who the media shows 2-second sound bytes that make him seem normal.  The guy who is adamantly anti-democratic.  The guy who is a raging narcissist.  The guy who has been indicted in 91 felonies.  The one who paid a porn star to quiet her after an affair he had.  The one who asked the governor of Georgia to find him votes.  The one who worked to get the vice president hanged.  The one who tried to get Congress killed.  The one who hoarded sensitive classified documents and showed them to anyone who could get into his golf club.

Sensible Americans might vote for one of those two guys.  They won't vote for the other.

My hope is:

- the polls are critically flawed.  Primary voting has shown a massive underestimation of Biden and a massive overestimation of Trump.  If that continues (even if it's a small continuation), Biden sails to a victory.

- the more people see of Trump, the more they will remember why they didn't like him.  I'm hoping that people have forgotten why they didn't like Trump between 2016 and 2020.  I don't think there's any chance he's done anything to win people back.  So my hope is that as people start paying attention and Trump/Biden becomes a reality in people's minds, they'll remember who this dude is. And that the Biden campaign can show them the man that the media has yet to show them - a rambling, incoherent, narcissitic lunatic who can never be president again.

The game is on.  Let's do this.

I think the DC case will start if they can before the election.

So Trump has done a couple of wily things.  He suggested an August trial date for the documents case.  Even though that case should be open and shut, Cannon can really make it difficult on the prosecution, plus the fact that it's a Florida jury.  If Cannon accepts the August trial date, it could mess with the timing of the DC case.  Then Trump can either hope the documents case continues to get pushed back, or he gets a pre-election acquittal from a friendly jury.

Would've been really nice if the Supreme Court just kicked back Trump's ridiculous argument.

Well the Evangelicals aren't going to care.  They know who he is and don't care.  But Evangelicals are only about 1/3 of the Christians in the country.  A lot of voters in this country probably have no idea who Stormy Daniels is, and I'm sure a decent amount of them would have trouble voting for someone who paid hush money to a porn star he was cheating on his wife with.

If we can get the majority of voters to know who Stormy Daniels is, and if Trump is convicted, I think it might be a bridge too far for independents and even some republicans.  Again, my wife watches the news every morning, but she isn't political.  She has no idea what Trump is alleged of doing.  And she's not alone.

I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about how they're possibly going to get a jury for these Trump cases because everyone knows about it.  But everyone doesn't.  Some people actively don't pay attention to politics.  The reporter agreed that when he does "Man on the Street" type interviews, people have no idea who is running and pay no attention.  These are the voters that decide elections, and they just need to know what's happened.  And if they do, I think a lot of them will turn away from Trump.

Well if he loses the election, he'll face justice.  Not saying he won't get away with it, but he'll face the trials.  He can only delay it so long, and the government will press for it.  If he wins, of course, he'll get away with all of it.

The New York trial is the weakest case in the sense that Trump wouldn't even really face jail time, but remember that people aren't plugged into this stuff.  Swing voters that barely pay attention will know that Trump is a convicted felon.  Swing voters that start paying attention will realize that Trump paid a porn star hush money while he was cheating on his wife.  That doesn't matter in MAGA Land, but it matters in a lot of places.  That will absolutely cost him votes one way or another.

But all in all, I'm very disappointed in SCOTUS.  The legal system is way too slow, and guys like Trump are more than happy to take advantage of that.  Also, this goes back to Garland taking his sweet time.  This should've gone to trial a year ago or more.

Well, the strategy (I think) has to do with the idea that, in the case that Trump is not able to be the nominee (for whatever reason), Haley would have the inside track.  I forget what happens to Republican delegates if Trump is out, but Haley is going to be second, and she's going to have the second-most votes.  It might be worth it for her to stay in the race even if the chance is 1 in a million that Trump drops out.  But he is late 70s, in terrible shape, is under 91 felony indictments, and is widely hated.  There's a lot of ways Trump wouldn't be the nominee that wouldn't normally apply.

That could work.  The only reason I made it a clone is that Sony seems to want to tie their movies to Tom Holland's Spider-Man (even if Tom can't show up), and if they made him a clone (even one that doesn't look like Tom Holland), it leaves the door open that Tom could eventually show up.

"I think it has something to do with Spider-Man"

A lot of the Trump cases, Trump isn't even arguing that he's not guilty.  He's just arguing that it isn't a crime.  I don't know if that's going to work with a jury.

One thing I fear about the New York case is that a) some crazy MAGA billionaire is going to front him the money.  Musk has been one of the people floated to maybe do that b) foreign people are going to do it, making him more beholden to them.

And as ireactions said, that's why Haley and Trump aren't the same.

In 2020, the polls favored Democrats because Democrats (especially around the time of the election) were more likely to be social distancing.  And maybe it was to get social interaction or boredom or whatever, but Democrats were more likely to answer the phone, respond to a poll, etc.  Republicans were more likely to be doing something else.

In 2024, I haven't heard about anything.  People like to say that polls are broken, but polls were incredibly accurate in the midterms in 2018 and 2022.  The problem seems to be isolated to elections with Trump in them.

"Shy Trump voters" seemed to be a thing in 2020.  I wonder if "shy Biden voters" could also be a thing.  Maybe people are just embarrassed to admit they support a historically unpopular president, even if they like him overall.  I cannot imagine, under any circumstances, a Biden voter willingly telling a pollster that they will vote for Trump.  But maybe it's simply the matter of "shy Biden voters" telling a pollster that they're undecided.  Trump seems to have a ceiling of around 45% in most polls.  I guess it's also possible that Haley voters are "shy Biden voters" because they don't want to admit that they'd cross over and vote Biden.

I would love to understand it.  If the polls are truly underrepresenting Biden votes, I wouldn't be nearly as nervous.

I did read that Biden personally asked his campaign to highlight all the "crazy sh*t" that Trump says in advertising.  I think that's really important.  I think a decent chunk of the electorate that is willing to vote for Trump literally has no idea the kinds of things that he says. They're probably just comparing 2018 (things were relatively good for a lot of people) to 2022 (inflation, covid stuff hanging around, etc) and nothing else.  I don't think it would take much for a lot of those people to realize Trump's out of his mind and that things are overally pretty solid in 2024.

And a huge swath of Haley voters say they won't vote for Trump.  If they go third party, stay home, or actually vote for Biden, that's such a killer for Trump.

Of course, if that's happening:

- the polls are wrong
- most/all of the people voting for Haley are actually Democrats who are voting for Biden anyway
- there are "shy Biden voters" that are reporting something different to pollsters than what they're actually intending on doing

In every election, there are people who want something done, and the way they want to do it might be the wrong way.  You can look at basically any issue, and there are two solutions.  You can lower taxes to help low-income families keep more of the income that they earn, but then you can't afford programs that also help low-income families.  You can restrict illegal immigration, but you might miss out on helping people who genuinely need to escape from a dangerous situation.  You can eliminate social security and the taxes that it causes, but you could hurt people who depend on social security to survive.

The people that want these things and make these decisions typically aren't trying to hurt people or cause issues.  For whatever the reason, they land on one side of the fence instead of the other.  And in most elections, a huge swath of the electorate agrees.  So maybe you lower taxes for people and down the road, the food stamps program that people used to use gets shut down, and people decide that lower taxes may not be better.  Then they change their votes, and the world keeps on spinning.

I know bad policies hurt people, but it's how our democracy works.  If enough people want to enact bad policies, that's what we do.  I can live with that.  America has had a lot of bad policies, but we've worked our way to better places. 

Nothing good comes from electing Trump.  There's no attempt to do the right thing.  There's no attempt to make things better.  Every single thing he does he does for himself.  He is a unique, singular threat.

MAGAism is also bad because they have no platform.  They don't know what they want so they cannot accomplish anything.  But we've seen that's already working itself out.  Republicans are getting tired of MAGA's inability to do anything.  They cannot govern.  If we beat Trump, MAGA will collapse.

But we have to beat Trump.

To be extremely, overly clear...I'm not supporting Nikki Haley in any way.  Right now, she is extremely useful to anti-Trump people because she's the only one slamming Trump.  The Republican primary, mathematically, is over.  But Haley declared yesterday that she's staying in the race even if she's crushed in her home state as she's predicted to do.

Yesterday, she had a fairly smart move.  She leaked that she was ending her campaign, and she got Fox News to carry her entire speech.  And as she's done recently, she hammered Trump.  The harder she is on Trump, the harder Trump will be on her, and there's a chance that Haley voters refuse to vote for Trump.  Fox News voters are hearing a Republican hammer Trump, and I cannot tell you how important that is.  MAGA won't believe her and will call her a RINO or whatever, but if Haley can scrape off a few thousands potential Trump voters in the right places, Biden wins.

Remember, Trump won in 2016 in part because the Bernie/Hillary process was so contentious that Bernie voters refused to vote for her.  That could easily be why Biden wins.

But that doesn't mean that I would support Haley in any way.  She has gone back and forth.  She is saying that she'll pardon Trump.  But right now she's saying the truth and she's hurting Trump.  And if she can convince enough people that Trump isn't the guy and get them to vote 3rd party or something, then Biden will win.  For that, she's firmly in the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" territory.