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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.

Okay, but again, we can survive on bad policies.  If Trump just had bad policies, there's less to fear about him.  We've survived bad policies.  We've had a number of bad presidents that had bad policies, and we've survived four years with them.  We survived eight years of George W Bush who had some bad policies, but George W Bush did what he thought was best for the country and its people.

And we survived four years of Trump and his bad policies.  He ran for re-election, lost, and he tried to throw out our system of government, and he failed.

Bad policies I don't worry about.  What I worry about is anti-democratic promises.  This guy wants to shred the constitution, and that makes him uniquely dangerous.  Nikki Haley might have terrible policies, but she would do so in service of the Constitution and the American people.  Donald Trump does everything for himself.  We could survive four years or even eight years of Haley.  There might be some damage she leaves behind, but it wouldn't be anything that couldn't be undone or fixed.

Trump?  I don't know how long we survive under Trump.  And I don't know if the damage he leaves is repairable.  The damage he's already left might not be repairable for a while.

But we can't paint them with the same brush, or it weakens the entire argument.  I think there are a handful of GOP that I'm truly worried about if they get into power.  It's Trump, it's Kari Lake, its Ron Paul, and a few others that are absolutely insane.  If we just say everyone is Trump, then we're lying to ourselves.  There's one true threat to America right now.  And every enemy of our enemy is our friend.

(THE ABOVE IS JUST MY OPINION AND NOT THE OPINION OF SLIDERS.TV)

I think this is the kind of mindset we need to stay away from.  Trump is bad in a different way than Haley is bad.  They're both bad, but one is generationally bad.  One is just bad.

Liz Cheney (who is also bad but a different kind of bad) said that true conservatives should vote for Biden because W"e Can Survive Bad Policies But Not ‘Torching the Constitution’" (https://www.mediaite.com/news/liz-chene … stitution/).  I think we need to have the same mindset, or tribalism is going to destroy us.  Everyone can't be Trump.  We can't see boogeymen in every person we disagree with.

If Trump wins, we know he's compromised to foreign powers.  He's said he wants to be a dictator.  He's shown admiration towards authoritarian leaders.  We know what he wants to do and the threat he presents.

Haley has never said any of these things.  She's spoken out against the way Trump treats Putin.  She's supported Ukraine.  She's spoken out against Trumpism and the cult of MAGA.

She'd be bad on a lot of social issues.  She'd probably be bad on the border.  But she's never shown any anti-democracy tendencies as far as I'm aware.  And if we say everyone is Trump and everyone is as bad as Trump, then we hurt our argument that Trump is a unique villain that must be defeated.  We can't use the same type of hyperbole that Trump uses to rile people up.  We need to be truthful and honest.

(If Haley has ever shown anti-democratic tendencies or spoken about wanting to be a dictator, I'm happy to be shown that).

So if Sony wanted to just make Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire, are they able to do that?  Or is there something in their deal with Marvel Studios that says they can't use Spider-Man in their own movies?

Since we're going to have multiple Batman projects going on at the same time, I don't see why the public wouldn't be okay with multiple Spider-Man projects.  But I assume they are legally barred from doing that.  Because if Sony wants to do this stuff, that's what they should do.  If not a continuation of Maguire Spider-Man, then a continuation of Garfield Spider-Man.  Or a team-up of them both.

I assume they can't use Holland, or they would have put him in all of these movies.  I just can't imagine that making all these movies makes any sense for Sony.

I mean I don't know if we have a normal marriage, but it works.  We also don't talk about comic book movies or sports or many of the things that I have an interest in.  She went to see Dr Strange with me when we were dating.  As the movie started, she asked me what movie we were seeing again.  She likes Rachel McAdams so that was a high point for her.  We started watching the Avengers movies at some point around the time we got married.  She liked Iron Man (2008) a lot but didn't care as much about the others.  I made her watch the original Avengers movie as a father's day present to me.

But really, talking politics would be like talking about shows on Bravo.  Only one of us really cares.  Now if Trump wins and America slips into fascism, we're going to have to talk about it because we gotta get out of here.  But at this point, talking about it wouldn't help anything.

That might have just been an estimate.  The thing about the Marvels though is that its short runtime is notable because the movie actually feels a bit hacked.  I think, like many of the Phase Four movies, they struggled with reshoots, and I think they struggled to put a coherent movie together.

I think it was fine, but you can see the ghosts of a few storylines that were abandoned that would've probably been included in a longer movie.  And the decision was made to make it be shorter.  I also think covid delays also led to confusion regarding the connections to Secret Invasion, and I think it ended up massively hurting both projects (but I don't know if it would've been enough to save either).

I think the movie was fine, but I think the problem with Phase Four is a lack of overall direction.  I don't think every movie needs to tie into the overall Multiverse Arc (and ironically, this one sorta does), but fair or not, the standalone stories just sorta feel pointless.  Which wasn't necessarily the case in earlier phases.

So in Texas you can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries.  What am I better off doing?

- Vote in the Democratic primary - add to the total of Democrats that are voting in Texas and vote for the best candidates to help win in the general election in Texas

- Vote in the Republican primary - research and vote against any MAGA candidates, hoping to cut them off at the primary process.  Considering this is Texas, I probably have a better chance of defeating MAGA candidates in the primary than in the general.

I'll, of course, be voting for Democrats in the general.  But what helps more in the primary?

Yeah, I follow the Lincoln Project and Meidas and the big Never Trump Republican pages.  And I think that Trump is a unique villain that I don't think can be easily replicated.  If you told me today that I could press a button, Trump would disappear off the world stage forever, and that another Republican would take his place and *win* the election, I'd press it.  Even if it meant President Haley or President DeSantis or President Cruz or any of those guys, I could take it.  Because while I disagree on policy with all those guys, I don't think they represent the same threat level to the country.

I'm 100% sure we could survive with four years of basically anyone but Trump (if it's Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson or some of the really crazy MAGA people, I'm less than 100% sure) but if it's a politician that was on the scene before Trump, I can accept that.  All Republicans are showing how terrible they are, but I don't think most of them would actively torpedo the country like Trump might.

But my question is whether or not Biden and Democrats really believe that Trump is as dangerous as they say.  Because if they were, I think we would be in a better position in 2024.  I wish we had an open primary and that I felt supremely confident that the Democratic nominee was going to crush Trump.  I know that's historically never been done, but I don't care. 

If Biden and Democrats are willing to really working on the assumption that Trump is a mortal threat to the country, Biden should be able to put his pride aside and face challengers.  And Democrats should be able to feel comfortable making a challenge.  It should be a clean, honest, and fair primary where the best candidate wins.  If that's easily Biden, let the voters decide that.  If it's someone else, the party should graciously support whoever wins.  No mud, no attacks, just a true race.

And whoever that person may be.  A junior senator, a brand-new young Congressman, a progressive, a centrist, whoever it is...we support them to victory.

In 2020, Biden won and sailed to victory.  This feels much murkier, like 2016, when Hillary was anointed and was lauded as the obvious choice despite her awful approval ratings.  That's what this feels like.  But even an unpopular candidate can win if they run a good campaign, and I think the Biden campaign has done a pretty good job.  Enough people hate Trump and enough people are willing to hold their nose and vote for Biden.

I just know the right Democratic candidate would steamroll Trump.  I just don't know for sure that person is Biden.

(Note - I will do whatever I can, including volunteering my time and giving my money, to make sure Biden wins in November.  My enthusiasm for him isn't diminished or gone.  I will proudly vote for him no matter what happens.  I'm simply talking about the reality of the situation).

Okay, my point still stands.  Use whatever war you want.  I'm sure there are Vietnam vets that don't trust the Vietnamese.  Korean war vets that don't like Koreans.  When you have an "us vs them" mentality, those rivalries die hard.

I guess unless Trump tells them to switch.

I'm not sure how Republicans, many of whom are of an age where they would've spent significant time living during the Cold War, would be okay with Russia doing whatever they want.  Even if they think Russia has changed, rivalries die hard.

I know the answer is "it's a cult" but I don't believe all 70+ million people that voted for Trump in 2020 (and want to vote for him now) are in a cult. Some are reasonable, and I can't imagine they're okay with this.

I don't know how this border stuff is going to play out, but Republicans keep embarrassing themselves.  They tanked their own border bill in the Senate and failed to impeach Secretary Mayorkas.  They've gotta be tired of all this winning by now.

I'm going to be fascinated to see if public sentiment shifts away from Republicans and toward Democrats.  It absolutely should, but I don't know which side's spin people will buy.

Okay, so the Appeals court finally ruled that there's no total immunity for Trump.  So that's good.  From the limited review I've seen, the Supreme Court should have a week or two to decide if they're going to take it.  If they take it, we should have an answer by June.  If they don't (Please don't), then we should be able to get moving again.

I think it's imperative that this trial gets done before the election.  So hopefully everyone on board (except Trump, of course) can get behind that.