The 2024 Presidential Primary Election thread

So that solution would mean lying about one of the most important questions of current politics, all the time, endlessly. Surely that can't be the correct way to get out of a -- propagandistically, deliberatelly fuelled -- misapprehension?

This seems like the most appropriate thread for this comment.

On the Republican side:

• I assume Cruz and Rubio still have presidential ambitions. They'll be encouraged by the party's tendency, 2016 notwithstanding, to go with the guy who finished second last time (see Romney, McCain, Dole, Bush 41, and Reagan).
• Mike Pence is probably 50/50. If the country club Republicans are no longer pretending to like Trump, the combination of his association with Trump and his "Rush Limbaugh on decaf" personality might put him between a rock and a hard place -- too Trump-tainted for the traditionalists, and nowhere near outwardly crazy enough for the chest-thumping, true-believing Trump cultists.
• There will be at least one complete lunatic -- a Bible-thumping, QAnon-believing, tongues-speaking nutjob. This candidate will probably be a conventionally attractive woman, and Federal Farmer will immediately develop a crush on her.

On the Democratic side, assuming Biden doesn't run again:

• Obviously, Kamala goes for it and is the presumed front-runner.
• There will be one candidate who insists that if only Democrats would collectively set their hair on fire and run around yelling "Look at me, I'm a socialist! Castro was awesome, baby!" they would win every election in a landslide.
• There will be at least seven generic 43-year-old white male congressmen. Nobody will be able to tell them apart, including their wives.
• There will be at least one complete lunatic -- somebody with a hard-to-discern set of beliefs and a conception of foreign policy defined by magical thinking, distinguishable from the Republican lunatic by the lack of glossolalia. This candidate will probably be a conventionally attractive woman, and Federal Farmer will immediately develop a crush on her.

the list of GOP posers trying to get the Trump annointing for 2024 is LONG and any attempt to list them will be incomplete.
Hawley, Cotton, Cruz, Rubio, Graham, Scott?, Haley, Pompeo, Pence, Noem, Brian Kemp, Greg Abbott, Desantis, Duecy (not all the governors will run but all of them want to be The Anointed), and an assortment of House loonies like Gaetz, Collins, Masse etc.

All of them will be humiliated when the nominee ends up being a Trump because their base is fucking insane.

I have potentially unfounded hope that Trump decides not to run because he can't stand the thought of potentially losing again.

I have sliiiightly more founded hope that Trump won't be able to run again because he'll be in Riker's.

I don't expect The Donald to run again. He didn't really want to win the first time. By 2024, either he'll be bankrupt, or in total disgrace, or doing something that combines money and an audience with not having his amoral, non-legal proclivities in the spotlight.

On the other hand, Trump might obsess about this L and want to do nothing more than retake the White House assuming he's able.

Even assuming that Trump himself doesn't run, I think there is a fairly good chance that Ivanka, Donald Jr. or Jared would instead. While I would see that as likely a further step down (the incompetenece/inexperience/indifference of 45 plus the lack of his marketing genius) others might see it as a plus (projecting a better image than overweight, old Trump while getting most MAGA people as a default, returning things to a dog whistle so as to not scare off suburban moms, having a better tether to reality).

We all said the same thing about Obama 12 years ago

That said, while I wouldn't vote against her, there are many other seasoned Dems that are more palpable and got a track record of getting shit done. Tammy Duckworth could bring around not just the veteran vote as a disabled combatant in Iraqi War II but the disabled vote in general (there's gonna be a whoooooole lot more of them in the wake of COVID-19). And while she doesn't ID as socialist, they're pretty far left by American standards.

I doubt the Cuban population in FL would have her but the Chicano areas in Texas would make it as close as Florida in the 2000 election. AZ would be a given and maybe she'd flip another Southern state.

I don't think the Democrats would want to have someone run against the first mixed race, female VP. Especially if it's another old white guy. That said, I don't think Harris is very likable so she might not run or get far anyway.

Why not? No one dropped out to make Obama's path easier. Or Jessie Jackson's run either in '84.

This year, at least a third of the candidates were women, at least three were PoC and one was openly gay with the worst possible name to have as the first major gay candidate and no one batted an eye. If Harris loses the nomination, her race will at worst be a miniscule factor and certain not the ripe trolling fields that it was for Barack Obama.

The thing is, the DNC is not some sort of omnipotent puppetmaster. If it was, Hillary would have smashed relative newcomer Obama in 2008. If AOC runs in the primary and the voters opt for her, she wins.

If AOC were unwilling to challenge an establishment Democratic leader, she would still be bartending in the Bronx.

I don't know if it would be smart to challenge Harris, but it is hard to know where the next three years will take us. It might not have been smart of Harris to challenge Biden and the other Dems this year, but it didn't stop her from landing the vice presidency. Maybe AOC will try a similar path.

What the issue of whether/when to run boils down to is whether a candidate's instincts and sense of timing are on target. I thought Obama jumped the gun, but he sensed the moment was right and seized it. A lot of people (including me) thought Biden had missed his chance(s), but he's now president-elect. In the great novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of Heinlein's characters said that the people would be with you when you strike or you've misjudged the moment in history. He was talking about the difference between revolution succeeding and failing, but I think the thought applies to mainstream politics as well.

Wait, AOC switched to the Libertarian party???

Janeway straight up murdered a new lifeform to save Neelix of all people.

I've seen it prominently used in the past 3-4 years (mostly by Latinx women). I agree it's rather clunky to say, but the patriarchy, etc.

Honestly, Latin American is easier to say and just as accurate.

Small nitpick, but Obama didn't push to run IIRC. Others thought he'd have a good shot and he run thinking he'd get primaried by Super Tuesday for Clinton at the lastest.

Not me

Obama had cross party appeal and a likeability that AOC doesn't have. And Harris will already have the benefit of four years(or less) of being Vice-President.

I think you are seriously underestimating AOC's charisma and overstating Obama's cross-party appeal. According to some Googling, about 10 percent of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008 as opposed to 7 percent of Democrats voting for McCain. That's not particularly that high. But I guess I have to concede that basically no candidate in the immediate political climate could expect to pull as high a number. We'll see what the polling numbers look like for Biden, but I've got some quatloos that even with the disaster of 45, 95+ percent of Republicans voted for him.

At least hypothetically, AOC can do some things as well or better than Obama did before he ran. Social media was in its infancy in 2008. Now AOC has 10 million Twitter followers. She mostlyy randomly set up a stream to watch her play a video game that drew 400k live viewers. Assuming she can mobilize that population to actually get out and vote -- admittedly a big assumption -- she can be dangerous.

AOC is not unlikeable. The GOP is doing to her what they did to Hillary. They are starting early with undermining and painting her in a bad light. So that when she is ready, all the idiots who believe the nonsense (@Lanzman) will automatically say "oh, hell no, I'd never vote for her"

If people didn't act stupidly and listen to propaganda, this country wouldn't be in the dire straights it's currently in.

Indeed. In point of fact the GOP understands she is exceedingly likeable even as Dems debate it, which is exactly why they began a full court press operation to discredit her.

You know where we've seen this before? Hillary Clinton. In the early 90's she was a perfectly apealing person that everyone understood had a very bright future - Republicans most of all. So they proactively started a 20 year campaign to turn her into the devil. If Dems sit on their hands they'll see a re-run with AOC.

Wow, I've read fanfiction with less revisionist history than this

You can dig back onto this very forum to find out how much cross party appeal B. Hussein Obama had. The Tea Party was formed specifically the GOP viewed him as a radical who was gonna turn America Communist.

But then, they think that about anyone with a "D" after their name.

Just a reminder that you are all utterly, utterly mad.

It’s always campaign season in the greatest country on earth.

Hopefully this thread will die down for like 2 years at least.

On a forum like Wordforge, is this supposed to be news?

That's true, but while I'm a bit too young to fully remember the Clinton years, I don't remember anyone calling them anarchist radicals. Lots of other ugly names, but not even the right could actually believe them to be commies.

Well, some people did, because this was a thing:



But yes, the Republicans' level of shrieking, spittle-emitting lunacy has definitely increased since then.