2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Josquius]

Love that the guy who actually tries to give a thought out answer rather than just a snappy black and white one liner is the one they boo.
Whilst fascism may be the popular form of extremism, its worth remembering the others do exist.

[grumbler]

I am not "getting" the whole right-wing-Republican conspiracy theory about the Super owl being rigged so that Taylor Swift can endorse Joe Biden. There's a long history of music stars endorsing presidential candidates (including Taylor Swift in 2020), and the KC Chiefs were in three of the last four Super Bowls (and are the reigning champs).  It's gotten tpo the point where the Pentagon felt it had to officially deny it.

I'd believe that it was a false flag op, given how incredibly stupid-on-the-face-of-it and damaging to the Republican image with Swift fans and women generally it is, but this stuff is coming from Fox News, not exactly a left-wing false flag front.  It's bizarre and self-defeating. 

And I love it even if I don't get it.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think it's another example of the interests of the Republican entertainment-media complex not really aligning with the interests of the Republican party.

[Savonarola]

Biden recounts 2021 G7 meeting where he spoke with French President Francois Mitterrand.

A triumph of US presidential diplomacy and a good news since his recent calls with Leonid Brezhnev haven't gone so well.  It gives us hope that his upcoming meeting with David Lloyd George will be a success.

[Zoupa]

Between this and Trump with the whole Nikki Haley/Nancy Pelosi episode, you folks are in good hands.

[garbon]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

[Barrister]

Biden recounts 2021 G7 meeting where he spoke with French President Francois Mitterrand.

A triumph of US presidential diplomacy and a good news since his recent calls with Leonid Brezhnev haven't gone so well.  It gives us hope that his upcoming meeting with David Lloyd George will be a success.

Biden has been in politics long enough he probably met Mitterand.

[Jacob]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

Yes

[Barrister]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

Yes

Always worth remembering Biden had to quit his first presidential campaign (back in 1988!) after it came out he lifted entire sections of a speech by UK Labour Leader Neil Kinnock, including personal details that were true for Kinnock but not of Biden.

[Valmy]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

Yeah. Spicey gave us a running commentary on the weird and stupid things he would say when he was VP.

Weirdly I think the internet age has helped him here. In the old days of the dominance of the mainstream media and its 30 second sound bytes his gaffes could be disastrous. Now they just kind of get lost in the noise.

[Barrister]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

Yeah. Spicey gave us a running commentary on the weird and stupid things he would say when he was VP.

Weirdly I think the internet age has helped him here. In the old days of the dominance of the mainstream media and its 30 second sound bytes his gaffes could be disastrous. Now they just kind of get lost in the noise.

He gets helped A LOT in comparison to his opposition.

I mean really - I would ordinarily run screaming away from the guy.  But when the choice is Biden versus Trump...

[Valmy]

Hasn't Biden, even from when he was young, been all tongue tied and gaffe prone?

Yeah. Spicey gave us a running commentary on the weird and stupid things he would say when he was VP.

Weirdly I think the internet age has helped him here. In the old days of the dominance of the mainstream media and its 30 second sound bytes his gaffes could be disastrous. Now they just kind of get lost in the noise.

He gets helped A LOT in comparison to his opposition.

I mean really - I would ordinarily run screaming away from the guy.  But when the choice is Biden versus Trump...

Yeah the whole reason Obama chose him as his running mate was because it was doubted he would be a serious rival.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how he has done as President but obviously I am in the minority here. I am not sure what people expected.

[Sheilbh]

Always worth remembering Biden had to quit his first presidential campaign (back in 1988!) after it came out he lifted entire sections of a speech by UK Labour Leader Neil Kinnock, including personal details that were true for Kinnock but not of Biden.

Yeah it was Kinnock's great "why am I the first Kinnnock in a thousand generations to go to university?" speech.

Of course there is a media angle here which sort of goes against Valmy's point. Because riffing off that was, I believe, part of Biden's stump speech in 1988. He always credited and referenced that it came from Kinnock. He gave that speech, referencing Kinnock, hundreds if not thousands of times. Then he used it a closing peroration in one of the debates and didn't reference Kinnock. Dukakis team (and this goes to the international party activist thinig) included a volunteer from Britain who was also the son of a former (and future) Labour MP who was then acting as secretary to the Parliamentary Labour Party - he recognised that in that one section of that one debate Biden had nicked someone else's life story. And the Dukakis made sure the press knew, and it was a story for the press even with all the other times Biden had given his stump speech correctly acknowledging his debt to Kinnock's speech.

I think now, that sort of story and spin wouldn't survive contact with social media because you'd have people splicing clips of all the other times. But in the early 90s media world that sort of spin and story would quickly become dominant - the debate was on TV, those hundreds of stump speeches weren't - and very difficult to rebut - once an impression is formed it's not easy to unform it.

Totally agree on Biden's history of "gaffes" and mis-speaking. But I think there is something to the definition of a gaffe that it's when a politician inadvertently says or reveals something that is true, but they're not supposed to admit. If you think of Brown's "bigoted woman", or Clinton's "deplorables", or Romney's "47%" remarks - they seemed to indicate something about how those politicians actually thought about those chunks of voters, which was previously just subtext. I think in 1988 Biden's gaffes were evidence that he was a bit of a gobshite. In the current context - and why I think they could be more damaging - they just point to the question of is he too old.

So totally get the point that he has a history of this, but I think the context now means it lands differently. I think it's also why there's different standards for Trump - there's no objective gaffe because it is all context dependent and for Trump everything is text, there's no subtext there's no unspoken truths or hypocrisy that he's accidentally revealing.

[garbon]

Totally agree on Biden's history of "gaffes" and mis-speaking. But I think there is something to the definition of a gaffe that it's when a politician inadvertently says or reveals something that is true, but they're not supposed to admit. If you think of Brown's "bigoted woman", or Clinton's "deplorables", or Romney's "47%" remarks - they seemed to indicate something about how those politicians actually thought about those chunks of voters, which was previously just subtext. I think in 1988 Biden's gaffes were evidence that he was a bit of a gobshite. In the current context - and why I think they could be more damaging - they just point to the question of is he too old.

So totally get the point that he has a history of this, but I think the context now means it lands differently. I think it's also why there's different standards for Trump - there's no objective gaffe because it is all context dependent and for Trump everything is text, there's no subtext there's no unspoken truths or hypocrisy that he's accidentally revealing.

I raised because of the context. Current narrative is Biden is the too old one of the two and anything that can be pegged as examples of him being senile is attributed to that.

A ridiculous narrative that it would be great to see the Democrats due more to combat or pivot from.

[garbon]

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/9ZJtn/?utm_source=NBC&utm_medium=iframely

Poll noting by far 81 sends people into panic vs the 77 year old.