2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Oexmelin]

@Guller

They are not just my pet peeves, though, and I really think that a lot of people on the left just don't get it.  Just because Fox News latches onto something doesn't mean that they're not tapping into a resentment that's real.  Just keep swatting away any discussion, keep talking about what a nothingburger it is, keep asking what "woke" even means, let's see how that continues to work out.  However, let's not, I have to live in this country, and I really think it's better when Democrats get elected.

Except that this doesn't provide any answer for the moment the Republicans will breathlessly switch to another buzzword. You'll answer the "woke" accusations on transkids with what? Then, what do you do with DEI? With critical race theory? With whatever other form the culture war is going to take?

I don't doubt that this seeks to give voice to some form of amorphous resentment. My point is that answering that resentment (how? with what?) simply opens up new forms for another version of that resentment, and keeps it in the news cycle. I don't see a "fix" for that which doesn't leave the Republicans in charge of the talking points the following week.

There are other forms of resentment, hopes and aspirations - some of which do get scooped up by all that talk about wokeness. My sense is that it touches upon a sense of creeping disempowerment, a sense of losing out, including among groups that felt in control, and who once felt they ought to be counted amongst winners. There are progressive ways to tap into that sentiment, and to build Democrats talking points that ought to put the Republicans on the defensive. To me, that is taking control of the discourse. Instead, we got reasonable people talking reasonably about a million different things, and defering to the reflexes of the press for justification.

[HVC]

@Minsky

I don't think diminishing birth numbers will effect it the much. Portugal has been shrinking for a while now, and people still move because it's poor, for example. People from poor countries will always try to move to greener pastures. Unless declining birth rates coincide with increased prosperity, which I don't foresee happening in Latin America, nothing much will change. 

[Oexmelin]

And that's to say nothing of the abysmal management by the Democrats of the unfolding institutional crisis.

[The Minsky Moment]

The people carping about DEI now are the same tea party people demanding that Obama get his government hands off their social security.

The underlying phenomenon is that the social status and economic prospects of white non-college graduates has been declining steadily since the late 70s. Something like DEI is a useful outrage generator for that demo but if it's not that it's "critical race theory" or "ESG" or "anticolonialism" or "wokeness" or "socialized medicine."  All those things could disappear overnight it wouldn't change anything. 

[The Minsky Moment]

@Minsky

I don't think diminishing birth numbers will effect it the much. Portugal has been shrinking for a while now, and people still move because it's poor, for example. People from poor countries will always try to move to greener pastures. Unless declining birth rates coincide with increased prosperity, which I don't foresee happening in Latin America, nothing much will change. 

What will change is that: (1) there will simply be fewer available to move, (2) the advantages to having them come will be more obvious, and (3) there will be more competition for the best workers across the job spectrum.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't agree with this either, I think that issue did very little other than to reinforce existing entrenched positions.  The issue did hurt Harris was the price rise.

The politics of immigration is going to change soon.  There is an extreme and very rapid demographic transition going in Latin America right now. Birth rates are collapsing at extraordinary speed. The days of mass migration north are numbered. That demographic transition is similar to the one already affecting Europe and nearly all of Asia.  The US is an outlier but even here the existing native population is below replacement rate. The failure to maintain high levels of legal immigration, focused both on immigrants with high level skills and education AND lower skill workers to fill key service shortages is going to very costly over the medium and long term. 

You may be right.  Perhaps the current Democratic set of principles and positions is enough to consistently win the White House as long as inflation is low, unemployment low, and incomes rising.  Neither of us "knows" the true motivations of Trump voters.  We're making inferences and guesstimates.

The rest of your post is a non sequitur.  People have expressed concern for immigration right now, not in what it will be in 20 years.  And neither side has made *legal* immigration an issue.

[jimmy olsen]

Gotta hope Trump's brain is too melted to do much but he's still with it enough to fend off Vance from 25thing him

[The Minsky Moment]

You may be right.  Perhaps the current Democratic set of principles and positions is enough to consistently win the White House as long as inflation is low, unemployment low, and incomes rising.

One could have made the same point in Nov 2020 about the Republicans and Trump, when Trump had all the advantages of incumbency and was facing a candidate with a speech impediment and a long track record of badly losing presidential primary contests prior to 2020.

People have expressed concern for immigration right now, not in what it will be in 20 years

We need policy to change right now if we want the right outcome 20 years out.  if we wait 20 years, it will be much too late.

[Admiral Yi]

@Joan

I don't understand your first point.

You're talking policy.  I was talking votes. 

[Zoupa]

So uh what happens with all the pending court cases? Isn't there supposed to be sentencing for the rapes, the felonies, the stealing of documents and the Georgia stuff?

[Zoupa]

So uh what happens with all the pending court cases? Isn't there supposed to be sentencing for the rapes, the felonies, the stealing of documents and the Georgia stuff?

Just typing this out made me laugh out loud. Look who you guys elected lol.

[Tamas]

 

[DGuller]

I think 2020 was effectively a loss for Democrats.  In poker, winning small with a huge hand is tantamount to a loss, because you're going to get your share of bad hands that's you'll be wrecked with, and without winnings from good hands you'll be down. 

Democrats had a huge hand and barely won, and one consequence of barely winning was that they couldn't effectively claw back the advantages that GOP entrenched for itself when they got dealt good hands.

[Tamas]

What a fucked up 4 years this is going to be. And while 80 years old Trump will be napping in Florida, the insane asylum around him will have control of both the Congress and the Senate.

Wow.

[Syt]

So presuming Trump wins this - how long until Trump is declared mentally unfit and President Vance can take over?