2024 US Presidential Election Speculation

[Jia Nanfeng]

RFK Jr is a moron who doesn't have anywhere near the popular support relevant to the amount of coverage he gets. The news cycle with him is

Something happens
RFK says something increasingly stupid
Left leaning media soyfaces
Right leaning media says he's the only sane Democrat
Rest of the world is worse off for it.

Your characterization of this is just…

…100% accurate.

But, as a more right-leaning person I wouldn’t feel entirely nauseated voting for him. And I do admire his decades of clean water/oceans advocacy.

[Jordan]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/midw ... 00095.html

A good article. Argues that right now a big driver of inflation is home rental prices, more than basically any other factor. To fix this Minneapolis actually subsidized renters, which was predicted to drive inflation but did the opposite, and second they exterminated zoning laws to the third degree.

I know in Canada the conservative party is big against these big city zoning rules and I am warming up to the idea now that they have a point. Minneapolis, the city in question, is managed by Democrats and did pretty well with these policies.

Edit-I am also reading that MN also issued some very mild rent control by placing a cap on how much rental properties' value could increase c. roughly 2021. So not a hard cap, but a bit of management. But digging a little more, this only was passed in st. Paul and voted for in Minneapolis, but not implemented. Rent control is a bit murky as I understand it can backfire as landlords just rush to sell, killing availability. I feel like there is a balance somewhere.

Channeling McMillan here, the real problem with this country is the rent is too damn high. So we need to fix that as the first priority for policy imo. I understand that the government can do multiple things at once. The problem, imo, is that its priorities always seem to serve donors from specific industries and especially military contractors, not that it needs to stop doing x to do y.

[WeiWenDi]

Ex-staffers allege Marianne Williamson is running a fraudulent, dysfunctional presidential campaign

This is... troubling, to say the least. It certainly negatively impacts my image of Williamson as a progressive candidate. If true, it would mean that Williamson is basically running her campaign as a vanity project, if not an outright scam to take advantage of progressive-leaning voters' political donations without any intention of following through. It's also not entirely clear to me what she plans to do to get the DNC to recognise her campaign in the New Hampshire primary.

Again, this is making Dr Cornel West look more and more like the left's only sane option in the upcoming election -- even if he's only running on the limited goal of making the 5% vote threshold to get matching funds from the Feds for the Green Party.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/midw ... 00095.html

A good article. Argues that right now a big driver of inflation is home rental prices, more than basically any other factor. To fix this Minneapolis actually subsidized renters, which was predicted to drive inflation but did the opposite, and second they exterminated zoning laws to the third degree.

I know in Canada the conservative party is big against these big city zoning rules and I am warming up to the idea now that they have a point. Minneapolis, the city in question, is managed by Democrats and did pretty well with these policies.

Edit-I am also reading that MN also issued some very mild rent control by placing a cap on how much rental properties' value could increase c. roughly 2021. So not a hard cap, but a bit of management. But digging a little more, this only was passed in st. Paul and voted for in Minneapolis, but not implemented. Rent control is a bit murky as I understand it can backfire as landlords just rush to sell, killing availability. I feel like there is a balance somewhere.

Channeling McMillan here, the real problem with this country is the rent is too damn high. So we need to fix that as the first priority for policy imo. I understand that the government can do multiple things at once. The problem, imo, is that its priorities always seem to serve donors from specific industries and especially military contractors, not that it needs to stop doing x to do y.

I'm a Minneapolitan, and Minneapolis has done a fairly good job of managing housing policy, I agree. The 2040 Plan has come in for its fair share of criticism, largely from NIMBYs who don't like the idea of mixed-zoning neighbourhoods (and there are quite a few of those where I live, sadly). But SFH homeowners like me are reaping the benefits of the policy also, in the form of stable prices on consumer goods and utilities. We haven't done rent control yet. There was a rent control proposition on the ballot a couple years ago (basically just giving the city council the right to impose rent controls), but IIRC it didn't pass.

[Jordan]

I'm skeptical about the Marianne Williamson thing because ex-staffers are always bitter and tend to leak stories like this to the press, which are all too happy to eat up stories like this. With that said, I don't think she is a serious candidate either, insofar as I don't think she has any chance of winning. I would vote for her regardless. There is nothing in that piece which makes me think her platform is fraudulent, only that at worst, she surrounds herself with sycophants and has low tolerance toward her underlings. She is still far and away a much more progressive candidate than Joe Biden or RFK Jr.

I don't mind listening to stories or opinions that are against candidates I would otherwise support. I think there are fair criticisms to make of AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc., and I think it's important to not live in an echo chamber. I would still maintain that the kinds of candidates I like are far better than the corporatists and fascists.

I will still vote for her, and then when she loses the primaries, I will vote for Cornel West in the general election. I will do so without a single regret, because I live in California and my vote will literally make zero difference whatsoever in our garbage electoral system. It won't change a single thing. I'm under no delusions that Joe Biden will somehow lose the primaries or that Cornel West can be president. If Republicans somehow win this election, though, I really don't care much. I haven't been impressed with the last several years of Joe Biden, except for one or two imo correct decisions by him, such as how he handled COVID-19 relief early on and his withdrawal from Afghanistan. After that it all went downhill. I think Pete Buttigieg has been the worst Secretary of Transportation in American history, and I will actively vote against him if he ever runs for President again. I will say that.

[WeiWenDi]

I'm skeptical about the Marianne Williamson thing because ex-staffers are always bitter and tend to leak stories like this to the press, which are all too happy to eat up stories like this. With that said, I don't think she is a serious candidate either, insofar as I don't think she has any chance of winning. I would vote for her regardless. There is nothing in that piece which makes me think her platform is fraudulent, only that at worst, she surrounds herself with sycophants and has low tolerance toward her underlings. She is still far and away a much more progressive candidate than Joe Biden or RFK Jr.

If it was just one or two staffers, I'd probably agree with you. When you get up to around six or seven staffers, then it starts to look like a troubling pattern.

I just want to make it clear that I have nothing against the people who plan to vote for Marianne in the primaries. But, like you, I don't think anything's going to come of it. Bernie's 2016 and 2020 campaigns have basically shown the hard limits on anything that can be done to reform the Democratic Party from inside.

I don't mind listening to stories or opinions that are against candidates I would otherwise support. I think there are fair criticisms to make of AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc., and I think it's important to not live in an echo chamber. I would still maintain that the kinds of candidates I like are far better than the corporatists and fascists.

I'm one of Omar's constituents. I have some strong criticisms of Omar based on some things she's done and said locally. As a result, I supported and voted for Don Samuels in the primary. But when it came down to the general, and it was between Omar and Davis, I voted for Omar. Even a deeply flawed (both in terms of her personal comportment and in terms of her policies) Democrat like Omar is preferable to a Republican at this point, if there are no other candidates running.

I will still vote for her, and then when she loses the primaries, I will vote for Cornel West in the general election. I will do so without a single regret, because I live in California and my vote will literally make zero difference whatsoever in our garbage electoral system. It won't change a single thing. I'm under no delusions that Joe Biden will somehow lose the primaries or that Cornel West can be president. If Republicans somehow win this election, though, I really don't care much.

I'm largely in the same place. But I don't plan to vote in the Dem primaries because I'm pretty sure it won't make a difference.

I haven't been impressed with the last several years of Joe Biden, except for one or two imo correct decisions by him, such as how he handled COVID-19 relief early on and his withdrawal from Afghanistan. After that it all went downhill. I think Pete Buttigieg has been the worst Secretary of Transportation in American history, and I will actively vote against him if he ever runs for President again. I will say that.

Yup. I give Biden full props on getting us out of Afghanistan. COVID-19 could have been handled a lot better, but Biden certainly did a much better job than Trump would have in his place. Also, repealing DOMA was the right move.

After that, though? Yeah, you're right. Ordering drone strikes in Syria based on alleged Iranian activity. Union-busting the railway workers. Kicking tens of thousands of older workers off of TANF. Deporting more undocumented Hispanics than Trump did. Green-lighting the Willow oil pipeline project. Ramping up military confrontation with Russia and pseudo-military confrontation with China. Not an impressive record to say the least, at least if you happen to work for a living. I'm sure the defence contractors and Wall Street financiers are happy with him, though.

[Jordan]

I would have definitely voted for Omar in the primaries if I lived there.

I just feel like the staffer thing has nothing to do with policies at all. I've also heard Biden has been hard on his staff in some reports. These are leaked to the press by disaffected butthurt people, and it is all gossip mill stuff meant to discredit a candidate for an agenda imo. It doesn't change which side she is standing for and who she is fighting.

But yeah, she will lose. Oh well.

I think we can do better than Biden. I think we could have done better than him in 2020 and better than HRC in 2016. I feel like the democratic party is split between basically anti-Trump former republicans and centrists who lean right economically and then the actual left wing, which is maybe like 20-25% of the pop. I am among the latter, and view the former to be adverserial.

Even putting aside the policy stuff, I also just think Biden is totally not suited to be president. Some elderly people are sharp well into their 90s. My grandfather was like that. Biden, imo, is not. We deserve better leadership and a break from foreign interloping.

[Jordan]

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-r ... -it-2023-9

I recall previously James said that yes, Feinstein was super cognitively impaired and obviously so, and she should immediately resign because she was incapable of performing her duties. He gave a pass to Biden saying that his condition is not the same.

This resonated with me a bit because I do agree that there is nuance to everything, and there are always degrees of severity to any issue.

However, I continue to think that Biden needs to step aside and let someone else run, and here's why.

At this point, I feel like the people saying Biden is normal are telling people not to believe their lying eyes and ears and essentially gaslighting everybody else who can plainly see what is actually happening. With this story from business insider, we have an example of Biden saying one thing and then immediately repeating it as if he forgot he said it. This is not a case of him just accidentally saying the same short sentence twice, but launching into a whole story twice.

If you recall with Feinstein, what accelerated the inquiries into her mental competence was when she asked Jack Dorsey (previous CEO of Twitter, dba "X") the exact same question twice during Senate hearings. What Biden just did recently, if this story is accurate, is basically the same exact thing, except arguably much, much worse.

Biden has now done the same thing here. While I get that every now and then somebody misspeaks or makes a typo or something, I do not think it is hyperbole anymore to suggest that Biden is suffering from actual mental lapses. It doesn't mean he is fully in dementia or that he doesn't have moments when he is sharp. But in my opinion he just isn't cut out to be Commander in Chief right now. I'd argue he isn't even fit to be in the Senate anymore, just as I feel that way about Feinstein (and probably McConnell at this juncture). Even in his most banal of speeches, Biden is making clear verbal slips and repeating things ad nauseum like "Lemme tell you what?" and "Well guess what?" in a way that doesn't sound normal.

This country needs to have an honest discussion about age and competency. It's not ageism to talk about how defunct a gerontocracy is where oftentimes our political leaders plainly and visibly are not lucid. One thing we have to seriously consider is that this differs from person to person. Some people are sharp well into their 90s, and other people suffer from cognitive decline very early in life. And it's not wrong to question a person's mental competency if they are advanced in years and saying or doing unusual things.

Biden is not too old to be President. But he is not mentally competent for the job. And I don't know if there is any better demonstration of that than him essentially repeating a worse version of what Dianne Feinstein did when she questioned Jack Dorsey, saying the same exact spiel twice with no realization as to what had just transpired. Feinstein should have immediately resigned after that, and Biden should resign right now. I don't think Harris is any better or worse on policy than Biden, but I do think she is much more obviously capable of performing the job as President than Biden right now. It's not only about the day to day business of government, but also about ability to communicate a message and energy to campaign for any kind of cause whatsoever, even if it's a narrow political agenda. Biden is not capable of doing any of these jobs, and he was and still is the wrong person to lead both the party and the country.

Pointing out this increasingly apparent fact, that Biden is clearly not all there at times, does not mean I support Trump. I shouldn't have to say this, but of course I do, because whataboutism is rampant in today's political discourse. Trump's own failings do not change anything about what is going on with Biden right now.