The latest betting exchange odds on Trump being the WH2024 GOP nominee rate Trump as about a 70% chance of being nominated. To me this sounds to be on the high side given the mounting criminal indictments he is facing and a new factor highlighted in the YouTube video linked to above.
Comments
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/politics/usa-presidential-election-2024/republican-nominee-betting-1.178163916
Trump has opposed supporting Ukraine.
Trump opposed giving aid to Ukraine while in office.
Trump has a grudge against Zelensky as he wouldn't help him with the Hunter Biden issue.
Trump supported Putin.
Trump literally responded to the invasion of Ukraine by saying it was a "genius" move by Putin.
Trump has been purging those who would stand up for the military establishment to surround himself with Yesmen.
To just assume that Ukraine, if it still needs our help by 2025, will get it from Trump when Trump has for years said the polar opposite and wants rid of the MIC establishment people whom he seems to think stood in the way of him keeping power last time ... Is to sacrifice Ukraine and its future.
It's not good enough.
One thing I haven't been able to figure out is how the pollsters are selecting their likely primary voters. Anecdotally a lot of Americans seem to be quite narked off with the choice of these two old men, and I'd have thought a candidate who gets a bit of momentum in the early races could turn out a lot of these people in the GOP race, especially with no contest on the Dem side. But I have no idea to what extent these people are already in the primary polling.
Speaking of which, he was on Bill Maher’s podcast yesterday https://youtube.com/watch?v=lrpW-SUchFo
Christie is doing a fine kamikaze mission against Trump but he has no chance in the primary. Best comparison is Rory Stewart against BoJo.
38% of Republicans dislike Trump. (Albeit a lot of this group hate Biden.)
24% of Republicans like Trump, but worry about his electability.
That makes Trump the chear favorite, but it also shows there is a real - if narrow - path for an alternative to walk
The all Indian ticket would do the Chinese heads in.
I think his polling is Talkshow republican and reflects favourability for what he's actually saying, rather than an intent to support him.
The cucks in the GOP will do anything for Trump, if a Trumper found Trump in bed with his wife, the cuck would apologise and go make Trump a cup of tea.
Trump voters believe Trump is more likely to tell them the truth than their friends and family. Again: to understand the modern GOP, you need to understand what an authoritarian cult of personality is, because that’s what it has become.
https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1693267774313759209
The US constitution is really the most impractical document.
That does potentially give someone a platform to shine in his absence.
It also found that pledging to leave the ECHR at the election would lose twice as many votes for the Conservatives as they would gain from the promise.
The polling, carried out last week by More in Common, a think tank, found that 49 per cent want Britain to remain a member of the convention, which Winston Churchill helped to create in 1951. Leaving the ECHR was only supported by 23 per cent of people. The same proportion said they did not know.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poll-suggests-leaving-echr-would-cost-the-tories-votes-b8bzlpb6h
https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/18/chatgpt_political_bias/
Does cognitive dissonance explain Leon's absence?
Trump is a barking mad choice. Trump in prison is as mad as you are likely to get.
DJT is a bit less warry than JRB and somehow thinks that the US tax payer is not responsible for the national security of Europe and South Korea. On the other hand his cupidity and narcissism make him easier to manipulate so the MIC probably doesn't have a particular preference between the two.
Mind you, given the latest ideas that twenty somethings aren’t fully criminally responsible - so can use age in mitigation of rape & murder…
His price for Next President still might be too short though because that phenomenon won't necessarily carry through from the primaries to the general in the same way.
But next to Trump, he's probably best at winding up a crowd of the nuts who make up a third of the party.
The trouble with Decent Chaps is that they trust that other Chaps are also Decent.
He's much fatter than Sands.
The sooner Donald Trump drops out of politics in America, the better for all of us!
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/19/2024-debates-matter-00111948
They're not going to halt Trump - but if the law does, then they'll set the field for his replacement.
It shows how little understanding he has.
If Trump continues to be The Man, if the GOP remain utterly captured by him and the movement for him, then how does the law be applied by people captured by The Man?
For the GOP this should be a death spiral. An increasingly in-depth effort to circumvent their democratic system to protect the rights of The Man who is almost guaranteed to lose and lose heavily. Are 10 million people to be persuaded to vote for him who did not do so last time?
This is the importance of the battle. America still maintains a veneer of pretence that it is a democracy. Trump would strip that away completely. So if the GOP support The Man, they support the ending of the US in its current form. And they call themselves "conservatives"
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4159517-the-memo-georgia-indictment-reminds-voters-of-the-republicans-who-stood-up-to-trump/
...The Georgia indictment itself, in which Trump is charged with 13 offenses including racketeering, includes a plethora of details about the then-president and his allies being at odds with the state’s Republicans.
Beyond Kemp and Raffensperger, Republican members of the Georgia Legislature mostly failed to sign on to efforts to step in, despite being pushed to do so by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), among others.
The indictment also refers to a legal filing against Kemp, filed by Trump and attorney John Eastman. Prosecutors allege the duo had “reason to know” that the filing was replete with “materially false statements.”
Everyone expects Trump to continue with his claims that the indictments against him are politicized.
But the details in Georgia make that a much tougher task.
It's psychological and emotional rather than rational and that's the level at which it needs to be engaged with to change it.
He will win the nomination - I don't even think it will be a contest. Other candidates won't rally around DeSantis or Ramaswamy, and the people running as outwardly anti Trump (Pence to a slight degree, Christie to a massive degree) are just straight up unpopular. Trump isn't even going to the debates (I wouldn't be surprised if he goes to Tucker or someone else friendly for an exclusive interview that streams online / Newsmax that clashes with the debate to draw away the audience).
As far as I'm aware it would take congress to decree that Trump can't be President any more, so that won't happen.
He can go to prison and run, the SCOTUS precedent there already exists (Eugene Debs). He can try to pardon himself of all federal charges if he wins. So the deciding factor will really be Georgia.
I wouldn't be surprised if he wins the nomination and the Presidency again. Yes part of his win against Clinton was that he was considered the moderate candidate in that election, and that is no longer the case, but lots of people dislike Biden and the economy under him (not that the economy really has much to do with who is in the WH) and Trump brings out weird voters for the GOP (although he also rallies the Dem base). Biden is not as popular amongst Dems as Trump is amongst GOP supporters, so any election relying on turning out the base will probably swing to Trump. And we never saw Biden on the campaign trail in 2020 due to Covid - I think he will find it very hard.
If I were Trump I'd lean in (he is always more comfortable in demagoguery anyway), pick Kari Lake as my running partner (she's telegenic, she'd back him and his conspiracy theories and she'd back him in stealing future elections / pardoning himself) and run as a martyr to the cause - go full Messianic and talk about the false trial of Jesus and that stuff. The GOP base would eat that up, white grievance is always powerful in the US, and if he focussed on economic stuff rather than openly on immigration he could continue to make headway among Latino voters in certain key states.
Trump is ineligible according to the definition of the law. But in practice I can't see how that law would be enforced. So as fun a distraction as this is, we're back to the basics of this election - how dies candidate Trump attract the additional voters required to win the election?
I am going to assume that he can't, so the real battle isn't this ineligibility thing, its what Trumper state officials are going to do to openly rig this election so that Trump wins. He can't win a free and fair election. So cheat.
I also think if we get a Gore v Bush situation where the tie breaker happens to be one typically red state (let's say Georgia) that SCOTUS may give it to Trump this time. They only turned it down last time because he lost too many states and by too many votes. The argument (that many states changed the terms of the election due to covid and this was somehow unfair) seemed to have some sympathy from Thomas and Alito.
Most likely only a criminal conviction and jail sentence will stop him being Republican nominee again or winning the election again next year. The polls show Independents would desert Trump if he is convicted even if his base doesn't and the RNC could change the party nomination rules before the convention to stop convicted criminals being nominee
In the absence of Trump, it's a low-interest spat between also-rans.
isolationist but continue his
trade war with China and the
EU.
It is up to European powers
and Turkey helped ideally by
fellow NATO Canada to fund
our militaries enough we don't always need to rely on the US to defend Europe, our own continent and that includes continuing to supply Ukraine v Putin.
We cannot always rely on the US electing Presidents who want to police the globe
Trump will be the GOP nominee. If he is convicted, the GOP will lose many independent voters but will likely hold the very red states. If they kick Trump off the ticket after he wins and is convicted, they could be in "lose Texas and Florida" territory, because Trump will tell his base the GOP are in on the scam and to not vote if the GOP don't defend him.
The election descending into legal challenge doesn't help the GOP as they are not the incumbents, and have had a recent unhappy experience challenging results in the courts. So avoid that scenario completely by simply rigging the election. People will be outraged, but you spin your own outrage by claiming that the democrats are busy trying to openly steal the election. States where Biden wins being proof of the steal.
a) Some random state official you've never heard of declines to put him on the ballot, then somebody sues them to require them to put him there, and the case escalates potentially up to SCOTUS
b) Some random state official you've never heard of tries to put Trump on the ballot, then somebody else sues them to require them to remove him, and the case escalates potentially up to SCOTUS
Both these paths have lots of unsatisfactory outcomes where an election official does or doesn't do something but it doesn't get tested in court for procedural reasons or because the person who has the right to sue them decides not to.
American's a big country so I guess someone somewhere will try it?
They decided it was not permissible to carry out a recount on the terms Gore was asking for, and actually there were several very good reasons for that none of which involved vote rigging. (With hindsight Gore made a serious mistake in not asking for a Florida-wide recount.)
I agree that criminals like Clarence Thomas probably would rig the election if they could but unless there is an actual reason to do it rather than merely assuage Donald Trump's hurt feelings he won't have the chance to.
- they have not complied with the Inquiry's demands
- the accounts they were responsible for were misleading
- the bonuses were justified by false information contained in those accounts.
This case, the endless NHS and police scandals and much else are symptomatic of a country with public organizations which are functional only in a basic way because they are running on fuel in the tank - structures, systems, practices etc., - created by previous generations.
But those running them now don't know how to put fuel in the tank or maintain the car. Or even where they're supposed to be driving to.
But what they are mostly good at is nicking the valuable bits out of the car, causing accidents and running away from those accidents as fast as possible.
Lots of people employed by these organisations, especially at the top, seem to think they exist principally for the benefit of those inside them - not to serve any actual purpose or function for others. So reputation (untethered to any actual achievement) becomes more important than anything else. My heart sinks when I see those passive aggressive notices saying that staff have a right to do their jobs without being assaulted etc - not because I disagree with the sentiment (good manners to those providing a service to you should be a given) - but because it so often indicates an organisation which thinks that it is doing you - the customer, client, patient etc., - an enormous favour in bothering to deal with you at all.
Politics is fast becoming broken in this country.
It implies that it's not already broken beyond repair.
Disgusting behaviour from the Post Office, but sadly not in any way unexpected.
Even if they don't win in the courts, the time wasting of dragging things to the courts and the legitimacy that likely at least 3 justices will give to Trump will be useful for the project over all. And let's face it, if Trump is the nominee (which it looks like he will be) the GOP will have to lean in to it or lose badly. To denounce their candidate now would be to lose a huge swathe of their base when Trump tells them to ignore the GOP down ballot and only he can save them.
I highly recommend the 5-4 podcast, who have been doing deep dives into historical Supreme Court cases that are terrible. They started with Bush v Gore, and listening to their argument and reading further turned me from a "yeah, that was a bad election, shame Bush won" position to a "huh, they did outright steal this thing, didn't they" position.
https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/bush-v-gore/
I think we should mourn the passing of any belief in this (whether the belief was ever well based is a slightly different question) as we are going to struggle to replace it.
I look forward to the interviews, in a gloss magazine perhaps. A photo study of a lovely country house, and a chat, with a trembling lip, about the difficulty and pain the scandal has caused - nasty people blaming them for doing their jobs correctly.
Why isn’t she all over this ?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/aug/21/rishi-sunak-inflation-keir-starmer-childcare-politics-live-latest-updates
"A YouGov poll for the Times found that only 8% of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8% last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.
More people, 17%, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation." (I think this is the Graun quoting the paywalled story in the Times.)
Obviously if Trump drops out then the whole calculation changes, but so far there's no sign that he will.
Another thing that I think could happen is that Trump wins the delegates then drops out in favour of a more electable toady. This also has the benefit that they can definitely pardon him for federal crimes, unlike self-pardons which seem sketchy. When I suggest this people object that Trump doesn't seem like the kind of person to do this, and I definitely see their point, OTOH I do think he cares about survival.
2016 CQC inspection found:
"There was a very positive culture throughout the trust. Staff felt well supported, able to raise concerns and develop professionally. Staff were proud of their services and proud of the trust."
What use is an inspectorate that finds this?
But the bigger picture is that we get the politicians and public servants we deserve. I absolutely agree with @Cyclefree 's sentiment that
what they are mostly good at is nicking the valuable bits out of the car, causing accidents and running away from those accidents as fast as possible
except that's what most of us do given the chance. How many of us don't take the windfalls as a matter of principle, rather than due to lack of opportunity?
More importantly, how do we put in the guardrails so that it's harder to do the wrong thing and easier to do the right thing?
But as with Ofsted, it requires a lot of courage (running into WW1 No Man's Land playing the trumpet and setting off fireworks courage) to tell an inspector that things aren't good. So the inspectors have to be able to spot problems themselves, which is harder than it looks.
https://www.hsj.co.uk/policy-and-regulation/nhse-reminds-trusts-not-to-appoint-unfit-directors-in-wake-of-letby-conviction/7035399.article
Doh! Why hadn't we thought of that before!
But the bigger error is in the 'you can't do that' assertion. Says who, and you and whose army is going to stop it?
Even if the claim is correct, and even if it applies to Trump - and both assertions, but the first in particular, are dubious - who decides, and who is to hold them to account for their decision?
The political reality is that if Trump wins the election, Congress will affirm it and he will be inaugurated. No amount of legalistic jiggery-pokery is going top stop that, for the simple reason that the electorate (through the rather odd prism of the American electoral process) is ultimately supreme in any democracy. It would appear outrageous to deny the people their choice after they had made it. In effect, the people would have decided that Trump *can* take the oath in good faith.
Ironically, nothing could be more Trumpian than an attempt to use extraordinary constitutional procedures to block a clear election result, just because those in charge don't like the result, and because they can*.
* Although as explained above, they can't.
Though the Poles to be fair were as supportive of Zelensky with weapons from the start as Boris was, Poland and the UK have been Ukraine's staunchest supporters. Berlin and Paris would certainly do a deal with Putin to at least give him the Crimea if Trump was re elected
And you can make Trump Secretary of State, so he can spend his time messing up world affairs as he loves to do.
Firstly, Trump simply doesn't believe there is a more electable toady. Based on hypothetical polls (which I'm sceptical about but still) he may even be correct, but the key point is that the total self-belief he loudly expresses is the one genuine thing about him.
Secondly, there has to be a pretty strong chance that the Supreme Court would uphold a self-pardon. It's sufficiently arguable either way and, although I don't buy into the idea that conservative justices are in Trump's pocket (two are mad - not appointed by him, funnily enough - but four aren't), it would be surprising if a conservative court kept Trump in prison in those circumstances. Even if they did, however, he could always hand over to the VP at that point and they would pardon him - there's no need to do it before the election effectively.
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1693465705763520872/photo/1
Do you know the history of the Business Plot? Where big wig Republicans (including Grandpappy Bush) were trying to do a fascist coup against FDR? That is who the RNC establishment are. When they can get away with this stuff, they are absolutely up for it. They just don't like rolling the dice and losing. Once Trump won in 2020, they all got in line. Because he still managed to deliver. Not as much as a competent politician may have, but in other ways he over delivered because he didn't care and just let the donors or activists pick the people directly (like essentially letting any Federalist society freak become a federal judge, no matter how little experience they had).