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Vance is looking like a hindrance – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,179
edited August 26 in General
Vance is looking like a hindrance – politicalbetting.com

Economist/YouGov Poll, August 11-13% of registered voters who say the following helps / hurts their ticket's chances to win the presidential electionWalz: 42% / 16%Vance: 24% / 29%https://t.co/ReIZqyA0vm pic.twitter.com/0k6ve9t7s0

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Comments

  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,209
    First, like Walz is the VP debate
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474
    He looks like many things.

    'Hindrance' is the politest of them.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,913
    And yet PB Trump fanbois insist their baby will still win, is still hugely popular, and ignore all the polls, the movement in the polls, the momentum for Harris and the meltdown in the Trump campaign.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,930
    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,074
    edited August 16
    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,074
    ydoethur said:

    In first battle of Kursk, Ukrainians used British tanks to fight Nazis.

    Nothing has changed.

    https://x.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1824162218092663079

    ·
    The Ukrainian army continues its retreat into Russia.

    Darth Putin
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,913
    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,930
    Interesting piece on where the money on advertising is being spent: https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/pennsylvania-ad-spending-election-2024-e9c06d59

    Yep, its largely Pennsylvania again. I actually feel sorry for residents there. They must get so sick of this. I am really glad its not a thing in this country.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,861
    What dirty deal will Trump do to get Kennedy out of the race?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656
    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,861

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    edited August 16
    DavidL said:

    Interesting piece on where the money on advertising is being spent: https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/pennsylvania-ad-spending-election-2024-e9c06d59

    Yep, its largely Pennsylvania again. I actually feel sorry for residents there. They must get so sick of this. I am really glad its not a thing in this country.

    The politicians also exempted themselves from pretty much every law about data collection and aggregation, telemarketing, cold calling, robocalling, caller ID spoofing etc.

    So you not only have to put up with most of the TV ads being for politicians, most of which are negative attack ads rather than any positive vision from the candidate, but if you live in a swing state you’ll often get several phone calls per day for the next three months!

    The UK system of sending out a few leaflets and the occasional PPB works a lot better!
  • eekeek Posts: 28,433
    Sandpit said:

    DavidL said:

    Interesting piece on where the money on advertising is being spent: https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/pennsylvania-ad-spending-election-2024-e9c06d59

    Yep, its largely Pennsylvania again. I actually feel sorry for residents there. They must get so sick of this. I am really glad its not a thing in this country.

    The politicians also exempted themselves from pretty much every law about data collection and aggregation, telemarketing, cold calling, robocalling, caller ID spoofing etc.

    So you not only have to put up with most of the TV ads being for politicians, most of which are negative attack ads rather than any positive vision from the candidate, but if you live in a swing state you’ll often get several phone calls per day for the next three months!

    The UK system of sending out a few leaflets and the occasional PPB works a lot better!
    The first campaign to stop robocall me would be the winner in that state.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,074

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    That's epic wishcasting. I remember people writing Trump off in those terms precisely eight years ago. Strangely enough always people who really wanted him to lose.

    It's possible, but the alternative is equally possible. Trump gets a bit of message discipline, Harris does as terribly as usual in debates and interviews and people realise her liberal record is not what they want. That squeaks Trump over the line.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    Trump is now on TikTok! He’s talking about inflation to the kids.

    https://x.com/endwokeness/status/1824280027749290130

    Make America Affordable Again.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,913

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.

    As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,930

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
    It really says everything you need to know about Trump that he is positively encouraging others to blame his own child for his mistake in choosing Vance. He is contemptible.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    Except that's not really true in the swing states. Harris has a consistent lead, albeit a narrow one.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,030
    Sandpit said:

    Trump is now on TikTok! He’s talking about inflation to the kids.

    https://x.com/endwokeness/status/1824280027749290130

    Make America Affordable Again.

    https://x.com/TheDailyShow/status/1824265068995133503
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,209
    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    "End inflation" isn't a plan.
    And you've probably noticed that the US is already the world's largest fossil fuel producer.

    The plan is effectively mass deportations, and huge consumer price increases through tariffs.
    A plan for chaos.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474
    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    That’s a series of slogans, some of them eight years old and others incoherent. Not a plan, as such.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,930
    Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Trump is now on TikTok! He’s talking about inflation to the kids.

    https://x.com/endwokeness/status/1824280027749290130

    Make America Affordable Again.

    https://x.com/TheDailyShow/status/1824265068995133503
    The Daily Show is having so much fun with this. They will miss Donald when he is gone. Bit like Spitting Image and Maggie.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
    Mention of Abraham Lincoln brings me to this electoral curiosity.

    Many PBers will have heard of the Lincoln-Douglas debates amid the Senatorial election of 1858 and that Douglas defeated Lincoln.

    But Lincoln won more votes than Douglas - Douglas won because the winner was decided by the legislature.

    And the margin of Lincoln's popular vote win, 6.6%, was similar to what Lincoln would defeat Douglas by in the 1860 Presidential election in Illinois, 3.5%.

    What seems really odd though is that the popular vote in the 1858 senatorial election was higher than that in the 1860 presidential election:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates#Results

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election_in_Illinois
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,661

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.

    It seems that Musk and Thiel were highly instrumental in the Vance pick. Going with Vance unlocks Tech Bro/Crypto money that Trump very badly needs.

  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,744
    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    When she speaks her own mind she turns out to be a dud

  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    "End inflation" isn't a plan.
    And you've probably noticed that the US is already the world's largest fossil fuel producer.

    The plan is effectively mass deportations, and huge consumer price increases through tariffs.
    A plan for chaos.
    This is of little relevance though. Both campaigns are short on substance. What this shows though is the Trump campaign is adapting/changing to Harris coming on the scene and it may impact on the polling.

    I get that people hate Trump and I am not in any way a supporter but there is a lot of overconfidence / wishful thinking about the democrats.

  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,661

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.

    Harris still looks like a weak candidate to me ands one that a mainstream GOP candidate would eat alive. Trump is not that, of course, but he has a very solid 45% locked in and it is pretty efficient. He doesn't need that many Independents in a handful of swing states to get over the line. I think it's still his to lose - but it's a contest now whereas before it was going to be a procession.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,030

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.

    It seems that Musk and Thiel were highly instrumental in the Vance pick. Going with Vance unlocks Tech Bro/Crypto money that Trump very badly needs.

    It would be ironic if Musk was the prime mover behind the failure of the campaign

    And hilarious
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656
    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    "End inflation" isn't a plan.
    And you've probably noticed that the US is already the world's largest fossil fuel producer.

    The plan is effectively mass deportations, and huge consumer price increases through tariffs.
    A plan for chaos.
    But the platform promises to:

    Make america the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!

    The by far! is perhaps the relevant bit.

    Curiously the only other promise which gets an exclamation mark is:

    and no tax on tips!
  • Nigelb said:

    "over 100%" ?

    Trump: Virtually 100% of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants In fact I've heard substantially more and actually beyond that number 100%. It’s a much higher number than that but the government has not caught up with that yet.
    https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824187096401318126

    Almost certainly bullshit because of the speaker, but mathematically its entirely possible for net figures like this to be over 100%.

    Completely making up figures as an example, imagine 50,000 jobs (net) have been created - of which 60,000 (net) have gone to migrants and there are 10,000 fewer non-migrants employed than before.

    However while its possible, given who said it, I expect for that reason alone its total bullshit.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,661
    edited August 16
    The other thing to remember is that in some important states the GOP has had four years to lever its way into the voter registration and election certification process. In a close contest this is going to be very important - and when it goes to court, guess who is in control of the one where the final decisions will be made.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,661
    Scott_xP said:

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.

    It seems that Musk and Thiel were highly instrumental in the Vance pick. Going with Vance unlocks Tech Bro/Crypto money that Trump very badly needs.

    It would be ironic if Musk was the prime mover behind the failure of the campaign

    And hilarious

    Yep. For me, it's just too much to hope for!

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,449
    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    I can't square a Trump win fitting into an optimum outcome circle for Ukraine. I suspect all will be revealed after January 20th. You may be disappointed.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474

    Nigelb said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    "End inflation" isn't a plan.
    And you've probably noticed that the US is already the world's largest fossil fuel producer.

    The plan is effectively mass deportations, and huge consumer price increases through tariffs.
    A plan for chaos.
    But the platform promises to:

    Make america the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!

    The by far! is perhaps the relevant bit.

    Curiously the only other promise which gets an exclamation mark is:

    and no tax on tips!
    Given his liking for porn stars, I do get why he doesn’t want their tips taxed.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,536
    edited August 16
    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/



    I would expect once elected this will disappear. As they point out food inflation is now 1.1% in the U.S. and supermarket margins are thin.
    geoffw said:

    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    When she speaks her own mind she turns out to be a dud

    She's not had much interrogation or analysis from the press currently. Partly due to Trump backfiring so badly.

    Her policy positions will be interesting and when subjected to scrutiny, like here, may fall apart. Although to be fair there are some assumptions as to what her policy is going to be in the article as well.

  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,927
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,313
    Trump ultimately picked Vance to double down on his Maga message and take it through to 2028 if he wins given he could not run again anyway. Vance also represents what was a swing state, Ohio, which even though it has voted for Trump twice also voted for Obama twice.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,312
    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.

    It seems that Musk and Thiel were highly instrumental in the Vance pick. Going with Vance unlocks Tech Bro/Crypto money that Trump very badly needs.

    Thiel seems to have contributed to every GOP candidate for decades:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Political_views_and_activities

    Whereas Musk is so erratic in his beliefs and donations he isn't someone to be relied upon.

    Is there any evidence that picking Vance is bringing in any more 'Tech Bro' money than would have been donated in any case ?
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398

    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    I can't square a Trump win fitting into an optimum outcome circle for Ukraine. I suspect all will be revealed after January 20th. You may be disappointed.
    What is quite amusing is the complete certainty that people have that the democrats are the supporters of Ukraine. They were the supporters of human/women's rights but then abandoned Afghanistan in a complete panic. So why assume indefinite support for Ukraine? Unlike Europe public opinion is not absolute on Ukraine in the US, it can change. Ongoing support for the conflict also relies on the president negotiating the domestic political situation as we saw earlier this year.

    I have a very close interest in this conflict because my family are in Finland. It seems like there are different strategies, which we don't know the full details of, and which may or may not work. There is a risk that Trump 'pulls the plug'. But it seems more likely that it would be a sub optimum 'deal' that freezes the conflict in some way along roughly the current lines. Alternatively, the democrat solution is likely to be just to roll on the conflict, but is most likely to result in essentially the same situation, albeit at greater human and financial cost, and with more disruption - it also brings with it the possibility of total victory for Ukraine, or the complete implosion of Ukraine. I understand why people prefer the latter, but I am just not convinced that Trump is necessarily a disaster.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515
    FPT
    Andy_JS said:

    "Criminology student who threw beer over a police officer and kicked at riot shields during widespread disorder in Liverpool is jailed"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13748201/Criminology-student-threw-beer-police-officer-kicked-riot-shields-widespread-disorder-Liverpool-jailed.html

    "The criminology student's previous convictions include threatening behaviour, drunk and disorderly behaviour, production of cannabis, possession of cocaine and MDMA and breaching a suspended sentence order."

    Can't say he isn't studious....
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,313
    edited August 16
    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k. Biden and the Democrats also won some of the wealthiest zip codes in the US in 2020 and Biden also tied Trump with voters earning over 200 000 dollars.

    Both the Tories and Trump comfortably won voters over 65 and white non graduates however. So the divide is more an age than wealth one. In the UK it is actually now the LDs who do worst amongst the poorest voters and non graduate working class and best amongst the richest and
    graduates.

    A decade ago though pre Trump and Brexit both Cameron and Romney polled better with voters the richer they were and the more they earned and both won graduates too
  • eekeek Posts: 28,433
    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646

    FPT

    Andy_JS said:

    "Criminology student who threw beer over a police officer and kicked at riot shields during widespread disorder in Liverpool is jailed"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13748201/Criminology-student-threw-beer-police-officer-kicked-riot-shields-widespread-disorder-Liverpool-jailed.html

    "The criminology student's previous convictions include threatening behaviour, drunk and disorderly behaviour, production of cannabis, possession of cocaine and MDMA and breaching a suspended sentence order."

    Can't say he isn't studious....
    He’s a criminology student, or a criminality student?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515
    rkrkrk said:

    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
    Such jobs are not about the upfront salary/rewards - but access.

    The person in question is going get a detailed education on exactly how a chunk of the government works, who makes things happen. And get in all the useful WhatsApp groups...

    All of which sets you up perfectly to do contracts for the government, later. Worth orders of magnitude more than 67K in the long run.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,888
    rkrkrk said:

    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
    It's just more jobs for the boys (and gals...)

    Certainly not the best candidates.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474
    darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    I can't square a Trump win fitting into an optimum outcome circle for Ukraine. I suspect all will be revealed after January 20th. You may be disappointed.
    What is quite amusing is the complete certainty that people have that the democrats are the supporters of Ukraine. They were the supporters of human/women's rights but then abandoned Afghanistan in a complete panic. .
    How many times do people need to be reminded it was Trump who withdrew from Afghanistan? He signed the treaty. He withdrew most of the forces. And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election. Which, ironically, meant his fans could blame Biden for it.

    Biden couldn’t have reversed what had happened without launching a new full-scale military incursion, which understandably given the difficulties involved he decided not to do.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
    Mention of Abraham Lincoln brings me to this electoral curiosity.

    Many PBers will have heard of the Lincoln-Douglas debates amid the Senatorial election of 1858 and that Douglas defeated Lincoln.

    But Lincoln won more votes than Douglas - Douglas won because the winner was decided by the legislature.

    And the margin of Lincoln's popular vote win, 6.6%, was similar to what Lincoln would defeat Douglas by in the 1860 Presidential election in Illinois, 3.5%.

    What seems really odd though is that the popular vote in the 1858 senatorial election was higher than that in the 1860 presidential election:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates#Results

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election_in_Illinois
    In 1860, there was serious voter suppression in the South (more than usual) - anyone voting for Lincoln, in some states, was at physical risk.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,927
    rkrkrk said:

    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
    There's a broader point about how civil servants and local Government officers should work with the political leadership. In councils where one party has held power for a long period, a change of administration often leads to an exodus of senior officers - the politicians want new thinking and new ideas and there's often a misconception of a "cosiness" with the previous administration which doesn't generate trust.

    In Government, it's slightly different - you have the continuity of the civil service and the discontinuity of Ministers - how many Home Secretaries have there been since 2015? Departments where the Minister (and other political appointments) frequently change are different to those where there is a degree of stability. Often, the big decisions aren't taken - why do we have a shortage of prison capacity and who are the Conservatives to complain about that given they were in Government for 14 years?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
    Mention of Abraham Lincoln brings me to this electoral curiosity.

    Many PBers will have heard of the Lincoln-Douglas debates amid the Senatorial election of 1858 and that Douglas defeated Lincoln.

    But Lincoln won more votes than Douglas - Douglas won because the winner was decided by the legislature.

    And the margin of Lincoln's popular vote win, 6.6%, was similar to what Lincoln would defeat Douglas by in the 1860 Presidential election in Illinois, 3.5%.

    What seems really odd though is that the popular vote in the 1858 senatorial election was higher than that in the 1860 presidential election:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates#Results

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election_in_Illinois
    In 1860, there was serious voter suppression in the South (more than usual) - anyone voting for Lincoln, in some states, was at physical risk.
    Ah, another parallel with 2024. But this time, it's voters for the Dems that will be suppressed.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,536
    edited August 16

    rkrkrk said:

    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
    It's just more jobs for the boys (and gals...)

    Certainly not the best candidates.
    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515
    Sandpit said:

    FPT

    Andy_JS said:

    "Criminology student who threw beer over a police officer and kicked at riot shields during widespread disorder in Liverpool is jailed"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13748201/Criminology-student-threw-beer-police-officer-kicked-riot-shields-widespread-disorder-Liverpool-jailed.html

    "The criminology student's previous convictions include threatening behaviour, drunk and disorderly behaviour, production of cannabis, possession of cocaine and MDMA and breaching a suspended sentence order."

    Can't say he isn't studious....
    He’s a criminology student, or a criminality student?
    He should switch courses. Obviously gets confused. Paediatrician?

    On the other hand, maybe he thinks West Midlands Serious Crime Squad is still rolling?
  • FossFoss Posts: 1,019
    Taz said:
    For that kind go money - and the contacts it buys - wouldn't you just shop for a safe-ish seat and the greater kudos that would bring?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    A couple of points there.
    "Even the WaPo" is a bit old, as it's been dinging the Democrats for quite some time.

    Secondly, what evidence do you or the WaPo columnist have that she's proposing price controls ?
    (None, I'm guessing.)
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.

    It seems that Musk and Thiel were highly instrumental in the Vance pick. Going with Vance unlocks Tech Bro/Crypto money that Trump very badly needs.

    Thiel seems to have contributed to every GOP candidate for decades:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Political_views_and_activities

    Whereas Musk is so erratic in his beliefs and donations he isn't someone to be relied upon.

    Is there any evidence that picking Vance is bringing in any more 'Tech Bro' money than would have been donated in any case ?
    Not really. Works for the tech bros, though.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,754
    edited August 16

    What dirty deal will Trump do to get Kennedy out of the race?

    John Oliver had a segment on this a few weeks ago.

    Health & Human Services Secretary is the job RFK Jr wants.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,433
    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k.
    Now I know that the NI tax cuts are money that is required but you have to ask - how bad would the Tory vote have been without Hunt's reckless giveaway.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,258
    BTW, I think the latest Trump attacks - i.e. focusing on cost of living, and immigration - show that he is beginning to get back on track after being completely derailed by the Biden-Harris swap.

    Whether he can remain focused for the next 12 weeks remains up for debate: if he can keep the conversation on areas where he is strong (immigration and the economy), then he is very much in contention. If he goes off on grievance fueled rants, or if the conversation moves onto mental fitness or Project 2025 or abortion, then it's going to be much harder for him.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    I'm glad I'm not a journalists having to take Trump's press conferences seriously.

    We are now one hour and 8 minutes in to Trump’s “press conference” on food prices and we have now reached the Hillary’s Emails section of his Greatest Hits.
    https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1824200819542999225
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.

    He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.

    Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.

    So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?

    My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
    Mention of Abraham Lincoln brings me to this electoral curiosity.

    Many PBers will have heard of the Lincoln-Douglas debates amid the Senatorial election of 1858 and that Douglas defeated Lincoln.

    But Lincoln won more votes than Douglas - Douglas won because the winner was decided by the legislature.

    And the margin of Lincoln's popular vote win, 6.6%, was similar to what Lincoln would defeat Douglas by in the 1860 Presidential election in Illinois, 3.5%.

    What seems really odd though is that the popular vote in the 1858 senatorial election was higher than that in the 1860 presidential election:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates#Results

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election_in_Illinois
    In 1860, there was serious voter suppression in the South (more than usual) - anyone voting for Lincoln, in some states, was at physical risk.
    Lincoln couldn't even get on the ballot in the southern states.

    The disputes there would have been between the Southern Dems and the Constitutional Union supporters.

    In the northern states the GOP had what was an incipient paramilitary force:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,313
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.

    As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
    Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.

    Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
  • eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k.
    Now I know that the NI tax cuts are money that is required but you have to ask - how bad would the Tory vote have been without Hunt's reckless giveaway.
    Considering taxes were raised by Hunt, it was anything but reckless.

    As much as it pisses you off that those earning a low living are now on a lower marginal rate than before, while those relying upon unearned incomes are taxed more than before.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,277
    edited August 16
    Price controls don’t have a good track record . They might be good politics . In this case the GOP attacking Harris for fighting for consumers might backfire .

    Sometimes political forums miss just how little the general public follow the minutiae of policies .

    Explaining to the general public why price controls aren’t a good idea . Good luck with that .
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    darkage said:

    Sandpit said:

    As some of us might have highlighted yesterday, now even the WaPo is starting to notice…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/


    I can't square a Trump win fitting into an optimum outcome circle for Ukraine. I suspect all will be revealed after January 20th. You may be disappointed.
    What is quite amusing is the complete certainty that people have that the democrats are the supporters of Ukraine. They were the supporters of human/women's rights but then abandoned Afghanistan in a complete panic. So why assume indefinite support for Ukraine? Unlike Europe public opinion is not absolute on Ukraine in the US, it can change. Ongoing support for the conflict also relies on the president negotiating the domestic political situation as we saw earlier this year. ..
    There's never any certainty, obviously.

    But only one party has voted as a block against aid for Ukraine - at the behest of their presidential candidate.
    And Harris's statements have been unequivocal in support - and Walz was one if the earliest backers of Ukraine after the invasion.

    What's amusing is anyone thinking that there isn't a massive difference between the two parties on this.

  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,234
    Taz said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Taz said:
    Donating £67k to get a civil service job is a pretty poor return on investment. Indeed as she was formerly a partner in a consultancy, seems likely she has taken a big pay cut.

    On the broader point, I used to think it was very important top civil service jobs were impartial. I'm revising my mind a bit... if a minister wants person x who they rate to run an initiative... why shouldn't they have them? Maybe we need a new class of person like spads but with more seniority...
    It's just more jobs for the boys (and gals...)

    Certainly not the best candidates.
    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
    Won't get fooled again. Oh no !
  • DoubleCarpetDoubleCarpet Posts: 890

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    Sorry, but with the very greatest respect, Trump didn't lose massively in 2020 - it was a 4.5% defeat in the popular vote, and Biden only won 306 EV.

    1964, 1972, and 1984 were massive losses, but 2020 doesn't really fall into that category.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,452
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.

    Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.

    Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.

    As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
    Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.

    Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
    We've been over this one ad infinitum.
    It was a good pick both electorally, and from the POV of actually running an administration.

    Against that is your obsession with the ability of a candidate to 'deliver' their state.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,927
    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k. Biden and the Democrats also won some of the wealthiest zip codes in the US in 2020 and Biden also tied Trump with voters earning over 200 000 dollars.

    Both the Tories and Trump comfortably won voters over 65 and white non graduates however. So the divide is more an age than wealth one. In the UK it is actually now the LDs who do worst amongst the poorest voters and non graduate working class and best amongst the richest and
    graduates.

    A decade ago though pre Trump and Brexit both Cameron and Romney polled better with voters the richer they were and the more they earned and both won graduates too
    It's worth noting the 20-point lead enjoyed by the Conservatives among the over 65s last month compares with the 47 point lead they enjoyed in December 2019 - the swing in that age group from Conservative to Labour was 13.5%.

    Looking at the income figures, the worst Conservative performance (interestingly) was among those with household earnings between £50k and £70k - possibly those most affected by the freezing of tax thresholds.

    Oddly enough, among those earning over £70k, the 2019 vote split was Conservative 40%, Labour 31% and Liberal Democrat 20% whereas this time it was Labour 40%, Conservative 22% and Liberal Democrat 16% so again a 13.5% swing . In fact, the LDs did slightly better among those on lower incomes in 2024 than in 2019.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,045
    edited August 16
    Fpt

    Haters will say this is AI
    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1823742501884453312

    Elon Musk betrays a sense of humour as he tweets a clip of Trump & Musk dancing to Staying Alive.

    Otoh I bet Musk is too vain to rt this.

    https://x.com/28delayslater/status/1824100028979597792?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    edited August 16
    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
    That’s an interesting theory.

    The S400 air defences around the bridge are really rare and expensive to use. Sending large drones or small rockets to the area not only gives the locations away, but also consumes the expensive rockets on cheap targets. They’re designed to be used on enemy aircraft or ICBMs. The really amusing thing is that you can take them out with tiny drones they can’t see on radar!

    I don’t see the Ukranians actually having a way of doing any more than minor damage to the bridge from the air, it’s well-built and you can’t deliver tonnes of explosives from above to a single point. The successful attack is going to be either a lorry on the bridge, a boat underneath it, or humans laying explosives.

    The security is ridiculously tight after the last truck bomb, and they have border-style lorry scanners on the approaches, so the only way to get a truck bomb on the bridge is going to be some sort of an ambush involving dozens of special forces. Attacking from underneath could be possible with an ambush of drone boats, taking out the defences then following the gaps created to get a drone barge filled with explosives under a pillar. Getting humans to place explosives needs a lot less of the explosives, they can for example use shaped charges aimed at weak points in the same way you’d demolish a building, but the difficulty is getting them close by without detection, possibly some mad SBS/James Bond-style frogman operation from a submarine?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,313
    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    At the moment Harris has a lower average popular vote lead over Trump than Biden or Hillary had.

    However Harris is doing better in swing states than Hillary did, leading now on average in Michigan and Wisconsin for example and tied in Georgia, even if still worse than Biden did in 2020. So yes it looks the closest election in the EC since 2000 though even in 2000 had Gore been ahead in Florida even the SC stopping the count wouldn't have stopped him winning
  • eekeek Posts: 28,433

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k.
    Now I know that the NI tax cuts are money that is required but you have to ask - how bad would the Tory vote have been without Hunt's reckless giveaway.
    Considering taxes were raised by Hunt, it was anything but reckless.

    As much as it pisses you off that those earning a low living are now on a lower marginal rate than before, while those relying upon unearned incomes are taxed more than before.
    the targeting of the tax cuts isn't a problem - the problem is they were based on spending cuts that don't actually exist.

    My question / thought was that few people think the tax cuts actually resulted in any actual Tory votes. But if the Tory voters are those earning less than £50,000 than they are the people most impacted by the tax cuts..
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,258
    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
    That said, if (when) the Kerch bridge finally does fall, then Russia is going to have a really hard time supplying its forces (and even civilians) in Crimea. They need to get food, water, power, ammunition, and the like to the peninsular, which means either shipping them in, or getting them across a very narrow stretch of land that is vulnerable to HIMARS and artillery.

    My gut here is that what finally does for Putin and his Ukrainian adventure will come out of Dagestan or Chechnya. The more those places are denuded of troops to support Russian in Ukraine (and the surrounding provinces), the more the locals will fancy having a go.

    And when that happens, Russia will be in no position to respond, because they are stretched so thin. That will be the end of Putin.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,656
    nico679 said:

    Price controls don’t have a good track record . They might be good politics . In this case the GOP attacking Harris for fighting for consumers might backfire .

    Sometimes political forums miss just how little the general public follow the minutiae of policies .

    Explaining to the general public why price controls aren’t a good idea . Good luck with that .

    Price controls are dependent either upon wage controls or higher taxes.

    Many oldies are wiling to accept that to have the prices that they remember from previous decades:

    David Mort, 90, from Risca in Caerphilly said: "For old age pensioners it's getting worse."

    "A cup of tea, 20p - that's plenty. £2.20 is not a fair price," he said. "If it were me I wouldn't go in there, it's as simple as that."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7lyd3zrrro
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    stodge said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    I wish I had your faith. Hopefully you are correct and the continued Trump meltdown does for him once and for all.

    But the economy may decide this in Trump's favour.

    Still very early days in the campaign.
    As PB will know I advocate that the "real" economy can be very different than the "paper" economy. On paper the US economy is doing brilliantly! But clearly its patchy as so many people are experiencing a real economy which is far from brilliant.

    So yes, criticising the Biden administration for the economy is an obvious lever for Trump to pull.

    But he isn't pulling it and as all the recent reports have it, *refuses* to pull it as he demands "his right" to attack Harris for her crime of not being Biden being a woman with mixed ethnicity.

    'They've messed up this economy, they don't care about you, here's my plan' could deliver for him. But he refuses to do that. Instead he wants to personally attack Harris, drool on about the previous economy (the past, not the present or the future) and then go full blown crazy by talking about death by shark.

    Harris will have an economic plan even if Biden has been getting the blame. Trump doesn't have a plan and won't talk about a plan. Which again is why I believe Trump is done and will lose heavily. His own catastrophe in the making. And the worse the polls get the more insane he will get and the worse the polls get.
    Trump has a plan.

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

    You may disagree with his plan, but he does have one.
    Much of that isn’t really a plan. It’s a wish list. An early item is “End inflation”: that’s a goal. What’s the plan to achieve that goal?
    He was actually speaking about that the other day:

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/trump-lays-out-plan-for-combating-inflation-during-intellectual-speech-in-north-carolina/

    Points include reducing energy prices by raising domestic energy production, deporting illegal immigrants, and a drastic cut in government spending.

    Whereas Harris says she’ll reduce inflation by price controls in supermarkets.
    It's the tired old schtick we hear from non-social democratic politicians on the so-called conservative side of the fence.

    I'm not quite sure how reducing illegal immigrants, who presumably do a lot of manual jobs, will reduce inflation. I get the domestic energy production (presumably fracking in a big way) and spending cuts (yawn).

    The last Trump administration saw big tax cuts for the wealthiest and Trump is obviously a devotee of trickle down despite the fact we all know it doesn't work and of course spending cuts will impact the poorest in American society who are the main users of public services.

    In essence. it's a manifesto for the wealthy and very wealthy but that's his voting base so we shouldn't be surprised.

    Over here, it's very different - households with an income of over £70,000 voted 40% Labour, 22% Conservative and 16% Liberal Democrat so the Conservatives do better among the poor.

    That isn't really true. Last month the Tories did better with average earners on £20 to £50k than the poorest earning under £20k.
    Now I know that the NI tax cuts are money that is required but you have to ask - how bad would the Tory vote have been without Hunt's reckless giveaway.
    Considering taxes were raised by Hunt, it was anything but reckless.

    As much as it pisses you off that those earning a low living are now on a lower marginal rate than before, while those relying upon unearned incomes are taxed more than before.
    the targeting of the tax cuts isn't a problem - the problem is they were based on spending cuts that don't actually exist.

    My question / thought was that few people think the tax cuts actually resulted in any actual Tory votes. But if the Tory voters are those earning less than £50,000 than they are the people most impacted by the tax cuts..
    If they were based on spending cuts that would be a problem, but they were based on tax rises, so its not.

    What's your problem with putting up one tax to cut another? Especially when its targeted properly?
  • rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
    That said, if (when) the Kerch bridge finally does fall, then Russia is going to have a really hard time supplying its forces (and even civilians) in Crimea. They need to get food, water, power, ammunition, and the like to the peninsular, which means either shipping them in, or getting them across a very narrow stretch of land that is vulnerable to HIMARS and artillery.

    My gut here is that what finally does for Putin and his Ukrainian adventure will come out of Dagestan or Chechnya. The more those places are denuded of troops to support Russian in Ukraine (and the surrounding provinces), the more the locals will fancy having a go.

    And when that happens, Russia will be in no position to respond, because they are stretched so thin. That will be the end of Putin.
    Indeed.

    It is ironic that Chechnya was the making of Putin and that thanks to his misadventure it could be the ending of him too.

    I don't know enough about the Chechen situation to understand why they've not tried to have a go yet, it does seem odd that its all so quiet there.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,474
    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
    That said, if (when) the Kerch bridge finally does fall, then Russia is going to have a really hard time supplying its forces (and even civilians) in Crimea. They need to get food, water, power, ammunition, and the like to the peninsular, which means either shipping them in, or getting them across a very narrow stretch of land that is vulnerable to HIMARS and artillery.

    My gut here is that what finally does for Putin and his Ukrainian adventure will come out of Dagestan or Chechnya. The more those places are denuded of troops to support Russian in Ukraine (and the surrounding provinces), the more the locals will fancy having a go.

    And when that happens, Russia will be in no position to respond, because they are stretched so thin. That will be the end of Putin.
    When you say ‘end’ do you expect Mugabe style or Gaddafi style?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515
    Foss said:

    Taz said:
    For that kind go money - and the contacts it buys - wouldn't you just shop for a safe-ish seat and the greater kudos that would bring?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGEmxvknao&t=35s
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,258
    HYUFD said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    At the moment Harris has a lower average popular vote lead over Trump than Biden or Hillary had.

    However Harris is doing better in swing states than Hillary did, leading now on average in Michigan and Wisconsin for example and tied in Georgia, even if still worse than Biden did in 2020. So yes it looks the closest election in the EC since 2000 though even in 2000 had Gore been ahead in Florida even the SC stopping the count wouldn't have stopped him winning
    It is close, exceptionally close. I make Harris the very narrow favourite, but Trump really only needs to flip one of the rustbelt to snatch the election.

    It is worth remembering, of course, that it is far from impossible that Ms Harris holds onto WI, PA and MI, while losing the popular vote. That - assuming she held onto her single Nebraska elector - would give her a 270-268 edge.

    I don't know about you guys, but I don't think we'd see a gracious concession speech from him under that scenaro.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 3,090
    Fishing said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    The reason why I'm saying Trump will lose isn't what the polls show now. And that's despite the big move we've already seen from Tump being way out in front of Biden to now being behind Harris.

    I'm saying it because the momentum is there for Harris and will accelerate as Trump goes batshit crazy over not being in the lead and not being the anointed one. Yes, his base will vote for him as they are crazy / pathologically hate Democrats and Liberals / are screaming hypocrite evangelical "Christians" etc etc.

    It isn't about them. Its about everyone else. Trump lost massively in 2020. Tell me where he is going to find the millions of votes needed to win this time. They didn't vote for crazy last time but as he utterly melts down and displays all of the demented old man behaviours that Biden was attacked for they will decide he should get their vote this time?
    That's epic wishcasting. I remember people writing Trump off in those terms precisely eight years ago. Strangely enough always people who really wanted him to lose.

    It's possible, but the alternative is equally possible. Trump gets a bit of message discipline, Harris does as terribly as usual in debates and interviews and people realise her liberal record is not what they want. That squeaks Trump over the line.
    Just a gentle reminder that Trump did not win the popular vote, either in 2016 or 2020. He is highly unlikely to win the popular vote in 2024 either. The shadows of the Capitol riots remain a huge negative, and he is losing ground with independent voters. If the chips fall just right he can squeeze another EC victory, but with the momentum that Harris has picked up, that is a door that is closing. Yes, large chunks of the media (including the Daily Mail et al in the UK, funnily enough) are firmly on team Trump, as is Musk and a number of quite sinister figures in the Tech/Crypto space. However comparing the relatability of Harris v Trump and Walz v Vance its not even close. People tend to vote for people they like, and the warmth of Kamala Harris is a massive contrast the the hate filled and increasingly misogynistic bile of Trump.

    Plenty here seem to think that Trump has still got this, but I can´t help feeling that this is the residual shock from the EC victory of 2016. The momentum is with the Dems, and although it is not yet Labour day, I think the big mo is setting up what could be a landslide for Harris.

    Then there is Putin´s interventions for his clearly favoured candidate of Trump. Without being complacent, even the attempted assassination has not led to a lasting lead for Trump. People are tired of the weird, nasty schtick and team Harris, relatable and normal is a perfect antidote to rage of the right. Putin´s subversion is both more obvious but also weaker than before.

    We will see, but objectively Trump is indeed clearly on the back foot at this stage of the race and it is hard to see how he gets in back.

    Perhaps he really has f*cked the couch.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515
    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    The Kerch Bridge is closed to traffic this morning, after numerous explosions were reported in the area overnight.

    https://x.com/nz_trav/status/1824342393623286142

    No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.

    From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.

    And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
    That said, if (when) the Kerch bridge finally does fall, then Russia is going to have a really hard time supplying its forces (and even civilians) in Crimea. They need to get food, water, power, ammunition, and the like to the peninsular, which means either shipping them in, or getting them across a very narrow stretch of land that is vulnerable to HIMARS and artillery.

    My gut here is that what finally does for Putin and his Ukrainian adventure will come out of Dagestan or Chechnya. The more those places are denuded of troops to support Russian in Ukraine (and the surrounding provinces), the more the locals will fancy having a go.

    And when that happens, Russia will be in no position to respond, because they are stretched so thin. That will be the end of Putin.
    When you say ‘end’ do you expect Mugabe style or Gaddafi style?
    Putin is only President for life.
  • nico679 said:

    Price controls don’t have a good track record . They might be good politics . In this case the GOP attacking Harris for fighting for consumers might backfire .

    Sometimes political forums miss just how little the general public follow the minutiae of policies .

    Explaining to the general public why price controls aren’t a good idea . Good luck with that .

    Price controls are dependent either upon wage controls or higher taxes.

    Many oldies are wiling to accept that to have the prices that they remember from previous decades:

    David Mort, 90, from Risca in Caerphilly said: "For old age pensioners it's getting worse."

    "A cup of tea, 20p - that's plenty. £2.20 is not a fair price," he said. "If it were me I wouldn't go in there, it's as simple as that."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7lyd3zrrro
    Good luck paying someone's wages with 20p 🤦‍♂️
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515

    nico679 said:

    Price controls don’t have a good track record . They might be good politics . In this case the GOP attacking Harris for fighting for consumers might backfire .

    Sometimes political forums miss just how little the general public follow the minutiae of policies .

    Explaining to the general public why price controls aren’t a good idea . Good luck with that .

    Price controls are dependent either upon wage controls or higher taxes.

    Many oldies are wiling to accept that to have the prices that they remember from previous decades:

    David Mort, 90, from Risca in Caerphilly said: "For old age pensioners it's getting worse."

    "A cup of tea, 20p - that's plenty. £2.20 is not a fair price," he said. "If it were me I wouldn't go in there, it's as simple as that."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7lyd3zrrro
    The actual cost of a tea or coffee, when you go to a coffee shop, is irrelevant.

    You are paying for the shop, the bills, the taxes, the staff.

    At around the time of The Great Cereal Scandal*, some people worked out the cost of a business that just offered a seat, wifi and nothing else....

    *https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/27/shoreditch-cereal-cafe-targeted-by-anti-gentrification-protesters
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    RFK Jr’s response to suggestions he was trying to work with the Democrats.

    https://x.com/robertkennedyjr/status/1824053188799889650

    TL:DR he’s not a fan of the modern Democratic Party, prefers the old party of his father and uncle who stood up for the little people rather than the donor class and globalist interests.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,515

    nico679 said:

    Price controls don’t have a good track record . They might be good politics . In this case the GOP attacking Harris for fighting for consumers might backfire .

    Sometimes political forums miss just how little the general public follow the minutiae of policies .

    Explaining to the general public why price controls aren’t a good idea . Good luck with that .

    Price controls are dependent either upon wage controls or higher taxes.

    Many oldies are wiling to accept that to have the prices that they remember from previous decades:

    David Mort, 90, from Risca in Caerphilly said: "For old age pensioners it's getting worse."

    "A cup of tea, 20p - that's plenty. £2.20 is not a fair price," he said. "If it were me I wouldn't go in there, it's as simple as that."


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7lyd3zrrro
    Good luck paying someone's wages with 20p 🤦‍♂️
    Hence my idea to recruit immigrants in West Africa, to work for *really* low wages.

    Special Longterm Access Volunteer Education & Service contracts.....

    May I have a statue, please?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,809

    Fpt

    Haters will say this is AI
    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1823742501884453312

    Elon Musk betrays a sense of humour as he tweets a clip of Trump & Musk dancing to Staying Alive.

    Otoh I bet Musk is too vain to rt this.

    https://x.com/28delayslater/status/1824100028979597792?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
    It really shows how porky they both are in real life.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,888
    Sandpit said:

    RFK Jr’s response to suggestions he was trying to work with the Democrats.

    https://x.com/robertkennedyjr/status/1824053188799889650

    TL:DR he’s not a fan of the modern Democratic Party, prefers the old party of his father and uncle who stood up for the little people rather than the donor class and globalist interests.

    He's not a fan of the modern Democratic Party, and as they're sane, and will give him less opportunities to sell his evil (*) anti-vax rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

    He's a much better fit for the modern Republicans.

    (*) And I mean that genuinely.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,687
    Details of changes in Trump and Clinton/Biden's voters between 2016 and 2020. Useful information in there. So Biden won independents by 9%; Harris already at 8%. The expectation must be that after the Convention next week, Harris will be ahead of where Biden was with this group.

    And why she will win in November.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

    Also interesting detail on the impact of "postal" votes due to Covid. How much is this a permanent change or will unwind?

    "Nearly half of 2020 voters (46%) said they had voted by mail or absentee, and among that group, about four-in-ten said it was their first time casting a ballot this way. Hispanic and White voters were more likely than Black voters to have cast absentee or mail ballots, while Black voters were more likely than White or Hispanic voters to have voted early in person. Urban and suburban voters were also more likely than rural voters to have voted absentee or by mail ballot."
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,646
    rcs1000 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fishing said:

    I can't stand Trump, but Harris's overall lead is still MoE. Polls don't mean anything till after Labour Day at the earliest anyway.

    In fact, if it stays this close, it will probably be decided in the courts like 2000, in which case Harris is in deep trouble.

    It's a tossup.

    At the moment Harris has a lower average popular vote lead over Trump than Biden or Hillary had.

    However Harris is doing better in swing states than Hillary did, leading now on average in Michigan and Wisconsin for example and tied in Georgia, even if still worse than Biden did in 2020. So yes it looks the closest election in the EC since 2000 though even in 2000 had Gore been ahead in Florida even the SC stopping the count wouldn't have stopped him winning
    It is close, exceptionally close. I make Harris the very narrow favourite, but Trump really only needs to flip one of the rustbelt to snatch the election.

    It is worth remembering, of course, that it is far from impossible that Ms Harris holds onto WI, PA and MI, while losing the popular vote. That - assuming she held onto her single Nebraska elector - would give her a 270-268 edge.

    I don't know about you guys, but I don't think we'd see a gracious concession speech from him under that scenaro.
    The idea that there could be a tie 269-269 is perhaps the funniest. In which case the House selects the President and the Senate the VP, so we could theoretically have a Trump-Harris administration.

    This actually happpened 200 years ago, in 1824, when no candidate got a majority of the electoral college.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_United_States_presidential_election
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,809
    Looking at it actuarily, the risk of Vance becoming president is quite high via the visit of my old colleague the Grim Reaper if Trump wins.

This discussion has been closed.