United States elections 2024

[Yommie]

Trump falls into Biden's trap as he agrees to presidential debate | Al Mottur​

 

[Yommie]

'Get back to the basement': Joe Biden mocked over number of jump cuts in debate video​

 

[Yommie]

Trump, Biden RIG Debates, SCREW RFK Jr​

 

[Yommie]

Will RFK Jr. Qualify For The First Debate?​

 

[Yommie]

Trump campaign: Yesterday was a horrid day for Joe Biden​

 

[Yommie]

Aaron Rodgers was 'interested' in VP offer from RFK Jr. | The Hill​

 

[Yommie]

RFK Jr BACKTRACKS After Getting SLAMMED Calling For Full Term Abortion​

 

[Yommie]

RFK Jr. Fundraises in Nashville​

 

[Yommie]

DEBATE LOOPHOLE: RFK Can Qualify for CNN Debate​

 

[Yommie]

Trump indicates he will announce VP pick at GOP convention as Kamala Harris accepts debate invite

Ahead of his upcoming debates Joe Biden, Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he may declare his vice presidential candidate at the GOP convention in July.

www.hindustantimes.com

Trump indicates he will announce VP pick at GOP convention as Kamala Harris accepts debate invite​

ByShweta Kukreti
May 16, 2024 11:24 PM IST

Ahead of his upcoming debates Joe Biden, Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he may declare his vice presidential candidate at the GOP convention in July.​

Ahead of his upcoming debates with US President Joe Biden, GOP leader Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he may declare his vice presidential candidate at the Republican national convention in July.

Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted an invitation from CBS News to debate former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick this summer. (AP )






















During his interview with Scripps News’s Charles Benson, Trump was asked about the chance he will declare his running mate at the convention in Milwaukee.
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Responding to this, the former president said: "That’s probably a pretty good chance, I would say."
While he said he is not committing it "100 percent", but added, "you’re getting pretty close. I’ll be doing it in Milwaukee, we’ll be — we’re gonna have a great time."
This announcement comes after Trump agreed to debate challenges thrown at him by Biden, While the first debate will be hosted by CNN in June and another will be conducted by ABC News in September. However, the debates will not take place before live audiences.

Trump calls Milwaukee a ‘really important state’​

The Republican National Convention will be held from July 15-18 in the city of Milwaukee. “With tens of thousands traveling from around the country, it is our goal to showcase the vibrant, energetic, world-class city that is Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” the Republican National Committee said.


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Calling Milwaukee a “very crucial state”, Trump stated, “We are bringing the convention to Milwaukee and we must win Wisconsin.”
Speculations regarding who the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party would choose as his vice presidential candidate are intensifying. Several people who competed against Trump in the GOP's presidential primary this year, have been considered for the position. These include North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.).
Other candidates who might be on Trump's list are Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Sens. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida). South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) was formerly regarded as a major contender, but her hopes of joining Trump's ticket have been dashed after she admitted to killing her own puppy and a family goat. However, Trump has called her story "tough", calling her a "terrific" person.

Earlier this week, Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who endorsed Trump after withdrawing from the presidential race, has declared that he would accept an offer to be his running mate.
Also Read: RFK Jr. tears into Biden and Trump for 'colluding' to exclude him from debates: ‘They are afraid…’

Kamala Harris accepts debate invite against Trump's VP pick​

Meanwhile, Biden campaign declared that Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted a CBS News invitation to debate Trump's vice presidential nominee this summer.
Harris' team informed the network that she would debate in-studio on Tuesday, July 23, or Tuesday, August 13, and requested the Trump campaign to agree on one of the days. The Trump campaign is yet to respond to the debate invitation.

 

[Yommie]

Fox poll shows Trump leading Biden by 1 point; holds bigger lead with RFK Jr.

Former President Trump leads President Biden by just 1 point among registered voters, according to a new Fox News national poll. The poll found Trump at 49 percent support among registered voters i…

thehill.com

Fox poll shows Trump leading Biden by 1 point; holds bigger lead with RFK Jr.​

BY TARA SUTER - 05/16/24 10:35 AM ET
SHAREPOST

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci/Chris Carlson)
Former President Trump leads President Biden by just 1 point among registered voters, according to a new Fox News national poll.
The poll found Trump at 49 percent support among registered voters in a hypothetical match-up, up 1 point from Biden’s 48 percent.

When other presidential candidates such as independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West were included in the poll, Trump leads Biden by 3 points among registered voters, 43 percent to 40 percent.
Polls have provided mixed signals over whether the presence of Kennedy and other third-party candidates will hurt Trump or Biden more. This one suggests Kennedy would pull more support from Biden.
In the end, the third-party candidates could have the biggest impacts in swing states such as Michigan, where Kennedy is on the ballot. Kennedy, who is winning the most support in polls of third-party candidates, is seeking to get on ballots across the country.
The Fox News poll also found that 68 percent of registered voters feel “extremely” motivated to vote in this year’s presidential election. Fifteen percent in the poll said they feel “very” motivated to vote in the upcoming election, 10 percent said they were “somewhat” motivated and 6 percent said they were not motivated “at all.”
The Fox News poll was conducted May 10-13 under the direction of Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research and features a sample of 1,126 registered voters, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

 

[Yommie]

They Supported Biden in 2020. What Made Them Change Their Minds in 2024?

In polls of swing state voters, 14 percent of those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020 said they weren’t backing him now.

www.nytimes.com

They Supported Biden in 2020. What Made Them Change Their Minds in 2024?​

In polls of swing state voters, 14 percent of those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020 said they weren’t backing him now.


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Christopher Sheffield, 61, of Thomasville, Ga., said Donald J. Trump’s attitudes about race bothered him, but said President Biden appeared weak on the world stage.Credit...Ian Clontz for The New York Times

By Claire Cain Miller, Bianca Pallaro and Ruth Igielnik
Graphics by Alicia Parlapiano
The reporters interviewed voters who had said in a new poll that they voted for President Biden in 2020 but weren’t supporting him in 2024.
May 17, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET
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Frederick Westbrook, a retired Las Vegas hotel worker, voted for President Biden in 2020 — as a vote to get Donald J. Trump out of office. He now calls that “the biggest mistake of my life.”
“As a Black man in America, I felt he was doing unjust things,” he said of Mr. Trump. “He’s got a big mouth, he’s not a nice person.” None of that, in his view, has changed. But one thing has.
“Everything is just about the economy,” said Mr. Westbrook, who has started driving for Lyft to support himself on a fixed income in retirement. “I don’t really trust Donald Trump at all. I just think housing, food, my car, my insurance, every single piece of living has gone up.”
In a recent set of polls, Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden in five of six key battleground states, including Nevada. Across the states, Mr. Biden does not have the support of 14 percent of the respondents who said they voted for him in 2020 — voters like Mr. Westbrook who now say they will support Mr. Trump or a third-party candidate, or are undecided or won’t vote.
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In follow-up interviews, many poll respondents were engaged on certain issues, and said those that Democrats are strongest on, like abortion rights and preserving democracy, were also important to them. They disliked Mr. Trump’s personality — a reason many voted against him in 2020 — and weren’t necessarily set on their vote.
But other issues had come to the fore and made them unhappy with how things were going — particularly inflation, immigration and foreign policy.

Voters Who No Longer Support Biden vs. Those Who Remain Loyal​

Biden defectors are more likely to:	Biden defectors	Biden loyalists
Think the economy is poor	71%	16%
Want fundamental change	55	28
Have a favorable view of Joe Rogan	33	11
Be younger than age 45	51	33
Use TikTok sometimes or often	40	23
Say inflation/the economy is the reason for their candidate choice	29	15
Be unvaccinated	18	5
Think Biden is responsible for Roe being overturned	21	9
Say immigration is the reason for their candidate choice	11	1

Biden loyalists are more likely to:	Biden defectors	Biden loyalists
Think Trump is responsible for Roe being overturned	49%	84%
Want to bring politics back to normal	38	65
Be white	42	67
Be almost certain to vote	36	58
Identify as liberal	25	43
Say abortion is the reason for their candidate choice	7	22
Be satisfied with life	74	87

Based on New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College polls of registered voters in six states conducted from April 28 to May 9, 2024.

Biden loyalists are voters who supported Biden in 2020 and plan to support him in 2024. Defectors are those who supported Biden in 2020 but are not planning to support him in 2024.

Altogether, the defectors account for just 6 percent of registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the new surveys by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College. But they could play a decisive role.
They include Democrats, Republicans and independents who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. Many still support Democrats for Senate, suggesting that Mr. Biden still has a chance to regain support from some of them.
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Jaredd Johnson, 25, who works in marketing in Atlanta, said he supported Mr. Biden in 2020 because he hoped he would return the country to a prepandemic normal, but he doesn’t think he has. Though Mr. Johnson has reservations about Mr. Trump, he plans to vote for him.

He said he worries that priorities abroad are distracting from those at home. In conversations with friends and family, he said, they understand the importance of supporting Ukraine and Israel, sending aid to Gaza and helping immigrants.
But, he said, “Our conversations are suddenly less about what’s happening overseas and more about how we are struggling here, too.”
Biden defectors are likelier than others who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 to say the economy is poor and to want fundamental change to the way things work. They more often are young or Hispanic — groups that have historically voted for Democrats in large numbers, but are to some degree moving toward Republicans. (There are not major differences in the education level of voters who are sticking with Mr. Biden and those who aren’t.)
The surveys found fewer voters moving in the other direction: There were less than half as many Trump defectors in the swing states as there were Biden defectors.

Biden defectors don’t necessarily like Trump​

Christopher Sheffield, 61, a counselor for veterans in Thomasville, Ga., said Mr. Trump’s attitudes about race bothered him, but not as much as his concern that conflicts abroad could devolve into a world war.
“I’m an African American — of course I worry about racism,” he said. “But guess what? I’ve been dealing with that my whole life.”
Mr. Biden is “a good guy,” Mr. Sheffield said. “But when I look at him, he looks weak. With North Korea, Putin, and all those boys ready to act, I think they will be a little bit more reluctant to challenge Trump than they would with Biden.” He plans to vote for Mr. Trump.
Image

Virginia Faris, 54, with her dog, Alus. She said she does not like Mr. Biden’s economic policies.Credit...Sara Stathas for The New York Times

They’re unhappy with the economy​

Though the economy is strong by many traditional measures, half of all registered voters in the surveys said it was poor — including nearly three-quarters of Biden defectors. By comparison, just one in six of those who plan to vote for Mr. Biden again rated the economy as poor.
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In interviews, the Biden defectors repeatedly brought up prices. Inflation is still lingering at 3.4 percent, although it has slowed significantly since its 2022 high (9 percent).
Virginia Faris, 54, who lives in Wisconsin, is very satisfied with how things are going for her. But her four young adult children are struggling financially. She blames “Biden’s policies of overspending and printing money,” and plans to vote for Mr. Trump. She said, though, there’s a small chance she’ll change her mind, depending on how the election plays out. (Wisconsin was the only swing state in the poll in which Mr. Biden led among registered voters. Among likely voters, Mr. Biden led only in Michigan.)

They want major changes​

Biden defectors were more likely than Biden supporters to say the country needs big, fundamental change. Nearly six in 10 defectors believe that, while a similar share of Biden loyalists say they want to return politics to normal.
“All of our core values are gone, gone, and I’m just not pleased at all,” said Amelia Earwood, 47, a safety trainer at the U.S. Postal Service in Georgia.
She believes the American political and economic systems need to be torn down. Her list of dissatisfactions is long: inflation, illegal immigration, the Biden administration’s recent delay of an arms shipment to Israel.
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She called Mr. Trump “a horrible human being,” but added, “I’m voting on his policies, and I think that he could straighten this country out, while Biden made a ginormous mess out of it.”

Some support neither Trump nor Biden​

Like Ms. Earwood, most Biden defectors said they weren’t thrilled with either candidate.
Joseph Drobena, 63, a field engineer and a veteran living in Salem, Wis., voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 because he thought that Mr. Trump was too friendly toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and he was unsure about Mr. Trump’s involvement in Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He’s still worried about that, but said he was “supporting Trump grudgingly,” because he does not like how the Biden administration has handled domestic concerns, including crime and homelessness.
Then again, he doesn’t think Mr. Trump is strong on social policy, either. As he discussed his views, he said his support for Mr. Trump was wavering, and he would consider voting forthe independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he had enough support to be a viable contender.
“We have to do better than one of these two,” he said.

 

[Yommie]

Biden's poll numbers are awful. America, brace for a Trump victory in November.

Joe Biden is probably going to lose this election. Many of us realize that already, I suspect, but grief is a process.

www.usatoday.com

Biden's poll numbers are awful. America, brace for a Trump victory in November.​

The hard reality is that the Southern and Western swing states won by the president in 2020 are drifting further into the former president’s column.​

Nick Catoggio
The Dispatch




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Chatting with a relative last weekend, I felt a twinge of optimism about the presidential campaign.
Don’t worry, it was fleeting.
The relative in question voted for Donald Trump twice but her politics are anti-left, not MAGA. She worries about crime and inflation, as most of us do. She resents Joe Biden for not caring about the border. She loathes the pro-Hamas campus protesters.
But she was alarmed by what she heard on Saturday night.
She had Fox News on in the background as the network carried Trump’s latest rally live from New Jersey. And for the first time in years, she got to hear him speak at length, unfiltered. “He was ranting and raving!” she complained, taken aback.

Well, yes, I said. That’s sort of his thing.
But he really was in rare form that evening. And “his thing” is darker now than it used to be.
It’s strange to think of a Republican voter being surprised by Trump’s demagoguery, as it’s been the essence of the man and his movement for almost a decade. But he has gotten worse over time – angrier, obsessively vengeful, more blatantly authoritarian, and lately prone to praising fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter for God knows what reason. For a casual voter who hasn’t paid him much attention since early 2021, a long look at the former president in “retribution” mode is a bit of a revelation.

And so, for a moment, I felt optimistic. Millions of other casual voters will be having the same revelation this summer as they tune into the campaign. Trump being Trump, he probably won’t even feign normalcy during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention. The next six months will be a sustained advertisement by the Republican Party that its nominee is less fit for office than ever.
Then it occurred to me that … my relative is almost certainly going to vote for Trump anyway. And if she’s willing to put aside her horror at his mental decompensation in the name of ousting Biden, many other horrified casual voters are destined to do so as well.

Swing state polls look bleak for Biden​

On that happy note, let's look at the latest New York Times poll of six key battleground states. The results of that poll don’t guarantee a Trump victory in November, of course, but they do guarantee that a Trump defeat will be more destabilizing to the country than it was in 2020. Realistically, there’s no longer any “clean” outcome to this election for America.
There never is when one of the two major parties is led by a sore-loser manbaby. But this year is shaping up to be even messier than most of us fear.
Biden is probably going to lose this election.
Many of us realize that already, I suspect, but grief is a process. Anti-Trumpers who are momentarily stuck in denial still have more than five months to reach the acceptance stage, and naturally some are in no hurry to get there.

Will Trump get away with something?The legal crawl is letting down 'unreal' Americans.
The hard reality, though, is that the Southern and Western swing states won by the president in 2020 are drifting further into Trump’s column. The new Times poll finds him leading among registered voters by 7 points in Arizona, 10 points in Georgia and 12 points in Nevada, margins that threaten to make each state noncompetitive.
Those numbers may be gaudier than in other surveys, but they’re part of a trend that has Trump comfortably in front in all three states:

• Another poll of Arizona taken last month saw him ahead by 7 points as well while others in the state put his lead between 4 to 6 points.
• A couple of surveys of Georgia in April found him 6 points up on Biden there.
• And while the Times’ Nevada number is a bit of an outlier, a Morning Consult poll published weeks ago detected an 8-point advantage.

As you digest that, bear in mind that polling has traditionally underestimated Trump’s support. Maybe the industry has finally figured out how to survey the low-propensity working-class voters who keep surprising everyone by showing up in droves for their hero on Election Day, but if not, his advantage in these three states is even larger than the polls anticipate.
We’re running out of rationalizations for how Biden will supposedly turn this around.
The most common one is that it takes time for good economic news to penetrate the public consciousness. Supposedly, once Americans awaken to the fact that job growth has been robust and steady and that the stock market has been on a sustained tear, attitudes will brighten and Biden will gain altitude.

Economic news isn't making Americans more optimistic​

I’m skeptical. The latest monthly jobs report came in under expectations. Consumer confidence isn’t rising; it declined in April for the third month in a row. And Americans are growing pessimistic again about inflation, with the anticipated rate for the next year having recently reached its highest level in five months.

In the Times poll, more than 50% of registered voters rated national economic conditions as “poor” in five of the six states surveyed.
An incumbent can’t get reelected in an environment like that. And we’re reaching the point on the calendar where even if Biden suddenly got a string of encouraging economic data, it’s anyone’s guess whether there’s enough time left before November for voters to gain sufficient confidence that the trend will continue to justify handing him a second term.
Will Trump testify?History shows us he is his own worst enemy under oath.
The other commonly heard rationalization for why this might all turn around is the one I laid out above. Casual voters don’t realize yet how much more irrational Trump is now than he was the last time they saw him. As they wise up, the polls will move in Biden’s direction.
I’m skeptical of that, too. The last time they saw him, after all, he was egging on a mob to march to the U.S. Capitol. He may be ranting and raving more lately, but if you’re open to voting for Trump after Jan. 6, 2021, you’ve made peace with his general nuttiness, even if a strong dose of it like Saturday’s rally occasionally leaves you feeling woozy.

And while my relative might not have paid attention until recently, millions of other casual voters surely have because Trump clinched the Republican nomination months ago. To all appearances, he hasn’t suffered much from the exposure: His lead in national polling over Biden shrank after January but has settled in at a steady 1- or 2-point margin since then. (On this date four years ago, Biden led by 4.5 points by comparison.)
One would never know from looking at the data that Trump is the defendant in a criminal trial in New York City that’s been going on for weeks, where testimony has implicated him in cheating on his wife with a porn star and planting sleazy smears of his political opponents in national tabloids.
Trump critics have spent nine years waiting for Americans to have a “eureka” moment that he’s unfit for office. But the problem has never been getting voters to recognize that he’s unfit; the problem has been getting them to agree that he’s less fit than his opponent.




Between persistent inflation, left-wing wedge issues like the war in Gaza and of course his very advanced age, Biden is less qualified now than he was four years ago to make the case that he’s the fitter of the two candidates. Despite his best efforts to turn the race into another referendum on Trump, the data suggests that for most voters it’s more of a referendum on the incumbent, as reelection bids tend to be.

For cripes sake, he’s at 33% in the Times swing-state poll when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West are included as options for respondents.
In fact, despite Biden trailing Trump in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the same Times poll finds the Democratic candidates for Senate in all three states leading their Republican opponents.
Democrats likewise lead in the generic ballot average nationally even though Biden consistently trails Trump head-to-head. The president’s the weak link in the Democratic Party, plainly; a meaningful share of swing voters who are open to voting for Democrats in principle really do not want to vote for him again.
None of this is to say that he can’t win, of course. He’s still competitive in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the “blue wall” that Trump flipped in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and which Biden flipped back in 2020. If the president wins those three, he can lose Arizona, Georgia and Nevada and still clinch a second term.

Realistically, that’s his best-case scenario at this point. But even that is very dark.
It’s not unheard of for an incumbent to win by a smaller margin in his second campaign for president than he did in his first. Barack Obama did it in 2012, taking 332 electoral votes after winning 365 four years earlier.

Electoral College vote could be very close​

But 332 is a comfortable margin. If Biden holds off Trump in the Midwest while losing Arizona, Georgia and Nevada and all other states vote the way they did in 2020, the president will prevail by a margin of 273-265.
How do you think a country in which half the voters have already been driven to the brink of authoritarian madness with propaganda about rigged elections will react to an outcome that tight?
It gets worse. If Trump flips multiple battlegrounds won by Biden in 2020 but loses the election narrowly, it’s a cinch that the president’s margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be extremely tight. We may all get to relive the “hanging chads” insanity of Florida 2000 in November, except this time it could play out across three states instead of one.



Will young voters stay with Biden?Gen Z has the opportunity to decide 2024, but Biden and Trump make us want to sit out.
Or we may get to live something more sinister. Thanks to gerrymandering, both houses of Wisconsin’s legislature are dominated by Republicans. That will change somewhat soon, but it’s plausible that the GOP will retain control of both chambers in this fall’s elections or that it’ll gain control of both chambers in Michigan or Pennsylvania.
Imagine Team Trump rerunning its 2020 effort to pressure Republican state legislators into overturning their state’s election results, except this time any one of the three battlegrounds I’ve just named could single-handedly push him over 270 electoral votes by doing his bidding.
Imagine what those states would look like between November and January.
The last time we had an election as close as 273-265, Al Gore conceded following a court fight for the good of the country. If we have another one this year, the losing candidate will be a narcissistic freak who continues to hedge about political violence if, in his considered opinion, the outcome of the election isn’t “fair.”
“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump said recently. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

That’s code for “if I lose, it was rigged,” and his cronies in the GOP establishment know it. Already, prominent figures in the party have refused to commit to accepting the results this fall lest they offend the Republican myth that Trump is invincible in a fair fight.
We have all the makings here of “Stop the Steal 2.0,” in other words − except this time, thanks to Biden’s persistent weakness in polling, a Democratic victory will seem more inexplicable and suspicious to those expecting a Trump victory.

In 2020, the fact that Biden led comfortably throughout the campaign probably ended up convincing many Americans that his narrower-than-expected victory was legitimate despite the caterwauling from Trump and MAGA. How will those same Americans react to a second, even narrower Biden victory in November after months of polling that consistently showed him likely to lose?
Believing that the election was rigged will become Republican orthodoxy overnight, cynically amplified by every pandering striver with an eye on higher office, and may catch on among independents.
But you don’t need conspiracy theories to explain how a Biden upset could happen.
It could be that the current polling is simply wrong. Some of the president’s voters may be so unenthusiastic about him that they’re not answering calls from pollsters (or are embarrassed to tell those pollsters how they intend to vote), leading to artificially low numbers for him in surveys. Disgruntled Democrats who don’t want to confess their preference for Biden might well sigh and come home to him in the end when the prospect of a second Trump term finally stares them in the face.
Or perhaps the low-propensity voters whom Trump is counting on to turn out are being overestimated and will end up staying home, reflecting the anemic interest Americans have shown in their choices this year. Already, in fact, Biden performs better in polls that screen for likely voters rather than for registered voters.
Or, maybe, Democrats and state referenda down ballot will have a sort of “reverse coattails” effect in which disaffected liberals show up to vote for their party in Senate or gubernatorial races and then end up casting a reluctant ballot for Grandpa Joe while they’re there. That’s what Democrats are counting on in Florida, in fact, where a ballot initiative on abortion enjoys massive support, albeit not quite massive enough to rescue Biden.
Even if Trump were to lead in polling all the way to Election Day, a critical mass of undecideds might go into the voting booth, stare at the name on the Republican line and remember Jan. 6, and conclude “I just can’t do it” before gritting their teeth and pulling the lever for Biden.
But if you’re a loyal Republican who knows that Trump tends to overperform his polls and you’ve spent the better part of a year in a state of high excitement that he’s polling better than he ever has, defeat will be unfathomable. Motivated reasoning will assure that your explanations for his failure are nefarious ones.
We’re destined, then, to reprise the “Stop the Steal” hysteria of 2020, this time with a race whose outcome is harder to explain, with a losing party that’s more cultishly loyal than it was even four years ago, and with a candidate who’s facing more than just the end of his political career if he fails to regain power. The fate of multiple criminal prosecutions pending against him hangs on the outcome. Trump has nothing to lose by resisting defeat as desperately as he can.
And of course, that also will influence how Republican voters react to an upset Biden victory. Insofar as anyone on the American right rejects Trump’s narrative of ballot rigging and accepts the results of this race as formally “fair,” they’ll insist that it was fundamentally unfair because he was forced to run for reelection with a cloud of criminal suspicion hanging over his head. Without those four indictments, they’ll insist, Trump would have beaten Biden in the Rust Belt.
They might be right.
Americans had two opportunities this year to avoid an election that would plunge the country into a civic nightmare. One was to defeat Trump in the Republican primary, of course; failing that, the other was to hand Biden a solid and consistent lead in polling followed by an easy victory this fall, making Trump’s inevitable screeching about election fraud implausible. The first opportunity was squandered, the second is evaporating before our eyes.
Not only have we handed matches to an arsonist, we’ve soaked the civic stability of this country in gasoline for him − and many of us have done so quite purposefully. There’s no way to argue we won’t deserve what we get.
Nick Catoggio writes the Boiling Frogs newsletter for The Dispatch, where this column first appeared.

 

[Yommie]

Rule 1 to Be Trump’s Running Mate: Defend Him, but Don’t Steal the Show

Donald Trump’s search is still in its early stages, but he is said to be leaning toward more experienced options who can help the ticket without seizing his precious spotlight.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Yommie]

Tackling Chronic Disease: Our Path to a Healthier Nation​