Donald! Trump!

No

Theoretically, Can Trump win, then cut a deal and concede the presidency to the Dems in order for them to not prosecute.. ever?

No, in short. The only thing he can do once elected is resign and allow something even worse (his VP) to ascend to power.

If Trump wins, all his charges will probably evaporate anyway. It’s not the Dems prosecuting him, it’s various states and the DOJ.

If he does get elected I expect he’ll spend a bunch of those tax dollars on reinforcing his secret service protection.

I don’t think it’s his call even as as president. He can ask – thats it.

Currently Biden wants to increase funding for Trump’s secret service  detail following the recent attempts / breaches (in fact he’d already made the request before the second attempt happened), but all he’s actually able to do is say he thinks it should happen, its up to congress to actually do it.

I want to think the polling companies know what a cock up they made in 2016 by showing Clinton with a strong lead. And are now very conservative in assessing Harris’ chances. As posted above, I see far fewer Trump signs and stickers and far more Harris signs and stickers, even in Texas and Arizona. I’ve completed my ballot, which will be in the box tomorrow!

I have also noted that he isn’t dominating the YouTube discourse so much, in fact I see quite a bit more Harris and Waltz stuff on youube now. We know that Trump and the far right have dominated social media for the past decade or so, and it was a highly financed operation to do so. What isn’t clear to me is if the dems are now pumping money in as well or if it is a ground swell of grass roots surge of people just making their voices heard. It feels like the latter, but that may be deliberate, pushing that homely Waltz mid western down to earth image.

We have a warehouse and office space in Georgia. Pretty much everyone that works there is planning to vote for Trump. They seem to think it will be better for them and the economy. I think they’re **** idiots

They seem to think it will be better for them and the economy.

Even though there is vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, I can’t understand this: Trump voters think they will gain under Trump. But they won’t unless they’re earning in the top 5%.

I want to think the polling companies know what a cock up they made in 2016 by showing Clinton with a strong lead

hhmmm going over this one in my brain. Wasn’t it that the polling companies did their usual work, and the media outlets did their usual in that they ignore that polls have massive tolerances built it? iirc the result was within those tolerances

Even though there is vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, I can’t understand this: Trump voters think they will gain under Trump.

They’ll gain the ability to lord it over the woke libtards or something, perhaps larger portions of freedom fries, preferably seasoned with some vile laxative that leaves them shitting so much that their bowels detach and hang out their arse to be eaten by stray dogs, and raccoons…..can’t forget about raccoons.

And in a country where you don’t get healthcare in return for your tax,

And let’s just remember why – because proposing such a concept would be electoral suicide and a sure sign you are a communist. As Obama found out even some Dems think this. They are just plain weird as a nation. Nasty even.

The more I think about it, the more I think they probably deserve an unstable orange shit gibbon for president. It’s just a shame there might be same fallout beyond their borders.

The more I think about it, the more I think they probably deserve an unstable orange shit gibbon for president. It’s just a shame there might be same fallout beyond their borders.

Indeed, if places like Ukraine wouldn’t be screwed it he got in and laid it on a plate for his mate Putin I’d be tempted to celebrate the good ol’ us of a voting him in and watching the realisation unfold.

Theoretically, Can Trump win, then cut a deal and concede the presidency to the Dems in order for them to not prosecute.. ever?

Theorectically, I get the impression if Trump did win then he’s looking at never having elections again and modelling his reign much like Putins, let alone conceding the Democrats might ever get into power again. Can’t imagine there’ll be much left of the DoJ and the likes once he’s finished with it.

There are lots of really nice, kind, thoughtful, generous people living in the USA. Saying they all deserve Trump is like saying we all deserved the tories and brexit and the rest of the shit of the last decade. Might as well say someone deserved to get run over when they happened to share road-space with an SUV driven by a drunk.

Indeed this /\  I’ve visiting and worked in the US many times and have never encountered this fat, stupid, American centric personality that so many outside of the US ascribe to them.

I have uniformly encountered intelligent, kind, often gregarious, largely normal body type, hard working and diverse people.

Who I also believe the majority of support, gun control, womens right to choose, and even state backed healthcare.

It isn’t the voters who shoulder the largest blame, it is the system, the politicians and the oligarchs. In fact it is right wing rhetoric 101 to blame the victims rather than the perpetrators.

Indeed this /\  I’ve visiting and worked in the US many times and have never encountered this fat, stupid, American centric personality that so many outside of the US ascribe to them.

I’ve encountered both in the same family.

My best man was born and grew up in Texas, his parents were senior execs at NASA*, Shell, McDonell Douglas, etc.

He’s lived in LA for +25 years now and is liberal as you like.

His parents are classic gun-owning, Trump voting Covid-denying nutjobs.

*when he first starting driving as a teenager he could access launch-pads when driving his parents cars because of the sticker on the windscreen!

I get the impression if Trump did win then he’s looking at never having elections again and modelling his reign much like Putins, let alone conceding the Democrats might ever get into power again.

Great Freakonomics Radio episode on this recently, I like the view given there:

“POSNER: He won’t become a dictator, I think there are a number of reasons. First of all, I think it’s actually pretty hard to be a dictator. You have to be kind of smart — shrewd, at least. You have to be tough. You have to be brave.

DUBNER: You’re saying Trump is none of those — even brave, yeah?

POSNER: From what I know about him, it’s just hard to imagine him having this ambition to be a dictator. I know he wants power, and he wants to hold on to power. But I think he does it in an ad hoc way rather than the kind of shrewd, planned way that real dictators do to obtain power. And then the other thing is just that, I do think that the other institutions — the press, Congress, the courts — they’re not going to let him be a dictator. ”

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-predict-the-presidency/

the press, Congress, the courts — they’re not going to let him be a dictator. ”

I don’t disagree, but he’s done a pretty good job of morally bankrupting both the Republicans in Congress and the supreme Court

It isn’t the voters who shoulder the largest blame

I don’t think I can be persuaded of that. Same in this country. Spend any time in a staunchly true blue South coast of England constituency in the UK and you can sense it in the personality types. Go just down the coast to Brighton where they’ve voted in the Greens and tell me you can’t sense the difference without ever talking politics. We pretty much always get the government we deserve. Sometimes it’s when too many people vote for  unpleasant policies and sometimes because the electorate have been mugged off by charlatans who the electorate should have been able to see through….if they had wanted to.

Trump is just a completely harmless wazzock……….until the people give him the power. They/we are only the victims if we’re too (collectively) daft to know no better. I don’t see why we should give them that excuse.

I have also noted that he isn’t dominating the YouTube discourse so much,

Have you checked a representative sample of people’s feeds across the US?

There are lots of really nice, kind, thoughtful, generous people living in the USA. Saying they all deserve Trump is like saying we all deserved the tories and brexit and the rest of the shit of the last decade. Might as well say someone deserved to get run over when they happened to share road-space with an SUV driven by a drunk.

I think this is a thing worth remembering – The Republican Party has tirelessly and consistently worked to skew electoral systems and disenfrancise certain voters for their benefit – the whole system from school boards, through state and federal government to the Whitehouse  is rigged for  republican minority rule. Even out of power in any layer of government their gaming of the ‘checks and balances’ means they exert power by blocking. Much of the US political apparatus was built around Majorty Consensus is well meaning but allows a minority to over-rule/undermine the will of a majority.

Clinton had millions more votes than Trump to lose. Democrats require millions more votes that republicans just to split the house or senate 50:50. But it’s not really any different to what we have here – we’re a country that mostly votes for left leaning, progressive parties and more often than not elects the Conservative Party. This recent collapse is is the first time in our lifetimes that the tories share of the seats roughly reflects their share of the vote.

The increased heat and light we’re seeing in US politics is the polarising effect of all that Gerrymandering coming home to roost – minority rule gives power to the few at the price of them feeling constantly under threat, the rights increasingly violent rhetoric is an expression of that fear. There have been other countries geared towards supporting a politically dominant minority-  Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ba’athist Iraq, Tutsi era Rwanda, Assad’s Syria. What have they all got in common I wonder?

I don’t think I can be persuaded of that. Same in this country. Spend any time in a staunchly true blue South coast of England constituency in the UK and you can sense it in the personality types. Go just down the coast to Brighton where they’ve voted in the Greens and tell me you can’t sense the difference without ever talking politics. We pretty much always get the government we deserve. Sometimes it’s when too many people vote for unpleasant policies and sometimes because the electorate have been mugged off by charlatans who the electorate should have been able to see through….if they had wanted to.

Trump is just a completely harmless wazzock……….until the people give him the power. They/we are only the victims if we’re too (collectively) daft to know no better. I don’t see why we should give them that excuse

Actually, thinking about it again I’ll go further. If you are a middle of the road American (i.e. you’ve not been dragged into being a conspiracy theory MAGA fan club member) and fully aware of his (civil) guilty finding of sexual assault…then slander of the victim; and paying off a porn star; and his company being found guilty fraud; and his part in the Jan 6th riots, and….well suggesting to his people they should consider injecting themselves with bleach. If you are aware of all of that and much much more yet you are able to hold your nose and vote for him because you think you just might be personally be a little bit better off financially……you are a *anker plain and simple.

And if a typical American character trait is to think of themselves before all else is at the root of this, then yes it’s pretty fair to blame the nation for who they vote for.

Trimp will win, little or nothing will change just like last time, Trump is bone idle with no attention span for anything except golf and burgers. I agree with comments above he is not dictator material.

Worked a lot in the US in the 90s in the industrial areas and some Redneck communities- they are (no disrespect) simple folks with very short horizons and so poorly educated it’s shocking. They all cling on to the American dream even though it’s long gone, they think healthcare is communism even though their health problems are disgraceful for a first world country.

They cling to this way of life because they know nothing else and have witnessed nothing else. Theydon travel even within their own country and many over leave their county let alone the state.

All this makes them easy to manipulate.

Also that post WW2 generation who travelled during the war both globally and in the US have long gone and their influence on the following generation had also gone.

I have also noted that he isn’t dominating the YouTube discourse so much,

Its hard to know what ‘YouTube’ is like becuase you change it by looking at it

Have you checked a representative sample of people’s feeds across the US?

It’s worth having a look at Marianna Springs work with ‘Undercover Voters’. She creates dozens of social media accounts across a range of demographics which don’t actively engage – don’t post, like, share – so while ‘partial’  they’re not actively  creating  or shaping echo chambers in the way we might do individually – in order to see how information is being targeted,  promoted and amplified through or by social media.

I don’t think I can be persuaded of that.

What choices are they, the oligarchy control the policies that are offered, if the politicians can only offer the policies that their financiers will allow, nobody can really offer a realistic health plan for voters get decide, because their election pot would be non existent. So all the voters get to choose from two parties wedded to the same ideology, just with one throwing a few more crumbs from the table.

We have the same here now as well, two right wing parties offering virtually identical economic policies. Both using the culture war to “display” separation but without offering fixes to the economic disparity that is really at the heart of the culture war.

Trump, Farage, Boris etc have made an impacts, not because they are skilled orators or have anything worthwhile to say, but because they had huge financial backing and media coverage by the super wealthy, they were able to repeat their message repeatedly with paid for talking heads supporting them.

If all you offer to change major issues is minor tweaks, then the conversation will always be about is semantics. Offer real change and give people something to vote for. If you are meant to represent the parties of the people like the democrats and labour, then rule for the whole of society not just the few. If they won’t or can’t do that, then blaming the electorate is just victim blaming, and again that is right wing rhetoric that it appears many are happy to indulge in.

Trimp will win, little or nothing will change just like last time, Trump is bone idle with no attention span for anything except golf and burgers. I agree with comments above he is not dictator material.

It’s not Trump who is the danger, as such. It’s the people who he will put into power, Project 2025 is real and it’s clear what they want to do.

His VP is also intelligent, ruthless and massively ambitious.

Nothing like a nice sing-along session to cheer everyone up. This is why Trump is the best.

Possibly one of the cringiest things I’ve seen for a while.

well suggesting to his people they should consider injecting themselves with bleach

I’d (somehow) forgotten about that pearl of wisdom, it really should’ve been the end of any credibility he’d managed to achieve but the fact he’s got a very real chance of being voted in again says it all

Trump, Farage, Boris etc have made an impacts, not because they are skilled orators or have anything worthwhile to say, but because they had huge financial backing and media coverage by the super wealthy, they were able to repeat their message repeatedly with paid for talking heads supporting them.

This, or words to this effect, is said a lot. But it’s always said by people would personally never ever vote Trump/Farage/Johnson. The counter question is – so why have you not been duped by the aforementioned wealthy backing and media coverage – what makes you immune? The response to that is normally imo way too polite. If you are I are immune, what deficit exists in those that had be won over? In the past (I’m thinking Brexit now) I’ve been guilty of thinking they were just too stupid to know any better but I think I’ve moved on from that. It doesn’t take a genius not to buy the bull. I’d contend now that the money and honeyed words have liberated normal people with shitty views that’s it’s ok to hold them.

Because when these events happened my life is reasonably comfortable. In my earlier life when getting a job was difficult and having a decent job was just a pipedream, then the rhetoric and blaming of foreigners and others may have had a greater impact on me. Also having had largely shit jobs for 20 years before getting a good job (by leaving the country) I still am unable to buy a home or establish a decent pension, and for that I very much blame the asset inflation that has served the “already haves” much more than those coming after them.

But I can very much understand how the rhetoric can distort reality for those who are “victimised” by the system, especially when the party that is meant to represent them really offers little economic difference to the party that always serves the wealthy.

Hang on, let’s not get sidetracked into thinking Trump preys in the poor for his vote base and that being disadvantaged in life makes you vulnerable to the likes of Trump.  This is the votes distribution by income in 2016…Plenty of comfortable middle class folk finding their way to vote for him.

They are saying on the BBC that there are record numbers of early voters in Georgia.

More than 328,000 people voted in person or by post on the first day of voting, officials said – more than double the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.

In the last election the democrats had a significant advantage in postal and early votes, so I hope that is indicative of an energised opposition to another Trump term (got to find hope where I can).

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kv219d2go

In the last election the democrats had a significant advantage in postal and early votes, so I hope that is indicative of an energised opposition to another Trump term (got to find hope where I can).

Do they count and declare the mail ins and early votes separately?  It’s been a fairly constant news story that DT is at odds with the GOP on the ground with his conspiracy theories about mail in ballot fraud working against party activists trying to get people to vote early.

In the last election the democrats had a significant advantage in postal and early votes, so I hope that is indicative of an energised opposition to another Trump term (got to find hope where I can).

worryingly The Republicans are heavily pushing the vote early idea, Musk & Thiel have been pumping a lot of money into tech and ground games to do just this as well as using cash to bribe voters indirectly https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/10/07/elon-musks-pac-is-paying-47-for-each-solicited-petition-signature-from-a-swing-state-voter-heres-why-its-controversial/

It’s worth having a look at Marianna Springs work with ‘Undercover Voters’. She creates dozens of social media accounts across a range of demographics which don’t actively engage – don’t post, like, share – so while ‘partial’  they’re not actively  creating  or shaping echo chambers in the way we might do individually – in order to see how information is being targeted,  promoted and amplified through or by social media.

I recently read How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa. The second half of the book is a quite fascinating expose of how “the algorithms” can be exploited for political gain.

Do they count and declare the mail ins and early votes separately?

That would probably depend on which state it is. Each state is responsible for administering its own elections, they aren’t administered federally. I know for certain that some states don’t start counting the mail-in votes until after the ballot boxes close, but I don’t know if that’s universal. This was a source of complaint from the Trump team last election because the mail-in ballots skewed Democrat so it looked like there was a big surge of votes for Biden once they started counting the mail-in votes, which Trump tried to portray as fraudulent ballots. One problem with counting mail-in votes as soon as they are received is that some voters will die after mailing in their ballot, so those will (I assume) have to be disallowed.

Whatever the case, Trump’s team is making a lot of noise about these things trying to dishonestly cast doubt about the process.

So long as you’re alive when you cast your ballot, your vote counts.  The only time a mail-in will be discounted is if the ballot was mailed TO the recipient after they died.  In Georgia last time, this was the sum total of 2.

BBC reporting Trump spouting utter shite again last night, defending Jan 6th and trying to appeal the female vote.

I really hope there’s a substantial silent majority wanting Harris.

I really hope there’s a substantial silent majority wanting Harris.

It’s hard to remain optimistic
Trump saying Jan 6th was a day off f love, Vance said the 2020 election was rigged…

All of that crap should see them marginalised, yet half the country loves it ?

Waking up to the Brexit outcome was “WTAF?”

Waking up to a Trump victory will seem like the End of Days.