2024 U.S. Election of President and Vice President

[Albany Rifles]

My quibble on this is Eisenhower was never really a Republican as a Republican was understood to be in 1952. His political leanings were more Independent and Truman allegedly offered to step aside in 1948 if Eisenhower would run that election as a Democrat. The Republican on that ticket was Nixon who was picked to be the future of the party.

You make a valid point here. But however Ike's stances did drag the party away from the isolationist Taft wing of the GOP and launched what the party would become from the mid-50s to 1980s. LBJ's success with the Great Society was supported by the centrist and liberal (yes, there were some) Republicans on the Hill. Their support was how LBJ had success despite the defection from the Dixiecrats. His foreign policy was reflected the GOP over the next 3 decades. He also recognized much of the New Deal was baked in by then and made no attempt to push back against it.

I wonder where the old GOP foreign policy people and the Chamber of Commerce do. Both groups don't fit neatly into the Democratic Party to say the least. The foreign policy people that only care about foreign policy might get a Democratic Party home but it's not going to align with some wings of that party well to say the least. The Chamber of Commerce in contrast look sh*t out of luck.

Hence my comments regarding the Whigs. Where would McCain end up today? Independent like Angus King of ME...someone who agrees with much of one party but is willing to go to the other side of the aisle when he can agree there.

Time will tell.

[rj1]

Hence my comments regarding the Whigs. Where would McCain end up today? Independent like Angus King of ME...someone who agrees with much of one party but is willing to go to the other side of the aisle when he can agree there.

Time will tell.

The one thing missing about these kinds of what-ifs is a person might change parties but that doesn't mean they'd get elected. Angus King could not get elected as an Independent to first Governor and then Senator in any other state in the Union outside of Maine, Alaska, and maybe Vermont. That's how Maine's politics works and it doesn't really apply anywhere else. McCain could've hypothetically been a Democrat (the guy that sang "bomb Iran" would've become a Democrat? sure?), but would he have otherwise had the exact same points of view and been elected a Senator from Arizona as a Democrat? No, because he would've never won a primary. In this hypothetical world, you would just never get Senator McCain.

As far as the Whigs...I think some of the problem with our politics is the party alignments are so stale. I follow Canadian politics a ton and there's so much more fluidity there in comparison to our own country. (Compare Quebec politics of 15 years ago to now.) Part of the issue is really beginning post-World War II when Republicans and Democrats actively teamed up to make ballot access requirements for any other political party difficult in the name of anti-communism is both parties don't want anyone to have a chance of success other than themselves. The Democrats don't want to run against anyone other than a Republican and vice versa. For any other movement to arise there can't be a ballot access problem and you need to have mass organized political parties. And it's going to take multiple elections. That's difficult to do in practice. In 90% of the country, both parties in the current arrangement know who wins that Congress race and they don't have to put forth an effort. The issue as can be seen in Indiana and many other states is you're left with one-party government especially now in an era where politics have become incredibly nationalized. There's also the argument of political parties as organizations have never meant less than they do now, the thing keeping them going is inertia and a ballot access line. If any kind of switch comes, it's going to be top-down not bottom-up. A Ross Perot-style Independent run is obvious and I think Perot would do much better now than in 1992 considering how much stronger the parties were institutionally back then compared to now. The strongest movements in my opinion to changing the current two party status quo are:

-Vermont Progressives displacing the Republicans in certain locales (a Progressive recently defeated a Democrat for Mayor of Burlington, largest city in the state, if Bernie Sanders were a member of a political party it would be this one)
-Jesse Ventura's Independence Party of Minnesota in the late '90s (fizzled out, it still exists but they're not close to the force they were)
-a hypothetical Midwestern/Great Plains/Rocky Mountains replacement for the Democrats in the rural areas because the Democrats are simply dead and will be for the foreseeable future, in Indiana that might be the Libertarian Party following up on the success of the 2020 election, we'll see how this election goes in November on whether that has a real chance at happening
-a hypothetical urban replacement for the Republicans (largely the reverse of the above point, perhaps synonymous with the DSA, there are some entities out there - Working Class Party, the Greens, the Working Families Party, some further left people that are openly not Democrats have gotten elected in places like Seattle)
-a hypothetical Mormon-based political party in Utah and sections of Idaho and Nevada if they get upset with the cultural direction of the Republicans
-an African-American ethnicity-based political party if they ever got upset with the direction of Democrats (federal law forces the creation of majority-minority districts, case of a party that'd have seats in the House but zero in the Senate)

[Albany Rifles]

You are right about the rigidity of our systems...but, alas, that is what we will be living with for awhile. As for McCain becoming a Democrat...well, Arizona has a Democratic governor as well as a US Democratic Senator who may be a VP candidate shortly. My brother has been tied into Buffalo/Erie County Democratic politics for decades. Several Democrats who had been elected as such had to switch parties in the late 90s to get elected as the populace shifted. With Obama they shifted back. There are parts of the country where that happens.

I use the Whigs as an example as a long standing party that stood for X becoming splintered when faced by a new dynamic and morphing into a new party and adopting new platforms. The Republican Party become a hybrid of Anti-slavery Whigs, Know Nothings & Wide Awakes. They morphed into a new party. During the Civil War the Republican Party morphed into the Union Party to bring in War Democrats. For 1868 they solidified into the party they would become for a century.

As for a 3rd party president...it may be doable. But without a large number of fellow 3rd party members in Congress he/she would see nothing happen for 4 years.

[rj1]

I use the Whigs as an example as a long standing party that stood for X becoming splintered when faced by a new dynamic and morphing into a new party and adopting new platforms. The Republican Party become a hybrid of Anti-slavery Whigs, Know Nothings & Wide Awakes. They morphed into a new party. During the Civil War the Republican Party morphed into the Union Party to bring in War Democrats. For 1868 they solidified into the party they would become for a century.

Part of the problem with the Whigs was they didn't uniformly stand for X. The whole genesis of the party was formed around their hatred of Andrew Jackson, which more describes the Democrats at this point in time than it does the Republicans in my opinion. The only presidential elections they ever won were two war heroes that both died in their terms. The most Whiggish President we ever had was Millard Fillmore. William Henry Harrison was meant to be a placeholder while Henry Clay ran the country from Congress, Harrison died and the party did not do a good job at all vetting the political views of John Tyler who by the end of the term had been excommunicated from the party. Zachary Taylor was a repeat of Harrison and likewise didn't have strong principled political views. Fillmore I think is more a Gerald Ford type of he's unfairly maligned by history but as far as genuine attempt at representing Whig political views in office, he's the best on offer. (Although Abraham Lincoln and other Republicans Civil War forwards used to be Whigs. Not Grant, Grant didn't stand for anything politically pre-Civil War. I think before he ran for President he only voted for President once and it was for Buchanan in 1856.) There are definitely Trump comparisons to say Zachary Taylor and how he stood for himself, not the Whig Party per se, and that helped destroy the Whigs while all this turmoil in the country was going on. If there's ever going to be a split that kills the Republican Party I think the people that will do it are Christian conservatives due to the pockets of rural areas they dominate in grassroots politics. They were also the last Republicans that wound up staying on the reservation to come on-board to Trump in 2016.

One day when I get time to read I'm going to get a copy of Michael Holt's reportedly excellent "The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War".

As for a 3rd party president...it may be doable. But without a large number of fellow 3rd party members in Congress he/she would see nothing happen for 4 years.

Divide and conquer.

[Albany Rifles]

Holt's book is great!!!

[Bigfella]

The current Republican Party I think is a classic case of "what is Peronism after Peron?" Trump is not running for President again and sometime in the next decade is probably going to die by natural causes. We got a sliver of that answer in J.D. Vance although Vance is required to seal the deal and I don't think other contenders are simply going to concede to him the throne. You also had people like DeSantis and Haley running for President this year to it looks run for President in 2028.

The concern for those hoping for a rapid return to the pre-Trump GOP is that Peronism survived very effectively without Peron....twice. Forty years after his death a mutated form is still one of the major parties in Argentina. Gaullism also survived 5 decades without DeGaulle in charge, only recently looking like it might finally be dying.

For a variety of reasons I'm not assuming an identical path for Trumpism, but no matter what the result in November he will continue to dominate the party for as long as he can. His ego won't let him do otherwise. Assuming he loses this time he might not run again, but you just know he will want to decide his successor and that the MAGA followers will most likely follow his lead. Another couple of election cycles will also bring more acolytes into legislatures nationwide. That is going to cast a long shadow no matter who his anointed successor is...and this is assuming he loses in November. If he wins he will also get to appoint hundreds more judges.

I'm not convinced Vance has the chops to cut it as his successor, but others will emerge. The scary thing is if they learn & adapt the way Le Pen's neo-fascists have in France, further normalizing and mainstreaming their brand of extremism.

[statquo]

Kyle Rittenhouse saying he won’t vote for Trump because of his record on the 2nd amendment has MAGA outraged and is pretty funny in itself considering how much they backed him.

[TopHatter]

Kyle Rittenhouse saying he won’t vote for Trump because of his record on the 2nd amendment has MAGA outraged and is pretty funny in itself considering how much they backed him.

Dumbass just put a target on his back. Nothing MAGA hates more than a traitor to their god.

[rj1]

The concern for those hoping for a rapid return to the pre-Trump GOP is that Peronism survived very effectively without Peron....twice. Forty years after his death a mutated form is still one of the major parties in Argentina. Gaullism also survived 5 decades without DeGaulle in charge, only recently looking like it might finally be dying.

For a variety of reasons I'm not assuming an identical path for Trumpism, but no matter what the result in November he will continue to dominate the party for as long as he can. His ego won't let him do otherwise. Assuming he loses this time he might not run again, but you just know he will want to decide his successor and that the MAGA followers will most likely follow his lead. Another couple of election cycles will also bring more acolytes into legislatures nationwide. That is going to cast a long shadow no matter who his anointed successor is...and this is assuming he loses in November. If he wins he will also get to appoint hundreds more judges.

I'm not convinced Vance has the chops to cut it as his successor, but others will emerge. The scary thing is if they learn & adapt the way Le Pen's neo-fascists have in France, further normalizing and mainstreaming their brand of extremism.

The definition of Peronism has changed greatly over time and the nation's politics are not defined by left versus right and more Peronist versus anti-Peronist, which has worked itself into being a more class-based political structure (lower-class voters are Peronists, the bourgeois and elites are not, thus why I see Peronism as illuminating to what has happened in American politics the last decade; the irony is the Democrats always thought they would become the lower-class party that would reign supreme through demographics yet they have by fact become the elites). There are decidedly different strands of Peronism that compete with one another. For example, Peronism took a sharp turn left when the Kirchners took control over Argentina. Gaullism in contrast was more consistent over time. Macron is not a Gaullist and it does look to be fading away (if you asked Macron to define his political philosophy, he'd probably stare at you for 10 seconds and then answer "I stand for myself").

Whoever becomes the heir is going to greatly control what happens because like I said Trump is like Biden pretty old and won't be around long, so much like Martin Luther King Jr. you're going to have politicians out there speaking in Trump's name after his death selfishly to further their own causes. I do expect we'll see Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. run for President sometime in the 2030s which is its own "heir" thing. (We seriously need a constitutional amendment regarding close family members of Presidents being barred from running for a set period of time. Just this century we've had George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, there are idiots out there that want Michelle Obama to run so Barack can get a by fact 3rd term, and you know a couple of the Trump children will be around in the future. I blame the Kennedys for all this. 3 brothers and in their minds all of them were good enough to run for President.)

[Albany Rifles]

Dumbass just put a target on his back. Nothing MAGA hates more than a traitor to their god.

Yesterday Danger Doofus posted "After 12 hours of intense discussion and clarifications it is clear that President Trump is a strong advocate and champion of the 2nd Amendment and has my full support."

If you have to work that hard to get that asshole's vote, you are taking on water!

[Albany Rifles]

Former President Trump's going his own way is not helping GOP members of the US Senate.


Senate Republicans again have to defend Trump’s reckless claims - The Washington Post

Senate Republicans forgot Trump’s recklessness. It’s back to haunt them.


GOP senators relished watching Democratic infighting during the summer, neglecting that their nominee would never merely focus on policy issues.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Rachel Scott, senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, right, during the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on July 31. Trump dismayed Republicans by questioning Vice President Harris's ethnicity. (Joel Angel Juarez for The Washington Post)
For weeks, Senate Republicans delighted in the misery of their Democratic counterparts. The political story of the summer — whether President Biden would back down from his run at a second term — left GOP senators smiling and away from the media’s glaring spotlight on their foibles.


But the tables quickly turned. Their party’s presidential nominee recently returned to his natural form and lashed out against Vice President Harris in divisive terms that had little basis in truth. Republicans went right back into the political PTSD of the Donald Trump era, mouthing the same platitudes that they grasped onto during his presidency.

“He needs to focus on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Thursday morning.

Was she comfortable with Trump’s rhetoric? “He needs to focus on the Biden-Harris policies. That’s the successful pathway to November,” Capito said.


If that’s the path to success, why does Trump instead dive right into attacks on race instead of policy?


Capito let out a roaring laugh that lasted six whole seconds, incapable of answering the question — or unwilling to share her honest answer.

“I’m a really good mother and grandmother. I can’t answer that one,” she said.

Senate Republicans have always had the strangest relationship with Trump. The traditional Reagan-Bush ethos remains strong in their caucus even as the populist, nativist elements have come to dominate the House Republicans.

Republicans remember how Trump’s grievance-filled stumping for their two candidates who lost in the early 2021 Georgia runoff elections handed control of the Senate to Democrats. Many blamed Trump for inciting the Capitol riot — although just seven voted to convict him in the February 2021 impeachment trial.


After growing tired of constantly responding to his crazy tweets or wild statements during his time in the Oval Office, Senate Republicans were reluctant to endorse Trump’s campaign last year.

Yet, as Trump marched through the GOP primaries without any serious competition, and as voters soured on Biden amid questions about his capacity to serve, Senate Republicans embraced what they considered to be a certain victor, especially since he led them to believe that he was a different candidate.

They particularly embraced Trump’s call for “unity” after the July 13 attempt on his life in Butler, Pa., which some pundits declared to be the end of any Democratic chances of success.

“I hope that one good thing that comes out of this tragedy is a renewed sense of what unites us, a renewed respect for our fellow Americans,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who previously clashed with Trump, wrote in a July 19 op-ed distributed in his state.


The accommodations came before then. When Trump met at the Senate GOP political headquartersin June, he twice shook hands with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who went 3½ years without speaking to Trump after the 2020 elections.

“Tremendous unity,” Trump said after that meeting.

Later that day the ex-president even publicly backed one of his harshest Republican critics, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, in his Senate race.

After Harris locked up the support to replace Biden on the top of the ticket, House and Senate GOP leaders even cautioned their rank-and-file to drop any mentions of Harris as a “DEI” candidate. Trump wanted to focus on policy issues such as inflation and border security.

By 3 p.m. Wednesday, all those hopes for a unity-and-policy-centric campaign came undone.

Trump had just used his appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference to falsely question whether Harris hid her Black identity and accuse her of being only Indian. He mocked a prominent journalist as “that woman” and again praised the insurrectionists serving prison time for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He continued to tout those claims in a rally that same evening.


A couple of reporters followed Thune down a hallway before one politely told him to stop, that he was going to get a ton of questions about these comments. He read Thune the verbatim of Trump’s most incendiary remarks.

“Um, the campaign is — needs to be — mostly about the issues. There’s plenty to talk about, and I just think that’s where the focus needs to be,” Thune said, never addressing the substance of Trump’s assertions.

In the flip of a switch, Republicans were back on defense, reassuming the same roles they had been playing in years past.

A very small bloc tried to defend or explain the comments. “I mean, he’s going to say what he’s going to say,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Wednesday evening, acknowledging he had not watched the comments.

“He knows it’s all about policy,” Tuberville said, suggesting that it must have been a leading question that prompted the remarks. “It is what it is.”


Some Republicans took the duck-and-dive approach, making a very brief critique of an obviously outlandish statement.

“I don’t think it was helpful,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, swiftly jumping on an elevator to whisk him away from the Capitol press corps.

Only a few Senate Republicans forcefully criticized Trump, along with the incendiary statements that have resurfaced from his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

“Think about it,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters Wednesday. “What have we been talking about all week long? Childless cat women, DEI candidates. Now, is she Black? Is she Indian?”

Murkowski is one of onlyfour Senate Republicans to say publicly that they will not vote for Trump, so she has more political freedom to offer her unvarnished thoughts. She recalled how Trump had previously— falsely —questioned whether Barack Obama was a citizen. She questioned if his campaign is capable of carrying on in a normal fashion.


“Maybe they don’t know how to handle the campaign. And so you default to issues that just should simply not be an issue,” she said.

Most Senate Republicans jumped onto the same rhetorical life raft: Avoid addressing the actual Trump comments and instead wish for a return to the seemingly disciplined, policy-focused candidate of early summer.

“I’d say the policies are the key issues that we need to be talking about,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told reporters Thursday morning.

Lankford’s most recent policy foray would be a keen illustration of Trump’s aversion to substance. Lankford spent months negotiating a border-immigration compromise with Senate Democrats, and just as it was coming together, Trump demanded Republicans torpedo the Lankford bill because he wanted to keep the issue alive to use against Democrats in the November election.

Will Trump’s rhetoric hurt Republicans in November? “I think we’ll know more once the election happens,” Lankford said.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has about as strong a relationship with Trump and his family as any GOP senator. He’s worked closely with the ex-president in recruiting candidates and securing endorsements at the right time to get the best candidatesthrough their primaries and into the general electionfor the Senate.


He had not heard Trump’s comments by Wednesday evening, when a pack of reporters trailed him, so he stopped and listened to a summary.

“I don’t think it’s that difficult to litigate this race. This is the most liberal candidate for president that we’ve had in our nation’s history. I served with Kamala for four years,” Daines responded.

He blasted her “San Francisco politics and ideology” and said Republicans should focus on contrasting “the two visions of where we’d like to take this country.”

“That’s a better strategy, and that’s what I’ve been talking about,” Daines said.

But it’s not what Trump enjoys talking about. Republicans learned — relearned — this lesson again from the NABJ appearance.

Trump likes to talk about the border crisis, but his solutions are the simplistic answers of finishing the wall or the impractical idea of creating mass deportation camps for millions of undocumented migrants.


In selecting his running mate, Trump considered several Senate Republicans with real policy expertise in cutting taxes and national security. Some accomplished governors received interest.

Then he settled on Vance, the least experienced GOP running mate since before World War II. Vance’s biggest credential, his friends said, was his embrace of Trump’s political persona.

By Thursday morning, Murkowski had grown more furious.

“A campaign built on insults of an individual — we should be so far beyond that,” she told reporters. “It should not be about which nasty name you can call somebody. It should be about the issues.”

[TopHatter]

Former President Trump's going his own way is not helping GOP members of the US Senate.


Senate Republicans again have to defend Trump’s reckless claims - The Washington Post

Republicans just can't remember Rule Number One about Donald Trump:

[DOR]

By Thursday morning, Murkowski had grown more furious.

“A campaign built on insults of an individual — we should be so far beyond that,” she told reporters. “It should not be about which nasty name you can call somebody. It should be about the issues.”By Thursday morning, Murkowski had grown more furious.

Ma'am, if that's really what you think, you're in the wrong party.

[tbm3fan]

Former President Trump's going his own way is not helping GOP members of the US Senate.


Senate Republicans again have to defend Trump’s reckless claims - The Washington Post

Are they that stupid? Trump's ego has always been about getting even and revenge. He was dissed in his early years in New York. Upset because New York high society wrote him off as a pretender which he was. They saw through him regardless of what one thinks of high society people. Ever since he has been bent on revenge only now it is on the national stage. If you haven't noticed he is only about one thing in his life. That is to be acknowledge as the greatest of the greats. How someone that sick in the head is able to get near the Presidency is frightening. Yet history is replete with exactly that so is it our turn now...?

[Albany Rifles]

As for their stupidity I chalk it up to not wanting to get primaried. Follow Velveeta Voldemort or face a punishing primary.

So it isn't the stupidity which bothers me. It's the mendacity.