did they get him yet?
wut happened bout his tax returns

buh bye

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/14/trump-biden-primary-electability-00131616

At this point, Trump should be considered the favorite to win, and the Biden administration has themselves largely to blame.



This post was edited by bogie160 on Dec 14 2023 11:30am

Big disagree. Trump can definitely win, and I agree that he's in a stronger position than he was in, say, October 2020. But the outright favorite, i.e. his likelihood of winning the general election being above 50%? No way.

Democrats have kept a lot of their powder dry when it comes to Trump. They've strategically done just enough to keep him in the political news and endear him to the GOP base with the indictments. They haven't even started running ads juxtaposing the mayhem on Jan 6 with Trump's speech about "we gotta show strength, don't let up". They haven't even started running ads showing the capitol police shoving protesters to the side so Trump and company can have their photo op. Or clips of his "inject bleach"-comment. Or videos of him being cozy with Putin and Kim. Abortion is still a not-so-secret superweapon for Democratic campaigns, one whose efficacy has been proven time and time again in elections since mid-2022. Democrats have the better campaign infrastructure. The realignment of Corporate America away from Trump - which occurred in the wake of the BLM protests - will pay dividents for their fundraising. Big Tech is fully on board tipping the scales to prevent another Trump presidency.

Also note that Trump still hasn't broken his usual 46-47% ceiling in these polls which show him ahead of Biden, it's just that Biden dropped. Trump's ceiling will always be lower than Biden's. At the end of the day, there's just more people who viscerally hate Trump than people who viscerally hate Biden. A big share of Biden's cratering polling numbers are caused by dissatisfaction among voter groups like progressives, college students, blacks and the pro-Hamas folks who would never vote for Trump. Sure, lacking enthusiasm could cause Biden trouble with turning out his coalition - but there are also significant parts of the GOP coalition who aren't thrilled about another Trump candidacy, let alone presidency.

---------------------------------

Trump won in 2016 because everyone misread the situation: the election was actually a referendum on Hillary, not Trump. He then lost in 2020 because that election was a pure referendum on him. In 2024, Democrats will try to make the election a referendum on Trump yet again while Republicans will try to make it a referendum on Biden's awful track record. I don't know which messaging will prevail in the end, but we really shouldn't underrate Trump's uncanny ability to hog the spotlight and make everything about himself. He could easily win this election if he had learned from his past mistakes and if he had developed some kind of message discipline. But how likely is that? At 77 years old, you're not gonna teach this dog new tricks.

Another factor that might play to Biden's benefit is timing. The post-covid portion of inflation as well as the reshuffling of global energy markets due to the war in Ukraine are abating and will continue to do so over the coming 11 months. The Gaza war which is causing him so much headache with Muslims and progressives will end soon and be nothing but a distant memory once the campaign kicks into full gear. And the FED has already hinted at multiple interest rate cuts over the coming year.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 14 2023 01:14pm

Trump is pulling away in key battleground states but Biden has a secret weapon. The economy is probably the biggest issue today.

Fed just announced 75bp cuts in 2024. Inflation is still not defeated and running hot even at restrictive rates of 5.25% on the fed funds, so why would we be cutting? It usually takes about ~6 months for rate increases/decreases to work through an economy. If they cut in March, you're going to get a nice economic boost by end of Summer. You think it's a coincidence? Lolno.

Definitely. The FED will try to manufacture a temporary economic surge for the election, similar to how Biden depleted the strategic oil reserve in 2022 to blunt the impact of inflation for the midterms.



Still, even putting these shenanigans aside, I'm cautiously pessimistic. Trump's margin on Biden is increasing, but not because he himself if flying high; it's all based on Biden's weakness, which might end up being a mirage.

Just look at the 2022 midterms: despite absolutely atrocious fundamentals, Democrats performed surprisingly well because a lot of voters were not prioritizing the economy and inflation as much as conventional wisdom thought, and because the abortion issue hurt Republicans more than anticipated. Moreover, the GOP gains were extremely inefficiently distributed: they made big inroads in deep blue and deep red territory, but barely saw any progress in purple and light-blue swing districts. This tracks with dissatisfaction among progressive, black and/or young voters while the upscale centrist or center-left suburbanite types seem to be pretty okay with the way things are going under Biden.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 14 2023 01:33pm

Trump's base of support is higher this go around, Biden's is lower. The fact that a majority feel Biden's policies have hurt, and a near majority (49%) feel Trump's policies helped is significant. Undecideds never go 100% one way or the other. If Trump has to win 35% of undecideds to win he's in a strong position.

Is it possible attacks hurt Trump? Maybe, but I don't know who cares anymore. We've heard everything.

Trump's polling numbers during the 2020 cycle were bogged down by people feeling oversaturated with the Trump Show. And by the extremely adverse circumstances that year. And yes, I do believe that Jan 6, the blown Senate races in Georgia, the indictments and perhaps also Dobbs have alienated some (former) supporters who were on the fence and barely got themselves to vote for him one last time in 2020.

This whole argument about the economy would carry a lot more weight if we hadn't just lived through a midterm cycle when voters felt the same way about hurting under Biden and having thrived under Trump - and Democrats performing really well (relative to the atrocious fundamentals) anyway. The economy was a significantly smaller factor in 2022 than most of us thought. I don't see a compelling reason why this should change in 2024, why the salience of the economy should be higher when inflation has abated a fair bit and when Trump's larger-than-life persona will overshadow the entire race.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 14 2023 05:18pm

Pure delusion.