US Presidential Election 2024

A president can say all sorts of stupid things but if he does stupid things economically he'll be punished. That's why Biden was so unpopular and Harris was tarnished by that. If you're in charge it's your fault and 20% price inflation over Biden's term in office was something that Harris was probably never going to recover from. Not choosing Josh Shapiro as her running mate was also a massive mistake for Harris.
 
It probably would have worked out better had the Democrats lost in 2020, Trump would have inherited the mess he'd created.
Trump would have won, no need to engage in the shenanigans and his second term might have been more like the first, no need for the CT loons and ideologues intent on settling scores that are now in hie entourage.

As for that wall, if you think it's beautiful wait until you see the view from this ladder here...
 
I'd say after the kamala loss that the Obama influence on democratic party is now shot. Obama was the one that engineered the biden pull out from the presidential race by co ordinating George Clooney to write that open letter at a critical time. Probably biden might have lost aswell but he would have done a hell of alot better than kamala. Its not her fault, she just wasn't what the electorate were looking for
 
Much of the commentary above proves just how much we don't get it in Europe. I heard Pat Kenny this morning with someone from the Clinton Institute (yep the "Clinton" Institute!) sneering and patronising at the awfulness of the people who put Trump back in the White House. "You can fool some of the people all of the time," Pat pouted while they played a vox-pop from a pair of Trump voters - one talking about Biden being "a communist" the other saying something like, "Trump loves God" and decided that these two represented the entirety of the winning side of the electorate: "How can so many Americans be so ignorant." Pat erupted with stern-voiced bafflement.

I'm old enough to remember the same critiques (and worse) when Ronald Reagan came to power. "He'll start WW111 etc," Bruce Springsteen sang 'Bad Moon Rising' at his show on The River tour ("Don't go out tonight - it's bound to take your life") while Michael D and the usual suspects were down at Shannon Airport protesting and whinging when Reagan arrived here (From the Irish Examiner 1984: "Prominent politicians like Michael D Higgins, Brendan Ryan, Tony Gregory, and Proinsias de Rossa wrote a letter of protest to US media including the New York Times and Time.")

As it turned out, Reagan spoke to Thatcher and said something like, "I think we can do some business with this man" (Gorbachev) and The Iron Curtain came down....

Anyway...

The unbelievably hilarious meltdown of the centrists

Let us all enjoy the bewilderment of the podcast ponces in response to Trump’s victory.
www.spiked-online.com
 
Howth Head said:
As it turned out, Reagan spoke to Thatcher and said something like, "I think we can do some business with this man" (Gorbachev) and The Iron Curtain came down....
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Reagan wouldn't have said that about putin though, he wouldn't have said it was a smart move to invade ukraine like trump did in 2022. Reagan would never do business with putin's russia like trump wants to do. There is no comparison between trump and Reagan, in fact trump would probably insult Reagan by branding him an out of touch Holywood actor if he was running against Reagan
 
Yep, and the self-aggrandising, preening, morally superior liberal elites, of which Micky-D is the Irish poster child, would have tarred Regan and Trump with the same brush. There's only so much crying wolf the masses will put up with. Trumps election is a failure of the left and a failure of the centre. It's a push back against wasteful and ineffective government and governance and the seemingly limitless capacity of the political and Government sector to tolerate and excuse ineptitude and incompetence.

The lesson for Ireland and Europe, which we will certainly not learn, is that far right and left wing mobs burning down migrant centres are as much a result of the staggering waste and inefficiency that sees patients wait in A&E departments for days, years of delays in the building of houses due to State inefficiency, bicycle sheds that cost as much as a 4 bedroom house should cost and all of the other manifestations of what happens when the State takes vast amounts of its citizens money and squanders it.

If you listen carefully the behind the bluster of God and Guns and "Freedom" and "Making America Great Again" you'll hear a cry for help from people who see the State breaking the social contract, because when it tolerates the waste they see in America and that we see here then that's what it is doing.
 
Purple said:
Yea, because Bernie's version of socialism is so popular in America...
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The trouble with Bernie’s version of socialism is that it requires a shared responsibility for a societal problem.

Americans don’t buy into that even it represents the best solution for the vast majority of them.

They want to have the opportunity to get rich and to hold on to those riches once they have been acquired.

They’d be better off with a bit of Bernie’s policy but they’d prefer to hold out in the remote hope they may one day make it big.
 
vance is ex us army ,what is his stance on ukraine ,could he talk trump into continuing giving support to ukraine ?
 
johnwilliams said:
vance is ex us army ,what is his stance on ukraine ,could he talk trump into continuing giving support to ukraine ?
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Early in the campaign he seemed hostile to aid for Ukraine unfortunately.
There's jostling for position within the Trump camp now that he has won, unclear which factions will come through.
 
One thing that has got very little mention anywhere is the low turnout this time around. In the last election the turnout was 66.6%. Biden won over 81m votes with Trump getting over 74m votes. This time around the turnout looks like around 60% (very similar to the turnout in 2016) and almost the entire number of lost votes are against the Democrats. Trump will still get somewhere around 74m votes this time around with Harris looking like she will end with less than 70m votes. We knew Trump voters would stick with him so the result here is entirely on how the Democrats lost 12m votes since 2020.
 
The twitterate weren't enraged enough by the prospect of Trump winning to get off their backsides and vote.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
The one good thing that Trump promised was to end that hopeless Ukraine war. Let's see if he delivers.
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Why is it hopeless, its freedom against authoritarianism? It will only be a good thing if trump shows putin the stick that he is prepared to use if putin doesn't abide. Trump has showed no indication that he is prepared to do that rather he seems to be pushing ukraine to give in to putin demands . Hopefully though he appoints Mike pompeo as his defense secretary, he has been very consistent on supporting ukraine.
The one big disappointment from biden is that he was far too timid regarding arming ukraine, hopefully he will finally give permission for ukraine to use long range missiles to strike deep into Russia and force the trump presidency into removing that ( very difficult) but also increasing ukraine bargaining position and countering effectiveness of Russian military
 
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I know the count is not finished, but current numbers show Trump is ahead by almost 4.5m votes, that's a lot to say the least. Trumps vote is almost in line with 2020, the Dems is down by around 8m. So the question that probably needs to be asked is, why did so many people turn their back on the Dems.? I think there may have been an expectation over here that solid traditional Republicans would not vote rather then hold their nose and vote for Trump, but it was actually the Dems who did not turn up.

Biden is going to go down as one of the worst Presidents in US history. Harris was too associated with him
 
The Democrats need to get their act together. They should never have allowed Biden to run again and instead find someone else who could have energised voters with solid reasons to vote for them and not just against Trump.
They never really tried to win back those former DM voters.
 
They, much like the Labour Party in the UK and here, have been taken over by a well off liberal elite.

The UK Labour party wasted more than a decade on a lightweight like David Miliband (rejecting his very electable brother Ed) and the obnoxious bully Jeremy Corbyn, both of whom were unelectable but acceptable by the extremists who ran the Party.

The Irish Labour party is the preserve of well of Solicitors and their like who see no contradiction in charging businesses €300 an our (or more) for their opinion while at the same time talking about fairness and how employers exploit the "worker".

It's been spoken about enough on this thread and in the print media but I don't think the message is sinking in. Perfection is the enemy of the good so the left don't seem to grasp that a Centralist who can be elected is better that a Socialist utopian who can't be elected and most people don't care or want to hear about woke ideology, no matter how well intentioned it may be. They want to know about economic and domestic security.
 
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Why would he? Because he didn't do an ok job as President or because of how the 2024 campaign was handled?

It is very strange. Biden inherited a mess from Trump and was trying to bring it under control. In some cases he was stymied by Republicans in the House eg on the border bill. There seems to be a disconnect between economic metrics eg employment and perception of the economy.
I haven't heard a credible coherent \ expert case as to why Trump's economic plans will benefit average Americans more than a continuation of Biden\Harris broad approach. I'm not saying the Democrat approach was perfect, but it was more responsible and had more chance of helping most Americans than the economic fantasies peddled by Trump.
Why was that association to Biden so damaging to Harris?

Democrats did worse than expected in many races, some of them quite personal (eg Senator, Governor) as well as general ones such as the House.

Biden should have stuck to his plan and only run for one term. But would a different Democratic candidate have been damaged by association regardless? Would any of them have been able to shift the perceptions on the economy?
 
His pro-cyclical economic policies which pumped vast amounts of borrowed money into the economy through a Federal infrastructure which is and was always incapable of delivering it to where it needed to go. The most socialist act by any President in the last 30 years was during Covid when Trump sent a cheque to every household in America. Rich socialists would rail against such a thing in case rich people get some of that money. Instead they should be worried about poor people getting their proportion of the money.

The old truism hold; well heeled intellectual socialists don't care about the poor, they just hate rich people.
 
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