politics

Trump’s flaws look far worse today than they did eight years ago. To take one example that should concern conservative voters: his behavior toward and views of service members. In the 2016 campaign, Trump’s attacks on Senator John McCain and on the Gold Star Khan family were bad enough. Now we have a litany of testimonies that he expressed contempt and disgust for wounded veterans—demanding that he not be seen in public with them—and that he debased fallen soldiers, describing them as “suckers” and marveling, “What was in it for them?” According to an Atlantic report, when he was scheduled to visit a World War I–era American cemetery in France in 2018, Trump complained, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Trump has always posed as a patriot, but he has proved himself unpatriotic, anti-military, and ignorant of the meaning of sacrifice.

I don't think most people (or even just most conservatives) really care about this and it hasn't been getting very focused media coverage. I think the author is over-estimating its impact on the voting populace.

Similarly, in 2016, Trump’s campaign was briefly rocked by the Access Hollywood videotape in which he boasted about grabbing women by the genitalia. He survived, in large part because many voters chose to accept his comments as “locker room” bluster. Several women accused him of sexual misconduct, but Trump fended off their allegations too. Now he has been held civilly liable by a New York jury for sexually abusing the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. A federal judge has said that the jury concluded that what Trump did to Carroll was rape in the common sense of the term. Some Americans will shrug that off, but many won’t be able to.

Again, I'm skeptical that many Trump supporters would really have their choice to vote for him swayed by this. If they decided that the accusations were spurious and/or politically motivated when they were made, I can't see many of them changing their minds simply because a court felt differently.

Trump hopes that his legal troubles will prove a boon to his campaign, allowing him to paint both law enforcement and the judicial system as part of a massive conspiracy against him. He has even requested that his federal trial regarding efforts to overturn the 2020-election results be televised. That’s unlikely, but the more airtime these prosecutions get, the better. Among Republicans, Trump’s polling has improved since his indictments, but many other Americans simply won’t be impressed, inspired, or persuaded by someone who faces 91 felony counts, in addition to civil cases.

This actually makes sense to me. I think Trump's Achilles' heel is that he is really only able to appeal to those who already agree with him, and thus over time his appeal shrinks to a smaller and smaller group of truly loyal supporters. The more exposure he gets, the more reasonable people see him for what he really is and revise their opinions of him.

On top of all this, Trump has a strong record of electoral losses, with his 2016 upset, which apparently surprised even him, as the lone exception. His party suffered the standard midterm defeat in 2018. Then he lost the 2020 election. Then Republicans lost control of the Senate after Georgia’s runoff in early 2021. Then his party was denied the standard midterm victory in 2022, barely eking out a four-vote House majority thanks in large part to his own handpicked, election-denying candidates, almost all of whom lost in competitive races. There is no obvious reason that 2024 should constitute a sudden break from this pattern of MAGA defeat.

Yes, there is: he'll be running again. Why shouldn't we expect the same "upset" that happened in 2016? His supporters will be motivated to vote for him in ways they were not motivated to vote for other Republicans in other years.

Recent polling suggests that Biden is in real trouble, including with a number of core Democratic constituencies, which is leading many Democrats to yearn for a different candidate or to despair that Trump will be reelected. In fact, Biden has a strong record to run on. In his first two years, with a tiny House majority and only a tiebreaker in the Senate, he managed to pass more progressive, consequential economic legislation than, arguably, any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. Unemployment is low, and inflation is cooling. Perhaps the public has not fully felt these positive developments yet, but they will almost certainly have registered by next November.

This is total speculation and seems like wishful thinking from the author, quite frankly. Regardless of Biden's actual record, what matters is how he's perceived by the people. Liberals are relatively split on him, from what I can tell, and it largely has to do with how far Left a person is and how old. Younger, futher-Left people are more unhappy with him than older, more mainstream liberals. Biden is undebatably an institutional, moderate Democrat. But I don't think that will matter when it's just down to Trump or him. I think his liberal detractors will realize what's at stake and vote for him anyway. If I'm wrong on that, Lemmy will have supported the fascists, fucking commie purists.

The abortion issue, opened up by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, has consistently played in Democrats’ favor, and that’s unlikely to change next November. If the Republican nominee were former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, women might not rally so powerfully to the Democratic side. But Trump claims responsibility for the decision overturning Roe by virtue of his Supreme Court appointees. That, plus Trump’s treatment of women, gives Biden a huge opportunity with female voters.

I agree with this. I think conservatives have underestimated how much even their own women value their reproductive rights, to the point where I would be willing to bet many conservative women vote at odds with what they claim their views on abortion are when they're in the voting booth.

Biden’s pro-Israel policies during the ongoing war in Gaza might cost him support from Arab and Muslim Americans, but probably not enough for him to lose Michigan, for example, to Trump. Voters in those groups seem unlikely to support the author of the “Muslim ban,” who is threatening to reimpose similar restrictions, and the “Peace to Prosperity” Israeli-Palestinian proposal that invited Israel to annex 30 percent of the occupied West Bank. Some will stay home—a potential danger for Biden—but many will, perhaps reluctantly, turn out for him despite what they say now.

I think that's fair analysis. I feel bad for Muslim and Jewish Americans these days. The war between Israel and Palestine has complicated/exacerbated Muslim-Jewish relations across the globe, and Biden's pro-Israel policies, combined with Trump's anti-Arab policies have put American Muslims in a difficult position when it comes to who to vote for (or if to vote).