Democratic strategist James Carville believes that President Joe Biden is "going to come to the conclusion" that running for reelection is "not a good idea." In a recent New York Times op-ed, Carville suggests former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should play a role in selecting candidates to replace Biden. He wants them to hold town hall meetings across the country, going into the convention with a plan in place as to who the new candidate should be. I find this to be an interesting idea that would gear up people's interest and excitement.
Assuming replacing a major party's presidential nominee four months (or less) before election day is a good idea (a very big assumption), the only plausible candidate is Kamala Harris, for both pragmatic and political reasons. (And when we're talking about electoral politics, pragmatic = political.)
First, the purely political. Kamala Harris' current job is to be Joe Biden's replacement. Implying that she's not up to the job is a very bad look. Given that black Americans and women are two of the most important constituencies of the Democratic party passing over her in favor of (presumably) a white male candidate is a doubly bad look. It would essentially be telling two very important groups of voters that the Democrats will accept their votes but never allow them a place at the table.
Now for the pragmatic. Let's start with the fact that presidential campaigns are separate from the party apparatus. This is, in part, a byproduct of the way presidential candidates are selected, where the primary campaign transitions into being the general election campaign. So at the moment there is one Democratic presidential campaign comittee (Biden/Harris) that's registered with the Federal Election Commission. This means that the $250 million (and counting) war chest of campaign donations that have been contributed to the Biden/Harris campaign can only be accessed by Joe Biden or, if he's not available, Kamala Harris. The most that this campaign fund can contribute to a presidential candidate who is not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is $3,300. Then there's the question of campaign staff. They all work for the Biden/Harris campaign, not the DNC. While I'm sure a lot of them would be willing to stay on for the newly launched Johnny Unbeatable campaign there would probably be a significant number of staffers who won't. The same goes for voter/targeting data and pre-purchased television slots for the last few weeks of the campaign. (Tens of millions of dollars of that last one.) Ballot access is also an issue. The deadline for submitting candidates names and slates of electors is as early as August in some states, so resolving the metaphorical knife-fight that would be a contested nomination would have to be done very quickly indeed. And then there's the related knife-fight of picking a running mate and doing so with enough time to get on the ballot in all fifty states (plus DC). Each of these (especially ballot access) would be a point where Republican ratfuckers will gleefully throw sand in any official gears they can.
Carville should know all this. Why he's substituting his own "fantasy football" nominating process for the actually existing process developed over decades for Democrats to select their nominees is left as an exercise for the reader. I'm getting a very "but her emails!" feel about recent press coverage of the Biden campaign.
What level of disclosure of Biden’s medical information more than already has been disclosed (including further tests he could do and make the results public) would be fair given the need to reassure the public about his ability to campaign and govern on the one hand and the need to let candidates and presidents have some privacy about their consultations with doctors that prevents the public from reading too much into medical data or conversations that may not be very relevant to their competence?
Specifically, should Biden take a cognitive test and neurological assessment now and release the results (to prove that his cognitive skills and neuro-motor symptoms (ie, as in potential Parkinson’s) have not declined since his last physical early this year)?
The risk in doing so is that Trump will almost certainly not reciprocate. He might get some doctor to say he’s cognitively the best person his age that they’ve ever seen but he won’t release the actual cognitive test and neurological assessment results from a respected, neutral neurologist or geriatric medicine physician.
It seems to me a contest Biden could lose but never win, just as the debate was. If your opponent will neither reciprocate nor tell the truth (about anything, including what he had for lunch), it seems to me your best bet is to stay right where you are and make as few possibly harmful moves as possible.
President Joe Biden: meeting with AFL-CIO leaders, attending NATO summit, bilateral meeting with Kier Starmer.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Campaign events in Texas, keynote speech to Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority's biennial convention.
Donald Trump: Golf.
I'm just guessing with Trump since his public schedule is a bit hard to pin down, but that's what he's been doing for the past week and a half, aside from a rally last night in Doral, FL (where he owns a golf course).
Specifically, should Biden take a cognitive test and neurological assessment now and release the results (to prove that his cognitive skills and neuro-motor symptoms (ie, as in potential Parkinson’s) have not declined since his last physical early this year)?
I think it would probably be a fine idea for Biden to take cognitive tests and publish the results - his bad debate performance aside, he doesn't seem to be declining that rapidly - but I also think the Parkinson's thing was a completely irresponsible speculation by the NYT. Congress has been working on a big Parkinson's research bill and it was passed and signed into law on July 2. There's every reason for a Parkinson's expert to be meeting with White House staff if they are working on a bill which requires specialist knowledge.
The same doctor also has noted on his LinkedIn page that he was a consultant to the White House medical unit and physician to the President from 2012-2022. According to that very same NYT article, the doc made a minimum of 4 visits to the WH per year between 2012-2016 (we don't have the number of his visits during the Trump administration because they quit voluntarily releasing the visitors' logs).
So basically, the NYT's statement is "oh look, this neurologist who's already been visiting the White House multiple times per year for over a decade kept visiting the White House. Biden must have Parkinson's!"
Specifically, should Biden take a cognitive test and neurological assessment now and release the results (to prove that his cognitive skills and neuro-motor symptoms (ie, as in potential Parkinson’s) have not declined since his last physical early this year)?
I think it would probably be a fine idea for Biden to take cognitive tests and publish the results - his bad debate performance aside, he doesn't seem to be declining that rapidly - but I also think the Parkinson's thing was a completely irresponsible speculation by the NYT. Congress has been working on a big Parkinson's research bill and it was passed and signed into law on July 2. There's every reason for a Parkinson's expert to be meeting with White House staff if they are working on a bill which requires specialist knowledge.
The same doctor also has noted on his LinkedIn page that he was a consultant to the White House medical unit and physician to the President from 2012-2022. According to that very same NYT article, the doc made a minimum of 4 visits to the WH per year between 2012-2016 (we don't have the number of his visits during the Trump administration because they quit voluntarily releasing the visitors' logs).
So basically, the NYT's statement is "oh look, this neurologist who's already been visiting the White House multiple times per year for over a decade kept visiting the White House. Biden must have Parkinson's!"
Also, on 3 of the 10 times Dr. Cannard visited the WH, Biden wasn't even there.
11-15-22 in Bali for G20
8-25-23 in Glenbrook NV/Lake Tahoe
11-17-23 in San Francisco
So apparently some rando on Xitter thinks to check the president's publicly available calendar, but not the New York Times?
Even if Biden did have Parkinson's, wouldn't that be far less troubling than dementia, given that Parkinson's is predominantly physically rather that cognitively impairing?
So I feel caught in this weird limbo where most editorial writers and pundits in mainstream media make it seem that any sensible person wants Biden to not run, but most progressives I know on social media - who are much more politically active than I am - think that any talk of replacing Biden is West Wing fan fiction and Democrats need to hunker down and beat the fascists.
Do we have a poll of "most editorial writers"? I read the Philadelphia Inquirer and they have been firmly in Biden's corner.
From the Inquirer's June 29th editorial:
President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.
But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.
In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.
And then there was the Inquirer's July 6 editorial (the link may possibly hit a paywall) (asterisks below represent my edits--the Inquirer editorial board went on quite a long rant about Trump's unfitness for office):
A similar imbalance has taken hold in the coverage of Biden’s debate performance.
******
But little attention has been paid to Trump’s incoherent debate performance because he is often incoherent.
******
Apparently, it’s OK for Trump to spew nonstop nonsense, but Biden can’t ever lose his train of thought.
I am a clinical psychologist. Not credentialed as a neuropsychologist, but I've had neuropsych training and have done several dementia assessments. I've been saying since 2016 that if DJT was my client, I would be recommending a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment based on the obvious deterioration from his performance 30 years ago. Biden shows some deterioration too, but it's more of the sort we class as normal age-rated decline in short term memory and word recall. When it happens to someone in their 60s we make jokes about "senior moments," but if they're 80 we interpret it more drastically, though we really shouldn't. There's nothing that makes me think he can't do the job, since being president doesn't really require being quick on your feet in a verbal exchange.
That said, I wish Biden hadn't run. He and the rest of the Democratic gerontocracy have exhibited a major failure of leadership in not preparing their successor generation--indeed, actively blocking the rise of GenX and Millennial leaders, because of their conviction that no one can do the job as well as they can. And of course, because they are politicians who have devoted their lives to gaining power and are not about to give it up voluntarily. But failing to arrange for orderly succession is just political malpractice.
I may be mistaken, but I think Harris was on a unified ticket with Biden in the primaries. If so, she will have enough delegates to win the nomination automatically if Biden does step down.
I may be mistaken, but I think Harris was on a unified ticket with Biden in the primaries. If so, she will have enough delegates to win the nomination automatically if Biden does step down.
No, there was no “unified ticket,” at least not in my state, and so far as I know, not in any state. There are no running mates in primaries.
Biden was the candidate, and the delegates from the primaries are committed to him. It’s just that everyone knew that if he was the nominee, Harris would again be his running mate.
I think Biden accidentally introducing Zelensky as Putin, and naming his VP as Trump without apparently noticing, has probably guaranteed the Democrats will somehow remove him.
vicepresidenttrump was trending immediately on X. Watching it with my 2 twenty something sons and we were all having fits of apoplexy. Can it get worse?
vicepresidenttrump was trending immediately on X. Watching it with my 2 twenty something sons and we were all having fits of apoplexy. Can it get worse?
Yes. Like the old joke about the optimist and the pessimist:
Pessimist: things are terrible; they can't possibly get any worse.
I think Biden accidentally introducing Zelensky as Putin, and naming his VP as Trump without apparently noticing, has probably guaranteed the Democrats will somehow remove him.
Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.
Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.
<snip>
Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine “want to save face, they want a way out,” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.
<snip>
Russia has previously declared it was annexing Ukrainian land beyond the Donbas region and Crimea, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he would not accept surrendering any territory. Exchanging territory for a cease-fire would put Ukraine in a worse position without assurances that Russia would not rearm and resume hostilities, as it has in the past, said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “That is a terrible deal,” she said of Trump’s proposal.
To the extent we know Trump's "plan" for ending the Ukraine War it would seem to involve Ukraine giving up territory it now controls, including territory that Ukraine has recovered from Russia with the blood of its soldiers. There's no reason to believe such a deal would be any more amenable to the current Ukrainian government than Trump's previous demand that it start a fake investigation of Joe Biden in exchange for releasing already appropriated military aid.
Shots have been fired at Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. A spokesman said he is fine but is being treated. In photographs there appeared to be blood on his face.
I'm not sure where to post this, so I'll put it here.
My 22 year old son is extremely dejected this evening. The combination of Biden's unwillingness to step aside and the attack at the Trump rally today means that my son is almost certain T will be elected. Son is a Canadian who has been tracking and predicting US elections since he was 12 and his predictions have had a similar accuracy to Nate Silver's.
For the first time in his life he is fearful that the future will be much worse than the past. His autistic data-gathering and analysis have so far kept him hopeful. Tonight he is facing the possibility that his data is predicting a very painful future.
I would ask that those of you who are praying people please pray for him and other young people similarly fearful and wondering whether they dare hope for a life-giving future.
I will pray. I woke just as the news was breaking in Australia this morning and was pretty shaken up. I worry what the consequences will be for political violence in the US.
It doesn't help I was at a Christian concert last night where the band interspersed readings from Revelation with one song and the descriptions of the beast made me reflect despairingly on how so many Christians have fallen for Trump as if he is a false prophet. The music was quite trance like and for some reason my mind went to the possibility someone might try to assassinate him for religious reasons, but I felt he would survive. I prayed that whatever would be is God's will and that myself and others can accept what can't be changed and work towards a loving, just world.
We don't know the shooter's motives and despite my fear of what Trump might do if he gets in power and my deep dislike of the man I am glad he survived.
Also I was invited to the concert by a friend and was a bit disturbed by their end times music. Revelation is a book I tend to avoid. The rest of the concert was based mostly around Psalms and was more positive.
I have seen a brief film of Trump being shot. It was a flesh wound apparently. What I don't understand is that the bullet could not fail to hit the crowd of people sitting behind him.
I have read that the gunman has been shot dead. He is unable for interview !!
I honestly don't think Trump is gonna get much of a sympathy bump from this, not among people who weren't planning to vote for him in the first place.
The main danger from the Democrats' POV is disengaged Trump supporters, the kind who like him but might have been too apathetic to vote on election day. Some of them might get caught up in the hero-worship ensuing from this crime, and be more inclined to go to the polls. Could make a difference in some close swing-state.
I'm not sure where to post this, so I'll put it here.
My 22 year old son is extremely dejected this evening. The combination of Biden's unwillingness to step aside and the attack at the Trump rally today means that my son is almost certain T will be elected. Son is a Canadian who has been tracking and predicting US elections since he was 12 and his predictions have had a similar accuracy to Nate Silver's.
For the first time in his life he is fearful that the future will be much worse than the past. His autistic data-gathering and analysis have so far kept him hopeful. Tonight he is facing the possibility that his data is predicting a very painful future.
I would ask that those of you who are praying people please pray for him and other young people similarly fearful and wondering whether they dare hope for a life-giving future.
I have seen a brief film of Trump being shot. It was a flesh wound apparently. What I don't understand is that the bullet could not fail to hit the crowd of people sitting behind him.
I have read that the gunman has been shot dead. He is unable for interview !!
Two men who were just off to Trump's left were also hit, though I am not certain if this was the same shot that nicked Trump. One of the men was ambulatory, but the other was shot in the head. A doctor who was giving first aid to the second person said he saw brain matter through the wound. I believe he was pronounced deceased at hospital.
Of course, Don Jr sent a message saying his dad had been shot by the radical left.
I honestly don't think Trump is gonna get much of a sympathy bump from this, not among people who weren't planning to vote for him in the first place.
The main danger from the Democrats' POV is disengaged Trump supporters, the kind who like him but might have been too apathetic to vote on election day. Some of them might get caught up in the hero-worship ensuing from this crime, and be more inclined to go to the polls. Could make a difference in some close swing-state.
The danger is that this event just mixes into the quasi-messianic Trump narrative. He can now say, without actually lying, that he's survived an assassination attempt.
I expect the true believers to be pushing this hard.
In fact, I'm trying to think of an event in history where something like this against a right-wing firebrand didn't become a pivotal moment in the story.
It feels like political leaders need to make special efforts to downplay and calm the waters after acts of political violence against them (or in their general direction) otherwise they spiral. And of course if you are a chaotic political leader then you are quite unlikely to want to avoid the spiral.
Sorry to post three times, but I was reading the Wikipedia page about the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. I'm fairly convinced in my own mind that Reagan didn't use this event as a pivot to shape his legacy, however I was struck by this paragraph:
The events contributed to Reagan's initial popularity; though he had enjoyed approval ratings of up to 60% until March, his ratings surged to nearly 70% in the following months. Privately, Reagan believed that God had spared his life so that he might go on to fulfill a greater purpose and, although not a Catholic, meetings with Mother Teresa, Cardinal Terence Cooke, and fellow shooting survivor Pope John Paul II reinforced his belief.
Not sure whether it's genuine courage or commitment to the grift, but I have to admit to a certain grudging respect for Trump's defiant raised fist immediately after the shooting. If you'd asked me to predict Trump's immediate response to coming under fire I'd have said "cowering in a corner crying his eyes out".
Not sure whether it's genuine courage or commitment to the grift, but I have to admit to a certain grudging respect for Trump's defiant raised fist immediately after the shooting. If you'd asked me to predict Trump's immediate response to coming under fire I'd have said "cowering in a corner crying his eyes out".
This is why he’s dangerous - because he’s so easy to misunderstand. I’ve never doubted he’s a tough operator. The Vietnam bone spurs gets spun by opponents as cowardice, but IMO it’s far more likely to have been (completely rational actually) ‘I don’t want to die for this’
Courage under fire? Not a massive surprise.
Which (I hope obviously) is not a defence of or advocacy for him. But it’s a caution that ‘snivelling little coward’ probably is too far the other way.
Not sure whether it's genuine courage or commitment to the grift, but I have to admit to a certain grudging respect for Trump's defiant raised fist immediately after the shooting. If you'd asked me to predict Trump's immediate response to coming under fire I'd have said "cowering in a corner crying his eyes out".
Fight or flight, he chose fight. No courage, just a natural reaction. No respect from me, grudging or otherwise.
Not sure whether it's genuine courage or commitment to the grift, but I have to admit to a certain grudging respect for Trump's defiant raised fist immediately after the shooting. If you'd asked me to predict Trump's immediate response to coming under fire I'd have said "cowering in a corner crying his eyes out".
Fight or flight, he chose fight. No courage, just a natural reaction.
Yeah, pretty much, I think speculation on this point is overblown.
According to the Guardian a University of Chicago survey puts support for political violence against Trump at 10% of US adults and support for political violence in favour of Trump at 7% of US adults. Those are uncomfortably high numbers.
According to the Guardian a University of Chicago survey puts support for political violence against Trump at 10% of US adults and support for political violence in favour of Trump at 7% of US adults. Those are uncomfortably high numbers.
Just remember that Trump has spent years stoking this issue himself:
According to the Guardian a University of Chicago survey puts support for political violence against Trump at 10% of US adults and support for political violence in favour of Trump at 7% of US adults. Those are uncomfortably high numbers.
Just remember that Trump has spent years stoking this issue himself:
I heard on the news this morning that the shooter was a registered Republican. I'm sure we'll hear more later.
Like so many of you, I dearly hope this doesn't escalate the already tense divide here.
I'm glad he wasn't killed. That would have made him a martyr. Plus, in the back of my brain, I shudder to think of the person who would take his place. Like our Dear Governor.
I think Biden should give up his re-election bid immediately. The Dems are now competing with God.
Despite his pretensions to the contrary, Donald Trump is not God.
I didn't say or imply that he was.
You said that Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate running against Donald Trump for president, should end his campaign. You gave as your reason that "the Dems" were competing with God, though the fact that you didn't call on any other Democratic candidates to end their campaigns pretty clearly indicates that by "the Dems" you mean "Joe Biden".
So you may not have directly said Donald Trump is God, but the implication is hard to miss.
Comments
Assuming replacing a major party's presidential nominee four months (or less) before election day is a good idea (a very big assumption), the only plausible candidate is Kamala Harris, for both pragmatic and political reasons. (And when we're talking about electoral politics, pragmatic = political.)
First, the purely political. Kamala Harris' current job is to be Joe Biden's replacement. Implying that she's not up to the job is a very bad look. Given that black Americans and women are two of the most important constituencies of the Democratic party passing over her in favor of (presumably) a white male candidate is a doubly bad look. It would essentially be telling two very important groups of voters that the Democrats will accept their votes but never allow them a place at the table.
Now for the pragmatic. Let's start with the fact that presidential campaigns are separate from the party apparatus. This is, in part, a byproduct of the way presidential candidates are selected, where the primary campaign transitions into being the general election campaign. So at the moment there is one Democratic presidential campaign comittee (Biden/Harris) that's registered with the Federal Election Commission. This means that the $250 million (and counting) war chest of campaign donations that have been contributed to the Biden/Harris campaign can only be accessed by Joe Biden or, if he's not available, Kamala Harris. The most that this campaign fund can contribute to a presidential candidate who is not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is $3,300. Then there's the question of campaign staff. They all work for the Biden/Harris campaign, not the DNC. While I'm sure a lot of them would be willing to stay on for the newly launched Johnny Unbeatable campaign there would probably be a significant number of staffers who won't. The same goes for voter/targeting data and pre-purchased television slots for the last few weeks of the campaign. (Tens of millions of dollars of that last one.) Ballot access is also an issue. The deadline for submitting candidates names and slates of electors is as early as August in some states, so resolving the metaphorical knife-fight that would be a contested nomination would have to be done very quickly indeed. And then there's the related knife-fight of picking a running mate and doing so with enough time to get on the ballot in all fifty states (plus DC). Each of these (especially ballot access) would be a point where Republican ratfuckers will gleefully throw sand in any official gears they can.
Carville should know all this. Why he's substituting his own "fantasy football" nominating process for the actually existing process developed over decades for Democrats to select their nominees is left as an exercise for the reader. I'm getting a very "but her emails!" feel about recent press coverage of the Biden campaign.
Specifically, should Biden take a cognitive test and neurological assessment now and release the results (to prove that his cognitive skills and neuro-motor symptoms (ie, as in potential Parkinson’s) have not declined since his last physical early this year)?
The risk in doing so is that Trump will almost certainly not reciprocate. He might get some doctor to say he’s cognitively the best person his age that they’ve ever seen but he won’t release the actual cognitive test and neurological assessment results from a respected, neutral neurologist or geriatric medicine physician.
President Joe Biden: meeting with AFL-CIO leaders, attending NATO summit, bilateral meeting with Kier Starmer.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Campaign events in Texas, keynote speech to Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority's biennial convention.
Donald Trump: Golf.
I'm just guessing with Trump since his public schedule is a bit hard to pin down, but that's what he's been doing for the past week and a half, aside from a rally last night in Doral, FL (where he owns a golf course).
I think it would probably be a fine idea for Biden to take cognitive tests and publish the results - his bad debate performance aside, he doesn't seem to be declining that rapidly - but I also think the Parkinson's thing was a completely irresponsible speculation by the NYT. Congress has been working on a big Parkinson's research bill and it was passed and signed into law on July 2. There's every reason for a Parkinson's expert to be meeting with White House staff if they are working on a bill which requires specialist knowledge.
The same doctor also has noted on his LinkedIn page that he was a consultant to the White House medical unit and physician to the President from 2012-2022. According to that very same NYT article, the doc made a minimum of 4 visits to the WH per year between 2012-2016 (we don't have the number of his visits during the Trump administration because they quit voluntarily releasing the visitors' logs).
So basically, the NYT's statement is "oh look, this neurologist who's already been visiting the White House multiple times per year for over a decade kept visiting the White House. Biden must have Parkinson's!"
Also relevant:
So apparently some rando on Xitter thinks to check the president's publicly available calendar, but not the New York Times?
From the Inquirer's June 29th editorial:
And then there was the Inquirer's July 6 editorial (the link may possibly hit a paywall) (asterisks below represent my edits--the Inquirer editorial board went on quite a long rant about Trump's unfitness for office):
That said, I wish Biden hadn't run. He and the rest of the Democratic gerontocracy have exhibited a major failure of leadership in not preparing their successor generation--indeed, actively blocking the rise of GenX and Millennial leaders, because of their conviction that no one can do the job as well as they can. And of course, because they are politicians who have devoted their lives to gaining power and are not about to give it up voluntarily. But failing to arrange for orderly succession is just political malpractice.
Biden was the candidate, and the delegates from the primaries are committed to him. It’s just that everyone knew that if he was the nominee, Harris would again be his running mate.
He could have said that their talk was confidential
Yes. Like the old joke about the optimist and the pessimist:
Pessimist: things are terrible; they can't possibly get any worse.
Optimist: oh yes they can!
I'd say Donald Trump's plan to sell out Zelenskyy to Putin is a bigger issue than some momentary name confusion.
To the extent we know Trump's "plan" for ending the Ukraine War it would seem to involve Ukraine giving up territory it now controls, including territory that Ukraine has recovered from Russia with the blood of its soldiers. There's no reason to believe such a deal would be any more amenable to the current Ukrainian government than Trump's previous demand that it start a fake investigation of Joe Biden in exchange for releasing already appropriated military aid.
My 22 year old son is extremely dejected this evening. The combination of Biden's unwillingness to step aside and the attack at the Trump rally today means that my son is almost certain T will be elected. Son is a Canadian who has been tracking and predicting US elections since he was 12 and his predictions have had a similar accuracy to Nate Silver's.
For the first time in his life he is fearful that the future will be much worse than the past. His autistic data-gathering and analysis have so far kept him hopeful. Tonight he is facing the possibility that his data is predicting a very painful future.
I would ask that those of you who are praying people please pray for him and other young people similarly fearful and wondering whether they dare hope for a life-giving future.
It doesn't help I was at a Christian concert last night where the band interspersed readings from Revelation with one song and the descriptions of the beast made me reflect despairingly on how so many Christians have fallen for Trump as if he is a false prophet. The music was quite trance like and for some reason my mind went to the possibility someone might try to assassinate him for religious reasons, but I felt he would survive. I prayed that whatever would be is God's will and that myself and others can accept what can't be changed and work towards a loving, just world.
We don't know the shooter's motives and despite my fear of what Trump might do if he gets in power and my deep dislike of the man I am glad he survived.
Also I was invited to the concert by a friend and was a bit disturbed by their end times music. Revelation is a book I tend to avoid. The rest of the concert was based mostly around Psalms and was more positive.
I have read that the gunman has been shot dead. He is unable for interview !!
The main danger from the Democrats' POV is disengaged Trump supporters, the kind who like him but might have been too apathetic to vote on election day. Some of them might get caught up in the hero-worship ensuing from this crime, and be more inclined to go to the polls. Could make a difference in some close swing-state.
Praying!!
Two men who were just off to Trump's left were also hit, though I am not certain if this was the same shot that nicked Trump. One of the men was ambulatory, but the other was shot in the head. A doctor who was giving first aid to the second person said he saw brain matter through the wound. I believe he was pronounced deceased at hospital.
Of course, Don Jr sent a message saying his dad had been shot by the radical left.
The danger is that this event just mixes into the quasi-messianic Trump narrative. He can now say, without actually lying, that he's survived an assassination attempt.
I expect the true believers to be pushing this hard.
An eye witness said trump turned his head at that moment or he'd have been shot in the face.
Hard to believe it was possible with so much security on the site.
I pray this won't inflame tensions even further. 🙏
It feels like political leaders need to make special efforts to downplay and calm the waters after acts of political violence against them (or in their general direction) otherwise they spiral. And of course if you are a chaotic political leader then you are quite unlikely to want to avoid the spiral.
It feels like a dangerous moment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Ronald_Reagan
This is why he’s dangerous - because he’s so easy to misunderstand. I’ve never doubted he’s a tough operator. The Vietnam bone spurs gets spun by opponents as cowardice, but IMO it’s far more likely to have been (completely rational actually) ‘I don’t want to die for this’
Courage under fire? Not a massive surprise.
Which (I hope obviously) is not a defence of or advocacy for him. But it’s a caution that ‘snivelling little coward’ probably is too far the other way.
Fight or flight, he chose fight. No courage, just a natural reaction. No respect from me, grudging or otherwise.
Yeah, pretty much, I think speculation on this point is overblown.
Just remember that Trump has spent years stoking this issue himself:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/290892-trump-says-second-amendment-folks-could-stop-clinton/
Well obviously! The trouble is that he's been quite successful at doing it!
Like so many of you, I dearly hope this doesn't escalate the already tense divide here.
I'm glad he wasn't killed. That would have made him a martyr. Plus, in the back of my brain, I shudder to think of the person who would take his place. Like our Dear Governor.
That's what people advised the Democrats after GHW Bush won the Gulf War.
Despite his pretensions to the contrary, Donald Trump is not God.
I didn't say or imply that he was.
You said that Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate running against Donald Trump for president, should end his campaign. You gave as your reason that "the Dems" were competing with God, though the fact that you didn't call on any other Democratic candidates to end their campaigns pretty clearly indicates that by "the Dems" you mean "Joe Biden".
So you may not have directly said Donald Trump is God, but the implication is hard to miss.