Don't you think Kennedy has a better chance of doing that than Manchin?
I bet Hillary's envy gets disproportionately greener with every 1 point uptick Nicki gets in the polls.
Election 2024 Foreplay
- Thread starter TreeFrogTrader
- Start date
I bet Hillary's envy gets disproportionately greener with every 1 point uptick Nicki gets in the polls.
Don't you think Kennedy has a better chance of doing that than Manchin?
I bet Hillary's envy gets disproportionately greener with every 1 point uptick Nicki gets in the polls.
Well, Hillary has seen a lot. One of them is she has seen what someone ultra-marginal player such as Jill Stein can do. You know if you tried to make the case that you have to watch your arse with Jill Stein back in 2016, a large number of binary thinkers on the forums here and elsewhere immediately would have launched into their kneejerk "she will never win" routine." But as I say over and over and frigging over, it is not about whether they win, it is about the damage they can do with a handful of votes in elections that are split by a pubic hair, which most of them appear to be these days. Ask Hillary for more on this if needed.
Having said that, Robert Kennedy will chew up most of his dollars and energy just trying to get on ballots. So in a couple states he may have a Jill Stein effect, but the Jill Stein effect is not to be dismissed. Again, ask Hillary for more as needed.
But, and this is just an example, if you put Manchin on a NoLabels ticket in every state or most states, with donors who will give to a known entity, then you are talking major damage. Where "major damage" is defined by a number that I pull out of my arse which would be in the range of at least 15% -MINIMUM. Very do-able. Also very damaging. How the hell either/any of the parties get to 50% to avoid the whole process going to the House will very much be the topic of that day if NoLabels puts up a candidate. Keep in mind too that they can swing a close election by ordering their electors to side with one party or another at the end if needed. That side will not be Trump.
NoLabels won't put up a candidate if it looks like Nikki gets the nom. Doubtful but Rumsfeldian factors are at play. NoLabels is already one of them.
Vivek not going to be the nom. But, as I said, yesterday or so, he going to get a surprising amount of love in NH from rogue voters, young voters, libertarian voters, etc. The other little thing there is that Biden killed the dem primary so there is an army of dem voters who are itching to get involved. Some of them will vote for a non-Trump pub just to get involved- rather than to be put back on the shelf by Biden. Nikki will benefit from that too and already is.
I didn't know that. Who would make that call? Whoever runs the party? Someone we've never heard of probably. Could that have happened with Bush/Gore?
Why don't the Democrats just abandon Biden? He seems to be in serious trouble considering he is currently polling very badly in every battleground state by a large margin.
Seems like Newsom would be a better candidate. Besides the obvious pandering to the PG&E lobby here in CA he seems pretty popular.
Seems like Newsom would be a better candidate. Besides the obvious pandering to the PG&E lobby here in CA he seems pretty popular.
Ahhh, gets down into the weeds and pretty arcane pretty fast to try to answer that.
Short story is that the state legislatures can set the rules for when or if electors are bound or can be released. In some states they basically are sent in good faith but can jump the fence if they want to. In other states, the electors are bound to vote for the party that they were sent to represent. So in those states the elector cannot jump the fence on his own but has to honor the voters. In other states they cannot jump on their own but can be released by the party.
Thus, the power of a third party to use its electors does/may depend on which state/s get third party electors and whether they are bound or can be made moveable.
The other thing, just to make it as complicated as possible, it also depends on whether you are negotiating electoral votes with a third party before the electoral college meets or whether you have held a vote at the electoral college and no candidate got a majority- in which case the whole enchilada defaults to the house and then each state gets one vote, blah, blah, blah. So then the states have to have internal discussions/processes to reduce their electoral votes to one agreed upon vote and the third party gets to use whatever small power it has there.
That's the general idea. No doubt, one of the googlemeisters could study up a bit and revise some of what I said. Or at least have a different opinion. And that is fine. I am just trying to figure it out myself. But we could go down some strange Rumsfeldian roads this year - or there is that possibility. You don't want to try to fit it on a bumper sticker.
Some of the court cases about release of electors related to party nominees and some related to electoral college. When and if the time comes, that would have to be sorted out. Hopefully never but if "never" ever comes, this feels like year for it.
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Hey regarding Manchin... I was thinking about this just now... I don't think he'll do anything.
He's been in this game for a long time, and he obviously knows its ins and outs. He's stepping down as a US Senator --- why? Because maybe he thinks he'll get beat? That might be a reason. But maybe he has his eyes on 2028.
He's gotta know he has no shot at the Presidency in 2024. Why would someone like him even waste their time with a 3rd party... unless he has an ax to grind and wants to throw the whole process into the type of hypothetical clusterf*ck you have painted for us. Would he do that? I wouldn't think so, the man has too much clout in certain circles. Now Kennedy... yes, because he probably has an ax to grind. Or at least feels like he does, and that's all that matters really. But Manchin.... ahhhhh... I doubt he'd waste his time, too much to lose.
Thoughts?
Manchin in 2028? Jezzuzz man, he will be 81. Oh well, 81 is the new 80 in politics these days. Or the new 90 if you are Biden.
Manchin has four good months ahead of him where he needs to do exacty Zero and watch what unfolds. Speculation keeps his flag flying, he absolutely is not running for Senate because he will be beaten. And so this keeps him from being a lame duck.
I say four months, because by then NoLabels will have decided whether and who they are going to put up for a candidate. And it will be well past the time LBJ stepped down (he stepped down in March I think) so the theory that Joe will pull an LBJ late in the game will have run its course and Trump'/other GOP primary candidates statuses will be more sorted out. He has nothing to lose by just sitting around looking receptive. The most he can do is to be talking with NoLabels and speaking around the country and he is definitely doing that.
Having made those foreplay comments, I cannot say that there are no circumstances where Manchin would not enter to win, rather than just to dick around for attention. The chances may be small but they are much greater than zero. If for example, Joe steps down and the dems move toward Kamala or Newsom, Joe will enter to try for a real win and patch Nikki (for example) in as potential VP even before the election. Any sight or talk of Kamala heading up the ticket then the dems ass is grass and Manchin is a lawnmower. This is true even if Joe tries to drop out right before the convention. Manchin running is nowhere near as ridiculous as Miss Word Salad running. He would turn her into a roadkill and he is actually a pretty dull campaigner. Of course Trump would deal with her too and that would be pay to view TV right there.
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Yeah I guess he is that old lol. He carries it well though. Either way, if a slot opens up, wouldn't Newsome be the presumed shoe-in? I agree there's no way word-salad Kami is in the mix. Lets not forget Michelle though. Rumsfeld and all. She'd beat Gavin in the popularity contest.
Poor Kami... she has no place to go. There's always an MSNBC slot for her I suppose. I don't think CNN can afford the risk at this point if she flopped.
I have had and continue to have somewhat of an outlier view toward Newsom. I think he has lots in common with Kamala. Voters/people do not like to be clueless so they tend to latch on to someone who seems to fit the desired role/check the boxes without any real basis for doing it. Kamala was exhibit A of that in 2020. She was the pre-coronated one who looked the part, was from progressive Cali, and appealed to all the progressive dems. In reality, no one could region where she had appeal east of the Cali/Nevada border. In fact, in the end she did not even carry Cali in the primary and did not even make it to Super Tuesday. But by jove, every American- pub or dem- could rattle off the reason why she was a shoo-in.
Ditto for Newsom in my mind. No indication whatsoever that he can win outside California but he looks the part, checks some boxes, and by jove, everyone can name him as the logicial replacement to Biden. Bullfeathers. He is a California metrosexual dandy and other states get weigh in. They don't want him. Their progressive wing of the dem party might but that is only a piece of the pie and the progressives are already doing hand-to-hand combat with the moderate dems over a whole bunch of issues- issues that Newsom made worse in Cali. Jim Clyburn, for example, got Joe elected last time. No way you are going to dump Kamala and whitey-tighty Newsom is going to roll into the southern states and the black leaders are going to deliver for Newsom.
And this Michelle Obama scenario that gets repeated endlessly is also bullfeathers. She is one of the laziest fucks you will ever meet. She can squat somewhere and mouth-off while the media and lefties wash her feet but that is the extent of her output. She went to europe a while back and got paid 750K for a 45 minute speech. She has a mansion on Martha's Vineyard, a place in Hawaii, a house in DC, and another one in Chicago. She will not be giving that up anytime soon. Also she does not want being beaten by Trump as part of her legacy.
The dems are in deep now. They have passed the point of no return on finding a candidate through the normal process. ie. allow a primary and see what you got. They are not big on democracy. The eliminated competition in their party and also want the leading republican candidate removed from the ballot. Pretty Putinesque if you think about it. There have been other times in both parties when the incumbant did not allow/put forth a full primary but that was because there was no demand for it. But there is solid, solid, solid polling data showing that dems wanted a choice this time. The price they pay is the possibility that a third party could bite a chunk out of them, as discussed. 100% of their creation.
Well if all that's true, and they're smart enough to realize Newsom would instill a lackadaisical voting attitude across the Southeast where voters just say f-it and stay home, and you say Michelle is out... then there's only one option... they gotta keep Joe & Kami going for another 4 years.