It appears that the 2024 campaign season has started so I figured it was time to start a thread for all related discussion. Sorry for bringing this evil into your life.

As of this moment there are 4 candidates in the news I would consider voting for: RFK Jr, Vivek Ramaswamy, DeSantis, and Orange Man Bad. I don't know who will end up with the Libertarian nomination but I'm sure it will be another horrible spokesperson for the party a la Gary Johnson and Jo Jorgensen. I don't regret voting for Gary twice but he was a ding dong. Jo was so boring she pushed me towards Trump. 

It appears that Gavin Newsom, the former Mayor of San Francisco, and current Governor of California, who just had to call in the National Guard and CHiPs to crack down on the rampant open-air drug use in SF, is gearing up for his run at the Dem nomination. Excuse me for not rushing to export that kind of policymaking to the rest of the country. He also gives me major "aspiring Dictator" vibes so I'd like to keep him as far away from the White House as possible.

Joe Biden's record speaks for itself. 

I assume it will be Trump vs Biden 2.0 because it's not possible to have nice things anymore. But I'll take 4 more years of Trump over the alternative in that matchup 100 out of 100 times.

If both parties put up a turkey….I’m not voting for president.

posted by Ironman92

If both parties put up a turkey….I’m not voting for president.

I definitely get that.

posted by justincredible

I assume it will be Trump vs Biden 2.0 because it's not possible to have nice things anymore. 

posted by friendfromlowry

I doubt Ramaswamy would win the primary, but I wouldn't mind seeing him as VP or in some cabinet position. 

I really really really like Spike Cohen and it was unfortunate that he ended up with JoJo the last time, but I still voted for that ticket. He's my safeguard as a write in, if all else fails.

I like Ron Disantis, but I have a feeling that the practice of raining down EO's like parade confetti would intensify. I don't approve of this practice.

The media has already started their attacks on RFKjr, so that tells me that they are very afraid of him. Makes me like him even more. But I just want to read his transcripts, I don't want to listen to him at all.

I'd rather have shards of sheet metal hammered under my fingernails than to vote for Biden. Please, God, no!
On a fundamentally personal level, I still feel really bad for the guy. I can't help it. I think everybody who voted for him committed some form of elder abuse and it angers me. 

The military industrial complex needs to be dealt with in a severe manner, along with the CIA, FBI and all the other alphabet entities. They are, all of them, out of hand. 
Whoever comes out strongest in this area will almost certainly get my vote or write-in.

The term "our democracy" means that the dems get their way in all things. But as we have seen with Joe Biden, a dem doesn't even need to campaign anymore. The big cities will decide our elections from now on.

Spike is great. My wife and I went to see him speak at UC a few weeks ago. Love his ability to articulate libertarian principles. Also really like Dave Smith as a more aggressive but equally good messenger.

SOOOOOOOOO I had an post all typed up in the Biden thread but it was locked, so I copied it and will paste it here since it ties in anyway.

I'm curious about the upcoming election. As we've been finding out how the Biden administration, along with government agencies and mainstream medias, have all worked together in their malignant corruption, I'm curious as to how much further they will go in the next two years. 

We currently have Stacey Placket threatening a journalist for helping to expose this. She is using the excuse that Matt Taibbi mixed up CIS with CISA to threaten him. I'm willing to bet that this will help to prevent any further dissidence from other journalists.  I'm willing to bet that that is her point in taking this action. 

We've already seen how the social medias have been and still are working with government entities to suppress correct information in democrat favor. And as we are just now finding out, Biden asked government agencies to find people willing to sign off on discrediting the Hunter Biden Laptop Story.

Youtube is currently purging people, starting with Matt Walsh (who decided to take matters into his own hands and remove his content himself) and Tim Poole. Media companies cannot and will not separate social issues and political issues as they see them as the same thing. We all know that this is a one-way street.

If you consider yourself a progressive, you don't even have any recourse either. Because all of the progressives in Congress and the Senate have been dealt with and now vote strictly along party lines. Remember when AOC got onboard and called for more social media censorship? Even the Bernie Bros. Their canary in the coalmine happened when Bernie (who claims to be an independent) kissed Hillary Clinton's ring and fell in line. He has also taken the route of voting strictly the party line. 
All of you are screwed.

Remember when every dem was shitting their pants, making the claim that Trump was going to get us into war with North Korea?
Well now we are essentially at war with Russia by proxy/Ukraine. Almost 100 billion dollars into it so far. Trump and North Korea doesn't even seem like a blip on the map, anymore.

** Personally, I think using the "muh orange man bad!" was just a way for dem voters to vote blue no matter who, like they were always going to do anyway, but feel good about it. ** And we even see it on this site how dems call anybody that points these things out as conservatives. ANY pushback gets you called not only a conservative (like that is somehow a bad thing in and of itself) but also gets you called racist. 

So, I'm also curious if the Biden voters on this site plan on repeating their votes. 
I'm curious on - by some miracle that you do not plan on repeating your vote - what are your reasons for not doing so?

posted by justincredible

Spike is great. My wife and I went to see him speak at UC a few weeks ago. Love his ability to articulate libertarian principles. Also really like Dave Smith as a more aggressive but equally good messenger.

I think some aggression is warranted at this point. Being all nicey nicey with the democrats and republicans has gotten us to this ill-conceived place in time. I'm thoroughly sick of attempting to choose the lesser of evils and for several years now I have not played that game.

That is one (and probably the biggest thing) about Trump that is in his favor right now. He's not afraid to call out the fuckery of government in blatant terms. And he's chomping at the bit to get revenge on the entities that have corrupted the process in such a disgusting manner.
That's not to say that Trump doesn't have his big faults, because he does (example: infringing on 2A to appease the activists). But as of right now, I'm not aware of any other candidate who has the ego and nerve to take this on. 

So yes, I'd greatly appreciate some aggression.

I voted for Trump over Biden and I fucking loathe Trump, thought he was a shitty president who is only interested in self-promotion.  Yet I had zero problem pulling the lever for him over Biden.  Faced with the choice of these two narcissistic psychopaths, I may not vote.  I guess we could get RFK vs Ramaswamy and that’d be good because then maybe we could focus on true issues.

But instead we’ll get two 80 year olds and their respective stupid followers.  Gif help us.

I despise Trump, and I did not and will not vote for him.

But as I've said many times, the POTUS doesn't really do much.  We've seen now, even if you weren't paying attention during the Obama years, that both Biden and Trump's agendas were largely stopped by a divided Congress or the courts.

All that said, it's literally better for my pocket book every time a Republican is POTUS.  Here we are now and Biden wants to charge me higher mortgage rates for the terrible crime of financial discipline and good credit.

And I'm socially liberal.  Certainly not progressive - I think if you have a penis you should use the men's restroom.  But for the most part, I don't care and you can do whatever you want as long as you're not hurting anyone.  Silence is violence?  Then why do we vote in secret?!?

Otherwise, I think a lot of people thought Trump's shtick was just a campaign act and that he'd act differently as POTUS.  But with Desantis, I think that is the case.  He adopted that MAGA stuff himself when he saw it was effective.  Otherwise he's basically everything Trump isn't.

For the Democrats, I honestly don't know where their sticky fingers on these social and environmental issues end.  The type of spending they've been talking about these last 4-5 years should scare everyone with more than two nickels in their bank account.

My top possible candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she hasn’t said anything about running.

Condolezza Rice would be another amazing option.

Of the likely candidates so far I guess DeSantis is the best option, I like Ramaswamy as well.

I would want to puke if it was Trump v Biden again, please God give us any other option, anyone.

If I was forced to pick between those 2 morons I would either not vote for POTUS or plug my nose and mouth to stop the vomit as I vote for Trump.  

Pretty much anyone else from that side would be an easy vote over dementia Joe. 

Really Gabbard is a liberal but she is now independent but I would vote for her in a heartbeat even though I don’t agree with a decent amount of her stances.

posted by jmog

My top possible candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she hasn’t said anything about running.

Condolezza Rice would be another amazing option.

Of the likely candidates so far I guess DeSantis is the best option, I like Ramaswamy as well.

I would want to puke if it was Trump v Biden again, please God give us any other option, anyone.

If I was forced to pick between those 2 morons I would either not vote for POTUS or plug my nose and mouth to stop the vomit as I vote for Trump.  

Pretty much anyone else from that side would be an easy vote over dementia Joe. 

Really Gabbard is a liberal but she is now independent but I would vote for her in a heartbeat even though I don’t agree with a decent amount of her stances.

I'm glad you brought up Tulsi Gabbard! I really like her as well and I have been remiss in not bringing her up lately. She has proven herself to be fair and balanced when it comes to issues, has changed her mind on some issues and the best part about that is that she is unapologetic about it. I greatly respect the no apology approach. Too many people demanding apologies nowdays.

Condoleeza Rice used to be alright to me, but now I can't stand her. She's just another person who wants to feed the military industrial complex = endless wars. I think she knows very well that she has about as much chance of winning as Kamala Harris.

I think it would be awesome that any of those names we have brought up already; DeSantis, Gabbard, Cohen, Kennedy, Ramaswamy, won and then gathered up all those other people for their VP/cabinet. They would certainly hold each other in check in some fashion. Actual reform and progress doesn't happen without friction. That group working together would be the perfect storm that is much needed. They would also be able to build coalitions to work together on getting some desperately needed actions started and/or completed. I'm very willing to think outside the preset boxes that are presented. 

Trump really needs to go away, but he's not going to, so whatever.

I could vote for Tulsi.  That liberals/progs hate her and view her as a turncoat pretty much tells you everything about the direction of that party.  They no longer just ignore moderates - they flat out attack to destroy. 

The MAGA movement will be over and done with soon enough.  But IMO the real threat of fascism is coming from the left.

I like Tulsi, forgot about her. 

posted by gut

I could vote for Tulsi.  That liberals/progs hate her and view her as a turncoat pretty much tells you everything about the direction of that party.  They no longer just ignore moderates - they flat out attack to destroy. 

The MAGA movement will be over and done with soon enough.  But IMO the real threat of fascism is coming from the left.

One of the most easily identifiable traits of fascism is the blurring of lines between the state and media until they you can't tell when one ends and the other begins, essentially becoming one entity. This is currently 100% factual in the US. Nobody can deny that aspect of the absolute state of things. MSM works in conjunction with the state.

Dems have gaslit their voters into becoming unliberal.

Republicans have gaslit their voters into becoming financially unconservative. 

Both sides knew the Boomers were starting to die off,  gave up on GenX and targeted the millennials. Harnessing the Millie's was one of the greatest political power moves in the past 100 years. Very strategic, if you think about it. 

Democrats will not be having debates between candidates. You're just gonna have to eat shit and like it as you're forced to vote for Joe Biden to "save democracy."

I will vote for anyone on the left if its Trump. Likely vote for anyone on the right if it isnt Trump. 

Trump and Biden are both no-gos. If for no other reason than how it's mind-bogglingly stupid to have dudes so old they wouldn't be considering capable of much more than "Walmart greeter" in the real world holding the top job in our political system, especially in a world that's so technologically advanced.

DeSantis has been coming off as a one-trick pony with his War on Woke or whatever, which is feeling more like "you have the freedom to do what I think you should do" than anything else. I mean, it is amusing to watch Disney clowning him, but I don't know that it's a smart thing to go to war with your biggest tourist attraction (and main reason non-Floridians give a shit about your state) because they publicly disagree with your stance on certain matters.

I guess I could mention other names, but until they actually get somewhere where their names are worth mentioning as actual contenders as opposed to "randoms who will clutter up the ranks until dropping out" there's no real point. Which likely means another election of voting for whatever third party person winds up with 1% of the vote because the country is conditioned to vote R or D regardless of how much both parties suck.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRTqYcE9/

posted by jmog

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRTqYcE9/

Biden isn’t up to a debate with a middle schooler.

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

Biden isn’t up to a debate with a middle schooler.

What’s he going to do in the debates against the R nominee?

I’m in agreement with you, but they can’t really avoid that can they?

posted by jmog

What’s he going to do in the debates against the R nominee?

I’m in agreement with you, but they can’t really avoid that can they?

My guess is they will attempt to avoid this as well.

posted by Dr Winston O'Boogie

My guess is they will attempt to avoid this as well.

Hasn't this already happened though?

Now that you can't find an actual "moderator" unable to resist injecting their own opinions the debate is pretty much dead.  Neither party wants to give one jackass the power to decide the election.  It happened in 2012, and arguably 2020, as well.

They really need to change the format of the debates. Make it a sit-down, long format, podcast sort of thing. Something has to change.