• @ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    445 months ago

    All the media have to do is cover Trump relatively honestly and he will do the rest to sink his presidential campaign.

    In 2016 the media were so gaga over his norm breaking and other wackiness and everyone assumed Hillary was a sure thing compared to him, they didn’t actually cover him honestly.

    Plus he could let people just project whatever hopes and dreams they had on him. He had no governmental experience at any level to investigate and draw conclusions from. He convinced a lot of people that he would fight for them, and Hillary had no really solid counter to all that. Plus the DOJ threw the in-person voting to Trump.

    This time we know basically all there is to know about what a second Trump term would be like. Chaos, petty revenge, and burning the Constitution. If Democrats can take that clear and the media can look past all the dollar signs for a second, any half decent candidate on the Democratic ticket will win. Any candidate who can legitimately claim to be for working people and against the elites.

    So like a Sherrod Brown, Sheldon Whitehouse, John Fetterman, or Elizabeth Warren. I’d say Bernie but he’s probably too old. Brown and Fetterman would do really well bringing large so called “purple” states in.

    • themeatbridge
      link
      fedilink
      625 months ago

      Trump is still polling within reach of a win, and that’s after 4 years of President Trump, an attempted coup, and three more years of the criminal prosecutions that followed.

    • I love John Fetterman, but he did have a mild stroke and spent a month in treatment for depression while in office. He’s great, but I don’t think he is President material. I don’t hold either of those things against him, and mental health is important, but no way do you convince the public that all is fine

      • Drusas
        link
        fedilink
        -95 months ago

        That’s some ableist shit right there. The other representatives just hide their problems.

        • PorkSoda
          link
          fedilink
          95 months ago

          Genuinely serious where you draw the line when it comes to the health of a candidate.

          Someone with three previous heart attacks? Someone with anxiety?

          I ask that last one as someone with anxiety and a trigger being stress. To me those are not ableist concerns. Though the previous commenter could have used a better phrase than “presidential material.”

          • I’m responding as a hiring manager for a big tech company.

            I am not allowed, by law as well as very strict company policy, to ask any questions relating to the candidate’s health. I can’t know whether they’ve had four heart attacks, plan to get pregnant in the next six months, had a history of psychological issues, or anything like that. I think that most people would generally agree that’s a very good thing.

            There are certainly roles where physical performance is key to the job, and so they’re able to take that kind of thing into account.

            I guess what I’m saying is that, while your concern is of course valid, it feels different because we tend to see the president as someone with more of a job than, say, a senior software engineer. Okay, that’s fair in a very real sense. But I think that it’s different between the president and a prime minister, and that’s where it gets interesting. I think there’s an idealization of the role of president. And, bizarrely, that’s one reason Trump was so wrong but so beloved by so many.

            • The US doesn’t have a Prime Minister, so what the hell are you talking about? And the president is not hired, they are elected, so everything you mentioned around employee protections is irrelevant

              • That’s the entire point, you walnut.

                The US deifies its presidents, making them the temporary personality of the country. Since Bush II, there’s been a massive push to implement unitary executive theory. Other countries tend view their prime ministers as, at best, managers of the country who can and will be replaced. For fucks sake, the US can’t even decide whether the president should be subject to the same laws as “regular” citizens, but they’re always leaning towards “if the president did it, it’s not illegal.”

                What that means, walnut, is that the US sees the president as having something approaching the divine right of kings (very literally in the view of many republicans, as long as the president is Republican). The “will of the people,” by which we mean they won an election by winning 49.1% instead of 48.3%, is considered to Trump (pun intended) anything the courts can say, or that has been historically established or really just about anything else.

                So putting any limitations around who can be president is seen as interfering with the will of the people, unless it was already written down in the constitution for things like being a natural citizen and having a minimum age. Those are legitimate restrictions because the constitution cannot be wrong.

                • “I guess what I’m saying is that, while your concern is of course valid, it feels different because we tend to see the president as someone with more of a job than, say, a senior software engineer. Okay, that’s fair in a very real sense. But I think that it’s different between the president and a prime minister, and that’s where it gets interesting. I think there’s an idealization of the role of president. And, bizarrely, that’s one reason Trump was so wrong but so beloved by so many.”

                  This is what I responded to. This is what you said. You made a bizarre comment about a PM with no context, and I’m a walnut because I didn’t follow your insane logic without context?

                  You provided nothing to suggest you thought having a PM would be useful and I’m sure what you say is a huge push is nearly nonexistent. The most public article cited on that wiki page was from years ago in The Atlantic. I’m sure it has some merit, but the huge push is just a fantasy.

          • Why would I use a different phrase? Being the president of the United States is one of the hardest, most stressful jobs in the world. You make decisions every day that change the course of history. There are very few people suited to that.

    • CoffeeAddict
      link
      fedilink
      105 months ago

      I hope you’re right. I was definitely one of those people who thought Hillary was a slam dunk and thought Trump would never win.

      I’ve not been confident in an election cycle since. I want to be optimistic and say Trump will sink himself and that we will all have the satifaction of seeing his ass in prison. But, he has weasled his way out of every negative consequence in his life and survived political scandals that would have sunk any other politician.

      The dude is a cult.

    • @IronRain@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      155 months ago

      Funnily enough, I had this conversation with some friends that Taylor Swift would probably sweep the electoral college. Highly popular, progressive, white (to get a few of the Republican voters whose vote is base on the way their rep looks), and has a fan base that can potentially outmatch MAGA if her name was on the ballot.

      Whether she would be a successful politician, on the other hand, can be cleared by the fact that we survived 4 years of Trump. So it can’t be worse than that fiasco.

      • @PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        155 months ago

        And then she’d make her turn to the right once she met the political machine’s real force.

        I’m categorically against rich people in high public offices.

    • @Jode@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      145 months ago

      With John Stewart as VP. He said he doesn’t want to be president but VP? Let’s fuckin goooo

    • CoffeeAddict
      link
      fedilink
      125 months ago

      If it weren’t real life I’d like to see that go down lmao.

      It would also be hilarious to see Trump’s reaction to being taken down by the Swifties.

  • @Pratai@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    145 months ago

    A six year old child should be able to defeat Trump. At least in all forms of debate and intelligence tests.

  • Nougat
    link
    fedilink
    125 months ago

    Bernie Sanders: “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

    • @Deadeyegai@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      105 months ago

      And he probably would have won too if the DNC didn’t give him the absolute shaft because it was “Hillary’s Time”. Now we still see ourselves in the stupidity timelime

    • PatFusty
      link
      fedilink
      -245 months ago

      Id bet fetterman would probably die before Biden with all his heart problems.

  • @PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    95 months ago

    If he isn’t I’d imagine it’s a short list of other contenders that have the electoral width Biden can hypothetically pull from

  • @rbesfe@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    55 months ago

    The problem with someone like Dean is that time and time again, the average American has shown themselves to be embarrassingly uninformed when it comes to politics, and so the incumbent president has a huge advantage just by having their name be recognizable and their butt already in the chair.

  • @Nobody@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    55 months ago

    Jeff Merkley, progressive 3-term senator who takes common sense positions even when controversial, e.g. calling for a ceasefire in Gaza weeks ago

  • roguetrick
    link
    fedilink
    -135 months ago

    “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said at a campaign event in Boston, adding that he “cannot let him win.”

    Uh huh.