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Whelp... Biden was insistent on running, now the Monkey's Paw has answered. All the other plausible Dems who could have stepped in to replace Biden will be running for the hills, and being the Democratic nominee is gonna be the worst job in politics for the next four months. And at the end of the campaign he gets to be remembered by history as the loser in the worst landslide election since Reagan-Carter.
Also:
Sonia Sotomayor's decision not to retire during Biden's term is looking like yet another D own goal. Very real prospects for a 7-2 Supreme Court.
We're going to be seeing an orgy of foreign governments jockeying to cultivate relations with Trump. Official US foreign policy is going to be dead in the water, and NATO and G7 will be leaderless, until next year.
Trump is going to have an iron grip on the Republican party now, to an even greater extent than before. On various issues where other Republicans held positions contrary to Trump's, they're going to be brushed aside.
For the above two reasons, Ukraine is pretty well fucked.
Fucking vote
Democrats aren't just jumping ship over this bullshit. The actual voters, the people, not the talking heads, are pretty entrenched in Not Trump. Votes aren't changing over this, and the Democrats know what's at stake. At the end of the day there's more blue than red and it was an L for Trump as soon as he said he was running.
And the end of the day I dont give a shit that he got shot. So did 50. Its not changing my vote. He's been calling for violence and got some. I worry this will cause more political violence.
(40)
Maybe he means 50 Cent?
This is absolutely going to yield more political violence. And that’s something Trump has been trying to make happen for a while now.
In that context, and also considering he was deep into the professional wrestling for a while, I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if at least some of this was staged. This whole bit in particular seems super fishy. Like… how in the fuck did the secret service detail not coordinate overwatch with the cops, or just do it themselves?
Urban warfare is well known to be incredibly complicated for this reason. There's just too many buildings (and even if there's just one building: too many windows a shooter could be looking out of).
We're lucky that this punk-ass kid wasn't a trained marksman. 300 meters isn't an easy shot, but its something a trained person would do regularly with an AR-15 and the right equipment. (Even on the first shot: today's rangefinders are very good and its not so hard to compensate for bullet drop and other effects).
In any case, the range and difficulty of the shot makes it unlikely that this kid was going for anything aside from a straightforward assassination attempt. You're just aiming for center-of-mass at these ranges.
FTFY
Lucky.
A martyred Trump only makes the MAGA movement bigger and stronger than ever before. Trump is just a symptom of this problem, and I worry about the coming years. I look forward above and beyond just one 78-year-old loser dumbass.
The MAGA threat is here and persistent. Its better for us that MAGA is still coalesced around Trump today and that we can still fuck up Trump's reputation / ideology before he dies.
But actually killing Trump? That gives the movement the momentum they need to carry on for decades. A grazed piece of glass on Trump's ear is fine. We can still politically work with this, though the MAGA has gained an edge this week in politics, this sort of thing can be forgotten before the election (much like Pelosi's hammer attack or Gabby Gifford's headshot).
Trump will likely milk this situation for all that its worth and exhaust the oxygen in the room.
The real issue is that Democrats haven't solidified upon a plan yet. I suggest we either support Biden fully or we push for Harris. The sooner we push for a choice the better things are for our votes.
I genuinely think that this failed assassination attempt will end up helping Trump in terms of his chances.
If he had gotten killed, they’d swap in someone like DeSantis, and at that point the calls to replace Biden with Harris or Newsom or Whitmer or whoever else would become overwhelming, because DeSantis would wipe the floor with Biden - and DeSantis isn’t that good of a debater, nor is he terribly charismatic. If it was one of those vs DeSantis, I think the average low-info moderate-conservative-curious vote would be a LOT more likely to be swayed away from DeSantis.
Of course it does.
But a Martyred Trump is even worse. I'm happy we got the better of the two bad options. All we gotta do is turn Trump into George Wallace, a racist fuck who lost an election despite an assassination attempt.
Then, we forget about Trump... but always remember that the racists are out there. Without a martyr, the movement will disappear over time. They'll be trying to turn Trump into a martyr moving forward, even though he survived. Alas, things don't quite work like that.
With any luck, more neonazis come out of the woodwork and people get reminded at how ugly Trump's supporters are.
Votes aren't changing but the Trump voter was severely demoralized before this.
Trump's debate performance was fucking awful. Yes, Democrats are worried about Biden for good reason, but Trump won no favors during the debate.
This event has galvinized Trump and even given him a photo-op that makes it look/feel like he was ordained by God himself. I shit you not, that's what people will be praying for and seeing today now that its Sunday. If you know anything about conservatives, that's whats going through their head today on Sunday.
With that, a lot of them will see it as their holy duty to vote Trump in November. Expect record turnout. We will need to do everything to drum up the anti-Trump vote now to keep up with them.
You're not wrong. Here's hoping the Dems show up in droves as well
I always used to wonder how the Weimar Republic fumbled the ball so hard. Now I know.
Also, in Christian eschatology, isn't it a big deal that the Antichrist suffers a near fatal head injury before his ultimate victory?
No, because everything in that damn book is made up and doesn't matter.
To be fair this wasn’t near fatal. This was a graze at best.
Its not even a graze.
It turns out it was glass that exploded somewhere and shards that hit Trump. The bullet never got close. The kid was a terrible shot (thank goodness for that. A Trump martyr would be even worse than the current situation IMO).
300m with an AR15 isn't too difficult, but it does take training and practice to consistently hit at that range. And the relative speed at which secret-service killed the kid proves that (the Secret Service marksmen returned fire accurately and precisely. A job well done on that front).
We're incredibly lucky this was a punk ass kid who didn't know how to use his new toy. Then again, this all is much worse for Democracy anyway.
She’s 70. She can easily make it 5 more years.
5 more years and then run for president after that.
Uhh 75 is kind of young, don’t you want someone with experience for president?
I believe I read somewhere she has some kind of condition that could impact her longevity though.
She's diabetic, which doesn't really mean much. My grandmother was a poorly controlled type 1 and lived to be 80 years old.
STOP with this stupid rhetoric. If Biden steps down, it will be game over for the Dems.
And no, Trump has no real chance to get back into the White House. Trump will lose. He already lost as a sitting president while trying to illegally stay in power. The fact that people keep forgetting this is beyond stupid.
This incident will just encourage more people to vote. Good.
Trump lost by around 50,000 votes in swing states, in the middle of a bungled pandemic response. In 2020, Biden was polling significantly higher than Trump; today he is polling significantly lower.
All this before that picture of Trump fist-pumping after being shot, which is going to be widely juxtaposed against Biden's inability to walk down 2-3 steps.
I don't know where this idea that Trump has "no chance" comes from.
It comes from the fact that he lost to Biden while trying to cling to power illegally. And I didn't say "no chance." I said "no real chance."
People will vote in droves and Biden will win. And I don't even like Biden. Come back here and mock me if that doesn't happen.
I give 50/50 odds that Harris can do about as well as Biden, the more I think about it.
But there's very few Democrats who can reasonably replace Biden today. And most of those do not have access to Biden's fundraising (Harris does have access to that and gives her a huge leg up).
I still think that Biden staying on to serve as a political shield for Harris... and then resigning in January is the best path forward for Democrats. Harris still has to deal with womanizers and racists. All the adults recognize that she's the real President Candidate moving forward already, so its not like she needs to actually step into the political firezone.
I'm leaning to 50/50 now because Harris feasibly could benefit from some kind of VP pick herself to shore up support. Or she could go down in flames as the racists / anti-women vote turns out against her. Hard for me to say, but its a feasible path IMO, if people really want to replace Biden to replace him with Harris.
EDIT: However, the idea that Biden should resign for some no-name / non-existant Democrat who hasn't stepped up despite 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, now 2024 elections is fucking nuts. Your mysterious secret savior doesn't exist, and they'd never step up 3 months before the election to ruin their chances at 2028 anyway.
Those odds are terrible.
"Hey, take this gun. Point the gun in between your eyes, then pull the trigger. If the gun doesn't fire, I'll give you a million dollars. The gun has 50/50 odds that it will fail. Wanna play?"
Yeah, which is why I prefer if Biden stays running. I honestly think he's our best shot at defeating Trump. Even today.
Do you think anyone else has a chance this late in the game? Has support begun to coalesce at any replacements yet? Its been a few weeks since the first debate. Who is stepping up?
Harris is stepping up. I can say that, and there's some favorable polls right now for her. And I think the Democrats can spin the story of "You're worried about age, so we listened and gave our best / most reasonable response to the worries of the public". I'm not sure if it'd work mind you, but its better than nothing and I judge it to be about the same as Biden finishing this campaign (then resigning after the election), which is the default choice.
Harris could surprise me with a very good VP pick. Harris can inherit the entirety of Biden's campaign as well. The unions likely aren't going to be as happy with Harris as Biden but it'd be too late for them to withdraw their support. Etc. etc.
At this point in the race, Biden staying is the best chance the dems have to beat Trump.
After Biden takes the presidency, he can step down if he wants. But not before.