Presidential predictions for 2024?

I'd like to see Biden step down but I'm not sure if that helps or hurts. I tend to think that it would help. No one who was going to vote for Biden is going to now vote for Trump. They could vote for Kennedy I suppose and that would help Trump win.

Biden could hold on, if he thinks he will win, and just resign sometime after the election and let Harris finish out the term, or do nothing and just be a figure head.

Or the convention could replace him (if he bows out) with Gretchen Whitmer at the convention. It's going to be close, it looks like, regardless of what happens.

That was the worst debate I've ever seen with Trump looking like the Jon Lovitz "liar" character from SNL and Biden standing there with a blank stare, mouth hanging open as if he was having a stroke.
 
Despite Trump's claims that it was such a dominant display by him in the debate, subsequent polling has suggested Biden benefitted the most, albeit likely within the margin of error for such a poll. I.e. it hasn't really shifted the dial dramatically, and might indicate that independents are seeing Trump for the liar he is. Not so much a case of Biden winning votes rather than Trump losing votes.
 
It was a pretty bad debate, all right. But that's just a single poor performance. What hurt Biden more was all the negative commentary afterward - the talking heads all speculating on his decline and replacement.
Replacing the trusted candidate at this point is very risky. I don't see that the Democrats have a credible alternate, who would be acceptable to the crossover conservative voters: they won't accept anyone but a white patriarch. They should have been grooming an understudy from the very start of the campaign.
Both parties seem really inept at candidate selection.
I have three fears for the near future: that Pierre Poilievre (ugh!) might become prime minister of Canada, that Trump somehow seizes the White House and sets up his big gold throne in there, or Putin ends all our fears with a few nuclear missiles.
It's not a very sane world we're living in, is it?
 
From outside - current US politics is like watching a train crash, although actually watching that debate was about as enticing as a stroll barefoot on broken glass. If you weren't already committed to one or the other would you watch?

As a general observation a "weak" leader who appoints capable people looks preferable to a strong one that appoints only loyal people. I also wonder if "government is the problem" beliefs run so deep in the US that Presidential incompetence and failures of governance are something to be welcomed, like it would make things better somehow.
 
Nearly impossible, as contended below? No, actually not. Because he is receptive to input, and has never had this degree of outcry in the past from the Party for him to step down. But as long as his family tells him to stay in (which they currently are), he probably will not for the time being.
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Here's why it would be tough for Democrats to replace Joe Biden on the presidential ticket
https://apnews.com/article/biden-re...ot-dnc-rules-7aa836b0ae642a68eec86cc0bebd3772

"There is no evidence Biden is willing to end his campaign. And it would be nearly impossible for Democrats to replace him unless he chooses to step aside."
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Biden declares: "We finally beat Medicare" during the 1st debate

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the ...uh... with with the co ... excuse me, with ...um... dealing with everything we have to do with ...uh... look if ... We finally beat Medicare.


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(June 30, 2024) New poll shows impact of Biden's debate performance

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Biden advisers are telling CNN that his family is encouraging him to stay in the race.

[...] Of course, all of these conversations follow what has transpired since Thursday night's debate. As there have been calls for the president to withdraw from the race. Including an editorial boards, as well as all corners of the Democratic Party. Now, the president himself has also been collecting data anecdotally and through public polling, as he too, tries to assess what what folks are feeling across the party.

And that has been a deep concern. Panic has certainly set in. Donors have been wracked with anxiety over the president's poor performance on Thursday night...

[...] So, Harry, do we have new poll numbers for President Biden post-debate?

We do. [...] We can compare it to the pre-debate numbers.

And the bottom line is, it's not any good. It's not any good.

Look at this. Voters who say that Biden has the mental health to be president:

It was just 35% pre-debate. Look where it's dropped to now. Post-debate, 27%. How about that?

Voters who think he should be running for president:

It was 37% pre-debate. It's now 28%.

I have never seen numbers this bad for an incumbent president during my lifetime.

[...] But a lot of people thought Biden was too old back in 2020. These numbers look nothing like this back in 2020. These numbers are bad already.

And the truth is, Alison, they have gotten just considerably worse even in just a few days after that first presidential debate.

 
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Seattle said:
Biden could hold on, if he thinks he will win, and just resign sometime after the election and let Harris finish out the term, or do nothing and just be a figure head.
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He's a figure head anyway, it seems to me. Even from the start of this presidency, I'd bet a thousand pounds (but no more) that many of the decisions he's made, he was just following along with what some political team he works with told him to. Which, I might add, isn't necessarily a bad thing, or an indication of corruption, but it doesn't look like he's politically self-led at all.

So it's not between him and trump, it's between whoever has been managing him thus far, and trump.

But honestly, if I had to choose between trump and just about anybody else, I wouldn't choose trump.
 
It seems, most likely, that a vote for Biden would be a vote for Harris.
Do you want to see Harris as the president of the United States?
 
Remember folks this is slippery sculptor, so it’s worth repeating a very rare outright statement of his:
sculptor said:
For the record:
I do not like Trump.
I have never liked Trump, and, most likely, never will like Trump.
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Will you be voting in November Sculptor?
 
sculptor said:
[...] Do you want to see Harris as the president of the United States?
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Think about it. If Blue is still going to vote for Biden even after he finally achieves "official" cabbage and loach status, then how likely is it (should he step down) that the one replacing him would slot below that new standard or bar? The minimal qualifications for a replacement candidate are not much beyond that they just have some degree of experience, and are alive and not comatose.
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Harris would be a competent President who would not use the powers of the office for self-aggrandising and narcissistic purposes, unlike Trump.

Unfortunately, the United States still has a significant streak of misogyny that runs through it, so the mere fact that Harris is a woman will ensure that some proportion of the population would never vote for her (and that includes, sadly, a portion of the women voters).
 
sculptor said:
Why do you think that?
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Because all reality-based indications so far are that she would be. While she was DA she had an 87% conviction rate for homicides and a 90% conviction rate for all felony gun crimes. She saved millions by steering the worst criminals to life in prison rather than the much more expensive death penalty. She ended the "gay panic defense" one of the tools that violent criminals used regularly to justify their violence.

While senator, she worked on over a dozen bipartisan bills including bail reform bills, election security bills and workplace harassment bills. We definitely need more bipartisan efforts in Congress.

She has served as vice president for three years now, and has served as president for a day while Biden was in the hospital for a routine procedure,
 
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