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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28149 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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Ddhq estimates a 92% chance that the house will be republican, securing a Republican trifecta.

https://decisiondeskhq.com/results/2024/General/US-House/

To the extent that this election is a referendum on Biden's term broadly speaking, the strength of the reaction is almost beyond belief.

Biden simply has to go down as one of the worst Presidents in history. Who could defend his record?

You really have to grade Biden on a curve IMO. I'm sympathetic to him on COVID and Afghanistan, and while I don't agree with his handling of COVID, I can't say how I'd react when put into a similar position. Even more sympathetically, it's not clear to me how much he was really in control of the presidency. Is it really his fault that he got Weekend at Bernie'd into being president?

Even more sympathetically, it's not clear to me how much he was really in control of the presidency.

I am not sympathetic to this at all. If you are old and senile, you don't belong in a leadership position at... pretty much anything. The responsible thing to do is to retire and enjoy what remains of your health, and let younger people take charge. He knew his own mental state much sooner than anyone else did, and everyone knew approximately how much control he'd be in charge of his presidency when he was running for office in the first place. He should not have run, and by running he knowably made himself a figurehead and put his advisors in charge of the country in his stead. He shouldn't have done that, and the voters should not have voted for him knowing he would do that, but they did anyway, and that's largely his fault for enabling it.

He shouldn't have run, he did anyway, he deserves the blame for all the consequences of that.

Unfortunately, speaking from experience, people with dementia are often much, much less capable than others of recognizing that the deterioration of their selves.

It's odd to me how muted the public conversation is, though, on the corruption of Biden's inner circle in not pushing him out much earlier. I think people are approaching this wrong when they say "Biden staying in the race was bad for Kamala because it gave her less time to build a campaign". Biden staying in the race was bad for Kamala because it exposed to the public that the Emperor had no clothes, and she was the Emperor's second-in-command.

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