A third-party candidate who could shake the tree

[reader]

Joe Manchin, the outspoken West Virginia democrat, let it be known last night at a political forum in New Hampshire that he's considering a third-party presidential run. Unlike his party leader (Biden), the right-of-center democrat is popular with voters from both parties. And he has the charisma and stage presence to stare down Trump in debate.

Granted, third-party candidates in any race rarely win the top prize although they can make it mighty unsettling for the others. Manchin, however, eschews the role of spoiler and says if he enters the race he'll win it. And maybe he just could given how the current leaders--Trump and Biden--are unloved by large segments of their respective parties.

[forky123]

More a 3rd party candidate who would hand 2024 election to Trump. Manchin would take far more votes from Dems and Independents than from the Trump core.

[reader]

The last third party candidate to garner a significant portion (almost 19%) of the popular vote was Ross Perot in 1992. Although Clinton prevailed in that race, post election analysis found that Perot took equally from Democratic and Republican voters. In June of '92, Perot was actually leading the pack.

Perot campaigned for greater funding for AIDS research and in a failed '96 bid came out in favor of gay rights.

[forky123]

Not sure how relevant that is to the situation now. Trump has a far higher number of core voters who would vote for him even if he raped and murdered a 9 year old on 5th Avenue in broad daylight. Biden is a bad candidate and any centre democrat is going to garner more votes from the centre left and right than Biden is which is the area Biden needs to pick up votes or lose.

[reader]

Agree that the players are very different now. Biden’s popularity is unlikely to improve and his running mate is less popular than he is. The best thing Biden has going for him is that he’s not Trump while Trump’s best thing is that he is. 

The role that fate will play is now the biggest unknown.
 

[Mavica]

I don't place any importance on sketchy public opinion polls this far in advance of a general election campaign.  Biden hasn't even begun to campaign, nor campaign against whomever the GOP nominates.  His popularity will increase as the general election progresses.  If the GOP nominee is Trump or D, Santis ... Biden wins.  If the GOP nominates a generational younger candidate ... Biden will still be strong, but his age will become a front-burner issue as will the Harris Factor.

[stevenkesslar]

5 hours ago, reader said:

The best thing Biden has going for him is that he’s not Trump while Trump’s best thing is that he is. 

True.  But you could also say Trump's worst thing is that he is Trump.

Republican strategist Whit Ayres nailed this No Labels drama in a roughly three minute segment- from 1:04:00 to 1:07:00 - in the interview Bill Kristol just did with him below.  He pointed out 2 in 3 Americans don't really want a Biden/Trump rematch.  He called No Labels a "fruitless endeavor with a positive motivation to offer an alternative to Trump/Biden."  His logic is flawless, I think.  In 1992 Perot got 19 % of the vote but 0 % of the electoral college vote.  So even if he gets that much, which is unlikely, Manchin can't win.  If Trump is the nominee, it will be a referendum on Trump.  So all Manchin or West or any third party candidate can do is split the anti-Trump vote and put Trump in the White House again. Ayres is right.

Ayres didn't say it quite the way I will.  The No Labels people want less division.  But what they will get is a Divider In Chief focused on four year of retribution.

Whit Ayres: Is Trump Inevitable? Do Any of the Other Republicans Have a Chance?

That whole interview is great if you have an hour.  I'll add one thing neither Kristol nor Ayres say.  It's the recession, stupid.  That's the "biggest unknown" to me. 

Right now inflation is 3 % and unemployment is 3.6 %.  If it stays that way or gets better, and the election is a referendum on Trump, Trump loses.  Maybe Biden wins even if Manchin gets in, like Perot did in 1996 when Clinton's economy was on a roll.  But if the economy is shaky like it was in 1992, a third party candidate could help the incumbent lose.  Like Perot did.  Trump's best hope is to make 2024 a referendum on the recession.  If there is one.  In that case, Manchin could easily peel off enough anti-Trump votes in Arizona and Georgia and Wisconsin for Trump to win.

[Mavica]

IF the main issue in the General Election is a recession then advantage Biden, if he repeatedly and effectively points-out the damaging financial decisions of then Pres. Trump and the mistakes and high interest rate policies of the GOP dominated decision makers at the Federal Reserve Board.  The GOP is always better at messaging than Democrats, though. 

[forky123]

1 hour ago, Mavica said:

The GOP is always better at messaging than Democrats, though. 

If by messaging you mean obvious lies and by better you mean an audience too stupid to understand they are being lied to. 

[unicorn]

If it's Trump vs Biden, one on one, Biden will probably win. Only hard-core Republicans will vote for Trump. Independents are the ones who determine election winners. If a moderate Democrat enters the race, Trump will probably win. Actually, almost any Democrat can swing the election to Trump. Due to the electoral college, one doesn't even need a plurality of votes to win. Even though he only garnered a tiny fraction of votes, Ralph Nader gave the election to Bush, Jr., with catastrophic results. Bush, Jr. won the election even though he didn't even have a plurality of the votes. Bush won by a handful of votes in Florida, which was all he needed. Now if Trump loses the Republican nomination but runs as a 3rd party candidate, the whomever the Republicans nominate will have zero chance of winning. 3rd party candidates can't win themselves, but they can steal enough votes to determine the election results. 

[caeron]

6 hours ago, forky123 said:

If by messaging you mean obvious lies and by better you mean an audience too stupid to understand they are being lied to. 

It is a disadvantage if you want to stay somewhere in the neighborhood of truth.

If Manchin is only going to get in to win, then I don't think he'll get in. He'd have a very tough uphill climb and would burn a lot of bridges to try.  

Threating to do it might get him something. Actually doing it, not so much.

[stevenkesslar]

On 7/19/2023 at 7:41 AM, Mavica said:

IF the main issue in the General Election is a recession then advantage Biden, if he repeatedly and effectively points-out the damaging financial decisions of then Pres. Trump and the mistakes and high interest rate policies of the GOP dominated decision makers at the Federal Reserve Board.  The GOP is always better at messaging than Democrats, though. 

Rasmussen is the only polling company with daily tracking.  In June 2022, when inflation peaked, Biden's worst daily approval rating was 38 approve/60 disapproval In the July 2023 daily polls, his single best day was 46 approve/52 disapprove.  A lot better.  If you go backward from June 2022, Biden's approval rating kept getting worse as inflation climbed.  So that's not proof.  But it strongly suggests that, like with Ford and Carter, a higher "misery index" would hurt Biden in 2024.  Conversely, if inflation stabilizes at 3 % or even goes down to the 2 % target rate or lower, it suggests Biden's approval rating will improve.  Same thing happened to Reagan after the 1982 bloodbath:  his approval rating gradually climbed from horrific to landslide territory as the economy improved.

This also strongly suggests that voters will blame a recession on Biden, fair or not.  Using the chart below, the three candidates since 1984 who ran representing the party in power while the economy was working against them all lost:  Bush 41 in 1992, McCain in 2008, Trump in 2020.  Recent history strongly suggests that "it's the economy, stupid," is true. 

The thing I like about polling, in general, is that while it is far from perfect it is usually better than just making a wild ass guess.  Same with Alan Lichtman, who on this particular point is extremely interesting.  He's correctly predicted the winner of every Presidential race since 1984 in advance.  So while that's not the same as 2 + 2 = 4 every time, it's a pretty solid record that merits attention. 

That's basically Lichtman's scorecard for every Presidential race he has correctly predicted, and why.  Part of what makes common sense about this, and is flattering if you actually believe in democracy, is it's based on the idea that voters predictably decide based on important things.  Like the economy, recessions, war and peace, impeachment.  Try as they might, cynical pollsters and messaging gurus just aren't able to convince people that a pig with lipstick is not really a pig.

One of the things Lichtman argues that is going to be controversial in 2024 is that an incumbent party is always better off running the incumbent President, and avoiding a party fight.  I buy that.  Others don't.  I might feel differently if everyone agreed that Gavin Newsom was our guy, or Kamala Harris was our girl.  But they don't.  Even if we had a Democratic primary and every big name in the polls ran, the polls suggest Biden would win.  Probably for the same reason Trump will be nominated:  there is no alternative Republican everyone can agree to rally around yet.

So this is where Lichtman's theory gets very interesting.  Maybe there could still be some big foreign policy game changer.  But probably not.  The Republicans are sure working the scandal thing hard, without much success.  So Biden's re-election basically comes down to a recession and a third party.

Unless you completely dismiss Lichtman's track record and theories, his analysis of 1992 and Bush 41 is probably the closest to now.  Bush had one thing Biden doesn't:  a clear foreign policy win.  Biden has one thing Bush didn't:  several clear domestic policy wins to run on. ("Finish the job.")  So Lichtman's theory is that in every election since the Civil War it consistently takes six of these keys to nail your political coffin shut.  Neither Biden nor Bush could change the fact that they lacked charisma, and they lost seats in the midterm (the party mandate key).  The main variables that are still  up for grabs that killed Bush 41 and could kill Biden is running in a recession with someone like Manchin catching fire as a third party candidate. That could be fatal for Biden.

The other interesting historical question is whether this is really in anyone's control.  Part of what appeals to me about this theory, other than it's perfect ability to predict results so far, is that Lichtman's partner in crime back in the early 1980's was a global expert on predicting earthquakes.  So the idea is that when you have vibrant third party wildfires like Anderson in 1980 or Perot in 1992 and 1996 who get lots of votes, it's a political tremor that indicates a political earthquake may be coming.  It's only one variable.  Which is why it helped take out Bush in 1992 but not Clinton in 1996, who was running during an economic boom.  But nature abhors a vacuum.  It could be that the Democratic messaging and managers can't stop this.  They can probably stop Manchin.  Maybe he's just using it to get something else he wants.  But if not Manchin, it could be lots of other people.  And not necessarily through No Labels.  In the worst case scenario, like we have the hard landing that everyone fears, it's easy for me to imagine that some populist billionaire like Perot (Elon Musk?) decides they'll save America and jump in the race.

Lichtman's keys and all the polls are basically saying the same thing right now:  it's going to be close, if the election were held today.  

You can dismiss all this as some ivory tower academic theory, of course.  Even though it's worked pretty well in predicting elections in advance.  What's harder to dismiss is that when you just count votes third party Nader is almost certainly why Gore lost in Florida.  And third party Stein at the very least contributed to Clinton's loss in 2020.  There's no doubt of that.  I'm glad Democrats are freaking out and ringing alarms.  A strong third party run will divide the anti-Trump vote.  And help Trump and his devoted base win.

[forky123]

If anyone is looking at the state of US politics thinking the economy is the biggest factor in 2024 rather than the attack on democracy being perpetrated by the GOP and Trump then they deserve everything that would happen if Trump, or the GOP in any way, got in. 

[stevenkesslar]

6 hours ago, forky123 said:

If anyone is looking at the state of US politics thinking the economy is the biggest factor in 2024 rather than the attack on democracy being perpetrated by the GOP and Trump then they deserve everything that would happen if Trump, or the GOP in any way, got in. 

That certainly seemed to be the case in 2022.  Biden got endless grief for his idea that "it's the democracy, stupid."  But it sure seems like lots of people felt it was the democracy, stupid.  Most non-Trumpy conservative Republicans did well.  Almost every Trump election denying MAGA Republican blew themselves up. 

I'd single out Brian Kemp in Georgia as a telling example.  He's a conservative Republican who made his re-election about the shitty Democrat economy, stupid.  Even as he distanced himself from Trump's lies.  He did better against Stacey Abrams than he had four years prior.  Even as Trump's ass kissing election denying Senate candidate lost.  That sent a pretty clear message about what works and what doesn't in what is now a swing state.

Republican strategist Whit Ayres in that interview I posted above seems pretty confident that if Trump is nominated, it makes 2024 a referendum on Trump.  Meaning the GOP loses, he says.  Hope he's right.

Clintonista Democratic strategist Doug Sostik said a similar thing to Bill Kristol recently in an interesting way.  He said the 2022 election was a referendum on "crazy." And that helped Democrats.  If Trump makes 2024 about the shitty Biden economy, he's says, Democrats will have a difficult time - as of now, at least.  If Biden makes the 2024 election about "crazy," Biden wins.  Asked which he thinks is more likely, Sostik says the latter.  Biden will make it about "crazy."  Hope he's right.

I think the answer is hiding in plain sight.  I'm not a huge fan of Rasmussen polls.  But I can't help noticing that before inflation really took off in Fall 2021, even Rasmussen shows voters clearly approved of Biden more than Trump. Then from about Fall 2021 to Fall 2022, when inflation was at its worst, voters clearly approved of Trump more than Biden.  Since then it's more or less been a toss up.  Even if you believe Rasmussen polls are skewed, which I do, the trend seems real.  It will be a battle between it's the economy, stupid,  and it's the crazy people, stupid. 

The sweet spot for Biden is being able to argue he's not crazy, and the economy is good.  We'll see.  The problem right now is clear majorities of voters feel Trump personifies crazy, but the Biden economy sucks.

[forky123]

Fascinating. If people can't recognise a sexual predatory, racist, sexist, anti LGBT, anti democracy, unpatriotic, sociopath then I'm pretty sure they are too stupid to understand anything related to the economy not fed to them by the extreme right wing media and only then if they don't need to breath at the same time under risk of self suffocation due to over-extending the use of their brain cell. These are the same people who thought $1.5 trillion of tax breaks for billionaires was a great idea.

[JKane]

People's brain on FOX:

 

 

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

17 hours ago, forky123 said:

Fascinating. If people can't recognise a sexual predatory, racist, sexist, anti LGBT, anti democracy, unpatriotic, sociopath then I'm pretty sure they are too stupid to understand anything related to the economy not fed to them by the extreme right wing media and only then if they don't need to breath at the same time under risk of self suffocation due to over-extending the use of their brain cell. These are the same people who thought $1.5 trillion of tax breaks for billionaires was a great idea.

I'm not gonna disagree with a word you said. 

But I ain't gonna disagree with Jim Carville when he says "It's the economy, stupid,"  either.  The fact that the economy was still recovering from a 1991 recession in 1992 is widely credited with helping Clinton's win.  And dare I mention many, including many Democrats, see Bill as a predator?  None of the other adjectives apply.  Although I know some purist Gays who view Clinton's actions in the 90's as essentially anti-LGBTQ. 

I'm obviously hoping 2024 is more like 1984.  By election day, the economy and stock market were widely perceived as in rapid recovery.  Even if we have a mild recession  (Europe is technically in the most mild of recessions right now) I'm also hoping that given the choice between 10 % inflation and a mild recession that is deflationary, Americans might not be so sour about a brief and shallow recession.  If it makes the pain in their pocketbook stop.  By my count the last time a POTUS was re-elected during a recession was 1948.  It perhaps mattered that by that point the even more painful post-WWII inflation had been tamed.  Biden is compared to Truman a lot.  This could be one more similarity.

Since it's been suggested I rely too much on polls and should get around more, I'll add some anecdotal things about how this plays out in my family.  It actually fits very well with the national picture  about the college educated versus the "poorly educated," to quote Trump.

My Dad was a mainstream Republican.  Before he died he told one of my brothers he regretted voting for Trump.  Who he basically viewed as less bad than Hillary.  Of his six kids, three consistently lean left and three lean right.  Of the three on the left, the only really interesting thing is how emphatic my brother who I'd call a Bloomberg moderate Democrat was about how Trump needed to be shot by somebody in 2020.  I'm usually the outspoken liberal.  And even I would never say something like that.  But I think it accurately reflected just how much moderate educated professionals despised Trump by the time COVID broke out.

The three right of center voters were interesting.  One, who I'd call a McCain Republican, voted for Trump in 2016 based on his conservative economic views.  By 2020 he was also outspoken about what a "megalomaniac" Trump was.  He made a point of letting me know he voted for Biden in 2020.  I asked him if he had only voted on the economy, who would he have supported?  He immediately answered Trump.  I asked why.  He immediately said, "My retirement account."  I asked why he voted for Biden, then.  He said, "Because Trump's a megalomaniac."  He's also a college educated White professional.  So he fits right into the broad national political pattern.  He's a poster child for your argument.  He despises Trump.

A second brother who is essentially the same voted for Trump in 2016.  I'm guessing he voted for Trump again in 2020, but I haven't asked.  If he did, it would have been a reluctant vote.  Since he doesn't like Trump's anti-democracy antics, either.  And he lives in a solid red state, anyway.  The interesting conversation I had with him during Trump's Presidency is I asked him what he thought about the idea that Trump voters are racist.  He pointed out something I of course knew.  Which is that he has a Black son-in-law and a grandchild most people would call Black.  Like me, he likes Tim Scott.  So he does not consider himself racist.  He's also college educated.

My one sister, who is not college educated, also followed the national pattern.  She does not recall voting in 2016.  But she definitely recalls voting for Trump in 2020.  My two right of center brothers can clearly articulate conservative economic policy as why they voted for Trump in either 2016 or 2020, despite their misgivings about his personality.  When I asked my sister why she voted for Trump, she basically went into a long anti-Black Lives Matter rant. She obviously saw those ads Trump ran with fires and scary images of Black protestors.  Non-college educated White women were a real source of strength for Trump in 2020.  I pushed back a little about why I like BLM, but she was politely not buying.

Here's how I view where my sister fits in to America 2023.  My first real political experience was the six months I spent as a volunteer helping to get Chicago's first Black Mayor elected back in the 80's.  That was basically a race war.  I was assaulted once handing out flyers by some White guy.  The even more sinister thing is some nice looking White woman came up to me and whispered in my ear, "You are a traitor to your race."  That shit actually happened back then.  At the 2020 RNC Tim Scott eloquently spoke about how he could get elected because of a "change in the Southern heart."  He was almost 100 % right.  But he could have mentioned the "Northern heart" as well.  Happily, after redistricting, my sister's US Rep is Lauren Underwood, one of my favorite Democrats.  Having grown up in the Chicago suburbs, there is no way in hell a soft-spoken Black nurse like Underwood could have been elected in predominantly White Chicago suburbs when I was a kid.  Or for most of my adult life.  My sister won't even know who she is, if she votes in 2024.  If she does read up about Underwood, she probably wouldn't vote for her, anyway.  But Underwood will probably win her third term, easily.  So mostly I view this as progress.  Even if it is two steps forward, one step back.

The one I have the hardest time with is one of my sister's daughter, who I really enjoy traveling with.  And I learned pretty quickly that there's no upside to talking politics at all.  She's college educated, very successful, a true Republican (no RINO's, please), loves her Gay uncle, and is not a racist.  If I ask her what she thinks about Tim Scott, she responds with, "What do you think of Candace Owens?"  I'm blunt.  So I say I think she's a divisive Black conservative flamethrower.  Whereas Scott actually wants to unify people, be POTUS, and could win.  That's pretty much where the discussion ends.  

So it's not just older voters who didn't go to college.  To me, Owens is a perfect example of someone who gives my niece permission to believe what she reads in far right wing media.  Democrats want to let murderers run free, basically.  I don't want to ask, because I don't want to hear the answer.  But I'm pretty sure she'd argue that things like CRT are basically about indoctrinating as many White kids as possible, and psychologically damaging any child with the audacity to disagree.  It's a very long way from The Audacity Of Hope, sadly.  She'll vote for Trump.  But she lives in Kentucky.  Until a year ago, she did live in Ohio.  In late 2022 she told me her Republican Governor was a RINO, so she was glad his term had ended.  Call me an asshole.  But I pointed out that Mike DeWine was actually re-elected, by a roughly 2 to 1 margin.  Like John Kasich, I said, he barely won the first time around.  But he worked hard enough at compromising that he managed to pick up lots of Democrats to win re-election in a landslide.  This is not information she knew, or particularly wanted to hear.  Better to stick to the margaritas. 

There's one other thing about willful ignorance I'll underline, because it goes to your point about "over-extending the use of their brain cell."  Point taken.  But we're talking about the wrong organ, I believe.  To me, it's an example of the point I've beaten to death in other threads about how The Gays won by using our hearts, not heads.  And fostering empathy over common values - like love and commitment.  My niece complains bitterly and sincerely that she can't openly discuss her views among Gay and liberal friends.  A few of whom I've met.  But if you're going to call Mike DeWine a RINO, not have a clue why he wins, ignore Tim Scott, and mostly focus on whatever Candace Owens and all the other flame throwers say to divide, you really can't be too surprised or bitter about that.  It's willful ignorance, disguised as knowledge.

I'll end where I started.  I'm not going to disagree with a word you said.  My point, using my family as a compass, is that Trump would of course win in a landslide if it were just older White women and men without college degrees.  And I understand how they resent being seen as racists or homophobes.  Most of them are a lost cause.  And from talking to some in my own family I know why.  I'm glad within my family we can actually talk about these things, mostly respectfully.

I'm hoping the economy is good enough, and Democrats' messaging about the economy is good enough, to offset my brothers' impulses to vote for Trump simply because they vote Republican.  And he's a Republican. Although it doesn't matter, really.  Since none of us live in a swing state. 

To wind it back into the topic of the thread, putting Manchin on the ticket would give my two right of center brothers an easy reason to NOT vote for Biden.  One will vote for Biden for sure, unless he has the option to vote for someone like Manchin.  The other was so turned off by Jan. 6th that he probably won't vote for Trump again.  But Manchin on the ballot gives him a good reason to not even think about Biden.  So they're both good examples of how Manchin could split the anti-Trump vote.  With my sister probably the best outcome for Biden and Democrats is if she just doesn't vote at all.

[forky123]

Sorry Steve, your posts deserve far longer answers but I don't have the time or the will to respond in full.

Some points:

- If someone doesn't think they are  racist, sexist or homophobic, they should stop electing people who are to make laws that are racist, sexist or homophobic.

- Republicans have sadly worked out that if they sound the drum against every minority their lunatic fringe will rally 42% or so of the country to their cause.

- 4 years of Trump, MTG, Gaetz, Boebert in charge is going to be 4 years of revenge and terrible law-making. Simply look at the quality of law making in congress at the moment if you can get past MTG holding up naked private pictures of Hunter Biden. 

- US participation in NATO is at risk. The western world is on a knife edge at the moment and Trump is as subtle as a nuke. There is every chance the US would ignore article 5 with Trump at the helm at the golf course.

Probably of no interest to anyone, I am slightly right of centre. That being said, the right both in the US and my own home are so far right currently that the left is far less harmful and destructive in its outlook to me currently. 

 

[Pete1111]

On 7/19/2023 at 10:46 AM, forky123 said:

If by messaging you mean obvious lies and by better you mean an audience too stupid to understand they are being lied to. 

That's it, in a nutshell,

although how the lamestream media keeps framing the race with messaging about Biden's unpopularity is not helping.

Rather, they could explore data showing how Biden is not optimal yet he remains preferable to TFG, due to Trump's potential dementia, his indictments, grifting by his company, sexual abuser, etc.

But the lamestream media remains hands-off in too many ways.

Similarly, they could frame the Manchin 3rd party candidacy with the inevitable Trump win and by pointing to what Ayres predicts in @stevenkesslar post, 4 years of retribution, not to mention more Trump crimes and more pardons.

But the media does not focus on those issues.  Not enough anyway.

 

 

[Mavica]

The Hill published an article last week focusing on VP Harris and perceptions she's not up to the task, and her unpopularity rating.  The article presents a perspective i haven't seen written very often.

Quote

 

Kamala Harris is far from the worst vice president: Why do polls say otherwise?

... This ignoble distinction raises important questions as the election season heats up: Is Harris really doing such a terrible job, so out of touch with the American people that she deserves this historic disapproval? Or as the first female vice president of color, is she on the receiving end of well-documented and deeply ingrained bias? ...

 

Link:  Kamala Harris is far from the worst vice president: Why do polls say otherwise? | The Hill

 

[stevenkesslar]

On 7/23/2023 at 2:47 AM, forky123 said:

- If someone doesn't think they are  racist, sexist or homophobic, they should stop electing people who are to make laws that are racist, sexist or homophobic.

Conversely, if the Republican Party doesn't want to be seen as racist, sexist, or homophobic, they should elect leaders who makes laws that are NOT sexist, racist, or homophobic.

This is off topic from Third Party and Manchin.  But since we're talking about the election, generally, that's one of the interesting things about the GOP these days.  We're seeing both the worst of the MAGA Trump Party, and the best of a multi-racial post-Trump Republican Party all at once.

Now that former RNC Chair Michael Steele has gone full on MSNBC, he talks about things like the Tim Scot/Nikki Haley project.  Steele himself was elevated by the Republicans as a reaction to Obama.  And facilitating South Carolina electing an Indian American female conservative Governor, and a Black male conservative House member and then Senator, was part of Steele's vision of a new GOP in Obama's America.  I give Kevin McCarthy credit for continuing that.  He says he's the guy who made it a priority to recruit conservatives who were not all White men to run for the House in 2020 and 2022.  It worked. 

As a Democrat, I think it helps depolarize race and makes both parties pay more attention to what non-Whites want.  Of course, it has now come to my attention that it's "racist" for Democrats to study or care about what Blacks want, since we don't have that racism stuff anymore.

It was only a few years ago that Tim Scott would show up on Trevor Noah and say, convincingly, one thing he won't do is hold back on calling out racism when he sees it. And he did, in a very funny way, when Trump had his 2020 Proud Boys moment.   Now that he is running for POTUS, he calls out Obama because Democrats use race as a political weapon to control Blacks.  Huh?  Nikki is not campaigning on how she took down the Confederate flag to unify and heal.  Why am I not surprised ?  Trump always manages to throw any debate and anyone involved in it into the gutter.  My hope has been that Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are two of the leaders who help build the post-Trump Republican Party in 2028.  So I suspend disbelief and think even good people just say dumb shit like that during campaigns.

Chicago and South Carolina have historically been two of the most racist places in America.  So one litmus test I have is that if America can elect a Black Democrat from Illinois and a Black Republican from South Carolina POTUS based on the content of their character, we're making good progress.  The Democrats nominated Obama, despite the fact that he was a nobody running against the Clinton machine.  Tim Scott and Nikki Haley are way back in the dust behind the two White guys moaning about critical race theory.  It's early days, of course.  But the GOP has not persuaded me that America is done with that whole racism thing.

There is good news.  As I promised, another White guy has arrived to save America.  Woo hoo!

Quote

The West Virginia Democrat has so far refused to rule out a third-party bid, stoking fear among Democrats who worry it would harm President Biden’s chances at a second term. However, Manchin claimed on Monday that he wasn’t at the New Hampshire event to run for president.  “I’m here trying basically to save the nation,” he said.

Shucks.

Thanks, Joe.  You're swell.