US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"

trump knows which side of the abortion issue his bread is buttered on, but I don't think he'll 'have to go on record' with his vote on the florida measure. after delivering on three(!) SCOTUS nominations and the subsequent repeal of Roe v Wade, he can fudge his statements all he wants to and the anti-abortion voters won't mind. they'll mostly hope that his fudging improves his chance of winning a second term.

“He’s a freak that Florida Ron, a real freak that eats puddin’ with his fingers…”

lost Shock G line

"Do you miss $1.39 gas and angry tweets? Vote Trump 2024." When was the last time gas (particularly here) was even that cheap? 1995 or something?

Gas got that low in the early pandemic months of 2020. In Minneapolis the lowest I remember seeing was $1.16, Chicago can't be too far off that. Not that I would give anyone with a Trump anything the credence of critical thought regarding those numbers and why they were low, but still.

RFK is going to crater eventually.

Gary Johnson had a similar trajectory in 2016 being posed as a suitable alternative to two awful candidates, and he even came within two percentage points in the polls of being invited to the debates, hitting a high of 13% in July of that year, hovering between 8-10% after that. Then "uh, what is Aleppo?" happened and he wound up at 3.3% of the national vote.

Which wasn't nothing, in fact, was the most a third party candidate had drawn since Perot. But illustrates that they often poll way higher than they will eventually die to unforced errors, lack of funds, protest poll responses, etc.

Still, Gary was disruptive to the end result in 2016 in several battleground states so I don't wanna downplay it. I'm also not convinced by the narrative that he helps Biden by staying in.

Perhaps if he freefalls enough he might just bow out, but he'd probably have to dip to levels like 1%. And idk that he'll go that low.

What I think is the wildcard is who he loses in support. If the section of his voters that typically lean Democrat are the majority of eventual defectors, and most of them go back to Biden as opposed to another third party or staying home, his dip could be a boon.

But the type that vote RFK aren't going to be "vote Blue no matter who" types so those are a lot of loaded ifs. Think it to be more likely that he loses support proportionately across the aisle.

All's I know is there will probably be a funny smear campaign coming his way

lol the chi tribune endorsed Johnson over Clinton and Trump even *after* the Aleppo gaffe.

lol I totally forgot Gary Johnson ever existed until right now

Gas got that low in the early pandemic months of 2020

Even more remarkably, oil futures contracts slipped into negative territory for a couple of weeks around the same time. essentially you could be paid good money if you were willing to take delivery of crude oil because the world had run out of places to store it!

Booed by his party for being fine with drivers licenses

Gas got that low in the early pandemic months of 2020. In Minneapolis the lowest I remember seeing was $1.16, Chicago can't be too far off that. Not that I would give anyone with a Trump anything the credence of critical thought regarding those numbers and why they were low, but still.

lowest it's been in chicago the past 10 years is $1.61 in winter 2015/2016. it broke $2 (just) in march 2020. https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts.

Not that I would give anyone with a Trump anything the credence of critical thought regarding those numbers and why they were low, but still.

Hence this month's thread title.

https://cdn.forumcomm.com/dims4/default/dde94a2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6016x4011+0+3/resize/840x560!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F71%2Ff2%2Fe4874b6748398339eb76e9adef54%2F51131469478-f9ab64d5d2-o.jpg

XP "Cheap gas and a mean tweet" has been a meme dating back to whenever the first fuel price spike during the Biden administration was.

I've seen way more of those sticker in the Chicago area than I would have expected.

I thought I saw them first pop up when the prices went down actually.

I saw those all over South Florida.

Gas hovered around $1.80 and $2.20 from March 2020 to about December-January 2021.

the migrants who were flown to martha's vineyard as a racist PR stunt for DeSantis are allowed to sue the company that flew them there. the claims against desantis and the horrible people who work from him were dismissed, although there's a possibility that they can be brought back into the lawsuit later*

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1242131130/migrants-lawsuit-flown-marthas-vineyard-texas-florida-governor-ron-desantis

MIAMI — A federal judge in Boston has ruled that migrants flown from Texas to Martha's Vineyard in 2022 can proceed with a lawsuit against the Florida company that took them there.

The judge also dismissed claims against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials named in the suit.

Three migrants from Venezuela, along with an immigrant rights group, filed the lawsuit. They say that Florida's governor, others in his administration and an air transport company conspired to mislead them and deprive them of their civil rights when they recruited and flew them to Martha's Vineyard in 2022.

In their lawsuit, the migrants, identified as Yanet, Pablo and Jesus say they were told they were going to Massachusetts, but didn't know their final destination was Martha's Vineyard until shortly before landing.

The plaintiffs say a videographer hired by the DeSantis administration recorded them arriving and boarding vans. But apart from the videographer and van drivers, the plaintiffs say no one else in Martha's Vineyard had any advance notice of their arrival.

In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs says the case can proceed against the air transport company, Vertol. Judge Burroughs dismissed claims against Gov. DeSantis and other members of his administration out of jurisdictional concerns, but did so "without prejudice." That means the legal team representing the migrants can seek to bring DeSantis and others back into the case as it goes forward.

*yeah right

I guess it's just been so long since I saw prices that consistently low that if I did indeed see them just a couple years ago, I immediately forgot about them, because they were covid era outliers.

No doubt if Trump is elected again we will get some other fresh disaster and they will be similarly forced to artificially support the economy.

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=142287

i mean, what are the chances that failing to reform the electoral college or even talk about the issue out loud would come back to burn the democrats again?

Electoral college reform is going to end up with the Red States being Winner Take All and the Blue States proportional by district.

that NE proposal hasn't even left committee yet and the legislature only has a few more days

would be nice to have some electoral college reform tho

This seems very, very bad.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/wisconsin-ballot-measures-republican-backed-voting-results-rcna145913

it is

Seems bad man

The fuck? https://t.co/pZsUBB24YN pic.twitter.com/HxRiOWj9LL

— ettingermentum🥥🌴 (@ettingermentum) April 2, 2024

Apparently Fetterman went on the radio responding to the murder of aid workers with some whining about Hamas hiding behind civilians. Hope he has another stroke.

Fetterman can rot

https://i.imgur.com/zHX7LJ0.jpeg

democracy dies in darkness

https://149674310.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Buddy+Christ-11.jpg

Good news:

Nebraska legislators on Wednesday night blocked a late effort to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes, despite public pressure from former President Donald Trump to shift to a winner-take-all system that would likely benefit him in the fall.

The measure fell short, 8-36, in a procedural vote. While it’s possible supporters could take another stab at advancing the proposal, there remain serious hurdles as the legislative session draws to a close, and it’s unclear whether the proposal has enough support to get across the finish line and become law.

8-36 is not close. Good.

It won’t come up for a vote again. I know that’s what was promised, but there are no vehicles on which it could attach. Winner Takes All isn’t moving in 2024.

— Senator Julie Slama (@SenatorSlama) April 4, 2024

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/pink-slime-local-news-outlets-erupt-all-over-us-during-election-year/

PINK SLIME!

The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operators gear up ahead of November’s presidential election.

Pink slime sites mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.

NewsGuard, which rates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, has identified 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the US as of April 1—about as many as the estimated 1,200 real news sites operated by daily local newspapers.

I get my news from traditional blue slime sources only.

wake up early, clear out the encroaching gray goo from the window sill, delete new emails from pink slime mailing lists i didn't sign up for, then i play with gak all day, and i don't even wash my hands

… such sites have filled a vacuum left as traditional local news has been decimated by brands moving their advertising dollars into digital spending at Silicon Valley groups such as Meta and Google

I would propose this is the key bit of the dynamic even tho it’s not the focus of the article

Also the phrase “partisan outlet” is doing a lot of work here

Seems like a real professional operation... RFK Jr's campaign has walked back a fundraising email that referred to January 6 insurrectionists as "activists":

In the appeal sent to supporters, signed by "Team Kennedy," the campaign called for the exoneration of "political prisoner Julian Assange," the founder of WikiLeaks, suggesting he and Jan. 6 defendants are victims of prosecutorial abuse.

"This is the reality that every American Citizen faces — from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties. Please help our campaign call out the illiberal actions of our very own government," the fundraising email read.

...

After publication of this piece, Kennedy spokesperson Stephanie Spear told NBC News that the language was an "error."

“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process,” she said.

“All that stuff was a typo”

The two most pertinent questions about RFK Jr's crappy vanity project are how many ballots will he be on in November? and how many of those will be in critical swing states? The process of qualifying for the general election ballot is usually much simpler in the more liberal states than in conservative ones, but every one of the 50 states and multiple territories has a different process for qualifying and his campaign seems far too slapdash to get on more than a dozen or so ballots.

I sure hope so, and I hope none of those are in swing states

In my (admittedly limited) experience so far, it seems like the only people excited about RFKJ are antivaxx moms and general Qfools who don't like Trump embracing the creation of the COVID vaxx and stuff like that.

He might be able to piggyback onto some ballots via a formal Libertarian Party nomination (or a similar fringe party), but I haven't heard that they or the No Labels scammers have expressed interest in him. If it weren't for his name you'd need an electron microscope to see his campaign.

i also don't get why the fuck RFK is even doing this. He has no chance of winning. Does he simply want Biden to lose?

money i guess

the other day, there was a dude in front of my local post office getting signatures to put RFK jr on the ballot, had to resist the urge to give him shit

he’d probably accept your shit as safer than vaccines

lol

No Labels, no candidate, no surprise

https://apnews.com/article/no-labels-2024-third-party-biden-trump-c7477857e1dd05535326b8850f4500a1

money i guess

good morning!

US Politics, May 2024: They Shoot Puppies, Don't They?