- Joined
- Mar 6, 2019
- Messages
- 2,367
- Reaction score
- 4,606
Figured it's as good a time as any to play this game again. Can't believe it's been four years. So the question is, who do you think will be elected POTUS in November 2024? Here are the current candidates running or potentially running on each side.
DEMOCRATS:
1) Joe Biden
Otherwise, just gossip...but more substantial than just simple gossip. More on that later.
REPUBLICANS:
Announced as running:
1) Donald Trump
2) Ron Desantis
3) Nikki Haley
4) Asa Hutchinson
5) Tim Scott
6) Vivek Ramaswamy (who?)
Potentially running:
1) Mike Pence
2) Liz Cheney
3) Chris Sununu
4) Glen Youngkin
5) Kristi Noem
6) Chris Christie
7) John Bolton
So...who's your horse?
I'm fucking bored so I'll give you my free, drunken analysis from a failed former political operative. Stop reading here if you have a fulfilling life and/or friends and/or things to do or something nice to eat or drink in the fridge and there's something good on TV.
On the Democratic side, the party is fucked. Nobody realistically believes that Joe Biden is getting a second term. Only 51% of registered Democrats approve of the job he's doing, and 75% of them don't want him to run for re-election. The Democrat Party and DNC's main problem is, in my opinion, that they were so obsessed with trying to sink Trump and so beholden to far-left interests that they completely lost sight of a succession strategy. Kamala Harris should never, EVER have been chosen as a running mate and she was chosen solely because she's black and female (and if all they wanted was a black lady, they should've chosen that nutjob Stacy Abrams). Her record, both professional and personal, is abysmal. She was hated by almost all of her colleagues in the Senate, and that hatred has easily shifted into public opinion because she is the least liked VP and has the lowest favorability numbers in the history of political polling. Hell, her own FATHER thinks she's a useless fucking moron and doesn't associate with her. She is unelectable.
I have friends inside DC politics and actually the Biden Administration. What they're telling me is painting a very different picture from what the nightly news is telling you. Evidently, within the Biden Admin it is basically an accepted fact that he will not serve a second term and opportunists are already making their moves. From what I've been told, both Pete Buttigieg (Transportation Secretary) and Kamala Harris have already formed unofficial teams within the admin, and their people are approaching all of the key members (cabinet, appointments, secretaries, etc.) of the Biden admin to let them know that Pete and Kamala are both going to run for POTUS and each of them had better choose a side. If this is true, and I have this on very solid authority, then that means the DNC has most likely already sanctioned this path and Joe Biden has agreed to it (or been forced to agree to it, amazing what you can accomplish when you threaten to cut off campaign funding). My guess is that if all this is true and Biden is out, they'll come up with some bullshit story to allow him to save face and bow-out gracefully...probably a "sudden health issue" (but not senility or dementia, of course) will come up that would make it impossible for him to give 110% to the re-election campaign and it's time to "give someone else a shot."
But that said, Pete Buttigieg has been a fucking DISASTER as Transportation Secretary. During the biggest crises of his short tenure, he ran off on vacation with his boyfriend/husband and refused to come back. He's also incredibly creepy and came in almost dead last in the Democratic caucuses when he tried running for POTUS in 2020 and was quickly blown out. Nobody knows him except political types, and political types think he's useless. And then there's "Giggles" Harris, the universal hate object. The Democrat Party has a problem.
But so does the Republican Party, and that problem once again is Donald Trump. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE at the RNC was hoping, wishing, pleading that he would just go the fuck away. Within just days of the Jan 6th riots I was getting texts from RNC operative buddies absolutely thrilled that "this is the end of DJT!!" And once again, The Donald proved us all wrong. Right now, word I'm getting from guys inside the RNC is that the party is beyond worried and one of the most common predictions is that the brawl between Trump and Desantis is going to get so fucking nasty and ugly and offensive that it will turn-off enough GOP voters and more than enough independents and Biden (if he runs) could just win by default again.
As for the other GOP hopefuls, right out of the gate I'm writing off Bolton (fucking nuts), Christ Christie (old news, fat blowhard), Glen Youngkin (total douchebag, shouldn't have ever won gov, has a "punchable" face like Ted Cruz), Chris Sununu (nobody knows him, name sounds like a rare sexual excrement), and as much as I think she's fucking hot and would've loved to hump her back in, say, 2001, Kristi Noem (fucking crazy, like Michelle Bachmann crazy, gov of a shithole nowhere state). As for the announced, also writing off Asa Hutchinson (boring, nobody knows him, looks/sounds like a Klan member) and Vivek whoever the fuck.
Trump is leading all polls with roughly 55% of the polls, with Desantis trailing far behind in the teens. All others have low single digits. Obviously, Desantis is seen as Trump Light and a less-chaotic alternative. Personally, I think he's a piece of shit and I've hated him since his days in Congress but he's doing exceptionally well as FL governor. But as mentioned before and as you can already see happening, he and Trump are gearing up for horrible, nasty fight that I think can only hurt the GOP's chances.
The contenders I think could've had a very good shot at beating any Democratic Candidate if not for the presence of Trump and Desantis are Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and possibly Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.
Mike Pence has everything you need, on paper, to be a presidential candidate. Former House member, successful former governor and former VP. VP to a piece of shit, but still VP. I do believe he's managed to shed most of that DJT baggage by publicly coming out against him, but he's also a bit of a throwback to a time I think has since passed. His old school religious GOP leanings may scare off today's young independents. But he's also a really, really nice guy and that comes through. On my first day of work on Capitol Hill, many years ago when he was still a House member, I randomly ended up standing next to him at a crosswalk outside the Capitol. I guess he could tell I was fucking lost so he parted ways with his fellow House members and actually walked me to the office I was trying to find. I can tell you this, normal Members of Congress do NOT help random strange idiot staffers they meet on the street. I also worked with some of his senior staff and they all said the same thing--the guy is the real deal, far too kind and classy to be in politics, boring as hell but a genuinely nice man.
I believe Liz Cheney is going to jump into this race and that's a candidate I'm interested in. She's the country's most famous Never-Trumper, she has more LGBT street cred than any Republican in history and is more socially-moderate than a lot of Democrats, she's still 100% on key conservative issues that matter to most GOP voters (taxes, small government, constitutional rights) and her dad is one of the most powerful political operators in the history of politics. There's already a SuperPAC that has raised several million dollars for her so the writing is on the wall but I suspect she has cold feet. She's traveling the country giving speeches, but most of those speeches are basically anti-Trump tirades to sympathetic audiences. If she runs for POTUS, she will have to drastically shift direction and strategy as there is no way she wins a GOP primary running on the platform of "I HATE DONALD TRUMP." Could she beat Joe Biden in a general election? Absolutely. But she'll never make it that far on her current trajectory.
In the early aftermath of the Jan 6t riots, Nikki Haley was being floated by the RNC as the logical alternative/replacement to Donald Trump. A couple of DC buddies of mine reached out to me and told me I should get on board now with a Haley candidacy if I want to get involved in the 2024 race, to which I replied that I had zero interest. She's young-ish, attractive, female and minority, with a solid conservative record and has more balls than most men. She seemed like the perfect candidate to destroy an ailing, senile Biden on the debate stage in the next round. I hear rumors that she has some skeletons regarding her marriage and personal issues, but issues that are most likely manageable for a female candidate that would sink most men in today's culture. If any of the candidates can go on stage and withstand Trump's taunting and bullying, it's probably her.
Tim Scott just announced, but I was told several months ago by friends at the RNC to expect it. I actually think he may shape-up to be an interesting candidate, IF he can sell the right message. He's the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate, has a very compelling back-story and a solid, solid political record. He's also much like Pence in that he comes off as just a really classy, really decent guy. He's already doing the smart thing by trying to sell his campaign as one that's going to turn away from ugliness and brawling, but, like with Pence, there's always the danger of that translating to being weak. And when you look at Joe Biden, "WEAK" is probably one of the first things that comes to mind. Voters--Republican or otherwise--aren't going to want any more of it.
My prediction is...I have no fucking clue. Ask me again in November. But I can see two very distinct situations happening.
One, Trump and Desantis spend the entire summer in a stupid fucking Twitter/social media/FoxNews war, trading outrageous insults and allegations. This war ramps up in Fall toward the end of the year and by the time the Iowa Caucus rolls around, enough of the GOP faithful are so tired of the drama that they're just tuning out. I can also very easily see a situation where Trump's current legal problem with the NY State indictment finally pushes enough of his followers to abandon shop and switch to Desantis, but by that time, the image damage and GOP voter exhaustion has set in. Independents are already going to turn on him and his extreme anti-gay political agenda and whoever the Democratic candidate is wins in November, easily.
Two, the perfect situation in my opinion, would be for Trump and Desantis to make things so nasty and ugly that they both kill their own campaigns off very early on, while at the same time, this affords the other candidates an opportunity to come out from obscurity and offer an alternative. Personally, I'd like to see a ticket with Liz Cheney as the VP running mate to a former governor--I think a Haley/Cheney ticket would be very, very interesting. Obviously, it satisfies the decades-long desire to see the first female POTUS. And with two females, Haley has the solid conservative PLUS IMMIGRANT/MINORITY creds, Cheney has the social moderate creds and that combo not only satisfies the RNC establishment but gives a very compelling alternative to independents (and Democrats afraid of a second Biden term) and then also gives the ticket access to Dick Cheney's vast network of power-brokers and money.
There is one last Dark Horse rumor that I believe is just wishful thinking and has zero basis in reality, but it's being repeated enough by desperate Democrats that it bears repeating. If/When Joe Biden announces that he will not run for re-election, MICHELLE OBAMA will announce that she's running for President. In that situation, and especially if Trump or Desantis is the GOP nominee, she wins by a 30-point margin. But I don't think she's anywhere near stupid enough to do that. The Obamas accomplished something that very few major political families do--they made it to the White House, did two terms, left and are still generally liked. Sure, Barry accomplished basically nothing as POTUS, unless you count enraging the working-class to the extent that a window opened for Donald Trump to be elected, but he also didn't didn't have any major fuck-ups that the media could pin on him (which they wouldn't have, regardless). Today, the Obamas are still considered cool, fashionable, artistic, intelligent, funny, and they use that image to pull in millions of dollars a year. Why fuck all that up? Makes no sense.
And that, folks, is the free Keihan political analysis, sponsored in part by Kirkland (vodka, box wine and seltzer), Red Bull and some really good snacks from 7-11.
DEMOCRATS:
1) Joe Biden
Otherwise, just gossip...but more substantial than just simple gossip. More on that later.
REPUBLICANS:
Announced as running:
1) Donald Trump
2) Ron Desantis
3) Nikki Haley
4) Asa Hutchinson
5) Tim Scott
6) Vivek Ramaswamy (who?)
Potentially running:
1) Mike Pence
2) Liz Cheney
3) Chris Sununu
4) Glen Youngkin
5) Kristi Noem
6) Chris Christie
7) John Bolton
So...who's your horse?
I'm fucking bored so I'll give you my free, drunken analysis from a failed former political operative. Stop reading here if you have a fulfilling life and/or friends and/or things to do or something nice to eat or drink in the fridge and there's something good on TV.
On the Democratic side, the party is fucked. Nobody realistically believes that Joe Biden is getting a second term. Only 51% of registered Democrats approve of the job he's doing, and 75% of them don't want him to run for re-election. The Democrat Party and DNC's main problem is, in my opinion, that they were so obsessed with trying to sink Trump and so beholden to far-left interests that they completely lost sight of a succession strategy. Kamala Harris should never, EVER have been chosen as a running mate and she was chosen solely because she's black and female (and if all they wanted was a black lady, they should've chosen that nutjob Stacy Abrams). Her record, both professional and personal, is abysmal. She was hated by almost all of her colleagues in the Senate, and that hatred has easily shifted into public opinion because she is the least liked VP and has the lowest favorability numbers in the history of political polling. Hell, her own FATHER thinks she's a useless fucking moron and doesn't associate with her. She is unelectable.
I have friends inside DC politics and actually the Biden Administration. What they're telling me is painting a very different picture from what the nightly news is telling you. Evidently, within the Biden Admin it is basically an accepted fact that he will not serve a second term and opportunists are already making their moves. From what I've been told, both Pete Buttigieg (Transportation Secretary) and Kamala Harris have already formed unofficial teams within the admin, and their people are approaching all of the key members (cabinet, appointments, secretaries, etc.) of the Biden admin to let them know that Pete and Kamala are both going to run for POTUS and each of them had better choose a side. If this is true, and I have this on very solid authority, then that means the DNC has most likely already sanctioned this path and Joe Biden has agreed to it (or been forced to agree to it, amazing what you can accomplish when you threaten to cut off campaign funding). My guess is that if all this is true and Biden is out, they'll come up with some bullshit story to allow him to save face and bow-out gracefully...probably a "sudden health issue" (but not senility or dementia, of course) will come up that would make it impossible for him to give 110% to the re-election campaign and it's time to "give someone else a shot."
But that said, Pete Buttigieg has been a fucking DISASTER as Transportation Secretary. During the biggest crises of his short tenure, he ran off on vacation with his boyfriend/husband and refused to come back. He's also incredibly creepy and came in almost dead last in the Democratic caucuses when he tried running for POTUS in 2020 and was quickly blown out. Nobody knows him except political types, and political types think he's useless. And then there's "Giggles" Harris, the universal hate object. The Democrat Party has a problem.
But so does the Republican Party, and that problem once again is Donald Trump. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE at the RNC was hoping, wishing, pleading that he would just go the fuck away. Within just days of the Jan 6th riots I was getting texts from RNC operative buddies absolutely thrilled that "this is the end of DJT!!" And once again, The Donald proved us all wrong. Right now, word I'm getting from guys inside the RNC is that the party is beyond worried and one of the most common predictions is that the brawl between Trump and Desantis is going to get so fucking nasty and ugly and offensive that it will turn-off enough GOP voters and more than enough independents and Biden (if he runs) could just win by default again.
As for the other GOP hopefuls, right out of the gate I'm writing off Bolton (fucking nuts), Christ Christie (old news, fat blowhard), Glen Youngkin (total douchebag, shouldn't have ever won gov, has a "punchable" face like Ted Cruz), Chris Sununu (nobody knows him, name sounds like a rare sexual excrement), and as much as I think she's fucking hot and would've loved to hump her back in, say, 2001, Kristi Noem (fucking crazy, like Michelle Bachmann crazy, gov of a shithole nowhere state). As for the announced, also writing off Asa Hutchinson (boring, nobody knows him, looks/sounds like a Klan member) and Vivek whoever the fuck.
Trump is leading all polls with roughly 55% of the polls, with Desantis trailing far behind in the teens. All others have low single digits. Obviously, Desantis is seen as Trump Light and a less-chaotic alternative. Personally, I think he's a piece of shit and I've hated him since his days in Congress but he's doing exceptionally well as FL governor. But as mentioned before and as you can already see happening, he and Trump are gearing up for horrible, nasty fight that I think can only hurt the GOP's chances.
The contenders I think could've had a very good shot at beating any Democratic Candidate if not for the presence of Trump and Desantis are Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and possibly Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.
Mike Pence has everything you need, on paper, to be a presidential candidate. Former House member, successful former governor and former VP. VP to a piece of shit, but still VP. I do believe he's managed to shed most of that DJT baggage by publicly coming out against him, but he's also a bit of a throwback to a time I think has since passed. His old school religious GOP leanings may scare off today's young independents. But he's also a really, really nice guy and that comes through. On my first day of work on Capitol Hill, many years ago when he was still a House member, I randomly ended up standing next to him at a crosswalk outside the Capitol. I guess he could tell I was fucking lost so he parted ways with his fellow House members and actually walked me to the office I was trying to find. I can tell you this, normal Members of Congress do NOT help random strange idiot staffers they meet on the street. I also worked with some of his senior staff and they all said the same thing--the guy is the real deal, far too kind and classy to be in politics, boring as hell but a genuinely nice man.
I believe Liz Cheney is going to jump into this race and that's a candidate I'm interested in. She's the country's most famous Never-Trumper, she has more LGBT street cred than any Republican in history and is more socially-moderate than a lot of Democrats, she's still 100% on key conservative issues that matter to most GOP voters (taxes, small government, constitutional rights) and her dad is one of the most powerful political operators in the history of politics. There's already a SuperPAC that has raised several million dollars for her so the writing is on the wall but I suspect she has cold feet. She's traveling the country giving speeches, but most of those speeches are basically anti-Trump tirades to sympathetic audiences. If she runs for POTUS, she will have to drastically shift direction and strategy as there is no way she wins a GOP primary running on the platform of "I HATE DONALD TRUMP." Could she beat Joe Biden in a general election? Absolutely. But she'll never make it that far on her current trajectory.
In the early aftermath of the Jan 6t riots, Nikki Haley was being floated by the RNC as the logical alternative/replacement to Donald Trump. A couple of DC buddies of mine reached out to me and told me I should get on board now with a Haley candidacy if I want to get involved in the 2024 race, to which I replied that I had zero interest. She's young-ish, attractive, female and minority, with a solid conservative record and has more balls than most men. She seemed like the perfect candidate to destroy an ailing, senile Biden on the debate stage in the next round. I hear rumors that she has some skeletons regarding her marriage and personal issues, but issues that are most likely manageable for a female candidate that would sink most men in today's culture. If any of the candidates can go on stage and withstand Trump's taunting and bullying, it's probably her.
Tim Scott just announced, but I was told several months ago by friends at the RNC to expect it. I actually think he may shape-up to be an interesting candidate, IF he can sell the right message. He's the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate, has a very compelling back-story and a solid, solid political record. He's also much like Pence in that he comes off as just a really classy, really decent guy. He's already doing the smart thing by trying to sell his campaign as one that's going to turn away from ugliness and brawling, but, like with Pence, there's always the danger of that translating to being weak. And when you look at Joe Biden, "WEAK" is probably one of the first things that comes to mind. Voters--Republican or otherwise--aren't going to want any more of it.
My prediction is...I have no fucking clue. Ask me again in November. But I can see two very distinct situations happening.
One, Trump and Desantis spend the entire summer in a stupid fucking Twitter/social media/FoxNews war, trading outrageous insults and allegations. This war ramps up in Fall toward the end of the year and by the time the Iowa Caucus rolls around, enough of the GOP faithful are so tired of the drama that they're just tuning out. I can also very easily see a situation where Trump's current legal problem with the NY State indictment finally pushes enough of his followers to abandon shop and switch to Desantis, but by that time, the image damage and GOP voter exhaustion has set in. Independents are already going to turn on him and his extreme anti-gay political agenda and whoever the Democratic candidate is wins in November, easily.
Two, the perfect situation in my opinion, would be for Trump and Desantis to make things so nasty and ugly that they both kill their own campaigns off very early on, while at the same time, this affords the other candidates an opportunity to come out from obscurity and offer an alternative. Personally, I'd like to see a ticket with Liz Cheney as the VP running mate to a former governor--I think a Haley/Cheney ticket would be very, very interesting. Obviously, it satisfies the decades-long desire to see the first female POTUS. And with two females, Haley has the solid conservative PLUS IMMIGRANT/MINORITY creds, Cheney has the social moderate creds and that combo not only satisfies the RNC establishment but gives a very compelling alternative to independents (and Democrats afraid of a second Biden term) and then also gives the ticket access to Dick Cheney's vast network of power-brokers and money.
There is one last Dark Horse rumor that I believe is just wishful thinking and has zero basis in reality, but it's being repeated enough by desperate Democrats that it bears repeating. If/When Joe Biden announces that he will not run for re-election, MICHELLE OBAMA will announce that she's running for President. In that situation, and especially if Trump or Desantis is the GOP nominee, she wins by a 30-point margin. But I don't think she's anywhere near stupid enough to do that. The Obamas accomplished something that very few major political families do--they made it to the White House, did two terms, left and are still generally liked. Sure, Barry accomplished basically nothing as POTUS, unless you count enraging the working-class to the extent that a window opened for Donald Trump to be elected, but he also didn't didn't have any major fuck-ups that the media could pin on him (which they wouldn't have, regardless). Today, the Obamas are still considered cool, fashionable, artistic, intelligent, funny, and they use that image to pull in millions of dollars a year. Why fuck all that up? Makes no sense.
And that, folks, is the free Keihan political analysis, sponsored in part by Kirkland (vodka, box wine and seltzer), Red Bull and some really good snacks from 7-11.
Last edited:
