For your sins we are once again trapped in the purgatory of a US Presidential Election year. It only feels like four years since the last one!
To kick things off, former-President Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses by a large margin, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis a distant second and ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley coming in third. Electorally, Trump appears to be unassailable as the likely Republican nominee.
Trump's main issues at this point are not his Republican rivals but rather a series of court cases, the latest of which is a defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Trump connected to his sexual assault of her in the mid-1990's. Carroll already won one case against Trump on this issue and the judge in this new case has already ruled that Trump can't attempt to re-litigate the findings that he sexually assaulted Carroll.
The cases Trump is currently embroiled in include:
Nonetheless Trump is still polling very well with Republican voters and, to a lesser extent, with US voters nationally.
Joe Biden is locked in as the incumbent for the Democratic Party. Currently he isn't polling well with economic concerns being raised by voters. On the left and with many younger voters, Biden's support for Israel's invasion of Gaza is deeply unpopular given the mass killing of civilians https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/politics/biden-poll-israel-gaza-young-voters/index.html
In previous years I looked at how the former Evil League of Evil had responded to the Presidential elections. If you recall, the former Puppies had taken different stances of Donald Trump over the years.
- Vox Day was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump from early on. However, when Trump failed to stage a coup in 2021 and "cross the Rubicon", Day became disaffected from him. Currently, he is not boosting Trump in the way he did in previous years but his contempt for the other candidates is substantial.
- John C. Wright and Sarah Hoyt went from being sceptical about Trump earlier in 2016 to becoming full on supporters by the election and on through to 2020. Hoyt is currently being circumspect but Wright is celebrating Trump's win in Iowa: https://www.scifiwright.com/2024/01/not-tired-of-winning-yet-clxviii/
- Brad Torgersen never fully embraced Trump. During the Trump Presidency he followed an anti-anti-Trump position rather than active endorsement. Following the 2020 election he promoted the idea that their had been substantial electoral fraud and has generally been dismissive of claims that January 6 was anything other than a moderate protest against electoral irregularity. He is opposed to Trump being the 2024 nominee. Last year he posted a Tweet hoping that Trump died in the night so that Ron DeSantis could be the Republican nominee https://twitter.com/BradRTorgersen/status/1660747939453767680 leading to pushback from Trump supporters.
So what about Larry Correia? Correia had the most vocal reaction of the former Puppies to Trump becoming the Republican nominee in 2016. Like Torgersen he toned his objections down during and after the 2016 election and settled on an anti-anti-Trump position. In the wake of the 2020 election, Correia was a vociferous promoter of the idea that results indicated electoral fraud. As claims of fraud increasingly fizzled out amid ludicrous court cases and bungled audits, Correia's position has been that the results were clear dodgy enough to demand investigation but because of Democrat cover-ups and Trump incompetence the hard evidence conclusively proving fraud hasn't been found.
What is different this year is Correia has been far more vociferous in opposing Trump being selected as the Republican candidate, to the extent of punching-right far, far more than he normally does. This would be creditable if his preferred pick wasn't Ron DeSantis. Still, his analysis is interesting. As far as Correia is concerned the various court cases against Trump are a Democratic contrivance to rile up Republicans to get them to rally around Trump. The Democrats are doing this, according to Correia, because they already know how to beat Trump and because they prefer to have Trump as the Republican candidate because of how unpopular he is with moderates.
Here is a recent Tweet expressing his analysis in his imitable style:
"It's cute when these fuckers play dumb. Like notice how they keep acting like the primary and the general election are interchangeable. Anybody who isn't a dishonest piece of shit being deliberately obtuse knows the dems want us to run Trump. Dems want Trump to win the primary, then lose the general. Duh. They aren't exactly secretive about this. Trumps got epic amounts of baggage. We've got 3 election cycles demonstrating the middle will vote against anything seen as Trumpy even if the D running against them is a drooling imbecile. Dems already know how to roll Trump. In the off chance Trump wins the general, they already know how to manipulate Trump. They've done it before. Sleazy lawfare helps Dems with both elections. Charging Trump gets Rs to rally around him in the primaries. Then once Trump wins the primary, those same cases help galvanize that great mushy purple swing state middle against him. Duh. This is blatantly fucking obvious to everybody who isn't a fart huffing moron or wishful thinking dipshit."
https://twitter.com/monsterhunter45/status/1747343427854094536
What about the Democrats supposed cheating though? Correia is still claiming that election fraud is used against the Republicans but that it is sufficiently difficult and low level that it can be overcome by a strong and competent candidate:
"Guys, seriously, enough with this doomer shit. Cheating isn't a magic wand that democrats can just wave whenever they want to instawin. Note, I've written a ton about how cheating works in real life but you don't ever see me engaging in this doomer bullshit. That's because fraud is a process which takes effort to pull off and conceal. The more fraud required the easier it is to catch. When the GOP has their shit together that process gets harder and harder to pull off. So the real issue isn't that cheating is a magic easy button. It is that it takes preparation and organization to protect against cheating. Several states have already shown us the way to stop this kind of thing in the future. Yet the Stupid Party is insisting we run the famous guy who employs a clown show of inept ass kissing dipshits instead of competent professionals, and we've already seen they can't prep for shit and just fly by the seat of their pants, so we will probably just blunder our way into oblivion like the last few elections."
https://twitter.com/monsterhunter45/status/1747309411817951651
And that's my round-up for the time being. These posts will be irregular until I become more obsessed with how the predominate military power in the world picks its leader later in the year.
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