I agree Harris was a disaster. The thing that kills me is Dems have now run three presidential campaigns in a row where the final, closing message to voters was "Vote for us because we're not Donald Trump and will adhere to basic societal norms." There are young Americans who will cast votes in the 2028 election who were two years old in 2012 and literally do not remember the last time a Democratic presidential candidate made an electoral pitch on the merits of their own ideas and policies instead of a specific repudiation to Donald Trump.
Whoever the candidate is in 2028 needs to have something to stand on that is not the status quo. I know major blocks within the Democratic Party will consider this heretical, but I genuinely don't care if it's someone from the moderate bloc or the progressive bloc. Just give the country someone with actual ideas they're passionate about and willing to fight for. I don't care if it's AOC or Buttigieg or Pritzker or Warnock or Ossoff, just for the love of god we cannot nominate another empty, status quo "norms and values" candidate (which Newsom seems to be positioning himself to run as).
Harris is an unserious person. She has zero interest or ability to dissect issues, consider various options and make informed decisions. Rather, she panders to the leftist echo chamber that she inhabits. She very obviously has no real interest in the issues. She only seeks power.
In a populist age, I am not sure how useful "conservative vs liberal" labels are any more. Trump isn't a conservative (he wants to tear stuff down, not conserve it), he doesn't hold to conservative positions in any sense (not a social conservative, which probably helps him with middle of the road types; not an economic conservative in that he doesn't like either trade or markets much; etc.). I'm not sure what the more useful labels are, but there are plenty of areas of substantive agreement (limiting credit card interest rates, protectionism, strong executive power (at least while people I agree with are in charge), etc.) between the "left" and "right" these days. So while Sanders is further "left" and Trump is further "right", there seem to me to be a lot of substantive overlap even if the means/constituencies who would benefit are somewhat different depending on which one is in charge.
The rump Reagan conservatives are a shrinking part of the R coalition; the Shapiro/Beshar wing of the Ds is pretty small as well in terms of influence over the national party. So long as both parties cater to their populist wings, the non-populists get the crumbs and mostly win in states that are marginal to their party's core constituency or where their party wants to win so badly that it is willing to tolerate heretics. It would be interesting to see what data you have/what your view is of whether we are in a permanent realignment of the Rs and Ds something like what is going on in the UK, where Labour and the Tories are sinking and populist "left" (Greens) and "right" (Reform) are rising (see the upcoming by-election and the local elections in May, where both of those look to do quite well). Our system doesn't allow for new parties quite as easily as the UK's does, and both of our parties are in at least slightly better shape than either Labour or the Tories are there, but it seems like there are considerable parallels. But given the barriers to entry for any new party here, it looks like we may be headed to a world of two populist parties and a lot of disaffected non-populist voters without a home.
I like your point about Trump not being a conservative because he wants to tear things down. He certainly does --- talk about throwing open the Overton Window! "Move fast and break things" is not exactly conservative, good point. He has a lot of views on such things as higher education and immigration and foreign policy that he shares with conservatives, but a lot of what we're used to has to be broken up to make any change.
Kamala Harris cannot win any national election and probably can't even win a Democrat Primary. Have people forgotten she dropped out of the Primaries in 2019 before a single vote was even cast?
I liked Nate's summing up: "I think Harris had a very difficult task: overcoming both the unpopular positions she’d taken in 2019/2020 and the unpopularity of her boss. All while trying to become the first woman president. Rather than cycling through various half-hearted attempts to rebrand her, Democrats should probably have chosen another candidate instead."
All true, and I would add that what I most noticed was her incompetence thruout the period of her vice-presidency. She was given a problem (immigration) she couldn't solve, just as Pence was (Covid) but Harris didn't even pretend; never showed up on the border at all, as many people pointed out repeatedly. And she couldn't keep staff: they hated her. She was nasty to them apparently and she never read their briefings and then accused them when she was plainly not prepared on a topic. Really, the election against Trump was her best performance on the political stage ever! I was amazed she did that well. Low-quality IQ, I thought.
This seems to me to point up the real crime of choosing someone as VP for reasons of victim identity, or really for "regional balance" in the old style, also. They allllllllll think they'll live forever and never need a VP --------- and then they get a surprise.
Good article. The chart is complicated but makes a lot of sense. Fetterman is arguably better representing his constituants than many Senators. However, I have to chuckle at the ending assertion that Democrats should have chosen a better candidate than Kamala. They didn't get a choice! Kamala was the pick by default, which I blame primarily on Jill Biden and the Biden inner circle, with an assist from any other prominent party figure that didn't stand up to her and make him honor his 2020 pledge. I am pretty sure why this was allowed - it was because Dem leadership agreed with me that Kamala would NOT have been chosen by primary voters - and she is who the establishment always wanted (even back in 2020, one of the reason Dems HATE Tulsi more than Trump was her epic takedown of Kamala). As to why the establishment wanted her? I suspect that they thought she was easily controllable, why that would be the thinking that I'll let you all figure out (I suspect excellent blackmail material).
How about this? We are in a post-ideology world now, where competence is all that most voters care about. That’s the real reason both parties are losing voters to independence. Nate, like most pundits, continues to gin up ideological polls, because they’re easier to quantify and explain, but they explain nothing real. Kamala lost because she was visibly and thoroughly incompetent. Whatever you think of Trump, he was not. Vance and Rubio are not incompetent. AOC and Newsom rival Harris for stupidity, and their records will vividly show it in a campaign. It has nothing to do with how they stand on any ideological issue.
I would add Mamdani the candidate, but probably not the mayor, to the competent column. Fetterman and Shapiro too. As I said, not an ideological situation, and the fact that so many pundits puzzled over the combination of Trump and Mamdani winning at the same time just shows how deeply stuck in the mud—and how deeply uncreative—those pundit thoughts are.
Perhaps this is more a function of my age than anything else, but something that jumped out at me was how well voters' perceptions of George W Bush's views matched their own ideologies. It seems like the rise of Trump has benefited his reputation, particulary among voters on the left, without hurting him with conservatives.
I know GWB has risen considerably in my own personal estimation. At the time GWB was president, I gave him no credit for good intentions. I just assumed any & every president would be a person who cared about helping all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. I assumed any & every president would be doing their best to implement policies that would help America as a whole, and not just themselves personally.
In retrospect, this was a foolish delusion of mine. Not giving GWB credit for his good intentions now seems unforgivably naive. In the face of a presidency run on selfishness, greed, and vindictive pettiness, with reckless disregard for any consequences that will be borne by others, I have been shown that not only is the bottom significantly lower than I thought, but there might not be a bottom at all.
In Obama's memoir from his presidency one of the things he gives Bush a lot of credit for is taking action during the 2008 financial crisis. Bush did something that was very unpopular, but seen as economically necessary (bank bailouts). A lot of presidents at the end of their term would have punted something like that to the next guy.
In an environment like we have now where winning elections is more important than actually governing there might have been a different outcome to a crisis like that.
“The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq— I mean, of Ukraine.”
[awkward silence]
“…Iraq too, anyway.”
-GWB 2022
People can draw whatever conclusions they want from that Freudian slip, but deep down he knows his weapons-of-mass-destruction narrative is not that different from Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine. That’s why I remain cautious about rehabilitating GWB’s legacy—even if he did one or two things right, which is the bare minimum in my view.
Well, you know, all of the dead from the Iraq war beg to differ with you on GWB's good intentions. The best you can say was he allowed himself to be snookered by Rumsfeld. GWB should have been imprisoned for war crimes.
Rumsfeld just took over ---- WITH Cheney. They took over Bush's presidency to his detriment, and then they lost the war by staying too long. And losing, losing, losing. This sort of thing happens too often, we see, what with the Biden aides taking over his presidency when he became unable to do much. We need to watch for this sort of takeover and "trow the bums out."
This always happens to Republicans after the fact. 20 years from now some other Republican will be the new Hitler, and Democrats will be wondering out loud why he couldn't be more like Trump.
Shocks me that Harris is even being considered as a candidate for 2028.
I saw the Daily Show spoof/attack on Newsom, so he is beginning to sustain attacks from the left now, not just the right. As a Californian I find him personally not effective or appealing, but Dems in California seem to like him. I'm skeptical about his national appeal.
AOC is probably the most authentic one out of the leaders. She is too much of a leftie for me, but she is way more likeable than Kamala or Newsom. I also wonder if there would be much of a difference between an AOC or Newsom and Harris. The Dem party, as you put, is just an indigo blog of progressiveness. As you've mentioned there are splits with abundance types and others, but really to me I think they all represent more or less the same thing.
I wonder if anyone believes Harris had a real shot in a real primary. She failed in 2019. She was invisible during the Biden Administration. When Biden quit, she was unable to get un-tied to Biden and all those memes. I remember a dude told me he couldn't vote for her because he couldn't stand the way her laughed. Ridiculous of course but he was not alone out there brainwashed by negative memes against Harris.
Regardless what stance she took that last three months, she would lose anyways. She was not political savvy enough to salvage that crappy situation she got herself in.
No, of course Kamala could not have survived a primary!!! That's why they didn't have one. Or one of the several reasons. Contested primaries often yield losers, after all. That's why they shut the whole thing down in South Carolina in 2020 and gave it to Biden as fast as they could.
I think the most interesting sentence is "... that more successful communicators can convince voters that they're on their side."
I've always thought the right/left or conservative/liberal paradigm is an oversimplified way to view politics, and for me personally, where I perceive someone falls on that paradigm is not the most important thing I look for in a candidate.
For me, the most important candidate qualities are squishy concepts like intelligence, leadership, and character. That said, I have no illusions that I actually have enough information to judge politicians accurately on these characteristics, so I end up gravitating towards those that are good communicators. It makes me trust them and gives me the impression they have those characteristics. Of course it's not just communication (Bill Clinton was a great communicator and I've always found him repulsive), but it goes a long way.
Yeah, Harris and the Democrats closing argument “vote for us, we’re not Trump”, was a losing argument in November 2024. How does it sound now, given all the absolutely crazy stuff Trump is doing? The generic ballot strongly favors the Democrats this congressional election cycle precisely because of their previous and current anti-Trump position. Like GW Bush said a few years ago in a speech in Los Angeles, “So, you like me fucking now?” Being against batshit crazy is not a long term winning political strategy, but it will work this November, provided that people actually get to vote.
What a load of crap. You think Michelle Obama, who the current racist president portrayed as an ape in a recent post, is corrupt because she takes a board position at a hospital, but it’s perfectly okay for Trump’s sons, who are integrated into his business partnership, to start up a bitcoin business, make millions of $’s, and then have the president offer guidance on how that business should be regulated, or not regulated.
You’re either delusional or hopelessly ignorant, possibly both.
Trump reposted a Lion King meme thingy someone else AI-ed ---- you haven't seen it, I am guessing. All this is pretty normal political behavior: they called Lincoln an ape all over the "yellow press" back in the day. And Bush was constantly, constantly shown as a chimpanzee by Dems on every forum for YEARS. I would guess you think all that's just fine.
Of course it's okay for Trump's sons to have a business and make millions! Good luck to them. And for their father to offer guidance? You aren't really into freedom of speech, I see.
As for what color is the sky in my world, here it's Morning in America and the sky is a lovely red.
What is your list, say, five items you think are absolutely crazy stuff Trump is doing? I admit his style is -- let's say, colorful -- and a lot of stuff he says he'll do, he doesn't. He's just giving himself room in the Overton Window, I suppose. Because when I think about DONE, I like pretty much all of it. Trying to stop fraud against the government monies, stopping illegal immigration, stopping gross bamboozlement of us by most of the world with their hands out for our money, etc., etc. What that he has actually DONE don't you like?
1. He’s thoroughly corrupt and enriched himself to the tune of 4 billion $.
2. Massive tax cuts for the rich, screw everyday Americans.
3. Weakened NATO and our alliances, made Canada an adversary.
4. He lied about the valid 2020 election, then tried to overturn it with a mob. Now he’s having his DOJ target people who tried to hold him accountable.
5. Made ICE and CBP his personal army, targeted vulnerable immigrants, not dangerous criminals.
6. Bowed to authoritarian Russia and Putin, abandoned democratic Ukraine.
7. Dismantled USAID and PEPFAR, made the USA a rogue nation internationally, when we used to be “the shining city on the hill”.
8. Tried to dismantle the professional civil service, a reform we’ve had since the 1880’s, and return to the spoils system.
9. Supported and appointed white and christian nationalists to positions of power within the government.
10. Dismantled protections for clean water, air, and the environment. Killed anything in opposition to fossil fuel use, including wind farms that are already in use.
That’s the short list. You like everything he’s done, good luck with that, pal!
Too loosey-goosey. All of the points, really. You make assumptions that I would not say are true. I did look it up, using your language as the prompt, not on Google of course, which is vieux jieux, but on Perplexity using ChatGPT 5.2, and it said this, when I prompted for personal returns:
"For Donald Trump personally, there is no credible, auditable public accounting (as of Feb. 10, 2026) that pins down how much he has “made” from bitcoin holdings or from his $TRUMP meme coin since he took office in January 2026.
"Why there’s no exact number
Trump’s public financial disclosure reporting has been criticized as not clearly covering the needed time window and as omitting most proceeds from some family crypto ventures, which makes a “since Jan. 2026” calculation impossible from disclosures alone.
"For the meme coin specifically, outside analysts can estimate on-chain trading fees and token flows, but converting that into “Trump personally made” requires knowing which wallets/entities are his, what his exact ownership is, and whether value was realized via sales—information that isn’t fully public.
"What is quantifiable (but not “since Jan. 2026”)
Reuters previously reported/estimated large crypto-related income in Trump’s disclosure materials (largely covering earlier periods), including income tied to token sales, but that does not answer the narrow “since he took office in Jan. 2026” question.
"A Reuters analysis estimated the project behind the Trump meme coin generated roughly $86–$100 million in trading fees soon after launch (reported in 2025), but that figure is not the same thing as Trump’s personal profit after Jan. 2026.
"If you tell me one more detail, I can compute a bounded estimate
Do you mean “made” as realized cash (sold coins/received fees actually paid out) or do you also want unrealized changes in the market value of assets he is reported to control?"
*************************************
I know, very boring, TLTR (too long to read), but at any rate it showed what I assumed, that it's not illegal for his sons to make money in this fascinating AI and bitcoin environment, and they are. I like to see competence in a president --- the Obamas were relatively impoverished and the Chicago hospital paid them a lot for Michelle to sit on their board. Now THAT was corruption, I have always thought.
I'm curious as to why the assumption is being made that having the lowest gap in score between how self identified Right Wing and Left Wing voters look at the candidate means that the candidate is the most electable?
Putting the problems with political self identification aside, I am not sure having the lowest gap means a candidate is the most electable, because that assumption itself relies on the assumption that a) there's an equal number of voters in each group that would vote with the same enthusiasm and b) that they would vote for the lowest gap candidate...I don't believe it is that cut and dry.
Seems to me we need to step away from common politics due to red blue division. Both parties are driving people away. Reality is no one can satisfy the list of issues for either party. So with that in mind I would support identification of the top six issues in the USA without regard to party. I would then support a business person with no serious political ties to address the top six plus any emergencies that might show up. Both issues and person(s) need to be identified. You are in position to achieve that goal with your vast polling experience.
I like. What is your list of six top issues? Mine would be (in no order) immigration, AI (electricity, land use, cybercrime, employment), inflation/affordability, crime, foreign policy, corruption and fraud with taxpayer money (Somalis, UN, etc.).
my top six currently are mis / dis information (lack of truth to form basis of effort), standard of living spread including public and private debt, public education, cyber criminals (including bitcoin), human rights / civil freedom under attack, overpopulation as a world issue (too much competition for existing resources). These are not necessarily issues considered by any reds or blues. The issues should come from each to gain party support. When the first six are truly fixed without band aid theory, the next six should be determined and so forth. There will always be problems to solve due to the human condition. History teaches this leason.
Nice list. I particularly like the mis/disinformation issue now that AI is making it worse than ever. My husband when I asked his opinion on issues immediately cited the out-of-control federal debt, and private debt is at an all-time high, too. I forgot that one. Public education is a mess beyond messes, IMO. I have been worried about overpopulation since, well, The Population Bomb, in fact. There would BE no issues around "global warming" or species extinction, even fast-spreading pandemics, if the gross overpopulation of this planet were contained --- my personal desire is for one billion humans in toto, which sounds draconian, but is simply no more than one child for every woman for only three generations. After that it would have to go back to two per woman. So I really like your list.
It would be great if Buttigieg would run for something more than "mayor of podunk" before making a bid for the White House. Whitmer is term limited out. Why isn't Buttigieg running for Governor of Michigan? He does live here, after all. Where would Newsom be on that chart? It's kind of interesting/shocking that on the graph higher up he's nearly identical to Obama. Actually, where Obama was on that chart when he first ran, vs. where he's ranked now, would be really interesting.
It's kind of astounding how much the Biden people (who became Harris' people) didn't see that they'd set things up for disaster. They seem to have had the negative-Midas touch. Here's hoping "incentives" as a way to deal with climate change is permanently damaged as a concept, so we can get on to a carbon tax (obviously, not right now) which all places serious about dealing with climate change do. Seems unlikely Harris will be the next choice. All hail perfect-hair Newsom!
While it is true that there is not much of a place for non-Trump conservative politicians, I disagree that such views don't have a following. There are conservative non-Trump commentators such as David French and Jonah Goldberg, and at least one major news site, "The Dispatch" that fill that niche without "libbing out".
I agree Harris was a disaster. The thing that kills me is Dems have now run three presidential campaigns in a row where the final, closing message to voters was "Vote for us because we're not Donald Trump and will adhere to basic societal norms." There are young Americans who will cast votes in the 2028 election who were two years old in 2012 and literally do not remember the last time a Democratic presidential candidate made an electoral pitch on the merits of their own ideas and policies instead of a specific repudiation to Donald Trump.
Whoever the candidate is in 2028 needs to have something to stand on that is not the status quo. I know major blocks within the Democratic Party will consider this heretical, but I genuinely don't care if it's someone from the moderate bloc or the progressive bloc. Just give the country someone with actual ideas they're passionate about and willing to fight for. I don't care if it's AOC or Buttigieg or Pritzker or Warnock or Ossoff, just for the love of god we cannot nominate another empty, status quo "norms and values" candidate (which Newsom seems to be positioning himself to run as).
Harris is an unserious person. She has zero interest or ability to dissect issues, consider various options and make informed decisions. Rather, she panders to the leftist echo chamber that she inhabits. She very obviously has no real interest in the issues. She only seeks power.
As opposed to Trump and Vance, who are very “serious.” I regret to inform you we are unserious people living unserious lives.
Didn't Kamala get her start in politics by having an affair with a powerful politician in California?
In a populist age, I am not sure how useful "conservative vs liberal" labels are any more. Trump isn't a conservative (he wants to tear stuff down, not conserve it), he doesn't hold to conservative positions in any sense (not a social conservative, which probably helps him with middle of the road types; not an economic conservative in that he doesn't like either trade or markets much; etc.). I'm not sure what the more useful labels are, but there are plenty of areas of substantive agreement (limiting credit card interest rates, protectionism, strong executive power (at least while people I agree with are in charge), etc.) between the "left" and "right" these days. So while Sanders is further "left" and Trump is further "right", there seem to me to be a lot of substantive overlap even if the means/constituencies who would benefit are somewhat different depending on which one is in charge.
The rump Reagan conservatives are a shrinking part of the R coalition; the Shapiro/Beshar wing of the Ds is pretty small as well in terms of influence over the national party. So long as both parties cater to their populist wings, the non-populists get the crumbs and mostly win in states that are marginal to their party's core constituency or where their party wants to win so badly that it is willing to tolerate heretics. It would be interesting to see what data you have/what your view is of whether we are in a permanent realignment of the Rs and Ds something like what is going on in the UK, where Labour and the Tories are sinking and populist "left" (Greens) and "right" (Reform) are rising (see the upcoming by-election and the local elections in May, where both of those look to do quite well). Our system doesn't allow for new parties quite as easily as the UK's does, and both of our parties are in at least slightly better shape than either Labour or the Tories are there, but it seems like there are considerable parallels. But given the barriers to entry for any new party here, it looks like we may be headed to a world of two populist parties and a lot of disaffected non-populist voters without a home.
I like your point about Trump not being a conservative because he wants to tear things down. He certainly does --- talk about throwing open the Overton Window! "Move fast and break things" is not exactly conservative, good point. He has a lot of views on such things as higher education and immigration and foreign policy that he shares with conservatives, but a lot of what we're used to has to be broken up to make any change.
Kamala Harris cannot win any national election and probably can't even win a Democrat Primary. Have people forgotten she dropped out of the Primaries in 2019 before a single vote was even cast?
I liked Nate's summing up: "I think Harris had a very difficult task: overcoming both the unpopular positions she’d taken in 2019/2020 and the unpopularity of her boss. All while trying to become the first woman president. Rather than cycling through various half-hearted attempts to rebrand her, Democrats should probably have chosen another candidate instead."
All true, and I would add that what I most noticed was her incompetence thruout the period of her vice-presidency. She was given a problem (immigration) she couldn't solve, just as Pence was (Covid) but Harris didn't even pretend; never showed up on the border at all, as many people pointed out repeatedly. And she couldn't keep staff: they hated her. She was nasty to them apparently and she never read their briefings and then accused them when she was plainly not prepared on a topic. Really, the election against Trump was her best performance on the political stage ever! I was amazed she did that well. Low-quality IQ, I thought.
This seems to me to point up the real crime of choosing someone as VP for reasons of victim identity, or really for "regional balance" in the old style, also. They allllllllll think they'll live forever and never need a VP --------- and then they get a surprise.
Good article. The chart is complicated but makes a lot of sense. Fetterman is arguably better representing his constituants than many Senators. However, I have to chuckle at the ending assertion that Democrats should have chosen a better candidate than Kamala. They didn't get a choice! Kamala was the pick by default, which I blame primarily on Jill Biden and the Biden inner circle, with an assist from any other prominent party figure that didn't stand up to her and make him honor his 2020 pledge. I am pretty sure why this was allowed - it was because Dem leadership agreed with me that Kamala would NOT have been chosen by primary voters - and she is who the establishment always wanted (even back in 2020, one of the reason Dems HATE Tulsi more than Trump was her epic takedown of Kamala). As to why the establishment wanted her? I suspect that they thought she was easily controllable, why that would be the thinking that I'll let you all figure out (I suspect excellent blackmail material).
How about this? We are in a post-ideology world now, where competence is all that most voters care about. That’s the real reason both parties are losing voters to independence. Nate, like most pundits, continues to gin up ideological polls, because they’re easier to quantify and explain, but they explain nothing real. Kamala lost because she was visibly and thoroughly incompetent. Whatever you think of Trump, he was not. Vance and Rubio are not incompetent. AOC and Newsom rival Harris for stupidity, and their records will vividly show it in a campaign. It has nothing to do with how they stand on any ideological issue.
Trump is competent...? Lol. The GOP is nakedly incompetent and it's not even relatively close, compared to Kamala.
I would add Mamdani the candidate, but probably not the mayor, to the competent column. Fetterman and Shapiro too. As I said, not an ideological situation, and the fact that so many pundits puzzled over the combination of Trump and Mamdani winning at the same time just shows how deeply stuck in the mud—and how deeply uncreative—those pundit thoughts are.
Perhaps this is more a function of my age than anything else, but something that jumped out at me was how well voters' perceptions of George W Bush's views matched their own ideologies. It seems like the rise of Trump has benefited his reputation, particulary among voters on the left, without hurting him with conservatives.
I know GWB has risen considerably in my own personal estimation. At the time GWB was president, I gave him no credit for good intentions. I just assumed any & every president would be a person who cared about helping all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. I assumed any & every president would be doing their best to implement policies that would help America as a whole, and not just themselves personally.
In retrospect, this was a foolish delusion of mine. Not giving GWB credit for his good intentions now seems unforgivably naive. In the face of a presidency run on selfishness, greed, and vindictive pettiness, with reckless disregard for any consequences that will be borne by others, I have been shown that not only is the bottom significantly lower than I thought, but there might not be a bottom at all.
In Obama's memoir from his presidency one of the things he gives Bush a lot of credit for is taking action during the 2008 financial crisis. Bush did something that was very unpopular, but seen as economically necessary (bank bailouts). A lot of presidents at the end of their term would have punted something like that to the next guy.
In an environment like we have now where winning elections is more important than actually governing there might have been a different outcome to a crisis like that.
“The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq— I mean, of Ukraine.”
[awkward silence]
“…Iraq too, anyway.”
-GWB 2022
People can draw whatever conclusions they want from that Freudian slip, but deep down he knows his weapons-of-mass-destruction narrative is not that different from Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine. That’s why I remain cautious about rehabilitating GWB’s legacy—even if he did one or two things right, which is the bare minimum in my view.
Well, you know, all of the dead from the Iraq war beg to differ with you on GWB's good intentions. The best you can say was he allowed himself to be snookered by Rumsfeld. GWB should have been imprisoned for war crimes.
Rumsfeld just took over ---- WITH Cheney. They took over Bush's presidency to his detriment, and then they lost the war by staying too long. And losing, losing, losing. This sort of thing happens too often, we see, what with the Biden aides taking over his presidency when he became unable to do much. We need to watch for this sort of takeover and "trow the bums out."
This always happens to Republicans after the fact. 20 years from now some other Republican will be the new Hitler, and Democrats will be wondering out loud why he couldn't be more like Trump.
Shocks me that Harris is even being considered as a candidate for 2028.
I saw the Daily Show spoof/attack on Newsom, so he is beginning to sustain attacks from the left now, not just the right. As a Californian I find him personally not effective or appealing, but Dems in California seem to like him. I'm skeptical about his national appeal.
AOC is probably the most authentic one out of the leaders. She is too much of a leftie for me, but she is way more likeable than Kamala or Newsom. I also wonder if there would be much of a difference between an AOC or Newsom and Harris. The Dem party, as you put, is just an indigo blog of progressiveness. As you've mentioned there are splits with abundance types and others, but really to me I think they all represent more or less the same thing.
I wonder if anyone believes Harris had a real shot in a real primary. She failed in 2019. She was invisible during the Biden Administration. When Biden quit, she was unable to get un-tied to Biden and all those memes. I remember a dude told me he couldn't vote for her because he couldn't stand the way her laughed. Ridiculous of course but he was not alone out there brainwashed by negative memes against Harris.
Regardless what stance she took that last three months, she would lose anyways. She was not political savvy enough to salvage that crappy situation she got herself in.
No, of course Kamala could not have survived a primary!!! That's why they didn't have one. Or one of the several reasons. Contested primaries often yield losers, after all. That's why they shut the whole thing down in South Carolina in 2020 and gave it to Biden as fast as they could.
I think the most interesting sentence is "... that more successful communicators can convince voters that they're on their side."
I've always thought the right/left or conservative/liberal paradigm is an oversimplified way to view politics, and for me personally, where I perceive someone falls on that paradigm is not the most important thing I look for in a candidate.
For me, the most important candidate qualities are squishy concepts like intelligence, leadership, and character. That said, I have no illusions that I actually have enough information to judge politicians accurately on these characteristics, so I end up gravitating towards those that are good communicators. It makes me trust them and gives me the impression they have those characteristics. Of course it's not just communication (Bill Clinton was a great communicator and I've always found him repulsive), but it goes a long way.
Yeah, Harris and the Democrats closing argument “vote for us, we’re not Trump”, was a losing argument in November 2024. How does it sound now, given all the absolutely crazy stuff Trump is doing? The generic ballot strongly favors the Democrats this congressional election cycle precisely because of their previous and current anti-Trump position. Like GW Bush said a few years ago in a speech in Los Angeles, “So, you like me fucking now?” Being against batshit crazy is not a long term winning political strategy, but it will work this November, provided that people actually get to vote.
Okay, gloves off.
What a load of crap. You think Michelle Obama, who the current racist president portrayed as an ape in a recent post, is corrupt because she takes a board position at a hospital, but it’s perfectly okay for Trump’s sons, who are integrated into his business partnership, to start up a bitcoin business, make millions of $’s, and then have the president offer guidance on how that business should be regulated, or not regulated.
You’re either delusional or hopelessly ignorant, possibly both.
What color is the sky in your world?
Trump reposted a Lion King meme thingy someone else AI-ed ---- you haven't seen it, I am guessing. All this is pretty normal political behavior: they called Lincoln an ape all over the "yellow press" back in the day. And Bush was constantly, constantly shown as a chimpanzee by Dems on every forum for YEARS. I would guess you think all that's just fine.
Of course it's okay for Trump's sons to have a business and make millions! Good luck to them. And for their father to offer guidance? You aren't really into freedom of speech, I see.
As for what color is the sky in my world, here it's Morning in America and the sky is a lovely red.
What is your list, say, five items you think are absolutely crazy stuff Trump is doing? I admit his style is -- let's say, colorful -- and a lot of stuff he says he'll do, he doesn't. He's just giving himself room in the Overton Window, I suppose. Because when I think about DONE, I like pretty much all of it. Trying to stop fraud against the government monies, stopping illegal immigration, stopping gross bamboozlement of us by most of the world with their hands out for our money, etc., etc. What that he has actually DONE don't you like?
1. He’s thoroughly corrupt and enriched himself to the tune of 4 billion $.
2. Massive tax cuts for the rich, screw everyday Americans.
3. Weakened NATO and our alliances, made Canada an adversary.
4. He lied about the valid 2020 election, then tried to overturn it with a mob. Now he’s having his DOJ target people who tried to hold him accountable.
5. Made ICE and CBP his personal army, targeted vulnerable immigrants, not dangerous criminals.
6. Bowed to authoritarian Russia and Putin, abandoned democratic Ukraine.
7. Dismantled USAID and PEPFAR, made the USA a rogue nation internationally, when we used to be “the shining city on the hill”.
8. Tried to dismantle the professional civil service, a reform we’ve had since the 1880’s, and return to the spoils system.
9. Supported and appointed white and christian nationalists to positions of power within the government.
10. Dismantled protections for clean water, air, and the environment. Killed anything in opposition to fossil fuel use, including wind farms that are already in use.
That’s the short list. You like everything he’s done, good luck with that, pal!
Okay, wow, I don't agree with any of these points, but I like to know how people think, so thanx for your most interesting list.
Ok, let’s just do point 1.
Why don’t you just Google the following question:
“How much money has Donald Trump made off bitcoin and his meme coin since he took office in January, 2026?”
You don’t have to believe me, just look it up, and don’t tell me that the entire media is biased against him.
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.” You can believe whatever you want, but that doesn’t make it true.
Too loosey-goosey. All of the points, really. You make assumptions that I would not say are true. I did look it up, using your language as the prompt, not on Google of course, which is vieux jieux, but on Perplexity using ChatGPT 5.2, and it said this, when I prompted for personal returns:
"For Donald Trump personally, there is no credible, auditable public accounting (as of Feb. 10, 2026) that pins down how much he has “made” from bitcoin holdings or from his $TRUMP meme coin since he took office in January 2026.
"Why there’s no exact number
Trump’s public financial disclosure reporting has been criticized as not clearly covering the needed time window and as omitting most proceeds from some family crypto ventures, which makes a “since Jan. 2026” calculation impossible from disclosures alone.
"For the meme coin specifically, outside analysts can estimate on-chain trading fees and token flows, but converting that into “Trump personally made” requires knowing which wallets/entities are his, what his exact ownership is, and whether value was realized via sales—information that isn’t fully public.
"What is quantifiable (but not “since Jan. 2026”)
Reuters previously reported/estimated large crypto-related income in Trump’s disclosure materials (largely covering earlier periods), including income tied to token sales, but that does not answer the narrow “since he took office in Jan. 2026” question.
"A Reuters analysis estimated the project behind the Trump meme coin generated roughly $86–$100 million in trading fees soon after launch (reported in 2025), but that figure is not the same thing as Trump’s personal profit after Jan. 2026.
"If you tell me one more detail, I can compute a bounded estimate
Do you mean “made” as realized cash (sold coins/received fees actually paid out) or do you also want unrealized changes in the market value of assets he is reported to control?"
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I know, very boring, TLTR (too long to read), but at any rate it showed what I assumed, that it's not illegal for his sons to make money in this fascinating AI and bitcoin environment, and they are. I like to see competence in a president --- the Obamas were relatively impoverished and the Chicago hospital paid them a lot for Michelle to sit on their board. Now THAT was corruption, I have always thought.
I'm curious as to why the assumption is being made that having the lowest gap in score between how self identified Right Wing and Left Wing voters look at the candidate means that the candidate is the most electable?
Putting the problems with political self identification aside, I am not sure having the lowest gap means a candidate is the most electable, because that assumption itself relies on the assumption that a) there's an equal number of voters in each group that would vote with the same enthusiasm and b) that they would vote for the lowest gap candidate...I don't believe it is that cut and dry.
Not to mention that in our system you first have to get nominated by your party.
What, if any, was the impact of Harris having a strong debate but then being a terrible interview, unable to answer even expected questions?
Seems to me we need to step away from common politics due to red blue division. Both parties are driving people away. Reality is no one can satisfy the list of issues for either party. So with that in mind I would support identification of the top six issues in the USA without regard to party. I would then support a business person with no serious political ties to address the top six plus any emergencies that might show up. Both issues and person(s) need to be identified. You are in position to achieve that goal with your vast polling experience.
I like. What is your list of six top issues? Mine would be (in no order) immigration, AI (electricity, land use, cybercrime, employment), inflation/affordability, crime, foreign policy, corruption and fraud with taxpayer money (Somalis, UN, etc.).
my top six currently are mis / dis information (lack of truth to form basis of effort), standard of living spread including public and private debt, public education, cyber criminals (including bitcoin), human rights / civil freedom under attack, overpopulation as a world issue (too much competition for existing resources). These are not necessarily issues considered by any reds or blues. The issues should come from each to gain party support. When the first six are truly fixed without band aid theory, the next six should be determined and so forth. There will always be problems to solve due to the human condition. History teaches this leason.
Nice list. I particularly like the mis/disinformation issue now that AI is making it worse than ever. My husband when I asked his opinion on issues immediately cited the out-of-control federal debt, and private debt is at an all-time high, too. I forgot that one. Public education is a mess beyond messes, IMO. I have been worried about overpopulation since, well, The Population Bomb, in fact. There would BE no issues around "global warming" or species extinction, even fast-spreading pandemics, if the gross overpopulation of this planet were contained --- my personal desire is for one billion humans in toto, which sounds draconian, but is simply no more than one child for every woman for only three generations. After that it would have to go back to two per woman. So I really like your list.
It would be great if Buttigieg would run for something more than "mayor of podunk" before making a bid for the White House. Whitmer is term limited out. Why isn't Buttigieg running for Governor of Michigan? He does live here, after all. Where would Newsom be on that chart? It's kind of interesting/shocking that on the graph higher up he's nearly identical to Obama. Actually, where Obama was on that chart when he first ran, vs. where he's ranked now, would be really interesting.
It's kind of astounding how much the Biden people (who became Harris' people) didn't see that they'd set things up for disaster. They seem to have had the negative-Midas touch. Here's hoping "incentives" as a way to deal with climate change is permanently damaged as a concept, so we can get on to a carbon tax (obviously, not right now) which all places serious about dealing with climate change do. Seems unlikely Harris will be the next choice. All hail perfect-hair Newsom!
While it is true that there is not much of a place for non-Trump conservative politicians, I disagree that such views don't have a following. There are conservative non-Trump commentators such as David French and Jonah Goldberg, and at least one major news site, "The Dispatch" that fill that niche without "libbing out".