This can also work against him and Democrats though. NYT had an article about it recently. They interviewed a Trump supporter in AZ who believed abortion was a right, but wanted to vote for Trump. She hoped this abortion measure would get on the ballot so she could vote for abortion, while voting for Trump. Despite the obvious and very public campaign pomise to severely limit abortion and Project 2025’s goal to ban it federally.

An abortion ballot initiative will drive voters to the polls, but if they feel they are safe from losing abortion access, they may not feel like they need to support Dem candidates.

They never say who they’d like to see, at least not that I’ve ever seen. This user posts a lot though.

This presents a problem though, progressives are making the call for Biden to step aside. Cool, that’s their view. But if he did, the DNC picks the candidate without primary input. Anyone remember the last time a block of Democratic voters saw the primary process as the DNC picking a candidate against the wishes of the voters? How did 2016 go? Whether you subscribe to the “Bernie won” talking points or not, it does raise the question. Would the DNC pick satisfy the voters calling for Biden to drop or would they pick a moderate Democrat (the majority of the Democratic base) and further upset progressives?

His team claims that the evidence used was gathered during the presidency, when he was immune. It sounds absurd, since concealing private business records is clearly not an official function of the presidency, but its was apparently enough to sway the prosecution who admittedly may know more about the legal system than I do.

SCOTUS can’t do shit for state charges. Doesn’t mean they won’t try.

However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.

Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump’s team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act…

I agree with you. My thinking is, as a politically active person who is around politically active people from all over the spectrum, that no one has really heard from Trump in the past 3 years, besides the ones that wanted too. I’ve heard his voice maybe 10 times? Heard about him, of course, but not from him.

While the debate was an absolute shitshow, Trump was Trump. He reminded everyone for 90 minutes what it was like to have him in every room, on every channel, at every dinner table, and in every conversation. Undecideds are who they are, but they didn’t like that in 2020 when they voted for Biden. People’s memories are short and I think they forgot how terrible he was.

Some polls back up this analysis. A Quinnipiac survey shows Kennedy getting 13 percent of the vote; he has support from 9 percent of Democrats, 8 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of independents. The poll shows Biden leading Trump by three points in a head-to-head matchup but Trump ahead by one point when third-party candidates are included. Though both numbers are within the poll’s margin of error, they suggest that Trump could benefit if the election isn’t seen as a binary choice.

However, other polls show Kennedy pulling more voters from Trump, and the truth is no one knows how the election will ultimately shake out. “The public polling, if you dig into it, can be really head-swiveling,” said Smith. “It’s very hard to gauge the impact, but it does seem like he pulls from both, and right now — emphasis on ‘right now’ — slightly more from Biden.”

Kennedy certainly has no qualms about spoiling the election for Trump. On CNN on Monday, he argued that Biden poses a “much worse” threat to democracy than Trump because of the Biden administration’s attempts to get social media companies to remove vaccine misinformation, much of it spread by Kennedy

I really don’t see how a pro-Israel, against any ceasefire agreement, candidate that also believes the free market will fix climate change stands to gain more support from former Biden voters than former Trump voters.

Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They either get condemned for helping keep a GOP speaker in place or they get criticized for not helping and getting stuck another freedom caucus pick speaker, after they bicker for a month.

Maybe they should move the case to DC then so there are enough active Top Secret clearances to create a healthy jury pool.

I bet we are in for 30 years of “the spirit of Donald Trump said to me in prayer…” From politicians and just straight up denial of his death from his followers.

Chubb is the underwriter

Right, not disputing that at all. I’m just saying he’s (or whoever is footing the bill) a long way from actually paying anyone their due.

He’s still not actually paying her. He’s just securing a bond that lets him avoid paying while he seeks an appeal. Just keep kicking the can down the road.

“Donald J. Trump on Friday posted a $91.6 million bond in a defamation case he recently lost to the writer E. Jean Carroll, staving off a potential legal and financial disaster just days before a deadline to secure the deal. The bond, provided by an outside insurance company, will prevent Ms. Carroll from collecting the judgment while Mr. Trump appeals.”

That, and she was quoted in Romney’s book (insert salt grain) saying she didn’t care about reelection because she was already elected and could go sit on any board she wanted or become a university president. She was always just in it for the money and status.

The GoFundMe is run by a random follower of his. Remember that guy who was raising money to pay for the wall and then just took the money and disappeared?

“The GOP is still expected to retain majorities in both chambers, though the party’s advantage would likely be slimmer than the absolute authority it now commands, particularly in the Senate. Currently, the GOP has a supermajority in the Senate and a near supermajority in the Assembly.”

So in a state were the D/R ratio is 42%\42% they are still getting maps biased in their direction, just not as much as they had before.

Like the $99 NFTs that you could only buy 100 of, conveniently falling just short of the IRS reporting threshold?

Oh, gotcha. There are a lot of pie in the sky “they should just do it” users on here, I can never tell.

I can’t tell if you’re summarizing here, but that’s exactly what he’s doing. The speaker and majority leader decide what bills are allowed to be brought to the floor for a vote. The only way around that is a discharge petition. Jefferies can’t bring the bill to a vote himself. From the article:

“The legislation could also be brought to the floor via a discharge petition, which would require the support of 218 members, including at least four Republicans.”

The question is, will 4 Republicans break with Trump to support it?

His supporters pay them very well. They get bait and switched into donating to his PACs to instead of his campaign directly and those PACs pay the legal bills.

"As Trump’s legal battles ramped up in the second half of last year, so did his legal spending – with his political action committees reporting a total of $34 million in legal expenditures in the second half of last year compared to roughly $26 million in the first half, according to the disclosures.

Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, continued to foot much of Trump’s legal bills in the second half of last year, spending nearly $26 million on legal fees and other related expenses, while only raising $6 million."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-spent-50m-pac-super-pac-money-legal/story?id=106843612

Except this is Biden’s Whitehouse continuing to tell Congress to approve aid and the GOP blocking that. This was the last package the US could provide without further congressional action. That’s not likely as long as GOP runs the house. Biden and the Democratic party have been pretty lock step in providing aid.