It’s Trump v Biden again. Why were there no better options for voters?

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More than once throughout the campaign, I’ve imagined America’s political party leaders as cruel lunch ladies, slopping greyish gruel on to trays for an unappetized America. “You’ll eat it and you’ll like it.”

Except nobody does like it. Poll after poll showed that voters did not want a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In a healthier political system, this discontent with the two incumbents would be an opportunity for other ideas to emerge, for other candidates to make a case to the public. In ours, this dissatisfaction did nothing to affect the slow march to the inevitable. In leaks to the press, representatives from both campaigns have long been speaking of a pivot to the general, and of waiting for voters to let it sink in that the general election would in fact be between Trump and Biden. Like doctors giving a patient a bad prognosis, they seemed eager to skip over the formality of having to deal with how little they had satisfied their constituents, ready to get back to the part where they accrued more power for themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ember-a-foregone-conclusion-that-no-one-likes

It's Trump's fault.

All American presidential politics has devolved into either supporting Trump or defeating Trump. This left no room for challengers to gain traction in either party during the primary season.

What will be most interesting is the down ballot races. There are 34 Senate seats up for election, of which 23 are currently held by Democrats and Independents.

https://www.270towin.com/2024-senate-election-predictions/
https://www.270towin.com/2024-house-election-predictions/

 

We get what we deserve.

 

Rather shallow op. We are not voting for or against Trump we are voting for or against the DC uniparty. And no that's not just the flip side of the same ugly coin. The election is about reclaiming the power the government has usurped from individuals over the last few decades. Vote Biden and you risk losing even more vote Trump and hope to get some of that power back. Even with Biden out it will be a difficult fight but for the good of the country we need to start taking out some of the industrial complexes we've been building since WWII. We can start with the Education industrial complex and it's destruction of out children.

 

If it's Biden v Trump I like it. Gives us a Washington career politician against an out-sider businessman. People have been saying for years, we need to get rid of career politicians, we need someone from the private sector. Here's the chance. Career politicians are always telling us they can fix the problems they cause.

 

The choice stinks. Why is it so bad?

On the Republican side, a majority of primary voters think Trump is some sort of white knight who speaks for them. Their numbers have overwhelmed every other candidate, and those of us who wanted someone else have been soundly outvoted.

On the Democrat side, it is hard to remove an elected, incumbent president who is determined to run again. The last time it was done was in 1856 when the Democrats refused to renominate Franklin Pierce. Others have been denied, but they were vice presidents who took over after the elected president died.

Biden is a senile, incompetent man who is easily manipulated. The far left of his party can do pretty much what they want with him, and he has little say. You hear hints from him now and then when he makes comments like "I don't want to get in trouble."

If rank and file Democrats really cared, there should have been a grassroots effort to replace him, but there wasn't. They are happy with senile old man who is a shell and a shill for the far left agenda.

 

I can visualize a couple of satisfactory alternatives to Trump, but none to unsatisfactory Biden.

 

Ohhh, it's Trump's fault?... LMAO!

It never occurred to you that it might be the fault of the retards that hate Trump so much, they're willing to burn the whole country down just to keep him out of office and ruin him financially?

 

That's the choice we had in 2016, and the outsider businessman won (although he was more a celebrity and media personality by then). From 2017 - 2020 there wasn't all that much change due to lack of preparation in 2017, poor appointments and personnel choices, and inability to manage the bureaucracy and relations with Congress thereafter. So not a whole lot got done about getting rid of career politicians and shrinking the power of government.

There is an attempt to be better prepared. Basically, Project 2025 is an attempt by Heritage and other conservatives to put together a plan on how to take over the DC bureaucracy. It may not shrink much, since more political appointees will be needed to manage the entrenched civil service.

 

Ranked voting is likely to make it harder for anyone to get the required states to win. Throwing the election to the house and guaranteeing a republican win.

 

with ranked voting, the loser would be dropped and their votes roll-up to the publics second choice

Ranked Voting does not split the vote

 

No it actually precedes Trump. The last time a party successfully pressured its own unpopular incumbant nominee out was in 1968 with LBJ, and I highly doubt that the party had a prayer of a chance of replacing him, had he not decided to retire from politics. He hated the job, hated the Vietnam quagmire, and his heart troubles were already apparent. How far back do we have to go, to see a political party replace its own presumptive incumbant nominee? . We have literally never seen an incumbant President lose a nominating convention fight since the nominating process at the conventions has been openned up from backroom cigar days. Its next to impossible and its scary as ****!

 

Vast majority of Americans wish there were better choices, and even people outside of the US shake their heads and wonder if these two are the best the country has to offer

 

Biden is an incumbent, and as you say, it is difficult to force out or not renominate an incumbent President.

However, there were 6 former Presidents who attempted to regain the Presidency after being out of office for 4 years or more, which is Trump's situation. Grover Cleveland succeeded. Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover failed. None of them were renominated by their party, and they either did not run or ran as the candidate of another party, e.g. Bull Moose. Had the modern primary system been in place, its likely that Teddy Roosevelt and possibly Grant would have regained the Republican nomination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_ran_for_office

 

1. none of these examples works because there was no modern primary system even in Hoover's day. You are engaging in speculation and I just don't believe you. Its definitely going to depend on whether the political vacumn in their own party has been filled by someone else in the interum. Because there was next to no chance that Trump was not going to run literally as an incumbant, there was no political vacumn. There was absolutely zero chance that Trump was not going to be the nominee. We had two very unpopular incumbants with the same hold on their party for all relevant purposes here. There was no hope that this contest would not be exactly as it is. There is no remotely proven method to remove these party coronations.

 

I think that Teddy Roosevelt had the best chance had there been a modern primary system. He won the most of the 1912 Republican primaries, but they were largely beauty contests. Talf had the convention delegates stacked against him before the meeting began. Lyndon Johnson did the same thing for Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

Grant had a huge advantage as the primer Civil War hero. That might have won the primaries for him, but the Republicans really did lose the 1876 presidential election in the wake of the many Grant administration scandals. The Republicans were able to steal the 1876 election.

 

No but it could result in a third candidate winning enough states to prevent anyone from getting 270.

 

This election provides us with a top tier 3rd choice, RFK. The thespians lamenting that there are only 2 choices, when there is such a high caliber 3rd choice are just being performative.

 

Donald Trump is and has been one of the best presidents we have ever had... Biden is unquestionably the most corrupt and lawless president we have ever had, with Obama running a close second.... Thanks to Joe Biden the US is now the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world as he committed treason in the surrender of 80 billion of military equipment to our enemies, and releasing 5000 terrorists back into the world from the Bagram airbase prison with the one turned right around and killed 13 Us military personal and 170 innocent civilians.. then Let's go Brandon turns around again and kills 7 innocent children in a family in a effed up Joe Biden drone strike...

Ask these children who the better choice for president is...

cnn.com

 

At least you and I can agree on one thing. I hate these "jungle primaries" and this ranked voting crap. Most voters don't know enough about the issues to pick the candidate they WANT let alone rank them. Why do you think political parties spend so much just getting the candidate's name on billboards with no issues mentioned? For more than few voters, seeing a familiar name is enough to get their vote.

 

nope, cause the remaining two would get all the votes from the people below them with ranked voting

if your first choice lost, your votes would go to your second choice and so on

 

RFK would be a good choice for us in deep red and deep blue states, where our vote doesn't count anyway. Which candidate our state's vote will go for is just as much a foregone conclusion as who the nominees are.

I'd like to see the next President get no more than 40% of the popular vote to emphasize the electorate's dissatisfaction with the major party candidates. It would also be nice to see voter turnout below 60%, but that seems unlikely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter...tes_presidential_elections#Turnout_statistics

 

If you're not in a swing state, how your state is going to vote is caste in stone, so you might as well vote for a good 3rd party candidate just to show the potential strength one might have.



I'd like to see more states award by Congressional District like Nebraska and Maine do, so that we get 50 state election campaigns.

 

"Donald Trump is and has been one of the best presidents we have ever had..."

lol, too funny

 

I actually don’t mind it for other races. Just leery about it for the president.