Trump getting shot at has helped his side’s “get out to vote” equation though.

That’s what scares me. They’re invigorated by recent events. I don’t think they’re any larger than before, but they’re definitely more motivated now.

Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be.

Agreed.

I don’t care if its Biden, Harris, or anyone else you put up. But yall need to pick fucking somebody and stick with the pick.

I’m sticking with Biden and Harris in that order until someone gives me a better option. And after weeks following the last debate, no one has given me a seriously better option.

I genuinely think that this failed assassination attempt will end up helping Trump in terms of his chances.

Of course it does.

But a Martyred Trump is even worse. I’m happy we got the better of the two bad options. All we gotta do is turn Trump into George Wallace, a racist fuck who lost an election despite an assassination attempt.

Then, we forget about Trump… but always remember that the racists are out there. Without a martyr, the movement will disappear over time. They’ll be trying to turn Trump into a martyr moving forward, even though he survived. Alas, things don’t quite work like that.

With any luck, more neonazis come out of the woodwork and people get reminded at how ugly Trump’s supporters are.

Lucky.

A martyred Trump only makes the MAGA movement bigger and stronger than ever before. Trump is just a symptom of this problem, and I worry about the coming years. I look forward above and beyond just one 78-year-old loser dumbass.

The MAGA threat is here and persistent. Its better for us that MAGA is still coalesced around Trump today and that we can still fuck up Trump’s reputation / ideology before he dies.

But actually killing Trump? That gives the movement the momentum they need to carry on for decades. A grazed piece of glass on Trump’s ear is fine. We can still politically work with this, though the MAGA has gained an edge this week in politics, this sort of thing can be forgotten before the election (much like Pelosi’s hammer attack or Gabby Gifford’s headshot).

Trump will likely milk this situation for all that its worth and exhaust the oxygen in the room.

The real issue is that Democrats haven’t solidified upon a plan yet. I suggest we either support Biden fully or we push for Harris. The sooner we push for a choice the better things are for our votes.

Yeah, which is why I prefer if Biden stays running. I honestly think he’s our best shot at defeating Trump. Even today.

Do you think anyone else has a chance this late in the game? Has support begun to coalesce at any replacements yet? Its been a few weeks since the first debate. Who is stepping up?

Harris is stepping up. I can say that, and there’s some favorable polls right now for her. And I think the Democrats can spin the story of “You’re worried about age, so we listened and gave our best / most reasonable response to the worries of the public”. I’m not sure if it’d work mind you, but its better than nothing and I judge it to be about the same as Biden finishing this campaign (then resigning after the election), which is the default choice.

Harris could surprise me with a very good VP pick. Harris can inherit the entirety of Biden’s campaign as well. The unions likely aren’t going to be as happy with Harris as Biden but it’d be too late for them to withdraw their support. Etc. etc.

Eyes on the prize.

Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia.

They’re not quite “flyover states”, but they’re less liberal than you might hope.

I give 50/50 odds that Harris can do about as well as Biden, the more I think about it.

But there’s very few Democrats who can reasonably replace Biden today. And most of those do not have access to Biden’s fundraising (Harris does have access to that and gives her a huge leg up).

I still think that Biden staying on to serve as a political shield for Harris… and then resigning in January is the best path forward for Democrats. Harris still has to deal with womanizers and racists. All the adults recognize that she’s the real President Candidate moving forward already, so its not like she needs to actually step into the political firezone.

I’m leaning to 50/50 now because Harris feasibly could benefit from some kind of VP pick herself to shore up support. Or she could go down in flames as the racists / anti-women vote turns out against her. Hard for me to say, but its a feasible path IMO, if people really want to replace Biden to replace him with Harris.

EDIT: However, the idea that Biden should resign for some no-name / non-existant Democrat who hasn’t stepped up despite 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, now 2024 elections is fucking nuts. Your mysterious secret savior doesn’t exist, and they’d never step up 3 months before the election to ruin their chances at 2028 anyway.

Its not even a graze.

It turns out it was glass that exploded somewhere and shards that hit Trump. The bullet never got close. The kid was a terrible shot (thank goodness for that. A Trump martyr would be even worse than the current situation IMO).

300m with an AR15 isn’t too difficult, but it does take training and practice to consistently hit at that range. And the relative speed at which secret-service killed the kid proves that (the Secret Service marksmen returned fire accurately and precisely. A job well done on that front).

We’re incredibly lucky this was a punk ass kid who didn’t know how to use his new toy. Then again, this all is much worse for Democracy anyway.

Urban warfare is well known to be incredibly complicated for this reason. There’s just too many buildings (and even if there’s just one building: too many windows a shooter could be looking out of).

We’re lucky that this punk-ass kid wasn’t a trained marksman. 300 meters isn’t an easy shot, but its something a trained person would do regularly with an AR-15 and the right equipment. (Even on the first shot: today’s rangefinders are very good and its not so hard to compensate for bullet drop and other effects).

In any case, the range and difficulty of the shot makes it unlikely that this kid was going for anything aside from a straightforward assassination attempt. You’re just aiming for center-of-mass at these ranges.

Votes aren’t changing but the Trump voter was severely demoralized before this.

Trump’s debate performance was fucking awful. Yes, Democrats are worried about Biden for good reason, but Trump won no favors during the debate.

This event has galvinized Trump and even given him a photo-op that makes it look/feel like he was ordained by God himself. I shit you not, that’s what people will be praying for and seeing today now that its Sunday. If you know anything about conservatives, that’s whats going through their head today on Sunday.

With that, a lot of them will see it as their holy duty to vote Trump in November. Expect record turnout. We will need to do everything to drum up the anti-Trump vote now to keep up with them.

That’s a lot of Hollywood bullshit about guns in your understanding of the world. I’d recommend that you stop watching movies (maybe even cartoons?) and instead read up on actual tactics and some physiology.

A fat, elderly, unhealthy 78-year-old-man could die from a heart attack from the tourniquet alone. Anyone taking shots at Trump at this age is going for the kill. There’s very, very few areas that are non-lethal, and those few areas are exceptionally difficult to hit 300meters away.

EDIT: A skilled marksman should be able to reliably hit someone at those ranges with an AR15. The kid fortunately wasn’t a skilled marksman. But even a skilled marksman won’t be aiming to do a Comic-book level or Hollywood level called shot to a non-lethal area at these ranges.

He’s pro-gun and we can point out the dangers of that alone.

A shot to the leg can cause significant bleeding and is often more deadly than say… headshots (see Gabbie Giffords).

Trained gunmen / soldiers shoot for the center-of-mass. In fact, its clear that Trump wasn’t struck by a bullet now but instead by glass shards. So some glass deflected the bullet out of the way.

I don’t need to use technical terms like 556 or 7.62 rounds or rimfire to prove I’m a knowledgeable gun owner.

When the other guy doesn’t know what AR means, I must bring down my language and remove technicalities. What I said earlier is the gist of the argument, we all expect the shooter to have some variant of AR-15 given the range and number of shots taken.

The important tidbit, politically speaking, is that this gun was literally illegal to own in my childhood. Do you disagree with me on that?

Some people are saying $10, which is a lot more to a kid than to an adult. But kids can afford $10.

EDIT: $15 to more reliable sources. Still in the rough ballpark tho

Local district attorney Richard Goldringer appeared on CNN and said one aspect of the attack that investigators were “going to have to figure out” was how the shooter managed to get close enough to aim a gun at Trump and fire repeatedly.

Its like AR-15 rifles that have long accurate, repeatable shots, have made it easier to fire at people today than ever before.

Thank god this is getting muddled.

I’ll take a win where I can. The election is too close for comfort now (or even leaning towards a Trump victory right now). We have time to change that, but we need to recognize the threat is growing right now.

A gun that’s more accurate and can shoot longer distances.

When bullet goes faster, it is more accurate and deals more damage. In the 90s, the AR-15 was banned but today its allowed and has been the gun of choice in pretty much every mass shooting of the last decade.

20 year olds don’t have wealth to reasonably donate to an election.

We are not at the stage where you say ‘alternatives’, but are instead at the stage where you need to start listing specific names.

The best candidates (the various governors) don’t seem to be jumping on board. Kamala looks risky politically but on technicalities she might have access to Bidens donations since she’s the running mate.

Is there any other alternative you want to bring up?