US Elections 2024 After Hours

[Scotty G]

Americans will head to the polls in November 2024 to elect the next US president. The person sitting in the White House's Oval Office has a big influence on people's lives both at home and abroad, so the outcome of this election matters for everyone.

The US political system today is dominated by just two parties, so every president in modern times has belonged to one of them.

The Democrats are the liberal political party, with an agenda defined largely by its push for civil rights, a broad social safety net and measures to address climate change.
It is the party of incumbent President Joe Biden, who is trying to secure a second term in power.

The Republicans are the conservative political party in the US. Also known as the GOP, or the Grand Old Party, it has stood for lower taxes, shrinking the size of the government, gun rights and tighter restrictions on immigration and abortion.

The party hasn't yet picked its presidential candidate.

When is the next US presidential election?​

The 2024 election will be on Tuesday, 5 November 2024. The winner will serve a term of four years in the White House starting in January 2025.

How does the US presidential election work?​

Both candidates compete to win electoral college votes.

Each state has a certain number of electoral college votes partly based on its population and there are a total of 538 up for grabs, so the winner is the candidate that wins 270 or more.

This means voters decide state-level contests rather than the national one, which is why it's possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally - like Hillary Clinton did in 2016 - but still be defeated by the electoral college.

All but two states have a winner-takes-all rule, so whichever candidate wins the highest number of votes is awarded all of the state's electoral college votes.

Most states lean heavily towards one party or the other, so the focus is usually on a dozen or so states where either of them could win. These are known as the battleground states.

 

[Scotty G]

I can't remember US elections being so crucial not only domestically but also internationally, yet all the Americans could find is these two dinosaurs, completely ill-suited for the task.

What a time to be alive.

 

[Dagmar]

A few weeks after his terrible showing in a televised debate with Donald Trump new concerns have arisen about Joe Biden's capacity to run for another presidential term after a couple of "big" gaffes at the NATO conference and a live press conference.

The president mistakenly introducing Ukraine's President Zelenskyy as "President Putin"

A few hours later he was asked about Kamala Harris and he mistakenly called her "vice-president Trump"
Reports say he gave a strong performance with a couple of gaffes.

People will only see the gaffes now. The rest doesn't really matter.

 

[Scotty G]

After 3 and a half years serving the U.S.A as President, Joe Biden has announced that he'll be stepping down at the end of his current run.

He plans to go into further detail around his decision later this week. He signed off his announcement with 'We have to remember, we are the United States of America'.

Biden released the following statement:

'My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it's been the best decision I've made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this.'

 

[Sad Professor]

Definitely the correct decision to withdraw. Biden appears to have grown old all at once.

The Trump campaign has gained some crazy momentum lately but now the Democrats can reshape the narrative.

However, three things went wrong for Trump this week, imo. Picking J.D. Vance wasn't a good idea, the speech (it seems) wasn't well received, and now Biden dropping.

The past 8 days have been among the craziest in American politics that I can recall.

 

[Wanted]

Harris is really uninspiring, it's a very "it's her turn" kind of endorsement. It covers some of the weaknesses of the DNC campaign, but I don't know if she's able to go on the offensive which is what the Democrats desperately need. Plus, the Democrats obsession with trying to push unpopular, uncharismatic VPs into the nomination haven't paid off for a while. Hopefully I'm wrong and she shows she's got what it takes

 

[Cappuccino Kid]

No-one is beating Trump at this stage.

The world should start preparing now.

 

[Hedonistic Blonde]

That Musk-Trump "interview" on X/Twitter should be alarming everyone across the board. It is a fact-checker free propaganda message on one of the largest platforms in the world. It bypassed all journalistic standards, spread lies, hate, and misinformation to a whole new target audience. Twitter pre-Musk would have flagged it and taken it down with disclaimers. This was Musk's endgame, in a way.

Countries should be drafting up laws to legally prevent this reoccurring ASAP.

On a side note. I wouldn't be surprised to see Elon Musk run for president some time in the future.

 

[Tom]

 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1824769554964169114

I'll be fascinated to see which way the polling errors go this time. In 2016 and 2020, I believe there were quite a lot of "quiet Trump" voters - those moderates who wouldn't admit at a dinner party that they'd vote for Trump, but would do so at the ballot box.

 

[Tom]

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met for the first time on the presidential debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.

In a fiery 90 minutes, Harris frequently rattled the former president with personal attacks that threw him off message and raised the temperature of this highly-anticipated contest.

Her pointed digs on the size of his rally crowds, his conduct during the Capitol riot, and on the officials who served in his administration who have since become outspoken critics of his campaign repeatedly left Trump on the back foot.

The pattern for much of this debate was Harris goading her Republican rival into making extended defences of his past conduct and comments. He gladly obliged, raising his voice at times and shaking his head.

Americans should go to a Trump rally, Harris said during an early question about immigration, because they were illuminating.

"People start leaving the rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom," she said.

That barb clearly rattled the former president, as he then spent most of his answer – on a topic that should have been one of his main areas of strength – defending his rally sizes and belittling hers.

Trump went from there to an extended riff on a debunked report that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbours' pets.

If debates are won and lost on which candidate best takes advantage of issues where they are strong - and defends or deflects on areas of weakness - Tuesday night tilted in favour of the vice-president.

All Harris needed to do was act normal. Trump would dig his own grave with his incoherent scaremongering ramblings.