Election 2024 Archives

“The irony of all this ceaseless chatter about Trump’s electability is this: 80 percent of adult Americans would prefer that President Biden not seek re-election. Eighty percent. That is a staggering statistic. And there’s more: Roughly 60% of Democrats would prefer the party nominate someone other than Biden next year. … If 80% of the nation and 60% of Democrats prefer that Biden not seek re-election, a case could be made that Biden is unelectable.”

Politico: “Despite his difficulties since he left office, about a third of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters still consider themselves supporters more of Trump than the Republican Party, according to a recent NBC News poll. Many of them aren’t going anywhere. … Fully 28 percent of Republican primary voters are so devoted to the former president that they said they’d support him even if he ran as an independent…. Indeed, the ‘Always Trump’ component of the party is so pronounced that it’s affecting how Trump’s opponents operate around him.”

Poll: DeSantis Has Big Lead Over Trump

February 23, 2023 Buck Banks

40% to 31%

A new WPA Intelligence poll finds Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of Donald Trump nationally among Republican voters, 40% to 31%, even when a long line of other Republicans such as Mike Pence were included. That lead for the GOP governor jumps dramatically to 55% to 37% in a direct DeSantis-Trump matchup.

Poll: Trump Leads DeSantis Nationally

February 16, 2023 Buck Banks

According to Political Wire, a Quinnipiac poll finds that when GOP voters are given a list of 14 names of Republicans who either have said they are running for president in 2024 or are seen as potential candidates in a Republican primary, Donald Trump receives 42% of the vote followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who receives 36%.

Nikki Haley receives 5%, Mike Pence receives 4% and Mike Pompeo receives 4%. No other candidate garners more than 2% of the vote.

When the potential field is narrowed to only four candidates, however, voters are split between Trump at 43% and DeSantis at 41% — a virtual dead heat. Haley receives 6% and Pence receives 4% in this hypothetical 4-way Republican primary.

Feinstein — Is She Going or Not?

February 15, 2023 Buck Banks

“Oh, no, I’m not announcing anything. I will one day.”

— Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), in an interview with Raw Story, about an hour after her office released the statement on her decision not to seek re-election.

Why the GOP Will Lose the House in 2024

November 17, 2022 Buck Banks

“The House Republican Conference will have the barest majority, rendered ungovernable by the lunatic likes of Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Green. The self-sabotage of an ungovernable Republican majority will all but guarantee that Democrats take back the House in 2024.”

— Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), quoted by Vanity Fair.

More Republicans Prefer DeSantis Over Trump

November 14, 2022 Buck Banks

42% to 35%

A new YouGov poll conducted after the midterm elections finds more Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents now say they’d prefer Ron DeSantis as their 2024 presidential nominee over Donald Trump, 42% to 35%. That’s a reversal from nearly a month ago, when a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found just 35% preferred DeSantis and 45% said they preferred Trump.

Cruz Bruised by Boos

November 10, 2022 Buck Banks

Poor Tailgunner Ted is singing the blues,
On Yelp, he only gets negative reviews.
He’s all hat and no horse,
Detested in Houston, of course,
Where, instead of cheering the Astros, they booed the Cruz.

Trump Was Going to Announce Prez Run Before Midterms

October 31, 2022 Buck Banks

“Donald Trump was seriously considering announcing a week from today before the election because he thought Republicans are gonna win the House, gonna win the Senate, and he wanted to take credit for it. … He’s now backed away from it. He may deny it, but he told people who raise money for him, he told political people that this is what he was going to do.”

— Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News that Donald Trump “was seriously considering” announcing a presidential bid before the midterms.

Hillary Clinton Warns About 2024 Election

October 25, 2022 Buck Banks

“I know we’re all focused on the 2022 midterm elections, and they are incredibly important, but we also have to look ahead because, you know what, our opponents certainly are. Right-wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election, and they’re not making a secret of it.”

80%

— John Ellis

28%

40% to 31%

A new WPA Intelligence poll finds Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of Donald Trump nationally among Republican voters, 40% to 31%, even when a long line of other Republicans such as Mike Pence were included. That lead for the GOP governor jumps dramatically to 55% to 37% in a direct DeSantis-Trump matchup.

“Oh, no, I’m not announcing anything. I will one day.”

— Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), in an interview with Raw Story, about an hour after her office released the statement on her decision not to seek re-election.

“The House Republican Conference will have the barest majority, rendered ungovernable by the lunatic likes of Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Green. The self-sabotage of an ungovernable Republican majority will all but guarantee that Democrats take back the House in 2024.”

— Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), quoted by Vanity Fair.

42% to 35%

— Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News that Donald Trump “was seriously considering” announcing a presidential bid before the midterms.

— Hillary Clinton, in a speech to Democratic activists.

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

— Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, distancing himself from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ apparent flip-flop on the war in Ukraine, on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

“The idea of Tucker Carlson being in that mob that day and not wetting his pants is hard to imagine.”

— Anderson Cooper, on CNN, criticizing the Fox News host’s attempt to re-write what happened on January 6.

“One of the things we learned post-Trump presidency is that he had ordered a bombing of a couple of fentanyl labs, crystal meth labs, in Mexico, just across the border and for whatever reason, the military didn’t do it. … I think that was a mistake.”

— House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) told Fox & Friends that it was too bad that Donald Trump didn’t launch a military attack on Mexico to try to stop drug traffickers.

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

— Donald Trump, in a speech at CPAC.

“Trump, allies say, seems set on ‘Ron DeSanctimonious,’ even though others around him don’t think it’s a bullseye. Some of the new ideas the former president’s entertained: ‘Ron DisHonest.’ ‘Ron DeEstablishment.’ Or even, ‘Tiny D.’”

— Bloomberg

Numerati

21

Twenty-one members of the South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty, Rolling Stone reports.

37

11.6%

Hate crimes in the US surged 11.6% in 2021, with the largest number motivated by bias against Black people, followed by crimes targeting victims for ethnicity, sexuality and religion, the FBI said in a report. The FBI reported hate crime incidents rose to 9,065 in 2021 from 8,120 in 2020.

80%

— John Ellis

311,000

“U.S. hiring grew solidly but cooled some in February as employers added 311,000 jobs, while unemployment rose to 3.6%,” the Wall Street Journal reports.