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Post by Webster on Jan 22, 2024 16:09:39 GMT -5
(The Guardian) DeSantis's exit winnows Republican race down to just two candidatesIt was only a few weeks ago that Republicans looking for an alternative to Donald Trump had a veritable cornucopia of big-league politicians to choose from. But, with the exception of Nikki Haley, all of them have dropped out, and yesterday, a big name announced his exit: Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who once seemed like the best bet to unseat Trump from the helm of the Republican party. His downfall was a mediocre second-place showing in Iowa last Monday, despite pouring everything his campaign had into winning the first state to vote in the GOP nomination process. There was clearly not backup plan for DeSantis, and yesterday, he announced his exit from the race with a video posted on X that included a fabricated Winston Churchill quote. In it, the Florida governor takes one last jab at Trump, who has spent the past months pummeling him with insults, most notably the nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious”. DeSantis nonetheless endorsed Trump as he exited the race, and later on Sunday, the former president said the nickname was being retired. Here’s what DeSantis had to say:
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Post by Webster on Jan 22, 2024 16:13:08 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Money, endorsements, poll numbers: Ron DeSantis had it all, and then he lost it. Was it taken from him by the 800lb gorilla of the Republican party Donald Trump, or did he cause his own downfall? The Guardian’s David Smith untangles the question, and finds that it’s a little bit of both: It began in a glitch-filled disaster on Twitter. It ended with a misattributed quotation on X. Just like Elon Musk’s social media platform, efforts to rebrand Ron DeSantis’s US presidential election campaign could not mask its fundamental flaws.
When in May the Florida governor announced his run during a chat with Musk on Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio streaming feature, there were technical breakdowns that drew comparisons with one of Musk’s space rockets blowing up on the launchpad.
Eight months, dozens of staff departures, tens of millions of dollars and one crushing defeat in Iowa later, DeSantis announced he was dropping out in a video posted on the renamed X that quoted Winston Churchill as saying: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal – it is the courage to continue that counts.” According to the International Churchill Society, the British wartime prime minister never said that.
Two days before the New Hampshire primary election, DeSantis’s humiliation was complete. “This is probably the biggest collapse of a presidential campaign in modern American history, if not all American history,” David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida, told the MSNBC network on Sunday. “Ron DeSantis had everything going for him.”-Read more: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/21/ron-desantis-republican-presidential-candidate-dropped-out-analysis
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Post by Webster on Jan 22, 2024 16:23:16 GMT -5
(The Guardian) There are reportedly some shenanigans happening in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary, though what they amount to is unclear. NBC News reports that Granite state residents are getting robocalls from a fake voice that sounds like Joe Biden and encourages them not to vote tomorrow. The president’s name is not appearing on the ballot in New Hampshire, after the Democratic National Committee opted to make South Carolina the first state in its nominating process. However supporters of the president are encouraging people to write in Biden’s name on their ballots, as a way to show their support and try to win back the state’s spot in the nominating process. In previous years, New Hampshire was the second state to vote after Iowa for Democrats. The robocalls concluded by giving people the phone number for Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic party chair who is supporting the write-in campaign. She believes the calls’ intention is to hurt Biden, NBC News reports, and that they are illegal. “I want them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible because this is an attack on democracy,” she told NBC. “I’m not going to let it go. I want to know who’s paying for it? Who knew about it? Who benefits?”
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Post by Webster on Jan 22, 2024 16:24:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden won’t be on the ballot in New Hampshire, but two long-shot Democratic candidates will be, while opponents of Israel’s invasion of Gaza are encouraging voters to write in “ceasefire” as a show of protest. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt on some of the lesser-known aspects of the state’s primary tomorrow: While Donald Trump and Nikki Haley might draw focus, a shadow presidential primary is taking place in New Hampshire, where Joe Biden could stumble at the first hurdle of his bid to run for president again in 2024 following an internal Democratic party feud.
As a consequence of the party scrap, Biden’s name will not even appear on the ballot in the Granite state on Tuesday. While the president remains the favorite to win his party’s overall nomination, his absence here has opened a window for Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020, to mount longshot presidential bids.
The pair have spent weeks campaigning in the state, pitching different visions for the future. Phillips, 55, has touted his reputation as a centrist; his record of working with Republicans to get things done; and the fact that he is 26 years younger than Biden.
Williamson, who withdrew from the 2020 race before the Iowa caucuses, is selling more of a deviation from the current administration. A progressive, she would introduce free college tuition, declare a climate emergency and Department of Peace which would be tasked with avoiding war abroad and tackling white supremacy at home.
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