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Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Second 2024 Republican Primary Debate Thread" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. That this thread was the most active yesterday is a little surprising given that it was only created at 8:30 pm. It managed 11 pages of posts in just a few hours. I didn't watch the debate and don't have it in me to read all of the posts in this thread. If what I see on the first page is any indication, the thread is probably not worth my time, or anybody else's for that matter. The first thing I noticed was a Nikki Haley shill. The poster authored one of the first responses saying that Haley had done a great job. Two posts later, the same poster wrote to say that he was 69 years old and had never seen a candidate as strong as Haley. In the very next post, the poster responded to his own post to say that he is 49 years old and agrees. From this we can conclude that Haley is winning the vote of sock puppets between the ages of 49 and 69. I'll leave the question of whether that is a key demographic to others. It also looks like the moderators got more attention from posters than most of the candidates. The very first post of the thread pointed out that collectively the candidates participating in the debate represent only 36 percent of the polling average. If they were a single person, former President Donald Trump would be beating them in polling by 20 percentage points. As a result, it is not clear what these candidates are hoping to achieve. They may be running for second place or hoping to be chosen as Trump's running mate. But, in some cases, both of those goals seem pretty unobtainable. For instance, I don't think Chris Christie has much chance of either. One issue that seems to get a lot of attention in the thread is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' position regarding Mexico. Apparently he wants to send US armed forces into Mexico, a position about which posters were divided. Some posters were actually supportive of the idea of going to war with our southern neighbor. This highlights a big difference between the dynamics of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Among Democrats, pressure is always placed on candidates to show that they are moderate and willing to compromise with their opponents. In the Republican Party, candidates are incentivized to out extreme each other.