Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped āwars with France,ā after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to āclose the deal.ā
ā¦
Letās review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews ā so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews ā so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies ā so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate.
Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.
Not sure exactly what youāre referring to, but if youāre referring to the Fox News interview, I think she addressed trans rights as well as she possibly couldāve toā¦a Fox News audienceā¦without completely losing them.
I call BS.
Thatās too strong a statement. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal, gave an entire speech about climate change at COP28 and again this past July, and has an entire āLower Energy Costs and Tackle the Climate Crisisā section on her issues page. On top of that, actions speak louder than words, and the one meaningful action she can wield as VP - casting tie-breaking Senate votes - was used to enact the Inflation Reduction Act, which works in a meaningful way to combat climate change.
Idk what your metric for āmeaningful wealth redistribution isā but the kind of āwealth redistributionā many middle Americans want is the kind where they can afford to start a new family, and/or afford their first home, and/or afford to start a new business. All of those have been addressed explicitly by Harris and her policy plan, and they go meaningfully beyond what we have now. Your other comment that sheād āraise the top marginal tax rate by 5% or whateverā makes it sound like thatās literally the only action sheād take to make the lives of middle-class people better.
Youāre not outright saying sheās weak on abortion, b/c I think you and I both know she isnāt - she is clearly far more outwardly pro-choice than Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbVPee2UdJk
https://therealnews.com/as-democrats-fold-to-the-gop-immigrants-pay-the-price
https://www.newsweek.com/dnc-2024-immigration-border-daca-kamala-harris-1942685
https://whyy.org/articles/harris-climate-energy-policy-domestic-oil-drilling/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/11/kamala-harris-fracking-gas-climate-change/
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/kamala-harris-economic-plans-verdict
https://fortune.com/2024/10/01/harris-economic-plan-middle-class-discontent-politics/
Youāre missing the point. Its NOT ENOUGH to be marginally better than Trump. You need to present a coherent alternative worldview, which she is failing to do by running to the center and saying as little as possible. What has she offered besides vague rhetoric on this? Is she going to end the fillibuster to restore abortion access? Is she going to reign in the extremest Supreme Court? Are they finding creative solutions with the FDA to regulate mifepristone? Will she proactively use the powers of the presidency to save lifes or is she going to talk about how important it is to codify Roe and then never do it?ā
I appreciate the sources but cāmon dude, you could at least format stuff a bit.
First off, to your immigration sources: theyād support a claim like āDemocrats are appealing to conservatives on immigration policyā, not āDemocrats ran to the right of fascists on militarizing the borderā. Thatās a BS exaggeration.
To your link to Harrisā interview: She was asked if she trans people should have broad gender-affirming care access. Her answer was āI believe that people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. Iām not going to put myself in a position of a doctorā. Thatās a 2-for-1 answer - ādecisions should be left to doctors and patientsā + āTo any conservatives listening, thatās not just my belief, thatās the fucking lawā. Saying āShe just got on national TV and refused to support trans rightsā is completely inaccurate.
To your economic sources: sure, those are food for thought. Hereāre some more:
Nobel Laureate Letter of endorsement for Harrisā Economic Plan Perspective of former US Treasury Chief Economist Perspective by Economic Professor at University of Regensburg Perspective by NHC Perspectives of various other economists
Her implementation of the plan will matter more than whatās on paper, but thatās true of virtually any other economic plan she could propose. In any case āsheās not going to meaningfully redistribute wealthā is still a matter of what you define as āmeaningfulā, and I assert that your definition is different from that of the average middle American.
To your climate sources: All this is saying is that drilling may likely go up under Harris. If that were all that mattered, I bet youād say Biden āisnāt committed to climate changeā either, since oil went up under him too. And Iād disagree, because what matters isnāt just reducing dirty energy production, itās about accelerating clean energy production. So again, BS exaggeration.
> What has she offered besides vague rhetoric on this? Is she going to end the fillibuster to restore abortion access? Is she going to reign in the extremest Supreme Court? Are they finding creative solutions with the FDA to regulate mifepristone? Will she proactively use the powers of the presidency to save lifes or is she going to talk about how important it is to codify Roe and then never do it?
What a loaded last question. āAnd never do itā like sheāll choose not to sign roe codification into law if given the chance.
Yes, I know thatās probably not what you meant, but your only legitimate questions are the filibuster question and the āreigning in questionā (The FDA already approves mifepristone, expanding approval doesnāt mean jack if the SC knocks it down).
To both those statements, to your entire post as a whole, and to this little quote in particular:
> Youāre missing the point. Its NOT ENOUGH to be marginally better than Trump. You need to present a coherentĀ alternative worldview, which she is failing to do by running to the center and saying as little as possible.
I say: youāre the one missing the point, by ignoring the context of the thread you started. You opened with your opinion on why Trumpās fascism appeals to people, and you claim she has to give an āalternate worldviewā to turn people away from that.
You canāt seriously think Harris could sway those people by talking about ending the filibuster, or reigning in the SCOTUS. Nor will she sway those people by talking more strongly about resolving the climate crisis, about protecting trans rights, about supporting abortion, about chilling out on illegal immigrants, etc. There is practically no one who wants her to take stronger left-leaning stances on all those things AND will vote for Trump instead. I only say āpracticallyā because if the odds of that were say, 1:100mil, then hey, maybe a couple voters will do that. Everybody else? Not bought into Trump at all.
If you really do honestly feel Harris needs to go way farther left, then youāre just projecting what YOU want onto the people who are okay with Trumpās fascism.
Itās literally not. They ran to the right of what Republicans wanted. There are countless articles talking about how it was everything and more than Republicans wanted and they only turned it down over politics. I can find literally dozens of these articles:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-border-bill-wrong/
https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/5/24062710/senate-immigration-bill-border-security-ukraine-2024
She literally got up on national TV and when was asked a direct, completely basic question about whether or not she supported trans peoples most fundamental issues, deflected, dodged and refused to give a vocal endorsement of their rights. You can not be serious with this answer, you know how bad this looks. Literally all she had to do was say āI support trans rightsā or any other generic statement but she didnāt because she thinks trans people are a liability to her campaign and sheās hard pivoting to the right.
Haha, incredible. Do you think that Biden IS committed to climate change? Like in a meaningful, taking it as seriously as the end of the world doomsday scenario it is? His administration straight up lied about āno new drillingā. They laughed at the Green New Deal. Democrats are all talk on the environment.
Will she prioritize it? Or will she pull an Obama who had the chance to do it but said āIt wasnt the highest priorityā? You think itās just gonna land on her desk with a wave of a magic wand? Will she FIGHT for it? Or are we getting another āI think we should obey the lawā in a couple years.
Itās about more than one single issue. Its about having a defined set of values that you care about and can be held accountable to. Being āNot Donald Trumpā isnāt that. You know why most Americans like Bernie Sanders? (Yes even the conservatives who scream about socialism) Because heās been saying the same shit for 30 years. You donāt have to worry about him going up on a stage and wonder if heās going to suddenly backtrack on Medicare for All with some āI think we should follow the lawā non-answer. He has values that he expresses, even when theyāre unpopular. Do you even really know what Kamala believes in? Or is she campaigning on whatever happens to be polling at 51% or better? For better or worse we all know what Trump believes in.
No youāre not going to flip any single voter by saying you want to end the fillibuster or any given single policy issue. You get them to flip by demonstrating a clear set of values and sticking to them, so that when they have doubts about fascism they can look at the other side and know what it stands for. They know that thereās a moral argument to be made for any of these policy decisions because the democratic leadership has spent every opportunity to educate about them.
These people are inundated with propaganda 24/7. If all they hear from the right is about how immigrants are rapists who steal our jobs and are flooding the border like a zombie apocalypse movie, and then they go to the left to see that the Democrats kind of agree but think we should only deport 50% of the immigrants instead of 100% of them and want the border to be only slightly more lethal, what conclusion do you think theyāre going to draw? Imagine for a second we had democratic leadership that werenāt straight up cowards and NOW when undecideds look to the left they hear about how the vast majority of illegal immigration is due to overstayed visas and the border is kind of a sham topic. Now they hear that the border is already the deadliest border crossing in the world by a large margin and making it 5% deadlier isnāt going to fix the issue. Now they hear that immigrants pay taxes into the system and donāt get them back out, and are the foundation of many of our industries that would collapse without them (thereās other issues here obviously). Now they hear about the cost of detaining and deporting people and they hear about what asylum means.
THATās what it means to present an alternate world view. If youāre offering people a choice between a Republican who is going to 100% deliver on fascism or a Democrat who barely knows what they stand for and is going to diddle around for 4 years and never make a coherent case for anything, or at best offers some Diet Republican policy, people are gonna just pick the fascist.
I canāt take you seriously. Not after you post a lazily constructed list of links, some of which are your response to me calling your border claim false, only for you then to be like āno actually wait here are more links for what I was actually trying to sayā, only for the links to still not back your BS that democrats went āto the right of republicansā. (If you wanna point at anything specific to actually attempt to make your point, then go for it, but if it doesnāt actually back you then stop wasting my time with this).
Also not after you again ignore the specific question she was asked (do you support gender affirming care) and the answer I already quoted her giving (yes, itās a matter between doctors and patients) so you can claim to know that the precise reason she used her words and not yours is āshe thinks trans people are a liability to her campaign and sheās hard pivoting to the right.ā
Not after claiming to believe that Biden doesnāt care about climate change - no wait, that maybe he does, but not āin a meaningful, taking it as seriously as the end of the world doomsday scenario it isā kind of way, as though the policy matching that intensity (shutting off all fossil fuel production tomorrow) isnāt a move thatāll DEFINITELY get Trump elected so he can steer us full speed ahead into a climate catastrophe.
Not after acknowledging yourself that āyouāre not going to flip any single voter by saying you want to end the fillibusterā but playing that off like itās just a random āgiven single policy issueā.
And certainly not after evoking Bernie Sanders as a positive figure, who is himself urging people to vote for Kamala.
The rest of your comment makes it very clear that youāre dug in, that you earnestly believe your projection onto all 70+ million people who are gonna vote for Trump, and that if Kamala was exactly the candidate you wish she was, that sheād magically sway people inundated with Fox News 24/7 because you have it all figured out.
Based on what youāve said I wouldnāt be surprised if you either intend to vote for Stein or De La Cruz, or just want to push other people to do that.