Elephants and Jackasses...

It’s ultimately a game with rules and republicans have figured out how to win at it. It’s like people don’t realize that even stupid people get a vote. You have to get the stupid people on your side.

 

We've really only been thru two full presidential election cycles where the Republicans fielded a truly and completely platform-less shithead*. Whether you agreed with Republicans in 2012 and before is neither here nor there. We're not dealing with the same thing we were less than 12 years ago. So this is relatively new.

And saying things like this it's like you want American politics to go further down the shitter.

*And trump had a platform in 2016, it just kinda sucked.

 

I don’t think Trump himself is smart enough to understand the rules and laws of elections to know how to circumvent them. But I think he works with people who want to. The fake elector scheme comes to mind. January 6th is the dumber but still dangerous attempt to prevent democracy from prevailing. And I think it came closer to succeeding than people think.

Saying Trump is end of democracy might be hyperbolic to a degree. But I don’t pretend that the modern iteration of the Republican Party actually believes in free and fair elections. After all, most of the indictments for various voter fraud is coming from republicans around the country. They won’t even commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election.

 

You can compare their "platforms" at NewsNation. I think they update it regularly:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/trump-harris-political-views/

According to allsides.com, NewsNation is pretty much center.

 

That's totally worked in one of the last four presidential elections. Come on, man.

 

people will hate them for any reason or no reason

The more I hear Kamala speak, and the more I learn about her, the more I like her. There's nothing wrong with shutting the fuck up and being more calculated while your opponent is making mistake after mistake, but for some reason people are holding that against her.

 

When are you hearing her speak? I watched a well rehearsed DNC speech and her Walz announcement, just like the rest of you. What else has there been? I'd be surprised of there's more than 2 hours of her speaking in front of a camera since Biden dropped out. An hour of that is probably the same rally speech, three times over, it's mostly fluff.

Tell you what, if you can find one campaign promise she has made that Joe Biden didn't promise four years ago... I'll put a Harris Walz sticker on my truck and ride around till election day. It can't be something to do with trump. Has to be something she's promised to fix about this country

It's OK for people in the middle to be equally disappointed in both parties, even if for different reasons.

 

here ya go

oh and just today, here's her plan to combat the housing issues and reduce inflation

She strikes me as a bit more moderate and considered than Biden, though admittedly if she were to just continue along the same arc I would be 100% fine. Biden is/was a good man, he was just way too old for the job, but his administration as a whole did a lot of good. I honestly don't want her to be that much different.

 

I thought we were talking about speeches, but OK. Biden did promise to reduce housing costs in his campaign. Yet, people couldn't buy houses fast enough when he campaigned, with the largest spike in average price happened well into Biden's presidency. Build Back Better originally tried to throw 170 billion dollars at creating affordable housing, but it was left out of the final bill. The inflation reduction act came along in 2022, I think, because inflation wasn't shit when he campaigned in 2020.

 

You asked for campaign promises, I linked to those. For speeches, there's tons of them on youtube from her various rallies. Please stop moving the goalposts, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. Gave you what you asked for though.

 

I still think you gave me crap. The only thing that might be new is that $25000 housing crap, but it's just different way to throw taxpayer money at it than they tried with BBB. And, not wanting to defund the police. It's all the same shit, different person spewing it.

Biden promised to double immigration judges and staff. Source Politifact Biden promise tracker.

The other sections of that article, Isreal and Ukraine, are not applicable to this because those issues didn't exist during the 2020 campaign.

 

I want to be clear, I'm not arguing that people vote against Harris. I'm just pissed at both parties for everything that has gone down since about 2015.

And if anyone thinks I deserve rock the Harris sticker, I will, as I said.

 

That's a pretty disingenuous headline from Axios. Harris said she would sign the bipartisan border bill that was negotiated with Lankford, but tanked by Trump because he doesn't want the Biden administration to have a win on immigration. That bill was always a compromise in which Democrats were acceding to some Republican demands in order to get a more comprehensive solution. $650 million on already-appropriated fencing is a far cry from the $25 billion Trump asked for to build several thousand mile medieval wall (which was never going to stay at only $25 billion). Supporting compromise legislation is bog-standard legislating, and Harris is a former Senator.

 

Obama, Biden and Harris have all been pretty centrist. Some of that is attributed to the right being moved dramatically, but they aren't exactly wildly liberal platforms.

The actual left is pretty neglected in terms of representatives, and it's technically led by folks like Bernie Sanders and AOC. I think it's a little debatable if they'd be center or left in any comparable system, but suffice to say the far left isn't nearly as potent as the far right.

Trump's movement dies before 2028, one way or another. The Democrats are confronting a major lurch left, as the boomers stop being the major voting bloc and that emphasis shifts to Millennials, who are far less conservative. The trend that they move right as they age simply isn't the case. Also, there's more than even odds that the GenZ voter turnout is far higher than historic precedent. The participation seems to be increasing, and my hope is that the gerrymandered districts don't dissuade people from voting, even if it doesn't change the outcome. This puts the Democrat strategies at a disadvantage. The GOP knows who will be voting for them in 2028 right now, more or less, and they know what those wedge issues will be, more or less. The Democrats do not.

So, the Democrats have to cement Harris now, for the next 8 years, or they will be confronting a far-left pendulum swing that has no historic precedent, is a precise reaction to the far right swing since 2010 or so, and led by a voting bloc that absolutely detests the establishment, which is one of the things that put Trump in office in the first place. That detestation comes from candidates like Biden and Hillary. If Harris loses, then this Democrat establishment washes out with her, and we're all in a version of Handmaid's Tale.

If she wins, there's at least a chance of keeping some of the status quo all the way to 2028. Neither party will lurch further left under Harris, which is the only thing they care about. The Bernie's and AOC's serve their purpose, but every time there's been a left-wing movement, it's been a nightmare, usually splitting the Democrat ticket. If there was a serious left-wing party surge, it'd tank the stock market without actually getting any electoral victories, much less legislation.

For example: I think this is the last election a Dem gets anywhere without universal healthcare being part of the platform. This is what I mean when I say lurch left. The next generation of political activism is VICIOUS, their version of intolerance is predicated on ridiculing the absurd status quo ("Why does a gun advocate have better protection from being shot at than 2nd graders?"). Millennials as the primary voting bloc will have some growing pains, and the prevailing wisdom that the GOP will be on its heels after a loss is true to a point, but they won't be unrecognizable in 2026. They'll pick up some hippies, lose some of the Trumpier elements of their platform and come up with ways to play on Harris' unpopularity as an incumbent.

Harris is a viable candidate because defending against a Trump victory is existential.

Yes, he is a fucking threat to democracy. Period. No hyperbole. No rhetoric. No exaggeration. Trump is a threat to our democracy.

Harris beating him by playing defense seems to be the path. The issue is what happens next? 2026 is probably a bit of a shit-show, as both parties figure out how to move away from the MAGA movement. The Democrats have no bench, and the GOP have an unending parade of Bush family members, Trump remnants, Fox personalities and literally hundreds of qualified, successful governors, reps, senators, etc. that can get through a primary to win a nomination....they just haven't succeeded in seizing the reins of the movement yet. The Dems have...Newsome, and a handful of quietly popular state and local reps. There's not a current Dem Senator I can think of getting the primary nod, in part because they are too precious to lose and risk being replaced by a GOP rep. They are wildly susceptible to an AOC-esque run, and they know it. Harris now buys them 8 years to build a bench.

 

I wonder what Newsome's game plan is. I get why he didn't step in front of a the first female POC running but if she wins, that means he can't run for 8 years. And assuming Harris wins again in 2028, a party winning back to back is pretty rare.

I'm no Gavey fanboy, but man, I really wish he was running. He'd humiliate Trump so bad, that hopefully Trump would crawl into whatever hole and just disappear.

 

This seems a bit obvious, but he could just govern California. If he can successfully tackle homelesness and the cost of housing from the state level, he would be able to, with all honesty, campaign on being responsible for the most successful state in the country, and the embodiment of the American Dream on the Golden Coast.

 

Well, what's he waiting for? He's been Gov since 2019. Homelessness has skyrocketed just as much as home prices have.

But obviously I was referring to his quest for the White House.