The Great Talon'd One does about as good a job as you can in 20 minutes making the argument as to why you shouldn't vote for Trump regardless of your politics:
I'd like to think that if the Left put a charismatic person on the ticket, that people who are moderate Republicans would feel ok voting for a Dem but yeah, you're probably right. *sad face* I get Trump's popularity in 2016 but I cannot understand the grip he still has on people 8 years later. I could also get people voting for him because he's a Rep and they would never vote for a Dem but it's not even that. They look up to him as some sort of savior and give him a free pass on all the batshit crazy shit he says.
That's true for the people who are Trumpers (which is a cult) but there are plenty of moderate Republicans who would have willingly voted for a good Democratic nominee. I agree with GTE on Newsom, he would have killed Trump in this election because he's charismatic and slick as hell. Kamala is going to lose votes because of her race and gender. It's sad as hell, but it's absolutely a fact. Add in that she's not a popular candidate (just like Hillary) and this is how we get a tight race despite one side having a complete POS candidate who is a threat to our democracy.
Newsom needs a full campaign; I don't believe he could have done it on the abbreviated timeline Harris had to work with. The dude just gives off such "sleezy car salesman" vibes that he glows in the dark. You really have to watch him beat the stuffing out of Republicans at debates/interviews for a while before you come around on him. It would take him a while to penetrate the national electorate (the double entendre there being exactly why he needs the time).
He would need to start moderating some of his positions now if he wants a shot in 2028. He's never going to make it out of the primaries if he doesn't lighten up on an overbearing regulatory environment and drop some of the nonsense social issues like schools not having to notify parents if their kids are transgender. I get that he was probably doing all of that to be in lockstep with the CA legislature, but not of that shit is going to play well at the national level. His core weakness is going to be having to explain why so many people are leaving his state. He's smart enough to address that, but again, he needs to lay the foundation for his campaign now. It should honestly be his to fuck up because there's zero Republican bench after Trump. My biggest issue with Newsom remains him having been married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. Like... why?
There is no GOP after Trump. That was Pence’s plan - to ride out 8 years of weird and have the torched passed to him, where he figured he could take it back to politics as usual. Didn’t work too well. Now, it’s Vance and whatever money is backing him figuring they can take the reins of the grift eventually. Same with Musk.
Calling it now, Musk is trying to inherit Trump's movement. I dunno if he can legally be president, but that is 100% the plan.
Also, I'm genuinely baffled by the questions around Harris' qualifications. She's the vice president. Like....how much closer to being president can you actually get?? I think the job of president is just too big. There's the popularity contest of it, there's the policy piece and there's the actual coordination and leadership of our government. It's impossible to nail all three of those, and it's increasingly frustrating that one nominee is held to actual standards of accountability, while the other is free to make up whatever bullshit he feels like and it somehow is called "balanced". This is an impossible job, and the type of people drawn to do it either seem to be complete fucking sociopaths who lie about the impossibility of it, or pragmatic over-achievers with serious liabilities in one aspect of their candidacy....and the idea that that's a fair choice is increasingly absurd.
lol, the same questions came up about Dan Quayle. I think he was the first to announce in the 2000 election? And, in the Iowa straw poll he finished behind George W. Bush (who wasn't even there) and Steve Forbes.
I know a lot of people, from multiple states, who would vote against Newsom simply because he's from California. Took a good bit for Kamala to distance herself from that, and even use some of that as a strength, but she had to put in work to reframe it in the public discourse. As you said, Newsom would have to start NOW. To your point about people leaving the state, where I live I swear at this point half my neighbors are California transplants. Granted, they're good people and I have less than zero problem with them moving here -- unlike those "don't California my Texas" twits -- especially when they bring all their money and friendliness with them. So what you said is absolutely not an exaggeration. However, the narrative is that they're driving up the costs elsewhere. In reality, I see the rising costs of houses more as a factor of corporations buying them for rentals and such, as well as just general inflation and COL.
Agree, the narrative that Californian transplants are driving up housing costs is nonsense. So is the narrative that immigrants are driving up housing costs. That might be true in Canada, but I'm not aware of any hard data to really support that and it certainly isn't true in the US. Corporations are buying up housing likely as a hedge for a potential commercial real estate crash and the US will probably be in an economic period that there aren't many existing models for. Record low unemployment and high capital/labor demand but also record high costs of capital (loans/credit) are two factors are usually intertwined, but we just don't really know whats going to happen when they exist independently. Newsom or anyone else looking for a shot at the big job would be wise to get their arms around that because the back half of the 2020s is going to be economically chaotic.
As someone who left the state, it's 100% about housing costs. And those costs result from a combination of desirability, bipartisan NIMBYism, and Reagan-era tax fuckery.
the narrative around immigrants is the absolute WORST. People think they're driving up crime rate. Yeah you know what's a great idea? Sneak into another country then commit all the crime, that'll help you lie low! People think they don't pay taxes. They pay taxes on everything they buy, and on their income. The IRS doesn't give a flying fuck on your status, they just want theirs. Know how I know that? I have two relatives who went to jail for not paying their taxes (sovereign citizen bullshit). People think immigrants are taking their jobs. As I've mention on here before, the main thing that I do most days is filter through applications and conduct interviews. I do that because we have more job openings than great applicants to fill them. People do not want to stay at a job long enough to see if they like it or not (I'm talking 2-3 months most), and are quick to move onto the next shiny thing. Because even without work, even worst case scenario they are living at true US "poverty" levels, that quality of life is still an aspirational thing to people from many other countries. You know who's more than happy to stick with something until it's finished? People who have the moral understanding of what it's like to actually deal with some real shit. Further, they take jobs that we don't want, because it gives them the work/life balance that they do. A true 9-5, mindless, clock out and leave work at work, raise children they hope will have a better life than they did. These people moved here for the sake of their families, learned literally another language at adulthood, just in hopes of maybe having it all work out in the end. Some of the nicest people I've ever met have immigrated here from other countries -- and not just Mexico, but Ukraine, South Sudan, India, El Salvador, Somalia, I could go on. We're just afraid, as a society, to get to know them. /rant
The US has taken in more immigrants than any other country, and it's not even close. I'm fine with there being reform, and God knows the situation at the border is a nightmare because Congress refuses to pass legislation to address it. The rhetoric around immigrants needs to be split into 3 separate issues: integration, border crossings and actual immigration (visas). The border crossing shit is a nightmare, the integration is itself rife with issues (think requiring muslim women to remove headwear for id's, that sort of thing), and the visa issue has so many different stakeholders it's impossible to reform. As it's all lumped into one steaming pile, quite often with racism sprinkled on top, it's just impossible. You can't begin to address this stuff until the rhetoric stops being about isms, and I don't see that happening any time soon. Also, I think the climate refugee shit is about to kick into high gear, and the sooner we have a handle on it (as well as helping our neighbors handle it), the better.
I feel like America does integration better than almost anywhere else. The rest of the system may be a clusterfuck, but we turn foreigners into Americans like nobody's business. You'll read stories about entire neighborhoods of third generation immigrants in European countries being treated like total foreigners. Meanwhile I know a first generation Saudi immigrant who drinks hard liquor straight from the bottle and wears strappy leather bikinis at Burning Man. I believe that's what Sid Meier called a Culture Victory.
But if he’s successful in taking the reins from Trump and getting his supporters under his influence, that makes him a kingmaker. It’s like the next step in the literalization of the rhetoric. Republicans have been fighting against being seen as racist/sexist/xenophobic/stupid/etc. and so Trump came along and leaned hard into it. Now under Musk, they can lean into being the elite billionaire-funded racists/sexists/etc.
He just won't answer that like when he debated DeSantis. Was asked that question three different ways and dodged all of them. And yeah, Kimberly Guilfoyle is disgusting /s