That’s been the running theory on the right for the right for a while now. Got exactly jack shit done they had both houses of Congress, two weak candidates in past two presidential campaigns, nothing but opposition and promises to the base. Easier to fundraise as the opposition party.
Tulsi is a pretty face but had some really shit opinions and questionable practices especially when it came to Assad. Not to mention she just got primaried and lost her seat in Hawaii. I really don’t get all the Gabbard love. It seems that more conservative leaning people liked her more than Democrats did. Everyone is shitting on Harris a lot right now mostly for her record as AG of California. I really don’t think it will hurt her as much. I also think her popularity was diluted a lot in the early primary because of the shear number of candidates. Everyone seems so concerned with likability when it comes to president and VP but no one seems to talk about competence. The current administration is entirely unlikable and grossly incompetent. Same bullshit used against Hillary and look where we are.
Or they're just dumb as shit and out of touch. If you're a politician, surrounded by other politicians, that's no different than any other echo chamber. They probably think the voting public doesn't know what they really want and we're the ones who are dumb as shit and out of touch. I don't just see it as a democrat issue though. Both parties suck, horribly. The republicans had two terms under Obama and one under Trump to get their healthcare plan lined up. You see anything? They actively support a president who is attempting to act like a dictator and who recently committed genocide on his own people (see: PPE and resources to red states only).
I think that the democrat strategy is to pick people who are attractive to republicans who are sick of the Trump Mcconnell crime family. They know that anyone who leans left is is voting for them because they recognize that the Republican party is an existential threat to America so they are hedging their bets and going with solidly status quo candidates.
Democrats voters are now feeling how Republican voters would feel when they put someone like Dole or Romney on the ticket. Just.... ugh. We’re fucked.
they would have been criticized for going far left, now they’re criticized for going toward the center. Only win that matters is in November though and I see no issue with it — this gets them there. It’s not “exciting” per se, but it makes sense.
"In 2011 and 2013, Trump donated twice to Harris for a total of $6,000. Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to her father, also gave Harris $2,000 just six years ago. When asked about the donations Tuesday, Pierson said they should prove once and for all that Trump is not racist. “I will note that Kamala Harris is a Black woman and he donated to her campaign so I hope we can squash this racism argument now,” she said." https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...ile-privately-acknowledging-her-appeal-393983 Well, shit y'all....problem solved. All you have to do is donate to Lady Obama or whatever 6 years ago and poof! You're not racist! https://www.politico.com/news/magaz...background-bio-biden-running-mate-2020-393885 "In June, her Wikipedia page was edited 408 times — far more than any other candidate on the shortlist –– in the span of three weeks, which people pointed to as a sign of her nomination as running mate (The Wikipedia page of Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, saw more activity than any other candidate). The edits, mostly made by one person, had scrubbed controversial information from her page, including her “tough-on-crime” record and her decision not to prosecute Steven Mnuchin for financial fraud in 2013." I think Biden is shooting for some history here as the first woman of color on a major party ticket, and the "lone black female Senator" make great bullet points, and the dog whistle logic of "a black female prosecutor that's tough on crime" might dispel some of the nonsense around "Biden wants to defund the police and have liberal anarchy in the streets." White people+tough on crime=racism (see Joe Arpaio), but Harris might not have that issue. However, I think Biden will be a single-term president, and Harris has a tremendous uphill battle to succeed him. I also think that letting Harris do all the debating will make for the most entertaining trash tv since Tiger King. Harris debating Trump would just be one step closer to having our political system merge with the WWE, and you could totally put that shit on pay per view, with Biden debating Pence (on key points such as "what size depends are you sporting, sonny jim" and "what Ford truck would Jesus drive?" or my favorite "why Jesus hates poor people, despite everything He said in that book of His") as the undercard. I would seriously consider breaking 11 years of sobriety to watch Kamala Harris go "If you're not racist, you ever grab a black woman by the pussy?"
Theyve been shooting for "historic" since Obama's stellar first campaign with decent to outright terrible results. Depends on how charismatic the candidate is. I really don't see Kamala as the same level as charismatic as Obama. Plus to the tough on crime aspect. Her open record of prosecuting PoC for petty crimes, and being glib about it, seems like the outright wrong pick at this very moment. Why I think you are hearing some moderate trepidation over this pick from the left. Klobuchar was heaved off the short list with extreme prejudice for this very thing, she just didn't happen to tick the PoC box. So far all Ive heard to counter this is "anything is better than Trump," see the two Innocence Project guys on Rogan last week, and the strategy is lining up with Hilldog's 2016 failure (Historic woman! In reality a flawed candidate this is just the better of two evils). I really don't see her being seen as some moderate pick to up the undecided given the rest of her record. Iffy strategy trying to court moderates and not turning of a number of your base. We'll see how she sinks into her new role. Im also thinking she'll be the face of the entire campaign from here on out too. Joe will stay holed up in his bunker and he can send her to make the rousing firebrand speeches.
I think most of the vp's during my lifetime: Bush, Quayle, Gore, Cheney and Biden were slightly further red/blue than the president themselves. Harris fits the bill of being a bit more liberal than Biden, I think, without the perceptions of the extreme left that an Abrams or a Warren would have invited. The last female VP nod (Sarah Palin) didn't go so well, and she became a ridiculous cartoon. Put a pin in that, because I think the "embarrassing reality tv show, and tabloid fecal matter" is going to be the future for a lot of the faces of this administration. Hell, Spicer already was on Dancing with the Stars. The death of irony will be when the former press secretary Sarah sad-face goes on "Biggest loser". I think Biden picked someone who covered all the areas he doesn't: person of color, female, left coast, aggressive, immigrant parents, etc. with some experience at the higher ranks. If you narrow it to "things Biden is not, yet has executive level experience", it's a pretty shallow pool. I think he also wanted someone he didn't have to rescue or defend, and Harris fits that bill. Lastly, I think the police violence issue and Harris' past will calm down. Trump will gain no traction by bringing that shit up: it happened on his watch, he fanned the flames, and still hasn't done a Goddamned thing to fix it, and he can't claim "they want to defund the police" when Harris has that law and order background. I agree it's not a good look for 2020, and she'll do some double-faced atonement for it. The real question is when will the officers who killed Michael Brown get acquitted. If that happens after Nov. 3rd, all clear. I'm curious to hear more about Susan Rice, it wouldn't surprise me if she didn't get the pick because of comparatively poor fundraising, elected vs. appointed, and hell, it's who Republicans openly advocated for. I think Stacey Abrams might have been a better fit, since the south is more of a battleground now, and California is safely blue (that said, the governor will appoint the next CA Senator, and is expected to find someone with similar attributes as Harris), but very limited executive experience from what I understand, plus no way Abrams brings dollars to the game the way that Harris did...one of the reason she ended her campaign early, so she could focus on fundraising. The strategy remains the same: keep the election a Trump referendum and cruise to an easy victory. Keep the ripples to a minimum, keep the details to a minimum, just make this a personality contest between Doc and President Biff, and let that do it. It's kind of mindblowing we're 80+ days away, and there's little else to vote on. I haven't heard anything significant from Trump on 2nd term priorities or policies, and Biden's are very moderate and vague. I think he watched Sanders and Warren get torn apart by trying to sell detailed policy to a public with no stomach for it (or attention span to understand it). Now that Harris is official, we'll probably get a "first 100 days" plan here in the next few weeks, and I would expect that to be pretty high-level, vague, and mention things like "let someone else run my Twitter account" and "listen to people smarter than me on their fields of expertise", "no pussy-grabbing" and "Not govern by Fox and Friends." For most of the folks in my circles, Harris as vp doesn't move the needle, and when you're leading by double digits, that's what you'd want. To KK's point: I think the strategy isn't "bring over undecided voters", because...well, who the FUCK is on the fence right now? I think the strategy is more salted earth: you're leading by double digits, so don't put a VP pick in place that will make you bleed voters, and not someone who's so controversial the opposition will rally voters to vote against. Biden's thinking here is far more "bland, so Trump voters stay home, yet agreeable enough that it doesn't cost me from my double digit lead". The real issue of Harris in the executive office gets sailed on to 2024, which is foolish, but understandable when you're living in the dumpster fire that is 2020.
I think we’ll see an election not decided by the historical undecideds but a new undecided if they are going to vote at all for their chosen side. You turn off enough base voters in swing states and the race could be a lot closer than it appears. I’m also vary weary of these double digit lead poles at the moment. There was a definite under reporting of support for trump in 2016 because of social pressure. The social pressure has gone up by a thousand percent. Only my die hard trump friends on social media will openly talk about him. Everyone else doesn’t want the hassle of dealing with it on social media. I see less than a tenth from my average right leaning friends than I used to. Add to that the personal level doxxing I’ve seen go on since the George Floyd protest by my left leaning friends has gone from zero in my life to now numerous by a handful of them. I know the left’s articles want to claim cancel culture isn’t a threat to your everyday schmo who isn’t a celebrity but the changes I’ve seen a whole lot more people are going to clam up.
It's generally a safe bet to discard all outlier polls (Biden is not up 13 points in Florida), but a good aggregator like 538 handles that for you. I think the idea that there was a ton of "silent support" for Trump is mostly a myth; the national polls were quite accurate, and there were a few state level polls that were subpar in regions that Trump happened to win by razor thin margins, which made the effect seem a lot bigger than it was. The polls also shifted significantly in the last few days of the run up to the election as a result of the Comey letter, which moved the polling data from "this is a Clinton lock" into "this is within the margin of error and could go either way." The polls definitely caught this shift, but the pundits (lazy SOBs that they are) mostly missed it.
I also don’t think Trump gained any new fans over the last 3.5 years. His win in the Great Lakes was something like 20k votes in each state which overall isn’t that much. If he’s lost even a couple percentage points of that support, he’s lost.
I think it comes down to the Big 10 states. You win 3 or 4 of those Midwestern rust belt spots its yours.
Biden basically has two paths: the Northern route and the Southern route. The Northern route was Clinton's strategy, and if Biden can rebuild the blue wall by retaking Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, he's got the win. The Southern route is if he abandons the rust belt but picks up Arizona (which has been trending blue these last many years) and Florida. There are other states he can win, but it's likely that if he wins those, he's already reached the threshold through one of the two above routes.
There's also the third long-shot route of Texas. If he wins that, all hell breaks loose in the Republican camp.
I think a lot of the long-shot states like Texas and SC are not really in danger for the GOP as much as the reporting is using polls to make them more resource-intensive. It's hard to win in Florida if you are forced to spend time and money in Texas to avoid losing. Lindsey Graham would be of more use to the party elsewhere, but he's now fighting off Jamie Harrison at home. A $30m Senate campaign in SC, on a seat Strom Thurmond held for several lifetimes is crazy as hell to me, even more so that a Democrat has tied him in the polls with $29m raised. I don't think Biden is counting on long-shots. I think a lot of those states will end up with some surprisingly purple districts all of the sudden, especially at a local level, but once the bad taste of Trump is washed out of the electorate, they will revert back to red.