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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 21
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
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I've wanted to make a high-effort post about this for a couple of weeks but I've been very busy with work and stuff in my personal life. If by some chance this actually generates a larger discussion I might come back and plug in some sources and examples to solidify my argument, but for now I'm just going to blurt out my take and leave it at that. Sorry in advance for the incoming stream of consciousness.
I've become increasingly convinced that Kamala Harris is going to lose the election to Donald Trump, and if I had to make a call today I'd say he's going to be elected again. Looking at the polls and how they compare to 2016 and 2020, Harris's only hope is that polling has become much more accurate.
Frankly, I'm baffled by the campaign strategy the Harris team has rolled out since the convention. She had tons momentum after assuming the nomination, then expanded on it by tapping Walz as her running mate. In the days and weeks after the swap, I said on various threads that the best decision the Democrats made was to excite their base. Harris was a massive upgrade from the ticking time bomb that was Joe Biden and Walz boasted a resume that featured meaningful policy improvements that were passed by slim margins. For the first time in years it seemed like positive change might on the table and I firmly believed that enthusiastic Democrats would pull enough undecided and apathetic voters over to deliver a victory. They even stumbled across an effective and popular message with the "they're weird" line.
Then the convention happened and they sprinted in the opposite direction. They abandoned "weird" and "we're not going back" for something about joy. They quickly moved away from talking about how progressive policies are neighborly. At the convention, they snubbed the uncommitted movement, which is the most gettable single-issue voting block that would effectively hand them Michigan, in favor of border patrol agents, cops, and former Republicans, then doubled down on Biden's deeply unpopular Israel positions. And perhaps worst of all, they punted on any sort of counter framing on immigration in favor of what's effectively "we are actually the ones that are going to build the wall." Why?
Over the past two months, I've watched a ton of Harris interviews and stump speeches, and while I can appreciate the philosophy behind message discipline, she is bordering on NPC territory with the same lines. I prosecuted transnational criminal gangs. Trump wants to run on a problem instead of coming up with a solution. We need an opportunity economy where everyone has a chance to compete and succeed. Small businesses, middle class, blah blah blah. The entire message seems hollow and she seems unable to tweak it during off the cuff interactions. It certainly works for those who are afraid of another Trump presidency, but that's clearly not the case for the country as a whole. She needed to offer something more. A vision, a promise, leadership - hell, spend more time talking about how batshit and ineffective the Republicans are. Just do something, give us something. Instead, it's pretty much a promise to maintain the status quo, which is crazy since most voters (off the top of my head I think it's about 65%) want change. It's like 2016 all over again, only this time it's worse because we know how chaotic a Trump presidency was. There are long stretches during her stump speech where it becomes really hard to differentiate her message from a pre-Trump Republican. That's what makes this whole thing so frustrating for me. They're not fighting for a vision, they're telling people what they think they want to hear. It's playing not to lose. If he wasn't still alive Herm Edwards would be rolling over in his grave.
I could go on but I'm tired and already well within rambling territory. Plus, only like three people are going to read this. I guess I just wanted to get this down for the record when everyone is posting think pieces about what went wrong a few months from now. And before anyone gets on my case, I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
Edit
You pay too close attention and are out of step with the median voter, who pays very little attention. This is confounding your ability to read the room accurately.
Basically almost everything you’ve said is inside baseball stuff you only notice if you spend a lot of time on political media. Most voters are not, and with marginal/undecided voters you’re lucky if they even know who the current Vice President is.
In fact, a decent amount of what you’re saying is stuff you only even register if you’re spending a lot of time on lefty political social media and looks like completely insane shit to anyone outside of it. The median voter is more likely to think that Harris is too far left than too far right. If you’re mad at her for acting on this is a fact then you’re functionally just mad at her for trying to win the election.
If the election unfolds exactly as 2020, then it’s basically a coin flip that will go based on how about 50,000-100,000 of the most checked out, disinterested people in the world feel that day and whether the weather is good in the districts that favor the right candidate. If you feel this election is in worse condition than that one then you need to critically interrogate the information environment you’re in. The people who haven’t decided who they’re voting for yet are the sorts of people who vote based on how much it cost them to full up their gas tank on the way to the polls. It is not going to come down to any theater criticism level deep analysis of Harris’ word choice or the fact that her stump-speech is a stump-speech.
Ugh, literally the one time I decided to leave my computer at work. Don't make me Google on my phone. I'm not going to Google on my phone.
I'm basing my prediction off of polling. The polls are considerably tighter in battleground states compared to 2016 and 2020. That's a big deal since Trump outperformed the polls both times. I mostly get those from NY Times, CBS, and CNN, by the way - not exactly the most lefty outlets. I don't know how else to read the room.
As for my analysis of why she is in worse shape despite the indictments, the insurrection, the chaos, etc., well, you kinda summed up for me:
I don't think her messaging does enough to address this, not in the stump speech, not in the town halls, not in the interviews. I highlighted those talking points because those are the ones I've heard most often since the convention.
I don't get why her team is so afraid of that. The median voter thinks a lot of things, many of them inherently contradictory. The median voter also wants change, access to healthcare, and affordable housing. You don't see the Harris campaign sprinting to those things the way they do with positioning her as a centrist or courting disaffected Republicans. It's like they forgot that Obama won and Clinton lost.
And while you've clocked me as someone left of the Harris campaign, I haven't offered any "insane" suggestions. I didn't talk about Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, or whatever. I know that stuff isn't popular. Perhaps it could be if a major political party actually advocated for them and explained the benefits for a couple of years, but that's a different conversation. Arguably the most controversial thing I've said is related to Israel, but I used that as an example of how she moved away from the base. I've talked about the potential benefits of moving away from Biden's Israel policy before in this comment and elsewhere in that thread, but I intentionally didn't bring that up here because (1) ship has sailed, and (2) I knew it would be met with this exact criticism. The main point I tried to make is that she moved away from her base of supporters, has mostly failed to message on things that will improve the lives of average citizens, and isn't well-liked or charismatic enough to skate by on vibes.
I gotta say, as much as I enjoy our little back-and-forth election disagreements, I'm a little frustrated that my close attention to the race is being held against me. I'm over here watching both candidates' stump speeches and skimming polls from Rassmussen to Blueprint. What am I'm supposed to do? Just trust that the Democrats are doing everything perfectly when they've mostly been outmaneuvered by Republicans since before I was born? Do I ignore the obvious differences between 2008, 2016, and 2020 and think this all about some sort of messaging moneyball voodoo? Disregard the long list of journalists and pundits I've grown to trust over the years for their accuracy and thoughtful analysis?
What exactly is my takeaway supposed to be? How do you account for the Harris campaign's failure to build a lead against 2024 Donald Trump and his merry little band of Nazi billionaires?
It’s not that complicated. 40% of the American electorate are fascists or fash-curious and another 20% are dumber than a bag of hammers. Institutional guard-rails to protect the electorate from itself have been steadily eroded since the post-Watergate era and now they’ve failed. So as a democracy we’re going to get what we deserve good and hard because a large chunk of our countrymen have had their brains melted by conservative news and social media and another chunk are simply too stupid and credulous to understand how anything works and force politicians to say stupid shit to get to a majority.
This conceit that there is some magical moral purity to be found in the electorate is nonsense politicians have to entertain because that’s their job, but this shouldn’t prevent the rest of us from seeing things clearly. An inability to grasp this fact leads to the wrong diagnosis and treatment plan. Things have nothing to do with anything Harris, who has stuck the landing on basically every big test and feat of strength has been thrown at her, is doing and everything to do with the failure of American institutions to curtail the rise of a neo-fascist movement.
And polling has been horseshit this entire cycle. Trump overperformed in 2020 because the Democrats literally did not do any GOTV due to COVID. Then the pollsters overadjusted their models to match the 2020 electorate because they’re terrified of missing yet again. The polling hasn’t been this bad (as in statistically full of noise and sampling issues) in the modern era despite what Nate Cohn will say.
You have those numbers reversed. Probably at most 15% fash, 45% dumber than my hammer bag. The stupid ones are remarkably evenly split between parties (if many can be meaningfully described as attached to a particular party instead of a blind "throw the bums out" or "he does right [wasteful pork spending] by my hometown")
There's also no incentive for me to answer those spam texts honestly, if at all. Even if I am honest, many of these pollsters and GOTV orgs think I'm a Wisconsin resident, despite not having lived there since before Trump won 2016's Electoral College.
I agree this is true. Did Watergate have a causal effect on the erosion, or was it just a coincidental and well-known reference point?
I think some changes happened on the American right after Watergate that led them to embark on a decades long project to make sure they’d never get penalized by a Watergate type scandal again. In the same way after the government slapped down Big Tobacco other conservative leaning American industries, like firearms and fossil fuel extraction, ramped up lobbying efforts, seeding friendly members into the judiciary, and media manipulation to make sure that level of public-interest regulation could never happen again.
I think the media was completely unprepared for the extent they were gamed into being tilted for Conservative industrial interests as a result. People often claim that it’s rigged for the GOP but I think that reverses the causality. I think the GOP got taken over by the faction of interest groups that the media was actually rigged for, and their control over the GOP has only gotten more and more firm over time. And now they’re extending their need for control over all aspects of political and civic life.
Edit: Hit enter too soon
I used to believe that, then I saw the poll showing 47% of Americans are pro rounding up “illegal immigrants” and putting them in “militarized camps” and I’ve come to believe that maybe this country just doesn’t have the baseline level of decency and neighborliness required to have a functioning democracy. It brought to mind this essay.
That is wild. This can't be true? Is that true? What exactly were the questions they asked?
From what I can tell this is that poll. And here's the relevant quote from the questionnaire.
Well, that's horrifying. So is a lot of that document.
While it doesn’t make things any better, those numbers start to make more sense when one considers the degree that the media has played up the issue of illegal immigrants more recently (Fox, etc have really been hammering this drum).
There’s also the bad tendency that we Americans have had for the better part of a century, where other parts of the world are seen as maybe ok, but not as freedom-loving (other similarly developed countries) or downright awful places that nobody should ever want to live (the remainder of the world). It inspires this worldview that encourages suspicion of anything or anybody foreign that isn’t loudly and clearly conformed to “traditional American values”. Throw that mentality into a social media echo chamber and the suspicion condenses into irrational hostility.
Yeah that’s the one. It’s grim stuff.
The real turning point is the council for national policy. They madterminded the conservative religious takeover of the judiciary.
I haven’t read about these polling issues. Any recommended reading?
This is a general summary (gift link).
In it he mentions this Nate Cohn article (gift link) that kind of tells you where the potential for a polling miss might be.
Nate Cohn has a couple of other articles about methodological changes and issues here (gift link) and here (gift link).
And then, this one is a bit more partisan but worth reading. It lays out an argument that right wing polling outfits are intentionally gaming news coverage by timing polling drops to disrupt news cycles and using “floating methodologies” (basically when making modeling decisions they will adjust the model in whatever way will maximize odds of favoring the GOP.) I’d take it with a grain of salt as the writer himself confesses he may just be coping, but it’s worth bearing in mind.
There’s lots of space to hope here, even if the data shows a coin flip. A few things to remember, the election being uncertain does not mean the election is close. It means the data we have to assess what will happen is garbage. That’s what “coin flip” means, not that the outcome could randomly go either way but that anyone betting on the outcome has a 50/50 chance of being right. Personally, in 2016 and 2020 the vibes felt bad and I was anxious in spite of the data. I told myself to trust the data and ignore my instincts. This time the data looks bad but my instincts tell me to be optimistic. I still tell myself to trust the data, but so much of it just doesn’t jive with what I’m seeing.
Granted, this could just be life changes, I have a kid now which I didn’t in 2020 so I simply don’t get out and socialize much. I work fully remotely for an office in a very red state where it’s very much not the culture to discuss current affairs at all, which was not what it was like for me previously. So partly I doubt whether my read on the pulse of things is as good as it used to be. I’ve also gotten off Twitter and Reddit mostly, so I’m just less exposed in general to right wing dipshittery. Youth culture activity has moved off the sorts of platforms I frequent and moved onto TikTok where I don’t spend time so I feel a bit blind to the trends compared to before and I don’t know if the better vibes I feel are due to filter bubble effects or due to genuinely better vibes. But my statistician brain is the dominant one and it’s telling me we have a lot more upside than the numbers suggest.
Thanks for the links! It seems like an interesting question: are polls getting worse, and if so, how much bias does this add? The trouble is, partisans always argue that the polls are bad, but they don't necessarily have a better alternative, and I'm not sure how much weight to put on this argument.
Here's Nate Silver's argument that the polls weren't that bad in 2020. For 2024, I don't think we will know for sure until after it's over and polls get compared to votes.
I don't quite understand what argument you're making here:
I guess you're saying that the polls could be better, and if they were, we'd be able to make better predictions. But that seems like a hypothetical? We can only use the information we have now. Whenever we're talking about probabilities, it's quantifying our own uncertainty. Even a coin flip could be predicted, in principle, if you understood the physics well enough. We usually don't, so it doesn't matter.
Perhaps someone could do a better job of predicting this election than the election forecasters, but I don't believe it. I'm assuming there aren't any better methods. Even if there were, it seems like it would be difficult to prove the new method is superior in time for this election. Someone could of course guess right, but "calling it" once doesn't prove anything. I would normally judge this sort of thing based on forecasters formally keeping track of how they do over multiple elections.
The election may or may not be "close" once the votes are counted, but if you can't say which side will have more votes, that's not useful now when making a prediction. It's still 50-50.
The amount of attention polls get, and the tendency to treat it as some sort of live scoreboard of public sentiment, is just an incorrect model of what polls are and what they’re for.
There are, they just take a lot more work and insider knowledge to work out. They only break down in a close campaign where it does come down to a few thousand votes in swing states, at which point nothing works as a prediction. But if there was actually a favorite you wouldn’t really need polls to tell you, the campaigns themselves would know it.
That doesn’t work because methodologies change over time.
What’s useful about making a prediction? Why is it so important that the ability to predict the outcome should overshadow all other aspects of the conversation, particularly important aspects like how will the outcome affect people?
Asking what predictions are for is a good question. My answer is that election predictions aren’t important when we have no decisions to make based on them. That’s true for most of us, since we aren’t professionals making strategic decisions for campaigns. For us, attempting to predict the results in advance is basically entertainment. We don’t need to know who is going to win until after the elections are over. Even then, they don’t take effect until January or even later for some ballot issues, so we have plenty of advance notice.
(With the exception of “strategic voting” where having a rough idea who has a chance will matter. And if you’re going to volunteer, knowing which states are swing states is useful. But these don’t depend on the details of who is ahead now.)
The trouble is, many of us get very caught up in watching elections and can’t live with uncertainty. They come up with reasons why they think they know what’s going to happen. (And post them on Tildes, where sometimes I will respond disagreeing.)
Some questions for you:
I’d say this is unhealthy, and likely to lead to severe misdiagnosis of underlying issues by over-interpreting minor response biases and statistical noise.
They should be in the back of the newspaper section presented as dry, tabular data like the stock page. They should not be the focus driving coverage. I’d rather they not exist at all than be used that way.
The other methods are what campaigns do. They incorporate polling as one datapoint to get a read on the terrain, but they also look at intangibles like excitement, the behavior and reactions of influential people in individual communities, the endorsements of political leaders, etc. In 2016, for example, lots of Democrats on the ground were seeing things they cited as troubling portents out of Michigan and Wisconsin but disregarded them because the polling didn’t corroborate it.
Policy analysis, as in evaluating the effects of actual policy proposals being put forward, is a far more scientific discipline than polling and has the effect of actually informing voters about the stakes of an election rather than just treating it like a team sport where you get to cheer for your guy.
Thanks for clarifying!
Although I think it’s inevitable that campaigns have signals other than polls and will want to adjust for them, they still rely heavily on polls, and it’s not at all clear to me that they are better at predicting their own chances than the election forecasters. (It seems like it would be a skill issue, and skill will vary - campaigns could very easily be fooling themselves.) Also, from the outside, we obviously can’t trust a campaign to tell us the truth, so it’s not a better source in practice.
So I think the healthiest thing for newspapers to do would just publish rough probabilities from election forecasters’ weighted adjustments of polls and leave it at that: “looks like it’s still an even race based on election forecasts. Just like last week.” When I feel the urge to check for the presidential election, I just check the probability on 538, and I try not to do it too often.
The campaigns themselves are working against this, though, with the hundreds of millions they spend on trying to get people to pay attention. And there are many millions of political junkies, which creates a demand for election news.
There is also a structural imbalance - way too much attention on the top races and relatively little on local elections, which are under-covered. Voters often have little idea who those people are.
Note that policy analysis often requires some sort of prediction of what laws a legislature will actually pass and we definitely don’t know that ahead of time. (As well as what court rulings there might be preventing a policy from going into effect.) I think that’s much harder to predict than election results, which are already pretty hard. We don’t know who will be making the decisions or what they will do, so we don’t know the stakes. But we have to make a guess anyway.
No attempting to predict the outcome while the event is still happening is a fool’s errand and a waste of time. Snapshots are useful for campaign strategy, but the news ought to be talking about the candidates character, policies, and proposals rather than dumb horse race coverage of polling.
And people, if they’re anxious, ought to be donating and volunteering instead of doomsaying over polling.
Well, that's one way to look at things. Once again, I'm in agreement with you for about 90% of what you're saying. The only difference is that, from the way I see it, you aren’t recognizing the agency or culpability Democrats have in all of this. It doesn't matter that they are the other major party in our two party system, it doesn't matter that the facts are on their side, it doesn't matter that 90% of Republicans vote against their interests, it doesn't matter that the overwhelming majority of Americans consume politics and news through non-traditional media. The country is moving right and Democrats have to concede and "say stupid shit" if they want to win. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. One that I think played a huge role in getting us to where we are today.
I find it interesting that you will acknowledge the fact that the guardrails have fallen off and that - for lack of a better word - shit is crazy, but then turn around and defend the Harris campaign for hiring old-school campaign strategists and running the most traditional, boring messaging strategy. You said it yourself, the game has changed, the field is fucked - why are we running the same playbook? Again, the excitement was there, they had enthusiastic foot soldiers talking about brat summer, Trump and Vance were weird, coconuts were falling out of trees from sea to shining sea, then poof back to the same old shit. It’s inexcusable.
I know, I know, I know - “Not real life” “left-wing bubble” “doesn't matter,” yadda yadda yadda. The fact is it's 2024 and social media plays a big role in elections. That was a reflection of the base. Those people were the door-knockers, they were going to spread the campaign message for free, they were the ones who were going to engage the low propensity voters and get them to come out. And they got shat on in pursuit of the Dick fucking Cheney endorsement.
This has nothing to do with “magical moral purity” or whatever. It’s about recognizing the fact that life has gotten harder for the majority of people. That was one of the key takeaways from the last time fascism swept through. You counter this by recognizing the problems and offer real, tangible solutions that make sense. Harris and the Democrats aren’t doing enough in that regard. As stupid as they are, Americans can still recognize that things aren't going great. Housing costs are out of control, grocery prices are up, traffic sucks, flights are always delayed, and when they aren't the plane falls out of the sky. At the end of the day, people just want things to be better. One party is blaming immigrants, the other party is pretending everything is pretty much fine. I don't know why it's so hard for you to see the problem with that.
Not playing that game. There is a common habit among liberals and leftists to act as if Democrats are the only entity in American political life with agency. How about we ascribe the blame where it actually belongs instead of pretending we could wish away all of our problems if “The Democrats” would just pick the hypothetically perfect candidate with a green lantern ring to manifest their wishes into reality.
It is not. The Democratic senate in 2008 had, like, 10 guys to the right of Joe Manchin. The NLRB hasn’t been as active as it is now since before Nixon. It only “moves right” if you decide to pick specific individual issues that have regressed while ignoring the big picture.
They are not running a traditional or boring messaging strategy, they’re just not running a strategy designed to appeal to you. There is a difference. This is the first election cycle where the Presidential candidate has prioritized non-traditional media and more-or-less ignored the mainstream prestige media to get their message out. There’s nothing traditional about it, you’re just mad that they’re trying to get the votes of centrist and habitual Republicans instead of hardcore progressives and leftists. But, unfortunately, you need to win 53% of the vote to win an election and that means outreach beyond you and people who think like you.
This is called trying to win an election. You message differently for late breaking undecideds and low-engagement voters than you do for people who pay attention to politics before October. Once again, it’s not for you because you are not the center of the universe.
The other party absolutely is not “pretending everything is pretty much fine.” That’s a farcically histrionic claim. Harris’ platform literally prioritizes housing costs and childcare credits as a centerpiece of the agenda and talks about how Trump’s economic program will make grocery prices worse. If you’re not hearing about it, it’s probably because the bubble you’re in is more focused on complaining about the Democrats, process, and rhetoric than actually talking about policy. And I don’t know man, if having to wait for flights of sit in traffic makes people vote for a fascist then maybe we need to confront the idea that the electorate is full of fascists and not a goddamn thing a Democrat does is gonna change that.
I'm putting this in a separate comment in case it gets nuked. Btw, god, if you're watching, this is the last thing I'll say.
I don't know who the asshole was that sent you one too many 🐍🐍 of these and then broke your brain, but it wasn't me. I'd appreciate it if you stopped treating me like I was the one who did it. This whole election cycle I've tried to be friendly, and respectful, and keep things as light as possible. Maybe that's hard to pick up through text because every time I say something, you chime in with the most needlessly condescending comments which is crazy to me because you were wrong in most of them. You were wrong about Biden staying in the race, you were wrong about how the Democrats would operate, and you were wrong about how Kamala Harris would be received. Stop talking to me like you know more than me. We just have a different perspective.
And I'll finish my side of this conversation the same way I started one a few months ago by saying with 100% honesty that I appreciate reading your insightful comments across the site. But damn, girl.
Did you ever consider that you are the one in a bubble? Her town hall with Anderson Cooper was painful to watch. She tries to distance herself from Biden but is unable to articulate how she is going to be any different. She is not doing a good job of getting her messaging across (especially to people who don't follow politics closely).
My “bubble” consists of having unfollowed most political social media since 2020 and mostly following things via the politics feed on Teagan Goddard’s Political Wire and Talking Points Memo. That may be a “bubble” insofar as it just straightforwardly is news about the news and explanations of what people are talking about.
Have you considered that this was a moronic question that nobody cares about and exists solely to create a framework to present a gotcha? This is precisely why her campaign has decided to side-step the traditional political media because they’re bad at their jobs. All they can do is ask these sorts of horse-race gotcha questions where they just parrot a Republican line of attack against Harris and ask her to respond.
The medium of political news itself is bad for informing people who don’t follow politics closely (and most people who do) because that whole clade of journalists are frivolous theater critics who are incapable of asking about anything that isn’t tawdry DC-centric gossip. Looking at a CNN appearance to see what the candidate’s message is for non-politics followers is like tuning into SportsCenter to see what people who don’t care about sports think. TikTok is where people who don’t follow politics closely are being reached, CNN is just where the candidate goes because it’s expected.
I think this highly depends on the age group we are talking about. Young people (who notoriously don't show up to vote) get their political news on TikTok. I also wonder how much political content is even showing up in someones algorithm who doesn't follow politics.
Also it's not like candidates are going out doing interviews on TikTok. A lot of the TikTok political commentary is just random "political experts" dissecting interviews and podcasts that happened elsewhere (CNN, Joe Rogan, etc.). This is what the average voter is seeing they are not subscribing to the Political Wire.
What filters out to not political people is endorsements/discourse from non political accounts, like celebrities. So boring interview responses don’t go there, viral dunks will.
Also your friends reposts bring the content to you more often. That combination, plus KamalaHQ being very smart about being on trend - they're fast to get clips up and generally use trending sounds that are still on the upswing rather than being oversaturated.
It's really clever marketing.
I’m still astonished that the Kamala campaign leadership is like 70% the same people who were staffing the Biden campaign. The vibe and energy are just completely different, and it tells you a lot about the impact that just having the right tone at the top can create.
What? I'm not doing that. I don't think that. I literally just said I agree with you on about 90 percent of what you said.
Remind me, who is in those seats now?
Right, right. Nevermind the fact that we are on the precipice of electing a fascist who wants to round millions of people up and deport them for "poisoning the blood" of our country. Not too big of a deal that women's bodily autonomy is being stripped away, or that corporations are basically able to operate with impunity. Trust me, we're not really moving right, it's just a few things here and there. WHAT??
Once again, let me remind you of why we're going back and forth like this. The election that is set to happen in a couple of days is, at best, a coin toss. If a candidate can't defeat Donald fucking Trump in 2024, then that means their campaign strategy ain't goin too good. Ok? I'm not the only one it doesn't appeal to. You're the only one who's making this about me.
I didn't say she wasn't doing anything, I said she wasn't doing enough. Again, part of my perspective is from watching her town halls, interviews, and stump speech. Those are good things to talk about, they poll really well. But she also spends just as much time talking about the border, being a prosecutor, middle class fellating mumbo jumbo, etc., and by the end, the best part of her agenda has been drowned out by the same old shit that politicians have said for the past 30-40 years. It leaves you with the feeling that she is a continuation of the status quo. And that's not just me saying that. She is consistently polling lower than Trump when voters are asked 'which candidate represents change.' She's also said multiple times that she would not change anything about the last four years, and she continues to tie herself to some very unpopular Biden policies. None of that is popular in an election where the majority of people want change (again). That's not me. That's not some bubble. That's what the polls say.
40% of American voters are not fascists that is a ridiculous statement. Its much more likely that Kamala is a bad candidate and the Democrats are running a horrible campaign.
This can be said for both sides.
I agree. The polls are basically worthless.
If Harris is a bad candidate it is impossible to have a good candidate. Sorry
You don't have to apologize you are entitled to your opinion.
Rather than horrible campaign it is also possible that any new candidate in three months was a heavy lift, and or that choosing Biden's VP was the wrong strategic choice this year. ( Or that running a woman against Trump was the wrong choice)
As for horrible candidate, I don't know what to tell you but I don't see it. On the other hand if Trump wins I am going to do everything I can to avoid the pain of hearing his voice by avoiding broadcast news.
I will say that the campaign is doing a lot locally in swing states including local news interviews. I see a lot of billboards. Compared to h Clinton's campaign, this one seems very focused on the numbers that they need in the particular states in play. Harris has also given two long appearances on Spanish language shows, Univision Town hall that Trump also did and Telemundo.
I agree, 100%. Things would look very different if Biden had dropped out of the race earlier. I think people would view Harris more favorably is she had won a primary instead of having her foisted upon us last minute.
I didn't say she was horrible. I simply said she was a bad candidate. She lost all momentum that she initially had. I feel like this is mostly due to her poor interview skills and the inability to articulate how she is any different than Biden (who was an even worse candidate).
If the democrats lose to Trump again, they have no one but themselves to blame. The DNC needs a serious overhaul.
With that in mind, how do you feel about the recent allegations that Republican pollsters are inundating aggregators with 'favorable' polls for Trump?
If the very information you're basing your opinion off of is tainted at the source, would that change your stance any?
I know from many conversations with groups I regularly interact with, the average voter is woefully unknowledgeable about Kamala's positions and that's their main reason for claiming they're unsure about her. She could be advocating for "A Modest Proposal" in her speeches and voters would still have zero clue. They hear her say "I grew up middle class" and say "That's too practiced" but hear Trump say "I'm a businessman" and say "Yep, he sure is."
I mean, not really. I still hope that we're closer to 2022 than '16 and '20, but this passage didn't really quell my anxiety.
As for what you said in the rest of your comment, I think you gave a good example of why the Kamala Bot 9000 NPC-style answers aren't resonating
One of Trump's superpowers is his ability to come off as genuine because of the way he speaks, and more importantly, the things he says. He breaks the rules, says the quiet part out loud, and says things that politicians never say. It makes him seem authentic. When you contrast that with the classic, precise, focus group answers that Harris uses, she seems like the same old politician that voters have been rejecting. That's why I think "weird," and to a lesser extent, "not going back," was a good launching point for her. It's also why I think she needed to do more to offer a bigger, grander vision for what the problems are and for what her solution is.
The problem was she said "A $25k tax credit for first time home buyers" and people say "she isn't giving enough specifics about policy!" but Trump said "I have concepts of a plan" concepts which have been in progress since he was president and they heard "He's got plans, that's enough."
The end of the day, it wouldn't matter if she laid out every step of the plan (too dry, too disconnected from the real world, her laugh is condescending) while Trump babbles like an idiot. People don't like her for some (she's a woman) reason but they can't come right out and say that. Well, some of them can't.
Averages are weighted based on the pollsters bias. Only a terrible forecaster takes every poll at face value.
The Dems are marketing on the idea that the progressive folks are always going to come back to blue no matter who, so they're free to reach across the isle. They're right, but it does come across as disingenuous to have Harris speedrunning the pivot to the center as fast as she can is a little disorienting and off-putting to people who aren't entirely convinced.
The democrats have not seriously run an effective campaign since getting Obama elected, and even that was more of a mess than people remember.
They clutched defeat from the jaws of victory under Hilary in what is probably the worst campaign I’ve seen, they barely got Biden over the line on a “look he’s not trump” strategy, and they tried to run him again when he’s clearly too old, and now they’re going to fumble Harris.
The people in charge do not care. Every time this pattern comes out. I’m not even a huge believer that they need to play to the progressive base, but if you’re going to do it you have to actually commit
Fighting fascism is good for donations. Less good is having responsibility for actually running the nation.
The election forecasters are all telling us this is a coin flip. That's not at all comforting, but let's not turn it into "doomed" based on vibes. The vibes aren't going to give us a more accurate picture than running the numbers of how millions of people we don't know are going to vote.
We're just going to have to wait until it's over to find out. We probably won't know on election day either.
If you're not going to do anything about it (I mean, other than voting - please vote!), better to tune out entirely until then. Hard as that might be - I would have trouble taking my own advice.
When it comes to doing stuff, I'm somewhat involved in local/sate politics and focus my time on issues that might actually improve the lives of people in my community. It's one of the many reasons why I'll go days between replies. (You're in CA, right? Vote yes on 33!)
I'd probably spend some time volunteering for the Harris campaign if her views aligned more with mine, but I have a hard time supporting her to that extent over some issues that aren't worth talking about here. Left out of my original comment was a second portion that would've talked about why I'm not bothered by it as much as I thought I'd be. Don't get me wrong, there's still a fair bit of doom and gloom in AnthonyB's house, just not the way you think.
'Washington Post' won't endorse any presidential candidate https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/nx-s1-5165353/washington-post-presidential-endorsement-trump-harris
1933 and the Definition of Fascism - Bret Devereaux
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(For the historical arguments, read the post itself.)
Robert Paxton is a scholar of fascism who agrees after January 6 2021.
musk's acts opposing Harris are potentially illegal
This is an interesting, if belated, turn of events: Kamala Harris has earned an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders.
I doubt that it will make a great deal of difference in final turnout and voter intentions in Michigan, but every little bit helps.
They're about a year late. This should have been blatantly obvious to anyone paying even slightly attention that Biden or Harris are both better for middle east peace than trump. I'm glad to see this acknowledged in that community, though - it's been very frustrating to me watching the "uncommitted" movement in swing states - it's cutting off your nose to spite your face, only in this case your face is an entire country.
I think that's a non-generous take. Yes Trump is worse, but there are few times you have leverage on a National level leader, and what a great way to do that.
WXYZ Detroit (ABC) : Trump endorsed by several Muslim & Arab American leaders at campaign rally in Novi
Despite the headline-relevant part, which reads
The article also includes:
Kamala was also in Michigan yesterday:
WXYZ:
Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama hold rally in Kalamazoo
Both Kamala and Walz will be in Ann Arbor on Monday for a joint event.
Early voting kicked off in Michigan yesterday, which is why both campaigns are blitzing the state this weekend.
WaPo: Michigan sprints out of gates on early voting, with 145,000 ballots cast
Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally (Washington Post)
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Political strategist: Here’s how GOP’s phony polls will help Trump with the Big Lie
Large bets in election prediction market are from overseas, source says
With a massive divorce settlement from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nicole Shanahan is remaking herself as a pro-Trump wellness guru — raising alarm in Silicon Valley (Washington Post)
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It's interesting to me that she became Kennedy's running mate. I wonder how much money she put into the campaign.
The testimonials about her unusually strong work ethic and drive to succeed were interesting. Also she is very intelligent or she wouldn't have been so good at patent law as a law student.
It's disturbing to me that she identifies the democratic party as coopted by the trans humanism movement.
The vaccine theory of autism has done so much harm and now has created a billionaire enemy of mainstream medicine. She is not going away regardless of whether trump is defeated.
Harris gets Insane Clown Posse’s endorsement: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4950298-kamala-harris-insane-clown-posse-endorsement/
U.S. Border Surveillance Towers Have Always Been Broken
Arnold Palmer’s daughter reacts to Donald Trump’s references to her father.
For more reference:
Truly no topic is off limits for a Trump
speechrant. Wild. Just wild.the far right sheriffs who are ready to disrupt the election
GOP Candidates Embrace Trump’s Call to Demolish Education Department (gift article)
Are Republican pollsters "flooding the zone?"
Flooding the Zone
I know I keep posting about this (and my recommendation to not follow or worry about polling stands, the stress isn't worth it), but I do find this phenomenon fascinating personally.
one us military trained political extremist was arrested. There are more.
Stewart Stevens senior campaign staff for Bush and Romney, member of the Lincoln Project, bullish on Harris' chances
Georgia supreme Court declines to reinstate controversial new election rules
Did 'L.A. Times' and NBC pull punches to appease Trump? https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor-resigns-trump-msnbc-washington-post
I want to workshop this idea here before posting it as a standalone topic. Something like
~talk.political, usa, politics, electionTitle: 200,000 voters in 7 swing states
The messaging that this election will ultimately be decided by 200,000 voters in 7 swing states is simultaneously disheartening and liberating. It's a major apathy inspiration to know that you are not the target to either campaign. Neither of them need to pander to you. Sometimes, it goes as far as there being no effective difference in your personal life, despite one option clearly being better for the nation as a whole.
On the other hand, it's liberating. I can shill third-party and joke candidates all I want without any guilt that I could've done more. I don't even have to vote for the candidate I shill, if I'm a coward. My state's electoral college representation is already spoken for. Vote blue? Why not? That guy who is only running in one state with the sole agenda of proving one can appear on the ballot without any—I mean any—political party backing them? Speak your truth, king! Oprah Winfrey/Michelle Obama dream team write-in (Mrs. Obama as VP so she has more time for her daughters)? Better than the real options. Dick Cheney/Jeb Bush? Ok, that's a line I won't cross. Jeb!™ (please clap)/Liz Cheney? Would be good for a LARP in the rural parts of the state.
The mandatory line to include so the post doesn't get flamed & derailed
Congressional, local, and state senate races all actually matter every time. This was specifically about the presidency in a system with the Electoral College.Quick shower thought about a separate post: the types of undecided (presidential) voters.
Notably not included are the truly apathetic, as they weren't going to vote in the first place. Also, state and local races have far higher proportions of type 1 undecideds than presidential elections.
how Paul wellstone helped Tim Walz enter politics