It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.
Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.
Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.
Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?
It’s because democrats are unwilling or unable to deliver on real policies for working people. Of course, republicans are the same, but they more or less don’t even pretend to, choosing instead to whip up their constituents with culture war nonsense. Nobody has any faith in things improving. Repubs just want to get revenge on their cultural enemies, and democrats (voters) just want to prevent a total slide toward the far right.
Dem politicians can’t whip up excitement because it is impossible to get people excited by neoliberal policies, but that’s really all they have. Vague platitudes only work so many election cycles in a row before voters just can’t even pretend to be excited anymore.
tl:dr republicans are awful but at least their base believes in them.
Their base believes in them simply due to decades of propaganda and brainwashing coming from AM radio first and then normalized on fox “news”
I’m sure if democrats were lied to about nearly everything and were told republicans were immoral enemies that are the cause of all your problems for decades just like conservatives have done, they’d have more belief in the democrat party.
It doesn’t matter why the republican base believes in their party. Incidentally, you’re not entirely wrong about why, but they’ve had rebellion too: see the TEA party.
The democrat party strategy is different. Their base isn’t aggrieved axe-grinders. They’re earnest believers in the system. The problem is that the leadership doesn’t actually want to accomplish anything that would threaten corporate profits. Trump is great for them, since all they have to do is not be him! Policies be damned.
It is the way of Dems vs GOP.
And Fox essentially being a GOP mouthpiece.
Because we can’t mock Trump and their supporters if Kamala fumbles. As long as she doesn’t fumbled we can mock them with impunity
USA as a society is mentally ill, where sociopathy is often seen as a virtue. For instance denying poor people health care and food, denying pregnant women with potentially lethal complications the right to abortion. Allowing (white) people to kill (black) people without reason based on stand your ground rules. Refusing stricter gun rules despite countless school shootings. Denying workers a living wage. The list of sociopathy permeating US society goes on and on.
Now I know that despite this, about half the population see the problems. There are also Americans that fight this, and are world class people. But the other half, somehow confuse Trump’s sociopathy with strength, and admire him for it. Yes this is how it is in USA, sociopathy is widely not only accepted but admired, people want Trump to hurt people, the poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. Many Americans want all these people to suffer, for no other reason than their mere existence. Somehow this is OK to even extend to women in general too! As Trump is clearly a major misogynist.
If you are a normal well functioning person, it’s near impossible to grasp that such hate can be this widespread, and Trump is fueling it, and before him Republicans have been fueling it for decades.
This makes all the hateful illegal stuff Trump does nearly irrelevant, people simply don’t care, his followers just want to see the people they hate burn. It’s not that Trump isn’t called out at times, it’s just that it doesn’t really make a difference.
If you are a normal well functioning person, it’s near impossible to grasp that such hate can be this widespread, and Trump is fueling it, and before him Republicans have been fueling it for decades.
the only reason this shit ever gets this popular is literally because of fascism.
For what it’s worth, alot of us see the problem and are doing what we can to help. To stick up for queer folks, to not buy products from places like Walmart, and tell everyone we know to vote for people with empathy.
Greed is good, became the norm.
Conservative folks want to conserve what they have, at any cost. Simple as that. Fuck you, I got mine.
people want Trump to hurt people, the poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. Many Americans want all these people to suffer, for no other reason than their mere existence. Somehow this is OK to even extend to women in general too!
I can understand that this might be true of people, but sooo many people in this country are women, poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. To have as much support as Trump manages to have, clearly there are people within these groups that target themselves… it makes no sense.
Remember in 2016 there were LGBT for Trump?
It was absolutely insane!! No it doesn’t make sense, but there are always a percentage that are delusional, and sometimes they manage to convince others.
Probably there are people who actually believe they don’t deserve equal rights, this can be indoctrinated through religion, and religiousness in USA is VERY high.
There are probably also people who don’t see themselves as part of one of the groups even if they clearly are.
Remember the MAGA woman who was extremely surprised when her husband was expelled because he was an illegal alien? That’s how stupid people can be!
Because it’s “all the others” not “me” they think.Upper middle class gays somewhere in Gilbert Arizona who just want to see their retirement savings to go zoink. You have your walled swimming pool and Trader Joe’s nearby.
Common things that pop up in regards to Republicans voting against their own interests:
Women with the attitude that “the only moral abortion is my abortion.”
Immigrants who are angry at other immigrants, wanting to close the door behind them. (Just look at Cubans in Florida)
Log Cabin Republicans, LGBT+ members who are somehow shocked when the party turns on them.
What do most of these people have in common? Money.
Trump supporters are more likely to be small business owners. Capitalism doesn’t care about your skin color, your creed, your nationality, your history, it just wants your fucking money.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair was talking about jobs, but this can be extended to… women who financially rely on their husbands becoming more politically aligned with their husbands (especially if they like the lifestyle), immigrants financially relying on the “good people” willing to hire them as an immigrant (stockholm syndrome?), and the number of rich white gay dudes who may as well have been rich white straight dudes at any other point in history is too damn high (they love to hide behind their sexuality when anyone critiques their horrible positions, “You can’t critique Tim Cook for tax dodging at Apple, he just came out, he’s BRAVE!”).
MAGA terrorists have assaulted newspeople, destroyed cameras, whole 9 yards. Might be some of that mixed in with everything else. Fear of retaliation or whatnot. Most of these people have public-facing jobs with little to no security detail and Trump’s supporters range from civil to psychotic
PUT ME IN COACH!!!
seriously though, i think i would rather be murdered by a MAGA loser than be a fucking cringe ass hack shill.
Shes a woman, shes not white, and shes a democrat. Take your pick.
It’s simply tribalism at this point. Most people who still support Trump are simply supporting their tribe, whereas on the left most people still believe in the virtues and merits of democracy.
I still feel like democracy will win the day. Most of Trump supporters are 50/60+ and his message doesn’t seem to resonate as well with younger people.
Feel free to post any political stuff to [email protected] if you’d like. You’re welcome to crosspost this there too if you’d like more discussion on it.
It’s so harrisover
Kamala Harris is a non-white, non-GOP woman. Period.
Why the fuck do you think? People hate women
Because 95% of GOP members have the IQ of a starfish.
Our electoral system is just shit.
She’s way more popular and so are her policies, but having the support of the majority of voters doesn’t guarantee victory like it would if we lived in a democracy.
It’s insane how the PA suburbs are essentially deciding the next president…
She is female.
She is black.
She is strong.
She is not a puppet.She is EVERYTHING that the power structure fears, because she will be hard to control, and likely cost them a lot of money and power.
You really should have stopped before
She is not a puppet
The president isn’t in charge of COVID. States are in charge of COVID. Pandemics are handled by the states with help from the federal government. BLM protest are once again state issues. I’m not sure why so many Americans don’t understand how the government is run. Presidents are not dictators. They are limited by the constitution and laws.
No why is the split so close? Harris isn’t a good candidate. She’s wildly unpopular and has been for years. He policies are horrible and the average American doesn’t want them. They are the opposite of what Americans want.
Biden has always been fairly unpopular. I’ve always thought the guy was an idiot but he isn’t far left. He fairly moderate to Leaning a little right.
We also have a large red/blue divide in this country and presidents are picked by the EC.
Trump is a horrible candidate but things ran well when he was in office. People will remember that.
The short version is we are running two awful candidates and that’s why the elections are close.
Idk about that, several polls are showing Dem enthusiasm around 75-85%. That’s way more than Biden earlier this year. Harris’ base seems to like her.
They’re just excited the person isn’t half dead.
She wasn’t able to get a nomination through the standard channels. They had to put her in the back because they felt she was damaging Biden approval ratings.
He approval rate is low.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/kamala-harris/
More people disprove than approve.
I proudly voted for Obama Kamala is not Obama. She’s not Clinton. Hell she’s not even a Joe Biden.
Because apparently half of the active voters in this country are either greedy corporate cunts, wealthy sociopaths, MAGA morons, authoritarian Christian ideologue crazies, psuedo-intellectual “centrists”/independents that somehow conflate basic human respect for minorities and outright fascism as “both sides are the same”, or some combination thereof. Those type of people are the type that think the ends always justify the means and that the ends they want is a US that looks like a cross between A Handmaid’s Tale, Atlas Shrugged, and modern day Russia. It is one of the most disheartening realizations of my adult life to learn that so many of my fellow Americans are fucking vile people.
Do keep in mind, that roughly half of voters is not the same as roughly half of Americans. The highest turnout of voting eligible people in the last century was only 66.6% in 2020. Basically every Trump nut votes. It is there entire reason for being these days, to support and vote for Trump. And in 2020, Trump only got 46.9% of the popular vote, i.e. only 33.03% of the US voting eligible actually cast a vote for Trump. The rest of us are either actively trying to stop Trump or are at least not actively supporting him. The absolute BEST thing we can do as a country is to bump those numbers up. There is no excuse for 1 in 3 people to not vote, leaving another 1 in 3 people to have disproportionate power over everyone else’s lives. Complacency and apathy or counting on enough others to do their civic duty so you don’t have to is how Trump wins again. Vote and make every single person you know go vote too. Tell them to register. Tell them to vote early if that is more convenient for them. Whatever. Just go vote.
Update: The second best thing you can do is vote for state and federal epresentatives and leaders that will advocate for election reforms like joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) and/or abolishing the electoral college, fighting Gerrymandering, establishing new, more fair and representative voting systems (Ranked Choice, Approval, Proportional, etc.), term limits, etc. The goal is for representative government is to actually represent the popular will of their voters. It absolutely does NOT do that right now. That should be our first and greatest goal for our government.
You know what was eye-opening to me? I was once talking to a couple homeless women sitting outside a parish on a cold Canadian winter day, they were saying government needs to restrict access further to free and subsidized programs.
Apparently there were too many undeserving homeless people using the program that can’t take care of a place if it’s free, so according to these poor women, they shouldn’t let people like themselves have a roof over their head unless they can put up a $1-5k deposit for a unit. I wished them a good day, and gave them $10 each and my gloves…
It is one of the most disheartening realizations of my adult life to learn that so many of my fellow Americans are fucking vile people.
I think this is one of the single most important realizations of my societal awakening as well. I actually think a lot of the cognitive dissonance we see daily is a refusal to accept this premise. People refusing to believe that evil people exist in a real, meaningful capacity HAS to have some effect on the amount of people that deny republican politicians are That Bad and attack the left for truthfully acting like they are.
