Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped “wars with France,” after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to “close the deal.”
…
Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate.
Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbVPee2UdJk
https://therealnews.com/as-democrats-fold-to-the-gop-immigrants-pay-the-price
https://www.newsweek.com/dnc-2024-immigration-border-daca-kamala-harris-1942685
https://whyy.org/articles/harris-climate-energy-policy-domestic-oil-drilling/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/11/kamala-harris-fracking-gas-climate-change/
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/kamala-harris-economic-plans-verdict
https://fortune.com/2024/10/01/harris-economic-plan-middle-class-discontent-politics/
You’re missing the point. Its NOT ENOUGH to be marginally better than Trump. You need to present a coherent alternative worldview, which she is failing to do by running to the center and saying as little as possible. What has she offered besides vague rhetoric on this? Is she going to end the fillibuster to restore abortion access? Is she going to reign in the extremest Supreme Court? Are they finding creative solutions with the FDA to regulate mifepristone? Will she proactively use the powers of the presidency to save lifes or is she going to talk about how important it is to codify Roe and then never do it?–
I appreciate the sources but c’mon dude, you could at least format stuff a bit.
First off, to your immigration sources: they’d support a claim like “Democrats are appealing to conservatives on immigration policy”, not “Democrats ran to the right of fascists on militarizing the border”. That’s a BS exaggeration.
To your link to Harris’ interview: She was asked if she trans people should have broad gender-affirming care access. Her answer was “I believe that people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I’m not going to put myself in a position of a doctor”. That’s a 2-for-1 answer - “decisions should be left to doctors and patients” + “To any conservatives listening, that’s not just my belief, that’s the fucking law”. Saying “She just got on national TV and refused to support trans rights” is completely inaccurate.
To your economic sources: sure, those are food for thought. Here’re some more:
Nobel Laureate Letter of endorsement for Harris’ Economic Plan Perspective of former US Treasury Chief Economist Perspective by Economic Professor at University of Regensburg Perspective by NHC Perspectives of various other economists
Her implementation of the plan will matter more than what’s on paper, but that’s true of virtually any other economic plan she could propose. In any case “she’s not going to meaningfully redistribute wealth” is still a matter of what you define as “meaningful”, and I assert that your definition is different from that of the average middle American.
To your climate sources: All this is saying is that drilling may likely go up under Harris. If that were all that mattered, I bet you’d say Biden ”isn’t committed to climate change” either, since oil went up under him too. And I’d disagree, because what matters isn’t just reducing dirty energy production, it’s about accelerating clean energy production. So again, BS exaggeration.
> What has she offered besides vague rhetoric on this? Is she going to end the fillibuster to restore abortion access? Is she going to reign in the extremest Supreme Court? Are they finding creative solutions with the FDA to regulate mifepristone? Will she proactively use the powers of the presidency to save lifes or is she going to talk about how important it is to codify Roe and then never do it?
What a loaded last question. “And never do it” like she’ll choose not to sign roe codification into law if given the chance.
Yes, I know that’s probably not what you meant, but your only legitimate questions are the filibuster question and the “reigning in question” (The FDA already approves mifepristone, expanding approval doesn’t mean jack if the SC knocks it down).
To both those statements, to your entire post as a whole, and to this little quote in particular:
> You’re missing the point. Its NOT ENOUGH to be marginally better than Trump. You need to present a coherent alternative worldview, which she is failing to do by running to the center and saying as little as possible.
I say: you’re the one missing the point, by ignoring the context of the thread you started. You opened with your opinion on why Trump’s fascism appeals to people, and you claim she has to give an “alternate worldview” to turn people away from that.
You can’t seriously think Harris could sway those people by talking about ending the filibuster, or reigning in the SCOTUS. Nor will she sway those people by talking more strongly about resolving the climate crisis, about protecting trans rights, about supporting abortion, about chilling out on illegal immigrants, etc. There is practically no one who wants her to take stronger left-leaning stances on all those things AND will vote for Trump instead. I only say “practically” because if the odds of that were say, 1:100mil, then hey, maybe a couple voters will do that. Everybody else? Not bought into Trump at all.
If you really do honestly feel Harris needs to go way farther left, then you’re just projecting what YOU want onto the people who are okay with Trump’s fascism.
It’s literally not. They ran to the right of what Republicans wanted. There are countless articles talking about how it was everything and more than Republicans wanted and they only turned it down over politics. I can find literally dozens of these articles:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-border-bill-wrong/
https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/5/24062710/senate-immigration-bill-border-security-ukraine-2024
She literally got up on national TV and when was asked a direct, completely basic question about whether or not she supported trans peoples most fundamental issues, deflected, dodged and refused to give a vocal endorsement of their rights. You can not be serious with this answer, you know how bad this looks. Literally all she had to do was say “I support trans rights” or any other generic statement but she didn’t because she thinks trans people are a liability to her campaign and she’s hard pivoting to the right.
Haha, incredible. Do you think that Biden IS committed to climate change? Like in a meaningful, taking it as seriously as the end of the world doomsday scenario it is? His administration straight up lied about ‘no new drilling’. They laughed at the Green New Deal. Democrats are all talk on the environment.
Will she prioritize it? Or will she pull an Obama who had the chance to do it but said “It wasnt the highest priority”? You think it’s just gonna land on her desk with a wave of a magic wand? Will she FIGHT for it? Or are we getting another “I think we should obey the law” in a couple years.
It’s about more than one single issue. Its about having a defined set of values that you care about and can be held accountable to. Being “Not Donald Trump” isn’t that. You know why most Americans like Bernie Sanders? (Yes even the conservatives who scream about socialism) Because he’s been saying the same shit for 30 years. You don’t have to worry about him going up on a stage and wonder if he’s going to suddenly backtrack on Medicare for All with some “I think we should follow the law” non-answer. He has values that he expresses, even when they’re unpopular. Do you even really know what Kamala believes in? Or is she campaigning on whatever happens to be polling at 51% or better? For better or worse we all know what Trump believes in.
No you’re not going to flip any single voter by saying you want to end the fillibuster or any given single policy issue. You get them to flip by demonstrating a clear set of values and sticking to them, so that when they have doubts about fascism they can look at the other side and know what it stands for. They know that there’s a moral argument to be made for any of these policy decisions because the democratic leadership has spent every opportunity to educate about them.
These people are inundated with propaganda 24/7. If all they hear from the right is about how immigrants are rapists who steal our jobs and are flooding the border like a zombie apocalypse movie, and then they go to the left to see that the Democrats kind of agree but think we should only deport 50% of the immigrants instead of 100% of them and want the border to be only slightly more lethal, what conclusion do you think they’re going to draw? Imagine for a second we had democratic leadership that weren’t straight up cowards and NOW when undecideds look to the left they hear about how the vast majority of illegal immigration is due to overstayed visas and the border is kind of a sham topic. Now they hear that the border is already the deadliest border crossing in the world by a large margin and making it 5% deadlier isn’t going to fix the issue. Now they hear that immigrants pay taxes into the system and don’t get them back out, and are the foundation of many of our industries that would collapse without them (there’s other issues here obviously). Now they hear about the cost of detaining and deporting people and they hear about what asylum means.
THAT’s what it means to present an alternate world view. If you’re offering people a choice between a Republican who is going to 100% deliver on fascism or a Democrat who barely knows what they stand for and is going to diddle around for 4 years and never make a coherent case for anything, or at best offers some Diet Republican policy, people are gonna just pick the fascist.
I can’t take you seriously. Not after you post a lazily constructed list of links, some of which are your response to me calling your border claim false, only for you then to be like “no actually wait here are more links for what I was actually trying to say”, only for the links to still not back your BS that democrats went “to the right of republicans”. (If you wanna point at anything specific to actually attempt to make your point, then go for it, but if it doesn’t actually back you then stop wasting my time with this).
Also not after you again ignore the specific question she was asked (do you support gender affirming care) and the answer I already quoted her giving (yes, it’s a matter between doctors and patients) so you can claim to know that the precise reason she used her words and not yours is “she thinks trans people are a liability to her campaign and she’s hard pivoting to the right.”
Not after claiming to believe that Biden doesn’t care about climate change - no wait, that maybe he does, but not “in a meaningful, taking it as seriously as the end of the world doomsday scenario it is” kind of way, as though the policy matching that intensity (shutting off all fossil fuel production tomorrow) isn’t a move that’ll DEFINITELY get Trump elected so he can steer us full speed ahead into a climate catastrophe.
Not after acknowledging yourself that “you’re not going to flip any single voter by saying you want to end the fillibuster” but playing that off like it’s just a random “given single policy issue”.
And certainly not after evoking Bernie Sanders as a positive figure, who is himself urging people to vote for Kamala.
The rest of your comment makes it very clear that you’re dug in, that you earnestly believe your projection onto all 70+ million people who are gonna vote for Trump, and that if Kamala was exactly the candidate you wish she was, that she’d magically sway people inundated with Fox News 24/7 because you have it all figured out.
Based on what you’ve said I wouldn’t be surprised if you either intend to vote for Stein or De La Cruz, or just want to push other people to do that.
Bro how desperate are you? The links all say the **same **thing. I could find you hundreds more that ALSO say the same thing. This was a HUGE news story a while back, this isn’t even controversial. Republicans openly admitted that the bill went farther than the one they previously wrote and only killed it because Trump told them to. Are you gonna keep whining the more links I show you that prove me right?
https://newrepublic.com/article/178860/republicans-border-deal-michael-bennet
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/31/biden-border-deal-progressives-00138687
https://www.vox.com/politics/2024/2/5/24062710/senate-immigration-bill-border-security-ukraine-2024
You’re not arguing in good faith at this point.
Timestamp me the part where she says “yes”. That’s not what she said and you know it. You’re just lying now.
That’s the ONLY WAY TO CARE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. If you just pay it lipservice and then do all the bad things that are making the world boil, guess what! You don’t actually care about climate change.
Yeah buddy the problem is structural. Selling out your values to chase after the mystical ‘undecided middle’ doesn’t work. Democrats need to be a party of values that they live up to. If you don’t see the difference between those things then I can’t help you.
Where did I ever say anything about not voting for Kamala? You just don’t have a leg to stand on.
Yes, I do as a matter of fact tend to argue for the things that I think are right and correct. Is this supposed to be some own? Since you’re so right and smart why can’t you even form a coherent response that doesn’t involve straight up lying about the democrats own words.
I don’t live in a swing state so yeah I’m gonna vote for PSL and talk about why I think that is good. Again, is that supposed to be some damning argument? Lol you’re so out of steam.
Crying and shaking RN.
My guy…can you quote anything that specifically suggests democrats went to the right of Rebuplicans.
Here, I’ll help you: if you can link me anything that says that republicans killed the bill ‘because it goes too far to crack down on the border’, then that’d be democrats moving to the right of Republicans. Simply quoting that Republicans shut it down isn’t enough - they shut it down because Trump told them to, because he wanted to campaign on immigration. You’re quoting all this extra stuff about Democrats moving right, but you haven’t quoted a single thing to suggest they’re moving further right than Republicans. That was and still is the part I called BS on. Do you think you can manage that? Or are you gonna keep wasting your own time?
First off…technically, she does say “yes”, 17 seconds in. XD I’m starting to think you didn’t even watch the video.
Secondly, it’s an open-ended question. “Let me ask you this question, very broadly speaking here. Do you believe that transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country?” Then, mid-answer, she’s asked “They’re trying to define you on this. I’m asking you to define yourself, though. Broadly speaking, what is your value? Do you believe they should have that access?” She gave an open-ended answer about gender affirming care, to an open-ended question about gender-affirming care, asserting that legislators shouldn’t be overruling doctors on gender-affirming care. I bet if she’d just answered the question with “yes” but no broad explanation, you’d complain that “she doesn’t have any beliefs, she’s just saying yes without thinking so trans people will elect her”.
Follow-up for you: tell me how her answer implies “no”. Oh, but wait, you’re a stickler for the exact words used, so I’ll speak in your language: Timestamp me the part where she says “no”. Because that’s not what she said, and I’d like to say “you know that” but you probably didn’t watch the video.
Awfully convenient of you to cookie-cut straight through my statement mid-sentence to make it look like I don’t care about climate change, and to ignore the second part of that sentence. Y’know, the part you chose not to answer to because it was too hard.
The trump voters and the undecideds are the ones who are okay with Trump’s fascism, from supporting it to simply not caring about it. The group you started this whole discussion attempting to explain. Those voters don’t want Kamala to end the filibuster or to reign in the SCOTUS because that’s bad for moderate and conservative politics, the politics those people believe in. If she proposes doing those things, those people will be more inclined to vote Trump, meaning they’re more okay with him, either in spite of or because of his fascism. The subject of Kamala appealing more to guys like you or I with her campaign promises is a separate subject altogether.
Are you saying I’m wrong to assume YOU aren’t voting for Kamala, or to assume you’re talking about not voting for Kamala in general? I’ll hold onto both those assumptions for a bit longer…
Again, it doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what targets of Trump’s appeal think. You position yourself as someone who’s not okay with Trump’s fascism, but you think people who ARE will react positively to Kamala vocally taking a stronger left-leaning stance on a variety of issues. Even though that’s just what YOU want, hence my accusation of projection that you’ve so far not addressed.
Hey, there’s more of that projection I was just talking about
…Good thing I held on to those assumptions from earlier!
Lol
Oh I get it. You literally can’t read anything longer than a tweet. You should have said that before hand. Again, the bill was a clone of a far right Republican bill from a year before that had even more items that Republicans wanted.
https://dondavis.house.gov/media/in-the-news/us-house-votes-down-border-bill-favored-conservatives
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-border-bill-wrong/
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/analysis-senate-border-bill
Literally can do this all day. You want me to go on? Probably no since you’re not gonna read any of that anyways or pretend those things don’t actually say what they say. You argue like Ben Shapiro (pejorative).
Lol, desperate, desperate, desperate. That’s not that I said and that’s not why they killed it. The bill IS farther right than anything that Republicans passed through the house. As you even admit, they only killed it because Trump didn’t want to give Democrats a “win”. Then every Republican internally admitted that the border bill was the “best one” they would have ever gotten and gave them everything they wanted and more. Like it or not, that IS running to the right of Republicans. Can the Republicans change their stance and go farther right? Yeah of course, they’re fascists. But it doesn’t change the fact that Democrats were willing to go farther right than even fascists were proposing.
So she didn’t substantively say what you’re straight up lying about her saying? Apology accepted.
So “open ended” that she actually said nothing of substance. I’ve been arguing with people on the internet for decades and this is probably the most pathetic attempt to weasel away from a politicians words I’ve EVER seen. It’s a yes or no question and she refused to answer.
She didn’t say no. But that’s not how political support works. When you support something you say it loudly and clearly (e.g. “I support M4A”) When you don’t support something you weasel out of it. (“Do you support M4A? - Well I support Americans getting access to the coverage they need as part of an important conversation between themselves and their doctors”). That’s how politics works and only a literal child doesn’t understand that.
Because it was irrelevant and you were rambling. I never said shut off all fossil fuel tomorrow and you are once again just making up stuff to respond to and get big mad about. Why would I respond to you just making new stuff up when there’s so many other places in this conversation that you’re also making stuff up that need to be addressed.
Bro they don’t want any of Kamalas policies either! That’s the point. If you want ANY chance of getting these people out of the grasp of fascist Trumpian progapanda you need to… articulate. a. clear. alternate. vision. to. fascism. You are NEVER going to win them over by doing fascism lite. You are never going to win them over by running to the right - because the fascists can always just move more right. You will never win them over with feckless centrism. You MIGHT win them over by confronting their world view over a long period of time and making a MORAL case for why fascism is wrong. If you are not confronting the MORAL implications of fascism because you are agreeing with the base premises you are going to lose.
Again, I personally am not voting for Kamala because our election system is a joke and I live in a safe blue state and do not have to vote for her. I have not said anything about telling anyone else how to vote - I can’t speak to anyone else’s personal situation.
Do you not know how arguments work? Do you know where you are right now? What Trump supporters are part of this conversation? This is an online argument between you and me. I am arguing the things to you that I believe are correct. Because that’s how arguments work. Did you expect me to come out here and argue for the opposite of what I believe?
Yes, it’s the strategy that I PERSONALLY BELIEVE is the best. That is why I am arguing for it, here on the internet. Presumably you don’t believe the same which is why you’re arguing something different. That’s how conversations work. Jesus Christ, can you even pass the Turing test? You see a turtle in a desert lying on it’s back…
You appear to be conflating bills.
HR 3602, the focus of your first 2 quote blocks AND your first link is a REPUBLICAN bill. It was shot down overwhelmingly by democrats. Even Jerry Nadler, the guy your 2nd quote mentions, is a Democrat badmouthing the bill. (You conveniently cut right through the part of the text that said he was a Dem, which could’ve clued you in that this doesn’t back you.)
HR 3602 IS a clone of HR2, the Republican immigration proposal from last year, but it’s the wrong bill. The bipartisan border bill was HR815, before the border provisions were ripped out. BEFORE that happened, your very own 2nd link had this to say about the bill’s substance:
Your “thenation” quote acknowledges that it is, in fact, written in part by Republicans. But it otherwise doesn’t really get into policy details so as far as I’m concerned it’s just prose.
And your “americanimmigrationcouncil” quote conveniently leaves out the very next sentences: “It would expand additional visas and future green card availability and offer a pathway to citizenship to Afghans, while also significantly increasing detention capacity. It is a mixed bag.” I wouldn’t interpret “mixed bag” to mean “right of fascism”.
What you said was it’s “right of fascists”. To me “right of fascists” either means there’re Republicans saying “whoa, this might be too extreme” or it means that comparing the democratic proposal and the republican proposal, the democratic proposal goes further right. In this case, HR2 is the republican proposal, HR815 was the bipartisan proposal. Can you come up with substantive differences where HR815 is MORE radical? If not, what you meant by your exaggeration doesn’t matter, it’s still an exaggeration.
We agree that Democrats moved right on immigration. But that’d necessarily mean that this proposal is to the right of previous compromises made in the House. Doesn’t mean “to the right of fascists”.
Yes
Slow down a sec. “Every” Republican said it gave them “everything they wanted and more”? Again, you’re exaggerating. Yes, “some” Republicans admitted that it was ‘the toughest deal they were gonna get’, but that just means it was ‘the best compromise Dems were willing to give’. (Like your own 2 links said, the substance of the bill contained stuff obviously to the left of Republicans.) From my POV, this was 2 parties meeting in the middle, closer to the right than democrats have ever gone, but still the middle.
Lol, you don’t have to make it a big deal, just proof-watch your own stuff next time
Firstly, when you have to say you’ve been “arguing with people on the internet for decades”, either that’s true and…something you should reflect on, or you’re just a kid lying about his/her age.
Secondly: again, her answer was “that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I’m not going to put myself in a position of a doctor” How is that not equivalent to “we shouldn’t be restricting access to gender-affirming care”, gender-affirming care being the specific focus of the question she was asked?
Yay! We agree!
Disagree with your analogue. The real question/answer is closer to “Broadly speaking, do you support abortion” - “Well, I belive that Americans should be able to have that conversation with their doctors, and I shouldn’t have a say in that”. I’m personally fine with that answer to that question.
No, you said we should be “taking it as seriously as the end of the world doomsday scenario it is”. And the most appropriate action combat a threat of that magnitude is to shut off fossil fuels tomorrow. But that’s obviously not pracical, because it can lead to backlash and the US doubling down harder on fossil fuels. So the point is: where do we draw the line between urgent climate action and practical, long-term climate action?
“get big mad about”? Kinda outting yourself further as a kid there, lol
I feel like we’re going back and forth as far as the next paragraph is concerned, except for this nugget:
I agree with you on that. I think that’s what many of those people need - someone to confront them with patience and empathy, who can slowly deradicalize them over time. But it’s not Harris’ job to deradicalize them, or to show them an “alternate worldview”, that’s the job of a Trump supporter’s loved ones. Harris’ first job is to win the election, no matter what she needs to say (‘we’ll be tougher on immigration going forward’) or not say (‘we’re gonna overhaul the courts’). Her second job is to do the things that need to be done as president. And if Harris gets elected and she neither does anything about the courts, nor does she do anything about the filibuster by end of 2028, then you’ll have been right to suspect her of not being “THAT strong” on abortion. But no matter what she says now, we simply won’t know that until end-of-term.
Yes, a discussion between you and me…that started with being about Trump supporters. The beliefs that Trump supporters have is relevant to a discussion about Trump supporters.
Not saying I don’t want her to BE a progressive candidate. I’m saying it’s foolish for her to campaign like she’s the polar opposite of Trump. I don’t really care how she campaigns, as long as her campaign sits literally anywhere on the spectrum between “unabashedly socialist/communist” and “a little left-of-center”. I think she’s closer to left of that spectrum than you’ll admit, but regardless of how she actually leans, I don’t think it’s wise for her to campaign to the left side of that spectrum - there are MILLIONS of centrists looking for an excuse not to vote for Trump, and there are WAY MORE of them than progressives who will ONLY vote for her if she campaigns like a radical leftist.
The harder you go on the insults, and the exaggerations, the more convincing it is that you’re either too chronically online for your own good, or a kid, or both.
But I’m actually not saying those things to insult you, just trying to point out behaviors that you should consider toning down on. I’m sure flaming can be fun, but it’s not very good for your own mental health - it can degrade your ability to empathize and affect your real life relationships more than you might think.
I know I’m just a random internet stranger…but just food for thought.