And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?

  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
    8·
    5 hours ago

    They did know it had a serious impact on likely Dem voters, and likely Independent voters, in swing states, and they did it anyway.

    … Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-israel

    From July 25 through August 9, pollsters asked voters if and how the Democratic nominee pledging “to withhold more weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians” would impact their vote. In Arizona, 35% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).

    Even bigger shares of voters said they would be more likely to support her in November if President Joe Biden—who dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Harris last month—secured a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In Arizona, 41% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 2% who said they would be less likely. In both Georgia and Pennsylvania, it was 44% versus 2%.

    …

    Biden dropping out and being replaced with Kamala was an opportunity for Kamala to change the Dem stance on this.

    Kamala would have stood a much better chance at winning if she massively broke with Biden and did an about face on Gaza, and there is basically no way her campaign did not know this.

    • Drunemeton@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?

      She sides with Palestine, so she supports Hamas? She doesn’t support Israel? She supports Iran too!?

      That’s just the tip of the media iceberg that would have been thrown at her.

      Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?

      Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.

      How does she politically recover from that? ALL of that?

      And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.

      Can you (or anyone) provide a politically viable path through the above ‘top level’ landmines which would have gotten her into the White House and into a position where she could take direct action to stop the genocide?

    • queermunist she/her
      2·
      4 hours ago

      … Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.

      They were in a bubble of other blue-no-matter-who media and were assured by the consultants from Clinton’s campaign and the Labour Party that they could ignore those polls.

      So really, it would have taken a big enough push from the public that MSNBC became anti-genocide. Hypothetically it could have happened, but the Democratic base is too disorganized to pull that kind of bottom-up messaging coup off.

      • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Nurse bursts in to OR

        Doctor!

        This new study show that there is a 30% chance the patient will die if you ignore this allergic reaction they may have if you keep pursuing your current treatment plan!

        Doctor scoffs

        It can’t be that big a deal, if this was serious, the patient’s family would have let me know by mailing me that study with appended handwritten notes from my favorite peer reviewers from JAMA, and a gold star sticker!

        But Doctor! It’s not the job of the family to know how to practice medicine, that’s your job! And anyway, I have a copy of the study right here!

        Pff, no appended notes, no gold star, ignored.

        Patient dies.

        Huh, damn, things might have been different if the family had told me how to do my job in the exact, precise manner in which I accept advice. Oh well! Maybe the next patient’s family will figure out the correct way to tell me how to do my job next time. After all, I can’t be held responsible for not accepting information readily available to me… without a gold star sticker!