Summary
Kamala Harris’s political skills have transformed a potentially disastrous 2024 presidential election into a competitive race.
Despite initial skepticism and a challenging campaign, Harris has improved her public image and closed the gap with Trump on key issues. Since Biden stepped aside in July and endorsed her, she has shifted from an unpopular vice president to a viable candidate, even matching Trump in polls on economic issues.
Her leadership has given Democrats a chance to prevent a Trump landslide and halt the rise of American authoritarianism.
Well let’s be real honest with ourselves here. Her platform was fine and her campaign was executed very, very well. But she had only, what, 107 days to pull it off? Economists agree that her platform would have the best impact on the country, but she or anyone who would have taken her place were all swimming upstream against inflation. And since we’re being honest here, we both recognize that the Fed, not controlled by the executive branch, are the ones responsible for righting the ship. And Biden did everything he could from his chair up to and including working across the aisle in GOP majority house, and only failed when Trump intervened for sake of an election year talking point.
The map is the outcome, but it’s not evidence of any campaign tanking. She is intelligent, empathetic, and very well spoken. But the settling dust is indicating that the outcome was driven by a number of factors beyond her control.
Her platform was not fine. The few policies she put forward were either limited to incredible minor subsets of the population (capping price of just insulin, a minor payput for first time how buyers in very limited areas, a tax cut that barely puts a dent in the rise of the cost of living due to inflation), or were things most states have already done themselves.
Not to mention speed running to the right. A genocide, etc.
The number of days was not the issue. It was her complete disregard for the plight of the middle class struggling on food/housing and arabs literally watching her and bidens admin murdering their families.
Never mind the fact that she was one of the individuals that was gaslighting americans over bidens mental decline.
She had plenty of time to plan her campaign if she hadnt been too busy gaslighting people.
Just to be super clear, yes we were watching different candidates then. The country needs to walk a very nuanced path if we want to continue the recovery started by the Fed (interest rates) and Biden (IRA and CHIPS). Don’t get me wrong: Biden deciding to run for reelection was the worst possible decision he could have made. The second worst: dropping out 107 days from the election. I’m sure the private discussions about his decision were passionate, but of course she’s not going to publicly lay her boss out like that. That’s not realistic to expect her to undermine any progress Biden. You privately disagree and publicly commit. You do that until the circumstances change. The DNC is absolutely to blame. Not Harris though. It was as good as it could have been given the duration.
And then there’s the elephant in the room: she does not exist in a vacuum. We had a front row view to a horribly misogynist, criminal, fascist wannabe since (checks notes) 2015. People comparing these 2 and selecting to risk the world order just to save their regressive social views are also to blame. Because remember: all economists agree how dangerous his plan is.
No we’re watching the same candidate. You’re just willing to paper over a genocide for the other bits. And thats a you decision.
I, and many others were not okay with it. And that was our decision. Its not our responsibility to support a candidate just because the other candidate is a shit stain.
your candidate was the ones taking the risk. You dont get to demand peoples votes for a candidate or lay blame on others because of anothers candidates behavior.
You need votes to win which means convincing people to vote for your candidate. Harris definitely knew what the deal was and she made the decision to risk it. Trump also understood this, clearly better than Harris his campaign started courting that group immediately after she left them.
This conversation is done. you’re not bringing anything new to the discussion. Accept the loss that harris received because she was unwilling to move on a genocide.
Learn from this from the next election: a candidate does not get to demand votes from people because the other candidate is trash, demand your candidate move to accept positions that dont conflict w/ yours. As an example i was more than willing to accept the border policy and firearms policy shifts. I was not okay with cheney, but i would have ignored it for a win. I was not okay with arming israel while a genocide was occurring, i was not okay with how she treated the arab Americans begging for help by her campaign.
Prepare for Gaza to be handed to Israel under Trump. Same with Ukraine to Russia. And we’re only talking about the tangible situations without even considering the soft power impacts of putting him back in power. That’s the world order risk, and you can choose to “win” the battle (spoiler: you won’t) but it will forfeit all future ones (e.g. Korea, Taiwan, who knows what else domestically). You can’t choose to criticize one platform by one measure yet use a different measure for the other. Trump is objectively worse if you care at all about genocide, and therefore yes you as a candidate do demand the vote of others who think the other is worse. FPTP demands strategic voting. You vote for the person that aligns closest with you. You do your neighbors poorly when you decide to vote based on a single issue, so I think your observations about her campaign say more about you than it does about her.
like i said you’re not bringing anything new to this conversion. I’m well aware about whats currently and going to continue happening in the middle east, and elsewhere. stop assuming people don’t know whats to come just makes you look foolish. we did this entirely eyes open. not our fault harris and people like yourself thought it was a bluff. it mostly just demonstrates the supreme lack of empathy harris (and those like her) have.
The gall telling people to begging for their friends and family to not be murdered to ‘stfu, and vote for the lesser evil’ when the lesser evil is literally the one murdering them.
If you want to know a secret, I would have voted for harris if she was at risk in my state, but 1) she wasnt, 2) the arabs community wouldn’t, 3) they needed all the support they could get.
I was happy to help them attempt to push harris and the DNC, as you should have been. if more people took my stance and tanked harris’ campaign even harder earlier maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. sometimes a little empathy is all you need.
You’re assertion about FPTP, again you’re assuming I don’t already understand FPTP. I apparently understand it better than you do. Since I know when I can break with the theory based on contextual conditions in my state. I also know I can lie to my candidates/pollsters/you about my positions leading up to the election in order to get more than I really need to commit my vote.
I also understand FPTP theory doesn’t account for human behavior and that murdering peoples friends and family will naturally be such a stressor they won’t give a shit about its theory. I know I fucking wouldnt. so next time be more empathetic towards people being murdered and maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.
We as a nation lessen our ability to make those type of influential impacts on foreign affairs when we elect unpredictable and egotistical leaders. Put your own mask on before you help others. As long as we keep infighting like this, the Christian nationalists will continue to win. FPTP is strategic voting and strategic voting only. This type of division foments and spreads and it is so crucial that we instead focus on supporting empathic leaders who can evolve and iterate their platform for the greater good. You stopped paying attention to her campaign if you didn’t see that. But it goes back to the nuance of the situation in a post-inflationary economy, and unfortunately the incumbent historically has always lost. The first chance at harm reduction was for the GOP to not choose Trump. The second chance was to buck with history and reelect the incumbent party.
And no I didn’t stop paying attention to the campaign, she just never committed to stopping the arm shipments. full stop. I literally checked her campaign every fucking day for two months waiting for her to shift. the closest she got was on the final day and even that was far too little to convince anyone she was willing to do what needed to be done for the arabs to vote for her. and by then many people had already cast their votes.
sigh okay I’m done. please continue re-reading the last post until you understand what I’m telling you, i edited in a few extra details. You keep thinking I dont understand the implications. but its clear you don’t understand human behavior enough and think you can keep nattering at people with your theory they’ll eventually be swayed.
I in no way was fighting you or harris. I was helping arabs. you have yet to give a single fucking reason harris couldn’t have shifted positions that a community of people would fucking accept their family members being murdered and that cost harris 25 points in the electoral college at a fucking minimum.
Instead you’ve been nattering on about all the other problems that will crop up because trump won. well guess what, their family and friends matter more to them than ukrainians, lgbt, etc. You need a reason that can convince people to accept the murder of their family and friends. and good fucking luck.
So kindly take your own advice and stop cutting off your nose to spite your face over support for a fucking genocide. Because there is no argument you can make, that I havent already heard, or thought of in the last year that will counter what I’ve been telling you and you’re just going to have to accept that.
I believe you when you say you’re trying to help your Arab community. That’s the right thing to do. What you should spend some time considering is the opportunity for progress you take away by declaring the Harris platform not good enough. The opportunity for a less-than-worst outcome for Palestine has now exited the room. Have you considered what Trump will do? Have you considered how the world react when that happens? If feels like you haven’t given consideration for the now what.