could she blow it badly by choosing the wrong running mate?
I have long trusted, alongside polls, Professor Allan Lichtman’s system of keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen true/false questions and asserts that American voters vote for president based on the governing performance of the incumbent party. It has been right 11 times in a row, if you believe that the Supreme Court allowed Bush to win even if recounts were going to turn it in Gore’s favor. It correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 victory along a number of other upsets.
Per this system, Harris has a less lenient board but is still probably favored at this point. She has lost incumbency and unfortunately does not bring charisma (defined as broad appeal past their party). Nonetheless, if the remaining undecided keys fall as they stand now, she would win in October.
In my opinion, her candidacy could be better than Biden’s if this allows Biden to focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza instead of campaigning. This would allow a foreign military success, making up for the loss of incumbency. She may also hurt RFK’s campaign if there are a good deal of protest voters who are simply tired of two elderly men (and thus picked a slightly younger elderly man).
Because of this system, I was very very worried about Harris replacing Biden. Professor Lichtman’s streak is unparalleled and he has little skin in the game since he is not a pollster doing this for a living. Thus it’s difficult to see it as pure luck. Lichtman himself believes it’s still winnable though, and that has been relieving to hear.
Outside of the system, I can see how Harris could win. She polls better. She’s younger and can be a reasonably decent speaker. She’s certainly more exciting than Biden, and has more energy and time to campaign. With the media focused on her now, she could get her message out quickly and powerfully. I can see her winning by a significant margin.
If I’m honest, I’m not totally optimistic, but there are many factors in her favor. I would’ve felt better if she had the charismatic appeal of Kelly or Whitmer. It’s fine though. Her strengths of being a coherent non-fascist that has never been found legally liable for rape should help separate her from her opponent, and she’ll demolish him in a debate if he develops the courage to show up.
The one thing I’m kinda worried about, that I just learned yesterday, is her tendency to do “word salad” when she just doesn’t know what to say. So we get things like (paraphrasing) “the importance of the passage of time is important, for the passage of time is the passage of time and it’s important.”
She tends to do that a lot apparently :/
I have to say I am too. She’s had a few incidents of odd speech patterns; if not this, the poor soundbites like weirdly explaining things (“Russia is a country” or “do not come”). Trump’s word salad is so normalized that he won’t be scrutinized for it. There will probably be sexist comments on it as well.
I hope she gets new speechwriters and a bit of training on what to say instead. It’s probably a lot to hope that she can quickly override this pattern, given it’s likely something she’s done all her life, but her duties as VP are relatively minimal and the campaign can afford speech training. She’s better than Trump either way, but being consistently on point would be useful
I think Harris is an interesting Democratic nominee to beat Trump, and I think the Democratic Party played a smart move by letting Biden take the hit of the GOP’s initial attack campaign. Now, the Democrats can use the same old age and whatever else they were attacking Biden for on Trump. Additionally, if people were on the fence about Biden, Harris could possibly resolve the issues they were hesitant on. Plus, look at these contrasts:
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Trump has raped women. Harris is a woman.
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Trump is anti-choice man. Harris is a pro-choice woman.
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Trump is a felon. Harris is a prosecutor.
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Trump is a racist. Harris is a person of color.
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Trump paints himself orange. Harris has a natural skin tone.
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Trump is old and has been running a campaign against old age. Harris isn’t even 60 yet.
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Trump fucks up everything he touches. Harris was an effective Attorney General.
I think her nomination makes the election really about hypocrisy vs congruence.
Trump has raped women. Harris is a woman.
For the love of God, please, don’t use that one. I hope she has enough of a posture to not try to look victimized on the media in “solidarity” to the people that actually were. This don’t go well.
She needs to respond as a prosecutor would, attack against the perpetrator. We already know the right will say and do absolutely anything so why mince words? Call the lying convicted rapist exactly what he is and talk about what policies she feels will improve things.
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Anectodally - the young people I knew who were going to sit out the presidential election because they were so mad it was just two ancient white men, or were mad because Gaza, now say they will vote for “whoever the democrats run”.
Which is only two people, but she has at least some votes that otherwise would have gone to nobody.
I personally know one individual who was going to write-in RFK who will now be voting Harris. So far, it’s definitely having a positive effect.
Same with my brother because he thought Biden was too old. But he will vote for Harris. Realistically a vote for 81 year old Biden would have been a vote for Harris anyway, but I guess this is more straightforward.
I think she has a good a chance as anyone and I doubt any running mate pick would blow it unless it was like that one guy that was a dem and went independent because hes basically a republican.
You mean the certified piece of shit: Senator Joe Manchin.
Sounds right.
I wouldn’t agree with the choice but I could see the logic in picking the rightest, most obstructionist Dem they could find as the running mate as sort of a bulwark against “radical leftist!” attacks.
Kamala has the charisma of a potato, so it’s not yet clear how well she’ll do. She has a few sketchy things in her past as the former California attorney general which will likely come up (taking bribes to drop serious charges).
Thanks troll
Do you have a source for such a bold claim?
Do you have a source for such a bold claim?
As a matter of fact, I do.
Steve Mnuchin and OneWest Bank were, according to a memo obtained and reported on by The Intercept, guilty of “widespread misconduct” in the form of over 1,000 legal violations. The memo was the result of a year-long investigation and it asserts that OneWest Bank operated to intentionally boost foreclosures. The Campaign for Accountability called for a federal investigation of Mnuchin and OneWest Bank claiming they used “potentially illegal tactics to foreclose on as many as 80,000 California homes.”
Yet despite internal memos explicitly mentioning numerous prosecutable offenses by Mnuchin and co., then California Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to prosecute.
She’s never given an explanation for her decision and Mnuchin later donated $2,000.00 to Harris’ campaign. It was his only donation to a democratic candidate.
Will I vote for her if she’s the Democrat nominee for president? Yes, I think this election is far too important to abstain from voting. Is Harris a flawed candidate with a sketchy past? Also yes.
I think when the dust settles people are going to realize it’s her race to lose. That should answer both questions.
I want her to win, but I’d bet good money against her winning.
So do it. Either you get a cash payout, or you get a functional democratic government for the next 4-8 years.
You know a reputable bookie?
Know of anywhere that will let you bet on political races?
Unfortunately, they appear to be shutting down soon. Looks like it is illegal to gamble on politics in the US, at least according to one multi national betting site I looked at last night.
Good to know, thanks for the heads-up.
Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in history. She’s about 20 years younger then him. She’s unburdened by all of Biden’s failures, and can claim all his successes. Also not being catholic she doesn’t have to be weird about abortion and can be pro choice, which post-Roe is a HUGE deal for about 50% of the population. Trumpworld’s best hit against her is her laugh, which is absolutely not doing numbers because… c’mon.
So yeah she’s got a decent chance, but obviously anything can happen.
The only point I’d argue is that whenever I see pictures of people protesting outside abortion clinics there are plenty of women there too…
The abortion topic might not necessarily pull the womens vote as hard as you might think.
Most of those women think the only moral abortion is their abortion. Most of those men abortions are a means to an end of getting women back into the kitchen. This has way more to do with women’s suffrage than it ever did about babies. Just look at how they treat babies/mothers after they are born.
You’re conflating volume with popular support. The Nationalist Christians and related religious fundamentalists are extremely loud, obnoxious, and annoying, and that group does include women. It’s just important to also acknowledge that religious fundies, despite how noisy they are, are not a majority of the populace at this point.
And moreover, part of the reason they’re being so loud, obnoxious, and annoying, and the core reason of why they’re trying to solidify their hold on power, is that they can see demographic tea leaves - religiosity is plummeting across the country for a lot of very good reasons. But instead of adjusting their stances to be more inclusive, they’ve taken the Fox News route and are going for outrage. As long as we can make it through this and the next election relatively intact, I think and hope that this particularly cancerous tribe of fundies are destined for the dustbin of history.
I think everyone misinterpreted what I said, which I said very poorly. Its my bad.
Women who care about abortion access/rights as single issue voters almost certainly already werent voting Republican already. So if the Dems do run on a pro-choice platform it might not effect the numbers as much as people think.
Essentially it might motivate more people to vote, because its a contentious issue and it will be weighted to votes for the Dems, but I dont think its a magic bullet for her campaign.
There are of course women on both sides, but generally speaking the prospect of being forced to cast a child they do not want is off-putting for most women.
Sure, but how many of those people are ignoring that fact and instead applying an arbitrary moral standard onto other women?
See you’d think that but in practice women almost never imagine the men want restrictions that are actually as strict as the rhetoric suggests.
No exception bans are so beyond the pale that even blood red Nebraska will go 60 to 40 against them. Hitting the abortion button is one of the Dems’ best strategies right now, if the Republicans defend it too much they alienate the center, and if they don’t defend it enough they sap the right’s energy for them, and they themselves have polarized the issue enough that there’s not nearly as much of a goldilocks zone for keeping enough voters grumbling but not turned off to skate by as there may have been in the past.
Also applies to Project 2025 more generally but the abortion issue is the locus around which that broader case can be built from since it’s the “right now” manifestation of just how crazy it will all be.
Not sure if by that 50% part you mean that women all care about abortion rights. They definitely don’t. Conservative women love hurting other women whom they perceive to be sluts. It assuages their pain about dedicating their lives to some bubba of a husband who has never made them cum.
She does not have a good enough history to drum up the support necessary. Popular image matters, money matters, big media matters most. She doesn’t have it.
It really depends on how misogynistic and racist American voters are.
I’m afraid I have some bad news…
Checks notes… yep, it’s terminal.
From the outside… I hope that the US is not as bad as it looks.
I’m so tired of hearing this about America, we have one of the most diverse countries in the world. I understand the narrative that the media shows the world, the most horrendous of Americans (which are the smallest groups) get a totally disproportionate amount of media time because of their awful actions. A majority of the population tries to be decent human beings, of course bias exists subconsciously and people aren’t aware of it.
I am in the SE region of the US, which everyone loves generalizing as the most ignorant and racist area. I have seen true racist when I was delivering pizzas and my coworkers were black, it was horrendous. I can assure you the racists are a minority and a shrinking one at that. Not only that but it is exceedingly rare that they are under 50 years. Not only both of those things but both millennials and gen Z call out that shit immediately.
It really starts to wear on you when you actively try to fight these things and everyone still only sees your country as full of racists. Yes they exist but it is a shrinking minority.
I’ve lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. I’m “Mexican from South America” like many Trumpists would call me.
It’s not as bad as it looks.
From the outside - I read a comment about a " possible second black president" and it took me a minute to figure out they were talking about Harris
If I do more than a few hours gardening in summer I’m darker-skinned than her 😂
Why are they so obsessed with someone’s…hue?!?
It’s about African ethnicity more than albedo per se. GOP also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy is about the same hue as Obama but it’s less of an issue for him. Quite a bit of US racism lingers from the Jim Crow era and even the Civil War. Most African-Americans are literally descended from antebellum slavery and are still seen by some as something like escapees who need to be rounded up and put back on the farm. Obama himself didn’t have that in his ancestry (his father came to the US from Kenya, which didn’t “count”) and that helped him, I think, though of course he was still subject to racism. Basically there is a chunk of the US that misses the plantation system and wants it back.
If I do more than a few hours gardening in summer I’m darker-skinned than her 😂
This is your privilege talking. Because if someone targets you for your skin color, all you need to do is stay in the shade for a couple of weeks. “Lol!”
But more to the point, you’re right. Unfortunately, American politicians have a history of not liking non-whites in positions of power. Under Obama, the GOP shut down the government twice, and the famous “you lie!” line was uttered to him by a Republican during an official act - something that has never happened before. All because he was black.
I will never forget that clip during the Obama vs. McCain race where a woman says Obama can’t be trusted because “he’s an arab”
And McCain corrected her. I don’t want to sugar coat that era, but it would be nice if Republicans today had that basic connection to simple reality and personal-level decency. One, you can negotiate with that. And two, I was a lot less worried about John McCain or Mitt Romney destroying the political infrastructure that would let their bad ideas be replaced by something better.
This kind of thinking is exactly the reason why Trump got elected in the first place.
We don’t like because she’s a piece of shit cop, not because of her gender or her race
Unpacking Kamala Harris’s Record on Trans and Sex Work Issues - From denying affirming healthcare to a trans inmate to barring forums sex workers used to protect themselves, the former “top cop” has a concerning record of endangering our community’s most marginalized members.
https://www.them.us/story/kamala-harriss-record-on-trans-and-sex-work-issues
And…
Kamala Harris is a complicated choice for some LGBTQ+ people
https://19thnews.org/2020/08/kamala-harris-complicated-lgbtq-choice/
And…
Kamala Harris Takes ‘Responsibility’ for Opposing Trans Surgeries
She kept prisoners past their parole or release dates so the prisons wouldnt lose the labor
https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/
Enjoy your downvotes comrade
Don’t care about downvotes, like liberals don’t care about a democrats past. And they wonder how they suddenly turn to shit.
Ah, that’s a liberal problem so conservatives must care so much about their candidate’s past huh? So what you’re suggesting is they vote for Trump because he is a racist, rapist and fraud?
I bet you still shit in diapers since people are incapable of changing lmao
I don’t suggest anyone vote for Trump. Republican voters are victims of propaganda as much as Democrats are. People like Biden and Harris dont change, they lie to stay in power. They know being openly racist and bigoted would cause them to lose favor ability so they do it covertly with legislation
Numerous accounts have discredited the official US bullshit about Tiananmen Square and the fake Uyghur Genocide.
Lmao you actually said this
And it’s not a lie.
Firstly, lmao again.
Secondly, I actually don’t care what you believe. I just wanted to point out the basis for your comments on here. Now we know :)
What you believe is the lie
Joe Biden was one of that main sponsors on making harsher drug sentences in the 1980’s and yet he changed with the times and science, and so can she.
Leopards don’t change their spots
Weird, because Biden publicly and through action changed his views on those very same prison sentences.
But sure, let’s shine a flashlight and the least dangerous candidate and ignore the party actively trying to delete queerness
Biden isn’t the least dangerous. An enemy hiding among us is more dangerous than one in the open.
You’re hilarious, thanks!
So is the conclusion from that that LGBTQ people would rather vote for Trump (directly, or indirectly by voting for some small candidate or not voting)? I don’t get why this would be a reason for them to not support the democrats
It’s like if you have a choice of getting tickled for an hour or getting shot in the chest, and you focus on how much you dislike being tickled.
bro, getting tickled for an hour is very uncomfortable. Maybe If I get shot in the chest, my options next time will be I live a long life without a shot to the chest?
I hope you get the help you need
That may work in Harris’s favor. She is a woman and she isnt white…
Now I know theres minorities and women who do vote red but if you look at the population based on percentages white men are only 31% of the population, White women 30%, 12% black, 18% Hispanic. If she pulls white women, and the POC (not to mention the LGBT+ vote) she could absolutely walk it in. She just needs to convince those people to get up off their asses and vote in record numbers.
What about her policies though? Being more than one step away from the grave is great, but would she actually make sensible decisions?
We voted for Obama twice, and Hillary won the popular vote.
Hillary won the popular vote
Moot point because winning the popular vote is just as meaningless today as it was then
It is not a moot point, since it was offered as evidence of who this electorate are. No one said Hilary became president.
Getting shot gave Trump the win. Project 2025 will destroy the US.
Shouldn’t there be an actual primary now that the incumbent is out?
Ideally, but there’s essentially no chance that can be organized in time. The US is big. Biden should have just not run for a second term and let us have the primary as is normal.
Maybe this was all planned so they could shoehorn Harris in there.
It’s possible, but I doubt it. If that were the case I’m pretty confident some aid or something would eventually talk and we’d find out. That’d be pretty scummy.
The Democrats are out of time, and they could rush to nominate her as their candidate in August. It’s likely they will find the best polling candidate, and I hope they look for someone outside the Biden/Harris administration. Someone without the baggage of the last four years and complicit in hiding the condition of the current president.
Personally I hope they ask Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to lead. (If she will accept) Of all the possible nominees I’ve read about she has the most experience.
What I wouldn’t give to see Big Gretch in the Oval Office. MAGAts literally tried to hatch a plan to kidnap and murder her, so she’s aware of the threat they pose to civilization in a way few others are. That aside, she’s taught effectively for labor, helped repeal right to work in her home state, and is brimming with personality.
She also doesn’t want the job, which makes her even more perfect for it.
She could blow it badly just by being in the race.
She is in so a vote for her is one less vote for a rapist.
Tara Reid has entered the chat.
It’s Tara Reade first off. Secondly she defected to Russia in the company of a known Russian intelligence asset whom she termed a “friend.” So excuse everyone who thinks her story might be suspect.
MeToo only applied to women assault by republicans, it died all of a sudden when Democrats were found doing the same thing.
Believing accusers should always be the first step. But when independent organizations investigate and find that accuser’s story is contradicted by known facts and not corroborated by other witnesses or any evidence whatsoever, then no, we shouldn’t still believe them.
Yes and yes.
