POTUS 2024 - Harris vs Trump - General Election Discussion

[Edward64]

Kamala’s policy positions.

A New Way Forward - Kamala Harris for President: Official Campaign Website

It’s prob too soon, but would like to know her top 3-5, 100 day type list.

[Ksyrup]

We had a good 4-6 week run, but Harris is clearly coming back to reality. There's going to be no 3 month upward momentum run/trajectory that takes her to victory. She didn't get much of a post-convention bounce, and her numbers are starting to head down.

I suppose things can change in the next 2 months - is the debate really going to matter? - but I feel like I'm watching the air slowly release from a balloon.

[Danny]

I mean im not sure anyone thought she was going to run away with the election but it still seems its ultimately going to be a toss up on the odds of who wins.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Kamala’s policy positions.

A New Way Forward - Kamala Harris for President: Official Campaign Website

It’s prob too soon, but would like to know her top 3-5, 100 day type list.

They just copy/pasted the Biden policy page it seems.




Originally Posted by Ksyrup

We had a good 4-6 week run, but Harris is clearly coming back to reality. There's going to be no 3 month upward momentum run/trajectory that takes her to victory. She didn't get much of a post-convention bounce, and her numbers are starting to head down.

I suppose things can change in the next 2 months - is the debate really going to matter? - but I feel like I'm watching the air slowly release from a balloon.

They did a really bad job at the convention. Not surprising they didn't get a bump. Using the Biden team is going to be her undoing. Weirdest election I can remember with both sides seemingly trying to lose.

[JPhillips]

This Haitian panic is some racist bullshit.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

This Haitian panic is some racist bullshit.

What is even the point of it? Are they pushing some policy I don't know about? It's such a random thing for them to be talking about.

[RainMaker]

Another example of how bad the campaign has been. They got so much traction from making their candidates seem normal. It works because Trump and Vance are incredibly weird. But they've shifted away from it because they have the dumbest people alive running the campaign.


They should have Kamala doing the Kelly Clarkson Show and Fallon. Walz should be doing an ESPN podcast talking about football. THIS SHIT IS NOT HARD TO FIGURE OUT! People want to vote for the candidate who they can relate to most.





[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Danny

I mean im not sure anyone thought she was going to run away with the election but it still seems its ultimately going to be a toss up on the odds of who wins.

Not really. She needs to be several points better than she is now to have a real shot st an EC victory. Her numbers never got there and sre now going down.

[Jas_lov]

Some much more favorable state polling for Harris this afternoon than those two Pew and NYT national polls. I think it's important not to get overworked about one or two polls. Let's see how things shake out after the debate.

[Lathum]

Does the debate even really matter? FOX News will say how Trump was brilliant and MSNBC will say how great Harris was.

We all know Trump will slur and lie his way through the debate and the media will be their typical "That is just Trump being Trump" with no pushback.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Does the debate even really matter? FOX News will say how Trump was brilliant and MSNBC will say how great Harris was.

We all know Trump will slur and lie his way through the debate and the media will be their typical "That is just Trump being Trump" with no pushback.

Based on the aftermath of the first debate, I would say it matters.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Does the debate even really matter? FOX News will say how Trump was brilliant and MSNBC will say how great Harris was.

We all know Trump will slur and lie his way through the debate and the media will be their typical "That is just Trump being Trump" with no pushback.

Normally, debates don't matter much. However, the last debate ended Biden's campaign and with Harris the nominee for such a short amount of time this is going to be her introduction to a lot of voters.

I also think the first debate in 2020 played a role in Trump losing. Like most things with Trump, what's normal goes out the window when he's involved.

[RainMaker]

I think it matters a lot for Harris because she hasn't done much outside of campaign events. Not many people have heard from her since she became the nominee. And the polls show that a lot of people want to hear from her before making their decision.

She doesn't have to have a bunch of witty zingers, she just has to appear normal next to Trump, which shouldn't be hard to do.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I think it matters a lot for Harris because she hasn't done much outside of campaign events. Not many people have heard from her since she became the nominee. And the polls show that a lot of people want to hear from her before making their decision.

She doesn't have to have a bunch of witty zingers, she just has to appear normal next to Trump, which shouldn't be hard to do.

But my point is that it doesn't matter how normal she looks or how insane Trump is. His behavior is normalized at this point and whitewashed by the media who want him to win.

The forum he did with the NY economics club should have been enough to put him in a home for good and it wasn't even covered outside of the Aaron Ruppars of the world.

[Drake]

I'm watching the most fascinating dynamic play out in my (very) red rural community right now. It's come to light that we have a planning/zoning meeting coming up next month to finalize a UDO ("Unified Development Ordinance") that's been in the works for like 4 years. The reason we've been working on a UDO/new comprehensive plan seems to be that we hadn't updated ordinances or filed a plan with the state in so long that we were facing pending litigation over our out-of-date ordinances. (Who might be suing us isn't something I can seem to figure out...but anyway, that's why we started adopting this UDO.) Apparently there have been public meetings and committees and all of the usual sorts of things that lead up to stuff like this.

Anyway, so someone recently figured out that as part of the UDO, anyone who lives in the rural county whose property isn't zoned as agricultural is only allowed to have 1 chicken per 1,000 square feet of property. And then it turns out that due to tax advantages, a bunch of historically agricultural parcels were re-zoned as residential (no matter how far out in the sticks they are) because that meant the seller could parcel the property into smaller lots and make more money. Nothing nefarious there, as far as I can tell.

As you can imagine, a bunch of these rural folks who have acre lots and chickens are losing their shit over it. I'd be annoyed, too.

Except, in a county where literally all but one of our town and county level elected officials are Republicans (and our lone Democrat -- who's my neighbor -- would be considered a centrist Republican in most of the Midwest), the county council folks are going on the record as saying this is a Democrat initiative to steal our rights to have chickens and use our property the way we always have.

How do they connect those dots?

The county next to us the home of Indiana University. It's easily the bluest county in Indiana. Apparently we hired the same company to develop our UDO that the neighboring county did for theirs. I'm literally seeing local politicians go on the record saying, "If we'd have known what we were voting for, we never would have voted for it." -- all while blaming it on liberal shenanigans. And best I can tell, all we've got here is a situation where we copied a neighboring county's homework and now we're shocked that we're getting the same grade.

I don't even know what to do with it, honestly. (I live in town rather than in the county, and we haven't been able to have chickens for 40+ years by ordinance, so I've got no dog in this fight...except that uber-liberal Bloomington a county over...well, they can have chickens in town. But whatever. I understand if we don't want to clog up our local small claims court with suits over dog-on-chicken violence like the rich neighboring counties can afford.)

I don't get why they can't just say, "Hey, you know what? When we were reading through this plan we paid a 3rd party to help us develop, we didn't consider some of the things that are coming up now. Fortunately, we've still got time to have some public meetings and think it over a little more before we have the final vote." Instead, we're blaming the 12% of our population that votes Democrat -- and some other nefarious-but-unnamed big money Democrat interests for trying to steal our way of life out from under us...and isn't it a good thing that we caught them in time?!

(And then I talk to some local guys who aren't politicians, but keep their fingers on local politics/economic development stuff, and of course it turns out that the plan is really being pushed by folks at the commissioner level who have their own development interests in some of the key property areas covered by this plan. They're all Republicans, of course, but they're more businessmen-who-do-politics more than anything else. In a rural Indiana county, the R or D don't really mean much. Then it all makes sense, given that we've had at least three county commissioners in the last five years who ended up in jail for various corruption-related charges.)

But I guess this is just how the game is played?

[GrantDawg]

Yup, you got to blame the other team for anything unpopular. I wish we had that ordnance around here. Having chickens has become trendy, and my neighbors rooster is annoying.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[Drake]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Yup, you got to blame the other team for anything unpopular. I wish we had that ordnance around here. Having chickens has become trendy, and my neighbors rooster is annoying.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

I raised chickens long enough in rural settings that I got used to having to spend a few evenings a summer sitting on my back porch and picking off raccoons and opossums with a .22 -- because it didn't matter how high I built my fences, nature always found a way over (or under).

Chickens in un-fenced town lots just seems like a recipe for disaster. It's one of those ordinances that, given how rural my community is generally, had come to make a great deal of sense by everyone involved once it was passed. I was talking about it one day with my neighbor lady (who's like 90 years old. She's lived in the same house since she was in second grade). She said that the problem wasn't really with the chickens, but the fact that where you have chickens, you end up with raccoons and opossums and foxes who show up to eat the chickens...and get up to all the sorts of trashcan-banditry that raccoons and opossums and foxes tend to get up to. (Thankfully, though, not coyotes. Our town's infrastructure couldn't handle all of the TNT that comes with coyotes.)

So in her view, the chicken ordinance is really an anti-raccoon ordinance.

[NobodyHere]

There's been dozens of bands that are mad that Trump is using their songs at his campaign events. But this is the first that I heard of actually filing a lawsuit.


The White Stripes Sue Trump For Using 'Seven Nation Army'

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

What is even the point of it? Are they pushing some policy I don't know about? It's such a random thing for them to be talking about.

Just straight racism. Hard to count the number of prominent right wing folks that have made it clear the problem isn't illegal immigration because the Haitians are legal. They just want America to be whites only.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Lathum

But my point is that it doesn't matter how normal she looks or how insane Trump is. His behavior is normalized at this point and whitewashed by the media who want him to win.

The forum he did with the NY economics club should have been enough to put him in a home for good and it wasn't even covered outside of the Aaron Ruppars of the world.

You can tell the panic setting in for Dems when they start blaming everyone else for their failures.

Nothing is normalized. He's incredibly unpopular. Most Republican candidates are getting trounced in swing states. It's not the medias job to be the campaign for Harris.

[Edward64]

Good thing FL state line is just 4 hours away!

Trump said last month that he expected the ballot measure to pass and called for Florida lawmakers to pass legislation banning the use of marijuana in public spaces. He wrote that arrests for marijuana possession of "personal amounts" waste taxpayers' dollars and suggested that the ballot measure would help prevent deaths from fentanyl-laced marijuana.

If passed, the ballot measure would permit residents over 21 to possess, buy or consume marijuana recreationally. Medical marijuana is already legal in Florida.

Trump's support for the ballot measure is the clearest indication he has given about his stance on the issue of marijuana legalization and one that puts him at odds with other Republicans. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis opposes the marijuana ballot measure and most congressional Republicans have in recent years voted against bills to reform U.S. policy on marijuana.

Harris is a proponent also

Harris fully supports national cannabis legalization, and she’s been instrumental in the first presidential administration to work directly on marijuana reform. This is a huge leap forward for the country.

Looks like win-lose-or-draw, there'll likely be more legalization in the future.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Drake

I raised chickens long enough in rural settings that I got used to having to spend a few evenings a summer sitting on my back porch and picking off raccoons and opossums with a .22 -- because it didn't matter how high I built my fences, nature always found a way over (or under).

Chickens in un-fenced town lots just seems like a recipe for disaster. It's one of those ordinances that, given how rural my community is generally, had come to make a great deal of sense by everyone involved once it was passed. I was talking about it one day with my neighbor lady (who's like 90 years old. She's lived in the same house since she was in second grade). She said that the problem wasn't really with the chickens, but the fact that where you have chickens, you end up with raccoons and opossums and foxes who show up to eat the chickens...and get up to all the sorts of trashcan-banditry that raccoons and opossums and foxes tend to get up to. (Thankfully, though, not coyotes. Our town's infrastructure couldn't handle all of the TNT that comes with coyotes.)

So in her view, the chicken ordinance is really an anti-raccoon ordinance.

I have an account with a house that is in a cul-de-sac, and there are chickens that wander around outside their house. I asked the owner about them, and she said they aren't really theirs but they sort of are. The previous owners had chickens, and when they sold the house they just let them go into the woods behind the house. Three years later, a group of chickens came out of the woods and just started hanging out around their house. They figure eventually the foxes, hawks or coyotes (which we definitely have) would kill them off, but some how that group of chickens thrive on completely wild and unprotected.

[Danny]

The prey become the hunters, those are some predaxtor level chickens right there

[cuervo72]

Ice cold watermelon keeps my good girls cool. pic.twitter.com/511snOcYzm

— Heather Thomas (@HeatherThomasAF) September 10, 2024

[Front Office Midget]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

You can tell the panic setting in for Dems when they start blaming everyone else for their failures.

Nothing is normalized. He's incredibly unpopular. Most Republican candidates are getting trounced in swing states. It's not the medias job to be the campaign for Harris.

So when we get 4 years of neo-fascism, whose fault will it be? The party who ran on normality, or all the disgruntled leftists who refused to vote for them due to certain issues that the GOP is much, much worse on?

Interesting to see people who claim to hate Trump, yet refuse to vote for the other candidate. "Anti-"fa I guess.

I was under the impression that the playbook was to elect D and then push for positive change via activism. I guess we're going back to "complain the Democrats aren't progressive enough, and just accept a Republican government that we hate instead".

Oh well, I guess. I'm sure there are a ton of party heads who wish the GOP was in power right now, so that the Democrats could pretend to be against what's happening in Gaza for fundraising purposes. Still, I don't understand why we're willing to accept a worse government that will make 0 progress on any meaningful issues we claim to care about (labor, environment, human rights, etc.) just to prove a point.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

So when we get 4 years of neo-fascism, whose fault will it be?

The people who ran a shitty candidate who couldn't convince enough people to vote for them over one of the most unpopular political candidates of all time.

[cuervo72]

Ahh, we're back to the "Democrats are all shitty" part of the album.

[RainMaker]

I mean if you can't beat Donald Trump in an election, you're an atrocious candidate. Dems do have a lot of good candidate who are up like double digits in their Senate races.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The people who ran a shitty candidate who couldn't convince enough people to vote for them over one of the most unpopular political candidates of all time.

The curse of the extreme left seems to be they are too stupid to have any understanding of how the world works. Sometimes the lesser of two evils is the best choice. Trump and the R's are ever grateful that the left doesn't understand this simple truth.

[Danny]

You can click any random page in this thread and Rainmaker is saying the same thing regardless. Deja vu every page.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Sweed

The curse of the extreme left seems to be they are too stupid to have any understanding of how the world works. Sometimes the lesser of two evils is the best choice. Trump and the R's are ever grateful that the left doesn't understand this simple truth.

The "extreme left" that makes up 75% of your party.

The same idiots that thought Biden should stay in the race are going to tell everyone that Harris is doing well.

[RainMaker]

Another masterful gambit. Instead of inviting a normal person who maybe almost died because they couldn't get an abortion be your guest, they're going to invite Scaramucci to impress a few friends at MSNBC.

Not a serious campaign.




[cuervo72]

Could go through a dozen candidates and I bet the message would remain the same, yes.

And...perhaps much to our consternation, Trump isn't as unpopular as we'd like? I mean, he may be and most of this may be spin (again, media needs a horse race, needs candidates to be pulled back to the middle). But perhaps too many are just like "eh, whatever."

(Somehow with not a lot of actual evidence they still seem to think he is an economic genius, after all.)

[Ksyrup]

If I see another national news report interviewing someone in each column (for Trump, against Trump, undecided) and hear the words "smart businessman" again, I'm going to scream. The guy started well-off and has failed up. I don't know how people think he's some business genius. Because his name is on a bunch of tall buildings? A lot of his failings have been public, too, and came well before he was a political cause. It's weird.

[albionmoonlight]

I, too, think that [political candidate] should be [making better choices] based on [what I, personally, want them to do] and if they end up losing, then I will be sure to remind you that I said months before the election that they should do better.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I, too, think that [political candidate] should be [making better choices] based on [what I, personally, want them to do] and if they end up losing, then I will be sure to remind you that I said months before the election that they should do better.

If Harris loses, you'll hear nothing but complaints against progressives, Hispanics, Blacks, Muslims, poor people, Russians, Chinese, Iran, college students, the media, and whatever other excuses they line up. It's never their fault that they lose, it's everyone else's fault. Just ask Hillary.

I think Harris is running a dumb campaign (as evident by the ticket splitting) but I understand I'm not the target demographic she's aiming for. Candidates are responsible for the voters they target and how they perform with that strategy. No one else.

[JPhillips]

1. Trump wins
2. ?
3. Socialist utopia proclaimed

Just gotta figure out that second step.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

1. Trump wins
2. ?
3. Socialist utopia proclaimed

Just gotta figure out that second step.

It's interesting. Recent progressive movements have had mixed results, at best. The fact that progressives refuse to compromise combined the lack of centralized leadership has seen most of these die out without achieving their goals. Some have had some success at creating dialogue and minor change, but I'm not sure any have achieved their primary goal. They've also done such a poor job at messaging that the right has been able to shape the narrative on each movement while progressives focus on attacking dems.

[cuervo72]

Harris: Rights, middle class tax cut, allies
Trump: Mass bloodshed, raise prices, dictators

MAGA: Mass bloodshed! Yay!
Swing voters: Tough call
Constitutional conservatives: I don't love it, but I'm on board
Leftists: They're the same
Media: Candidates Offer Policy Alternatives

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) September 10, 2024

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I mean if you can't beat Donald Trump in an election, you're an atrocious candidate.

Alternatively:

- The electorate is so atrocious that many of them can't intelligently tell the difference.
- There are parts of the platform/other supporters of your party that are so objectionable to important parts of said electorate that they'd rather take what Trump is selling (overlaps with the first concept)

And so on. Candidate being bad is one factor, but it's far from the only one.

[Danny]

Trump should be a bad candidate but he isnt. He absolutely steam rolled everyone else in his party so hes clearly a good candidate to close to half the country.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Atocep

It's interesting. Recent progressive movements have had mixed results, at best. The fact that progressives refuse to compromise combined the lack of centralized leadership has seen most of these die out without achieving their goals. Some have had some success at creating dialogue and minor change, but I'm not sure any have achieved their primary goal. They've also done such a poor job at messaging that the right has been able to shape the narrative on each movement while progressives focus on attacking dems.

Almost like both parties are fully controlled by corporate interests who have shut out all progressive policies and have media at their back.

The only leverage progressives have is their vote. They can't buy candidates like Wall Street.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

1. Trump wins
2. ?
3. Socialist utopia proclaimed

Just gotta figure out that second step.

Or Harris wins and nothing changes because they have nearly identical economic and foreign policy stances. And yes, I'm aware how important that FTC board position is to some of you even if they have no power.

The funniest part is you all acting like Gaza is a big progressive issue. 75% of Democrats want it to end. They want weapons to stop. It's Harris who is taking the extreme position within her party. All she has to do is take the popular position and she'd get all these votes.

[JPhillips]

Gaza is a bad issue for Dems because it splits the party. I don't agree that there's a simple solution where Dems gain a lot of votes.

And for the millionth time, no they aren't the same and it's way more than an FTC chair. Hoping for Trump to hurt your enemies is just as bad as hoping for Trump to hurt immigrants.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Almost like both parties are fully controlled by corporate interests who have shut out all progressive policies and have media at their back.

The only leverage progressives have is their vote. They can't buy candidates like Wall Street.

It's always someone else's fault. All they have to do is show up and vote right? If their policies are so popular then it shouldn't matter how much money is being spent.

And the progressive vote doesn't carry any weight when they've shown absolutely no consistency when it comes to showing up at the polls. No one is going to shape policy on a group that may or may not show up when there are other groups that will reliably show up that you can target.

[GrantDawg]

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled they must keep the abortion rights amendment on the ballot. There are lots of red states with some pretty progressive ballot initiatives going.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Gaza is a bad issue for Dems because it splits the party. I don't agree that there's a simple solution where Dems gain a lot of votes.

There is no split in the party. It's overwhelmingly in support of cutting off weapons and advancing a permanent ceasefire. And not just among Democrats, it's also moderates and swing state voters. It's not even close.

Even if you're willing to overlook a genocide which most of you are, it's just a terrible political decision to support something that most of the country doesn't want. She's the one choosing the unpopular policies.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Atocep

It's always someone else's fault. All they have to do is show up and vote right? If their policies are so popular then it shouldn't matter how much money is being spent.

Show up to what? There was no primary to elect Kamala. Blue MAGA tried to convince us Biden was the only option.

And if money doesn't matter, why do politicians raise so much? Why do the candidate with the most money typically win? You could save the politicians some time by telling them they don't need to raise money.

Originally Posted by Atocep

And the progressive vote doesn't carry any weight when they've shown absolutely no consistency when it comes to showing up at the polls. No one is going to shape policy on a group that may or may not show up when there are other groups that will reliably show up that you can target.

Then stop crying when they don't vote for your candidate. You don't want their vote, you don't support their policies, so why do you have a fit when they don't vote for your candidate? Go be mad at the Republicans or racists you're trying to cater to who will just vote Trump anyway.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Show up to what? There was no primary to elect Kamala. Blue MAGA tried to convince us Biden was the only option.

And if money doesn't matter, why do politicians raise so much? Why do the candidate with the most money typically win? You could save the politicians some time by telling them they don't need to raise money.

Is this the first election in our nation's history?

I didn't say money doesn't matter, but you seem to think if dems ignored money and just went with progressive policies then they'd win a landslide. Despite your attempts to break everything in politics down to A+B=C, it's never that simple.

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Then stop crying when they don't vote for your candidate. You don't want their vote, you don't support their policies, so why do you have a fit when they don't vote for your candidate? Go be mad at the Republicans or racists you're trying to cater to who will just vote Trump anyway.

I'm about as far left as you can get but the lack of organization, lack of coherent plan, lack of compromise, and inability to see the big picture by progressives on the left is frustrating. Constantly shooting themselves in the foot because they're desperate to be right and punish everyone that doesn't see things exactly as they do. It's a variation of MAGA in that respect.

And stop crying when non-progressive candidates or presidents, that are still running one of the most left leaning administrations or campaigns in our nation's history, aren't jumping through all of your hoops to maybe get your vote.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Atocep

I'm about as far left as you can get but the lack of organization, lack of coherent plan, lack of compromise, and inability to see the big picture by progressives on the left is frustrating. Constantly shooting themselves in the foot because they're desperate to be right and punish everyone that doesn't see things exactly as they do. It's a variation of MAGA in that respect.

No one should compromise on genocide. And the plan is very coherent. Stop sending weapons to a far-right ethnostate that is committing a genocide. It's not that complicated.

Liberals don't understand the position because they don't really stand for anything and don't view Muslims as people. They don't understand that a large number of people find genocide to be repulsive.


Edit: Sorry, liberals care about Muslims when a Republican is in office. We'll be on the same side of this argument in a few months if Trump wins. So don't get too worked up about it.