Kamala Harris Pulled Off a Miracle | The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Trump landslide, is a testament to the vice president’s political skills
Kamala Harris Pulled Off a Miracle | The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Trump landslide, is a testament to the vice president’s political skills
The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Trump landslide, is a testament to the vice president’s political skills.
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.
That article has not aged well.
No it's not, liberals tried the age old tactic of getting minorities and the working class to vote for neoliberals that have devastated their well being for 50 years because the GOP is racist, and for some reason it didn't work this time.
Y'all took the wrong lesson from COVID and 2020. It wasn't that voters were going to continue to put up with Democrat's fealty to the right and corporate donors. It was that COVID was so unprecedented that they held their nose one last time. ,
/r/agedLikeMilk
I would have said this aged like milk after Trump's landslide-even-the-popular-vote victory, but even milk doesn't sour this fast. This aged like unrefrigerated shellfish.
Aged like a wet fart.
Aged like a sushi delivery order where they sandwich the sushi container between my edamame boxes.
She seems to have lost worse than Hillary...
The DNC will continue to lose HARDER!! Until the morale improves
Wow! What a great campaign /s
Here’s a list of progressive policies both foreign and domestic that supermajorities of both democrats and republicans support.
What’s that? You’d rather support genocide and brag about being endorsed by Dick Cheney?
You do you, I guess……. You’ll still get your weird blue maga votes i suppose.
I know, Harris couldn't have bent over more for reactionary conservatives that weren't raving mad Trump supporters if she had tried.
Then acting entitled to minority voters' support even going so far as to scold some of them like black men.
Did she win? No? Then it doesn't fucking matter!
What? Should she be getting a participation trophy? Sorry, I can't hear you over how Ukraine is being annexed by Russia.
Also it wasn't a toss up. Trump won every single swing state. All of them. This article is some mad copium. Prepare to see more of it over the next few days.
Aw man it was so close. I mean it wasn't, but she had a fierce competitor. The demented overweight felon rapist child molester won, but it was just the better choice overall
I know right. They act like Harris was some plucky underdog. When in reality her party is only one of two that govern the most power country on earth.
Leave it to the modern journalist to spin a loss as a win. Comedic at best.
Panelist on pbs live election coverage was saying Harris ran a flawless campaign. They just dont get it.
Lemmy users have been repeating the same bullshit.
Why is no one discussing Dems have lost the senate and given a bigger majority in the house to Republicans. Even without Trump they are bound to control house and the senate.
Stand by for nothing happening for the next 2 years or worse.
I yearn for your optimism.
I thot nothing will b accomplished when there was a chance Harris could have won but now it is in the worse category.
ABC thinks trumps lead is insurmountable in Penn. This shit is joever.
Since Trump seems to win I think a lot of things may happen in the next few years.
Thank that to even heavier Gerrymandering in part, which according to right wingers, is a "leftist conspiracy theory".
LMAO. Cope harder. The fact that this race was close at all just shows how much of a joke they are.
It's honestly unreal that Trump is even in the race, let alone in a position to pull off a possible win. After everything that has happened. I try to keep a positive spirit in general, but it's not easy to be optimistic on behalf of the US right now.
It's not unreal at all. I don't understand why time after time people underestimate what monsters the average American is.
America is a fascist country and fascist leadership remains popular among enfranchised residents.
I think the dnc feared a desantis candidate more than they did a trump.
Harris will be the lightning rod for democract anger, but the DNC are ultimately the ones to blame for allowing the first convicted president.
Edit: If Kamala loses, and it looks like she might, I'm blaming her and her campaign. She could have swooned the beliefs of America if she had ran on something better.
Her political skills are trash.
Kamala gained the most approved points after Biden gave her the race.
Since then, her approval rating has plummeted compared to her early numbers, and I think this is because Kamala doesn't really know what to believe.
You can see it with Tim Walz. There was a lot of momentum when Kamala took up the mantle, and that momentum was carried through once the Walz pick came out. Then, around the DNC, the campaign's tone shifted, crawling back to the ethos of the Biden administration. I think this is because Kamala couldn't decide to break away from Biden or not, and because she waited so long, she was around a lot of the same people in the Biden administration, and those people influenced her platform. You can also see this with marijuana and how she changed sides in her time between being DA and senator. Also, how she didn't really have a solid platform to begin with, which should have been established right when Walz was picked.
I'm not here to call her out as a flip flopper. I'm pointing to how she could have steamrolled this election, but chose not to. It saddened me so much when the campaign had silence Tim for his views and policies when those views and policies were the key to victory.
It's truly embarrassing as hell to have a Democratic party that can't absolutely crush a clown like Trump. The Democratic establishment isn't just out of touch, it's weak as fuck. Yes, this is on Kamala, but it's also on Obama, and the Clintons, and Pelosi, and Schumer, and the whole "anyone but Bernie" coalition. This is the consequence of running to the center instead of tackling wealth inequality head on.
I'd argue the opposite.
The fact that Americans are possibly still voting for someone who will bring in the Fourth Reich if elected, over the first female president is a sign of just how badly Democrats have dropped the ball. ESPECIALLY after Jan 6th.
I 100% agree except why is it that "Democrats dropped the ball"?
Democrats aren't voting for a fascist. Their politicians are not enabling a fascist. The Democratic voting base hasn't been bamboozled by 30+ years of obvious propaganda pretending to be news.
Christians dropped the ball. Conservative immigrants dropped the ball. Legit news media dropped the ball. Large corporations and wealthy individuals dropped the ball... on purpose.
Democrats work on harm reduction because we don't give them enough votes to make meaningful changes. A 1 or 2 vote margin isn't enough to vote around the moles like Manchin and Sinema.
It's not the Democrats' fault that there are so many cowardly, weak-minded, brainwashed losers in this country who fall for every bit of propaganda the GOP puts out. Politics shouldn't be about culture wars but that's how the republicans get votes.
It is the Democrats fault that there are so many cowardly, weak-minded losers in charge of the party though.
You could certainly say the Democrats should have been able to come up with a better outreach plan rather than running the same old plan that hasn't penetrated into this group for the last several elections. It's not as though the culture war nonsense and insane rightwing elements of the party are novel factors, such that the Dems can shrug their collective shoulders and say "Hey, we did our best, be we were flying blind into the unknown."
The Democrats are responsible for 50+ years of neglecting working Americans that created the culture you're complaining about.
You are right about stupid people falling for stupid shit, but that's not why democrats lost. Trump got less votes than he did in 2020, that 70 million who voted for Trump are just people who love what Trump says.
What made democrats lose are the 16 million votes Biden got that Harris didn't get. The GOP didn't magically make those votes disappear, those missing votes is the failure of the democratic party.
There is an industry built on lies my guy. A literal lie industry. Industrial lies
I think both can be true. That she cleaned up the situation is a testament to her skill as a candidate, and the fact this situation happened is in no small part an indictment of the Democratic party, in which she's among its most senior leaders
What exactly do you think would have won?
Humans are awful
Bernie Sanders
Pete Buttigieg
Or if they could have approached a very popular celebrity such as Dwayne Johnson or Taylor Swift and asked them to run.
Even Andrew Yang could have produced a better result if he made a better campaign pitch than focusing his solely on leftist pipe dreams that will bankrupt the country such as UBI.
Anything to blame the Democrats, huh?
Look blaming the democrats is done not because the republicans aren't to blame, but because blaming them is sort of pointless. It's like blaming terrorists for the shit they do. Yes, it's their fault. Yes, they're morally reprehensible. So what? Are you going to spend time trying to come up with detailed arguments for what they could've done better? No, you look to the material conditions, people, and organizations responsible for fighting them, and for making sure people aren't desperate enough to join them, because their job at least in theory is to do better. I blame the democrats because I believe they could have done better. I do not have even that small grain of hope when it comes to the republicans.
Close, but no cigar does not preserve actual democracy, unfortunately.
Calling yourself a democracy, and being a democracy are two very different things. The first proper word in North Korea's official country name is "Democratic", and bear in mind Russia holds "elections" as well.
Only a small handfull of countries in the world dont at least claim to be democratic. Heres a map. https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps/comments/1b0md42/countries_that_dont_claim_to_be_democratic/?chainedPosts=t3_1cfr8lx
It's not a testament to her abilities, it's a depressing statement about the state of America that a convicted felon, rapist, fascist loudman can be neck and neck with probably one of the smartest, most highly accomplished presidential candidates we've had in quite a while
I blame stupid voters AND Republicans trying to pull of a coup through voter suppression.
Up next, endless court cases in an attempt to get SCOTUS to hand over the election to Trump.
Yep, the truth is it shouldn't even be this close, but Kamala has moved significantly right in the last four years.
The Dem party doesn't try to get landslide victories, they want to give voters the absolute minimum they need to win. It's the only explanation for why they keep moving right after Obama's 08 landslide
Yep, the truth is it shouldn’t even be this close, but Kamala has moved significantly right in the last four years.
Actually, that's probably why she's winning. Because of the nature and makeup of the Electoral College, we can consider the Presidential election biased in favor of the GOP candidate.
It’s the only explanation for why they keep moving right after Obama’s 08 landslide
I've explained this in detail before, so rather than reposting, I'll just point folks over to this, https://lemmy.world/comment/12409521
The Dem party doesn’t try to get landslide victories, they want to give voters the absolute minimum they need to win.
Well, I'm sure they would if they could. But see above - it's not possible with the current structure. I'm still hopeful that we can get Harris elected, and then have a chance of getting the 127 DC states plan to pass - https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review
Which would allow Dems to pass the required constitutional amendments to address the systemic problems with the current, erm, system.
The fact that the election is a toss up shows to me just how dumb America is.
The choice is an average politician or an orange wannabe fascist ..... and a good percentage of the country can't decide? Or they choose the fascist?
The fact that it is even a close race just displays in big giant signs just generally how stupid the country has become.
I normally don't like being that blunt or unkind but these people are literally holding the future of the world in their hands and they have no freaking clue what they are doing.
I'm not American and it is completely frustrating to sit outside as we watch a bunch of idiots being indecisive about either choosing normalcy or insanity. It's such a hard question for America that they need to have a never ending debate about it.
Being susceptible to fascism isn't exactly an American invention. It's a failure of liberalism that leads to this, as democracy is eroded by capitalists.
Dude the right is full on talking about anyone they disagree with being a demon. Literally a thing that's never existed, and they at on top. If you're not in a state that's entirely unwilling to put you in a concentration camp, you might consider moving.
need to have a never ending debate about it.
It's not a debate at this point. The Trump supporters stopped living in reality a long time ago. I'm still friends with a couple on FB, and the shit they post is complete lunacy. They won't look at anything that comes from NBC, ABC, or even CBS. Fox is hit and miss...if it's remotely critical of anything conservative it's an MSM conspiracy.
The Russian / Chinese social ops did their job to perfection. These people only watch X, Newsmax, Britbart, and OANN these days.
They're regular people outside of the internet, but they've walled themselves off from anything that might put a dent in their world view.
The problem is those of us who want a better life for all. For people to be able to live and not just exist, who strive for kindness. Our problem is always that we are too willing to turn our collective cheek. We are too willing to be kind for too long, be too tolerant, too understanding. Meanwhile, the angry and intolerable, and the malicious and evil, stand high atop shaky foundations yelling loudly serious threats.
This election cycle is a representation of where our own anger has gone. I just fear it has come too late.
It’s sad how uninformed people have become. They get their news from Facebook or TV. Literally zero research done so everything they base their vote on is anecdotal or just assumptions based on their own life experiences.
We need to do better about getting information to the people. The government shouldn’t have to jumó through hoops to educate the public on basic shit
It's absolutely ridiculous but apparently there are people who didn't know Biden dropped out
Imagine how bad it feels to have those idiots as neighbors. I moved to this neighborhood around two years ago and I was really happy that there were no visible trump flags/signs around. It’s nice that everyone can keep their politics to themselves. In the last year, somehow that changed and there were a few signs put up here and there, but in the last month, they’ve multiplied and now they’re on multiple houses on every block. I don’t understand how anyone can see what’s going on and still feel compelled to go get a sign and put it up…unless they’re just trying to put up the scariest Halloween decorations. Now the nice neighborhood I moved to two years ago looks like election headquarters for someone who tried to overthrow the government four years ago.
I mean if she really wanted to guarantee victory all she had to do was to stop sending weapons to Israel. Great job by her to keep the genocide and her chances of election going.
Guarantee a Trump victory, that is.
I agree it's horrible that Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians for every person killed in the Hamas attack, and Harris needs to find a way to rein in Netanyahu if she becomes President. And that may be by withholding all weapons. But if and when Trump takes power, he's going to help his buddy Bibi nuke Gaza into a wasteland as a Final Solution to the Palestinian problem. Harris needs every last vote, even from those who support Zionism, but have other reasons for voting against Trump.
You're very uninformed if you think that Harris coming out against Israel (which is how EVERY news network would spin it) would lead to anything but a Trump victory.
The fact that you thought I would vote for a WOMAN over a Rapist Felon who Promised to create HUGE Financial Hardships while killing my Daughter is LAUGHABLE!
The fact that it's close is a testament to the idiocy and racism of the American public.
That and just a dash of sexism.
TBH when her candidacy first was announced I was completely convinced that Trump had already won... A woman, AND black?
Voting is a two way street.
You can't put all the blame on voters and none on the campaign. One of those groups gets paid millions and millions of dollars to get a D president.
When we ran a young charismatic candidate with a progressive campaign in 08, it was easy to get voters on board and red states became blue, it even carried over to flipping state governments
When we ran a young charismatic candidate with a progressive campaign in 08, it was easy to get voters on board and red states became blue, it even carried over to flipping state governments
See https://lemmy.world/comment/12409521 - but the TLDR is that 2008 isn't comparable, since a major gerrymandering effort by the GOP took place in 2010 that took Dems by surprise - and this gerrymandering made the above virtually impossible to repeat (by design, I might add).
Or is a testament to how effective rich authoritarians have been at keeping much of the public uneducated and or fed misinformation.
Lol what a spin.
Not fumbling the ball at the touchdown line is traditionally difficult for Democrats
What's more amazing is that no one is saying "is America ready for a woman president?" this time around, like they were in 2016. It's refreshing, but also sad that it took this long.Never fucking mind. At this point I decide whether suicide or applying for a green card is the easier option.
How on earth is Harris being tied with the worst presidential candidate in history spun as a good thing?
Yeah, how many of those votes are pro-Harris and how many are anti-Trump?
are you kidding me. how is someone like trump even able to get nominated much less win a general. satan I miss last millenium.
You could start by reading the article and actually responding to their arguments, as they explicitly address what you are stating here right at the beginning.
The fact that the election is a toss-up, rather than a Harris landslide, is proof that American democracy is already fully collapsed.
People: "We don't want old!" Biden: "I still got this!" Debate. "Maybe I don't." Harris: "I'm not old!" People: "Good enough!"
I am not dismissing Kamala Harris here but the Democrats could have pitted a cold cut sandwich against Trump and the race would be just as tight. This is a race between fascism and not.
well that's not true, Biden was definitely going to lose.
Are you fucking kidding? This campaign has been a fucking train wreck. There was genuine excitement behind her candidacy when Biden stepped down, and Walz actually generated even more enthusiasm. Since then, she has spent every moment of the campaign killing that energy. She alienated Muslim and Arab voters by refusing to allow a Palestinian speaker at the DNC. She's alienated her progressive base by campaigning with Liz Cheney and Laura Bush to court moderate Republicans. They're literally rerunning the 2016 playbook and saying, "Yeah, but this time I've got a good feeling about it!"
I hope she wins, and if you're reading this and you haven't voted yet, please just vote for her, especially if you live in a swing state. But Jesus Fucking Christ, let's not pretend she'd even have a shot of winning if she wasn't up against a facist rapist.
Yeah trying to appeal to conservatives didn't work for Hillary and I have no idea why they think it would have worked now. You aren't convincing the cult to un-cult, this should have been a referendum on Roe v. Wade and a litigation of Trump's failures in every decision he made, dancing on every issue to see if not offending christo-fascists would pull them to the center is insane.
Thank you for bringing attention to the incompetence of Kamala's campaign. She and her campaign at one point even had to silence Tim Walz for his believes because they went against the platform.
Then the race after Republicans by uniting with the Cheneys just cucked them so hard.
Tim Walz was the key to this campaign's victory. And Kamala dropped the ball.
Exactly, Harris has been mag dumping into her own feet on the final stretch to make this as close of a race as it is. It's like she's desperate to not win by too much. My inner conspiracy theorist is wondering if that's not actually the case. If harris won by a landslide then that would neuter trump and the far right as a threat. That would mean the DNC couldn't keep using them to push corporate moderates through by just saying "vote us or get the fash again". But if the DNC just barely wins then they can keep using trump and those like him as a threat.
Y'all are really giving off "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" vibes with this nonsense.
She’s alienated her progressive base by campaigning with Liz Cheney and Laura Bush to court moderate Republicans. They’re literally rerunning the 2016 playbook and saying, “Yeah, but this time I’ve got a good feeling about it!”
You missed the point of those actions. She's campaigning with Cheney and Bush to court women Republicans. Its a good strategy. My guess, if Harris wins it will be largely thanks to women stepping up in the voting booth.
If that's what they wanted they really should have been pointing out all the white women dying or going to prison in right wing states. White conservative women are 10x as racist as the men, you need to make it clear the gun is pointed at them if you want them to care at all.
No, I get the strategy. It's just bad. If abortion is your deciding issue, you're going to vote for Harris. Suburban women may very well be the key to this election, I just don't think that they were waiting for someone to give them permission to vote for Harris. I especially don't think that any of them who might have gone for Trump would be swayed by anyone with the last name Cheney or Bush.
Also, the assumption had to have been that they could court these conservative women safely because progressive groups would turn out to defeat Trump. I think that's a very dangerous gamble, especially without doing something to energize progressives. Breaking with Biden on Gaza, even just a little, would have done a lot, but they decided against that. I'm afraid that they've demoralized a large number of their core voting groups to court a small number of conservatives.
Trump would be a disaster, but these last-minute hopeful headlines just smack of desperation. I just saw another one saying Harris had "suddenly jumped into the lead" because one model put here at 50.015% of the vote. It's nothing to be thrilled about, especially with the Republicans set to employ every underhanded tactic they can to steal the victory. In any normal country there would be no competition between these two, but this is the USA.
The enduring fact is that our election cycles don't have to last years. She did this in a little over 100 days.
The Primary system is fucking broken. It only exists to make some states "Princess for a Day" and guarantee some advertising dollars. It is only so long because some states want a week to themselves, or want to be "first in the nation" or some other bullshit like that. And the parties do whatever they can to tip the scales all the time.
If I were in charge, I would change it like this:
-
All primary elections for President must occur within a four week span in May or June.
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12 or 13 states go in each week. The order will vary from election to election, so the same bucket of states only goes first once in 4 elections.
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there must be at least three candidates for any primary to happen. Less than 3 candidates = no primary.
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parties are free to ignore these rules, but then they should settle their candidate by some other method than a state-wide primary that taxpayers pay for.
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The coping has already begun.
I wouldn’t say that at all. It’s a testament to how terrible a candidate Trump is.
Wtf? So definitely nothing to do with the fact that her opponent is a rapist felon?
It is a much better situation than we were in just a few short months ago, so we've got that going for us, BUT we're living in the age of huge organizations not being able to stick the landing and epic faceplants that are screwing up countries/empires virtually overnight, so... yeah.
it aint over til the black lady sings.
I’ve seen some people argue that had Biden stayed in, we would be seeing the same numbers. Not sure if I agree with that. But it’s an interesting thought.
No. Biden wasnt getting WORSE numbers out of Republicans or centrist non party members, he lost all confidance from Dems. Flat out. You can't show up sick to debate at 2am in the morning, at some point he should have said no, it's going to make sense or we won't, He had everything to lose in that debate, only his side gave a shit about it, the trumpers give zero fucks if Trump is deranged and unintelligible.
My guess is he'd be doing worse, that the advantage of being a white male wouldn't be enough to overcome how his age is affecting him.
That overcoat is clean af
No it's a testament to Americas education system
and that's not a good thing
If God intervenes but He's not powerful enough and things go to shit anyway, does that count as a miracle? I mean, I hope that doesn't happen but I wouldn't be calling things miracles yet.