all of her interviews this past week have been the most normal, non-controversial interviews possible, and the freaks on the right are just inventing things to get angry about

10/12/2024 1:09:59 PM

That transgender inmates commercial is chopped and cut. I would like to hear what was originally said.

10/13/2024 11:05:45 AM

^^
Harris’ answer to everything is basically “this is a complicated issue with a lot of nuance” and Shes not wrong, but voters don’t want to hear that

I like that she uses the term opportunity economy but I think she could increase her gap by being more aspirational about what this means

10/13/2024 9:24:27 PM

I don't get it. Pay attention to this guy -- what he does and what he says. Why do people even tolerate him, much less like and vote for him? These trends are objectively stupid.

10/14/2024 2:18:03 AM

I was just thinking yesterday she should do what he did as far as ads go, most of his ads have snippets of her talking and seem quite effective. She should put out some ads of snippets of things he's said.

10/14/2024 8:15:37 AM

Taking the high road and the rational and / or empathetic approach certainly doesn't seem to get it done.

10/14/2024 9:36:42 AM

Her team has been doing that on social media, not sure about tv

10/14/2024 10:18:17 AM

https://www.threads.net/@acynig/post/DBFBUTEtuhs?xmt=AQGz2FNXUP6apOE-5AmXCPKQfNFC7nRwPX-HpVFO4Nok8g

She started Copying Obamas speaking style and mannerisms

10/14/2024 3:21:10 PM

Quote :

""To sway the audience's emotions is victory, for, among all things, it is the single most important in winning verdicts. Nothing else is more important than emotion.""

Cicero

10/15/2024 9:45:43 PM

another bad set of swing state polls today for kamala

wonder if trump's bizarre 40 minute music session will shift anything...

10/16/2024 12:04:50 AM

I doubt it will sway polls in any way. I hope that something he says or does before election day catches on with regular media in a way that meaningfully hurts his chances

10/16/2024 12:39:32 AM

https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states

Rcp has trump winning all the swing states now

10/17/2024 9:06:16 PM

But why?

10/17/2024 9:11:29 PM

My understanding is that right-leaning pollsters have flooded the zone with crap polls to skew the averages ahead of election day.

I know that Rasmussen and Trafalgar Group are right-leaning, and I believe that InsiderAdvantage may have a rightward tilt, as well.

[Edited on October 17, 2024 at 9:32 PM. Reason : ]

10/17/2024 9:27:44 PM

^
That seems likely. RCP is owned by a right winger and they include obviously bogus polls other sites disregard

But they’ve also tended to be fairly accurate in the past overall with their crude averaging method

10/17/2024 9:34:02 PM

^^feels like an optimistic view

Here is nate silvers take:

Quote :

"Last update: 12:30 p.m., Thursday, October 17. The Electoral College race remains as close to 50/50 as it gets. But with some good polls for Trump entering our database today, like a 2-point lead in a high-quality national poll and a big leadn Georgia (though he trails in North Carolina in the same Quinnipiac poll), if you squint at the probabilities, you’ll see Trump 50.2%, Harris 49.5%. (There’s an 0.3% chance of a 269-269 tie). That’s not much different from yesterday’s forecast of Harris 50.3%, Trump 49.4%. But however nominal, it’s Trump’s first lead in our model since Sept. 19. There’s a good chance that the lead will continue to shift back and forth, akin to a 110-109 basketball game late in the fourth quarter."

[Edited on October 17, 2024 at 10:03 PM. Reason : E]

10/17/2024 10:00:29 PM

This country is dumb.

Should be a blowout Kamala win. How is his torrent of bullshit distorting reality? I guess we deserve this guy.

10/18/2024 12:50:30 AM

dis/mis-information bots got into our democratic news stream. that, plus Rush Limbaugh turned every "conservative" into a dry-humor comedian which created a circle jerk of lib-owning.

10/18/2024 9:28:29 AM

couldn't possibly be that some progressive policies are seen as batshit insane, too, right? Gotta be those evil 'pubs

[Edited on October 18, 2024 at 11:52 AM. Reason : ]

10/18/2024 11:51:56 AM

there are no progressive policies that are batshit insane

10/18/2024 12:29:14 PM

counterpoint. yes, there are.

10/18/2024 1:49:05 PM

gonna need some evidence

10/18/2024 1:51:12 PM

We're talking about Trump vs. Harris, right?

Please name some "batshit insane" progressive policies of Harris.

10/18/2024 1:52:15 PM

Quote :

"counterpoint. yes, there are."

There definitely are, but even so, what people are willing to accept as a "better" alternative still staggers me.

10/18/2024 2:06:53 PM

Quote :

"We're talking about Trump vs. Harris, right?"

i'm referring to the more general phenomenon

Quote :

"This country is dumb. Should be a blowout Kamala win. How is his torrent of bullshit distorting reality?"

+

Quote :

"dis/mis-information bots got into our democratic news stream"

there is for sure a not insignificant portion of the electorate that are outright bigoted and all those other nasty things. and there are also many decent-natured people who either just aren't all that well informed but fall into fearmongering traps by the media/politicians. so those are typical/natural winds against the sails you'll find in any society throughout history.

putting them aside for a moment, the rest of the population is arguably open to Democrat politics, ideally persuaded by clear results and not just Democrat rhetoric. so the fact that our elections are still so tight is indeed frustrating, and warrants an earnest examination.

part of that explanation is that progressive policies are batshit insane and people just don't like them! yes, the right-leaning media uses them as ragebait, but if progressives would stop being so stupid in the first place, or failing that the moderate wing of the Democrats do a better job of calling out their ridiculousness, maybe more voters would respect the Democrats and give them their vote.

Quote :

"There definitely are, but even so, what people are willing to accept as a "better" alternative still staggers me."

agreed. but I don't expect much of the GOP at all. I assume they're going to be terrible. I do have expectations of the Democrats though, and they let us down over and over again. After 2016 I thought/hoped that Dems would get their heads out of their asses and do some proper self-reflection, but they really haven't. or at least not sufficiently to persuade Americans to vote for them

[Edited on October 18, 2024 at 2:24 PM. Reason : .]

10/18/2024 2:21:41 PM

I'm genuinely asking here: What are some of the more batshit insane progressive policies of some mainstream politicians?

10/18/2024 2:51:49 PM

I really don't feel like getting into an endless argument with TGL3 right now.

Or ever, really. It's easier to just focus on where we agree, which is a lot.

10/18/2024 2:56:01 PM

Quote :

"mainstream politicians"

unless we're talking about bernie/squad types, there aren't any. because their ideas and views aren't popular enough to get them elected as mainstream politicians.

but things like abolish ICE and defund the police were infantile overreactions to legitimate problems (not even touching the social justice and culture war stuff). I see these as more or less on the same level as republicans saying abolish the department of education or the EPA.

10/18/2024 3:15:39 PM

I voted today. Can someone let the advertisers know so I don’t have to see any more political commercials? That would be great, thanks

10/18/2024 4:04:57 PM

If only Democrats perfectly aligned with my preferred policy positions and worldview they would surely win a majority of elections nationwide.

[Edited on October 18, 2024 at 5:03 PM. Reason : Dems have won the popular vote every year since 2004, (an aberration due to war, really it’s 1988)]

10/18/2024 4:56:50 PM

did somebody say anything about "MY preferred policy positions and worldview"?

it's simple electoral reality that when Democrats don't win elections it's because they can't manage to persuade tens of millions of Americans to vote for them. i'm looking at aggregate human behavior, not trying to say any one person has or should have all the answers.

Quote :

"Dems have won the popular vote every year since 2004"

and that's a fair point at the national level. sucks we're stuck with the electoral college. doesn't change the fact that people as obviously unfit as Trump and those in his orbit are winning or at least keeping things close. The Democrats are a huge disappointment for not being able to have landslide after landslide against the GOP competition we've seen over our lifetimes.


[Edited on October 18, 2024 at 5:10 PM. Reason : even just for NC look at how the Dems squandered a generation of leadership with owngoals]

10/18/2024 5:06:17 PM

When people say “support for insane X policy is sinking the Dems!1!1!1!!1!1” they are suggesting Dems should tack to their exact worldview on “X” issue and that success is guaranteed across the country. It ignores electoral structural issues, it ignores imbedded cultural identities, it ignores the ugly right wing media environment we are constantly inundated in, and it ignores the fact that professional politicians are constantly reviewing polling and focus group testing for every issue under the sun and definitely know their electorate better than you do.

I’m saying that when you expand the electorate to the entire country, taking overall averages, Democratic policies are actually pretty damn popular and they’d probably be winning landslides if it weren’t for electoral structural issues (electoral college, gerrymanding), imbedded cultural identities, and our right wing media environment.

Quote :

"even just for NC look at how the Dems squandered a generation of leadership with owngoals"

You mean like winning every governor race, except 1, since 1994
Winning every Attorney General race since 1976
Winning every Secretary of State race since 1901 ( )

It’s true that NC Dems have fucked up their Senate runs for our entire lifetimes (right wing national media is more effective at influencing federal races than state positions and culturally people ID with the GOP at the federal level) and it’s true that NC Dems have dropped the ball on down ballot races like State Supreme Court where a lot of voters don’t understand the positions importance, often leaving those races blank.

The fact is, across the country and especially in NC, the GOP had a good run in 2010/2012 (oMG, a black President!) and they instituted structural factors (gerrymandering, voting requirements) that continue to pay them dividends that far outweigh their actual popularity. Democratic ideas are not overall unpopular, it’s just a constant uphill battle against advantaged and entrenched interests.

10/18/2024 8:35:18 PM

Democrats have to stop blaming their electoral failures on Fox News and gerrymandering. There's a good 20-30% of voters who are persuadable to either party in general, with the rest being fairly evenly split among the two parties. FoxNews only accounts for the intransigence of 35-40% of the voters, not those middle voters. Gerrymandering only accounts for state legislatures and congressional districts, not US Senate and Presidential races.
The fact that Democrats can't reliably win the middle voters against a candidate as universally awful as Trump suggests there must be something wrong with the Democrats, too. Trump is making inroads with Latino voters whom he regularly insults, for fuck's sake. How the hell does he make ANY ground with a group of people whom he accuses of stealing and eating pets, calling them thieves, murderers, drug dealers, and terrorists?

I'll tell you how, in no particular order:
- Defund the police
- Abolish ICE
- Trans issues in general (inability to define "woman", "people who menstrate", "men can get pregnant", 37 genders, aiding gender transitions while hiding them from parents)
- Pro-Hamas members
- Abortion extremism (up until birth, for any reason)
- Open borders
- Everything about America is evil and/or racist
- Decriminalization of shoplifting
- Anti-white and white-shaming diversity trainings
- "Mostly peaceful" riots
- CHOP
- A rock at Wisconsin is racist

If you'd like me to continue, here are some crazy-adjacent or Democrat-adjacent things that turn people off
- Orwellian abuse of language
- Language policing (microaggressions, pronoun shaming, trigger warnings, team mascots)
- Student protests by pro-Hamas organizations
- Student shutdowns of speakers
- Math is racist
- Punctuality is racist

Now, is the solution to these to take the GOP position? Hell no, as most of their positions on these are either equally insane or non-existent. Rather, either cut some of it out (Math is racist), or just take more moderate tacks. You can point out historic inequalities without demonizing all of American History. You can criticize Israel without making flyers with hang-gliders on them. You can point out unconscious bias without telling white people to be ashamed of being white. You can point out that American history is quite sanitized without resorting to the 1619 Project's wholesale distortions and outright lies.

10/18/2024 11:55:44 PM

nothing you posted is a progressive policy that has been up for any kind of vote, and a whole hell of a lot of it is filled with conservative buzzwords

you’re flailing

[Edited on October 19, 2024 at 2:56 AM. Reason : .]

10/19/2024 2:50:28 AM

I wouldn't say flailing...the first block makes sense, the last block while not as good is mostly reasonable. The middle is kind of retarded

10/19/2024 6:28:54 AM

Quote :

"I'll tell you how, in no particular order: - Defund the police - Abolish ICE - Trans issues in general (inability to define "woman", "people who menstrate", "men can get pregnant", 37 genders, aiding gender transitions while hiding them from parents) - Pro-Hamas members - Abortion extremism (up until birth, for any reason) - Open borders - Everything about America is evil and/or racist - Decriminalization of shoplifting - Anti-white and white-shaming diversity trainings - "Mostly peaceful" riots - CHOP - A rock at Wisconsin is racist If you'd like me to continue, here are some crazy-adjacent or Democrat-adjacent things that turn people off - Orwellian abuse of language - Language policing (microaggressions, pronoun shaming, trigger warnings, team mascots) - Student protests by pro-Hamas organizations - Student shutdowns of speakers - Math is racist - Punctuality is racist"

Most of these are Democratic positions only in the fever dreams of right-wing pundits. There isn’t some 30% of voters that are gettable on these issues. Some voters might claim they are swayable if Dems only dropped these issues, but they’re lying to us and probably themselves too. Even if Dems magically perfectly aligned with these individuals on these issues they would just move the goal posts and pick some other Drudge Report headline to believe whole heartedly. In the meantime how many iffy Dem voters would you lose?

Using NC again as an example: you think there are swayable voters that would go to Dems if NC Dems started campaigning on bullying trans people like Mark Robinson does? No, Democratic voters are worried about that state’s like SC and TN now have better public school teacher salaries than us, ya know, actual concrete issues that government should be addressing.

10/19/2024 7:42:50 AM

“the Democrats simply aren’t bigoted enough to get my vote”

10/19/2024 1:13:09 PM

'Woke' George Washington thinks people should be able to choose any religion they want.

10/19/2024 2:24:04 PM

Who's going to listen to a guy with wooden teeth? Not me!

10/19/2024 2:57:22 PM

Quote :

"Most of these are Democratic positions only in the fever dreams of right-wing pundits."

Which of these aren't Democratic policies or Democrat-adjacent? Of the 12 surely batshit insane ones I listed, the first 5 are explicit policies either enacted or advocated for by Democrats in various places. The anti-racism fervor advocated for by Progressives and their allies cover 3 more. California has explicitly decriminalized shoplifting, leading to organized retail theft rings. CHOP damned near had the blessing of the Portland government.

Quote :

"Using NC again as an example: you think there are swayable voters that would go to Dems if NC Dems started campaigning on bullying trans people like Mark Robinson does?"

You're kidding right... Did you miss the part where I said: "Now, is the solution to these to take the GOP position? Hell no, as most of their positions on these are either equally insane or non-existent."

10/19/2024 3:35:09 PM

I apologize, I did miss that part. My eyes were probably rolling too hard.

[Edited on October 19, 2024 at 5:22 PM. Reason : Can you name a Dem anywhere in the country that you feel is tacking on any of these positions?]

10/19/2024 5:16:29 PM

doesn't matter. there ARE tens of millions of voters who are NOT for those things, and ARE turned off by the fact that Democrat leaders do not sufficiently denounce them. that is the reality that I am trying to draw attention to. and i swear to god if y'all just sit on your hands and blame the GOP again. it's like we're playing against UNC, TA McLendon keeps fumbling, and y'all just want to bitch about AFAM classes. we KNOW they suck. it doesn't matter. WE suck even more. so let's stop sucking, tell TA to stop being an egotistical moron, started playing with integrity and excellence, and then before you know it we'll beat UNC every time, and even if they get home games every time because of some dumbass agreement from 250 years ago

[Edited on October 19, 2024 at 7:46 PM. Reason : i just want Dems to stop being in denial.]

[Edited on October 19, 2024 at 7:49 PM. Reason : see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEkDYx8XAM&t=17m44s]

10/19/2024 7:45:13 PM

I just can’t. I’m not debunking a list of isolated culture war issues and I’m not debating the Israel situation. Both y’all need to consider the possibility that your preferred policies aren’t popular at all, or that they don’t register as priorities for a huge chunk of the electorate. Like where I live people want Congress (you know which party) to allocate cash to FEMA and have been celebrating Governor Cooper bumping unemployment benefits in disaster zones. Touch grass?

[Edited on October 19, 2024 at 10:52 PM. Reason : I’m softening the language. I can be such an asshole.]

10/19/2024 10:23:43 PM

I liked Peggy Noonans piece in the wsj

10/19/2024 10:45:08 PM

Somewhere in Minnesota did a defund police and it ended badly. Somewhere in California did eliminate math classes to try and make scores more equal across socioeconomic groups. I’m pretty sure both places ended up reverting the polices. But it’s fair to say these are unpopular democratic adjacent policies.

But Biden was never a supporter of defund the police and was forcefully for more funding. Kamala is a cop. DEI policies and 1619 project are right and attacks on this are in bad faith. But I would agree it’s fair to call it democratic adjacent when some random isolated grifter he a bad dei training that the right wing whips into national news.

But… bad faith attacks are part of politics. There’s no set of policies democrats could have that wouldn’t be attacked. Democrats literally have mitt Romney and Cheneys supporting them, have embraced republican policies across the board… and they still get attacked.

I think we actually can just Blame right wing news. The left doesn’t have anything nearly as powerful and pervasive. As as Dominion lawsuits showed, they’d literally just make things up and present it as fact. Facebook is flooded with misinformation that people believe, trust in institutions including science has collapsed across the board. And right wing news is the epicenter. This can destroy a society. Obama a ran on a secure border, he deported more people for a while, than trump did (relative to days into presidency), democrats literally had to defend Elon musk against republicans for bailing out solar city, Obama killed the publicly funded space program to help spacex. Democrats are more pro business, pro military, than they are pro socialism. And it was literally a gop focus group to pick the next issue after they won on abortion that made transgender people an issue— they data scienced what Icked people out the most that democrats would be forced to defend.

If we had a fair news media, current gop ideologies wouldn’t make it. If you recall the 2016 gop primary had everyone except trump introduce themselves in Spanish— the gop knew if they wanted to win fairly they needed to change, trump showed them that leaning into white supremacy could win (even if just barely).

10/20/2024 12:14:10 AM

the right are bigots, and they’ve been using Trump as a shield to deflect their bigotry and blame it all on him, but it legitimately all boils down to them being bigots

[Edited on October 20, 2024 at 1:51 AM. Reason : .]

10/20/2024 1:50:12 AM

^^dems don't have mitt romney supporting them

10/20/2024 6:15:22 AM

I'm kind of disappointed in Mitt Romney and GWB for not taking a public stand. Even if they both personally vote for Harris, that's just one vote each in states that don't matter.

10/20/2024 6:16:20 PM

Quote :

"I just can’t. I’m not debunking a list of isolated culture war issues and I’m not debating the Israel situation. Both y’all need to consider the possibility that your preferred policies aren’t popular at all, or that they don’t register as priorities for a huge chunk of the electorate"

So in other words, you'd just like to keep losing elections that you absolutely should win. Got it. A non-trivial amount of people outside the Democratic Party's base want absolutely nothing to do with Trump and his ilk, and you can't parlay that into electoral majorities. Think about that.

Quote :

"DEI policies and 1619 project are right and attacks on this are in bad faith."

Elements of these things are right, but the actual approach taken and championed by Democrats and their allies absolutely are not. DEI trainings where white people are told to be ashamed of themselves are, shockingly, not going to play well to white people; and a few of the swing states the Dems need are, in case you didn't know, very white. The 1619 project is an ahistorical blackwashing of American history as a response to an ahistorical whitewashing of it. Any suggestion that the founding fathers merely wanted to separate from England to preserve slavery is nonsense, and it's precisely why there was such hostility to Hannah-Jones being on the faculty at UNC: journalists who just make shit up for an agenda have no business teaching at a university.

Quote :

"I think we actually can just Blame right wing news."

At best, you can blame it for the intransigence of the mid- to far-right. I don't think they are swaying moderates or conservative leaning folks with their nonsense. To the extent that I agree with you, it's that Trump leaned into white supremacy behind the scenes, and ultimately made people show their true colors. He made the tacit racism of the 70s and 80s acceptable to say out loud again.

10/20/2024 6:25:29 PM

Quote :

" Any suggestion that the founding fathers merely wanted to separate from England to preserve slavery is nonsense, and it's precisely why there was such hostility to Hannah-Jones being on the faculty at UNC: journalists who just make shit up for an agenda have no business teaching at a university."

I’m sure it’s that and not the complete GOP takeover of the UNC system

10/20/2024 6:48:37 PM