It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.
Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.
Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.
Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?
Because too many people treat politics like a sporting event. You root for your team no matter what, and against the other team. You have to do it this way, because if the other side wins that means your side loses.
So there are too many people who view Trump as “Their Guy”, and are “rooting” for him. Anything they hear that might portray Trump in a negative light (like a criminal trial, for instance) must be the Other Side trying to cheat to win unfairly.
I remind people that Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media consultant, and the lesson he learned from Watergate was that Nixon could have gotten away with it if the media was more sympathetic. He then went on to be the CEO of Fox News. That’s no accident. There is a direct line from Nixon to Trump, and Roger Ailes drew it.
the lesson he learned from Watergate was that Nixon could have gotten away with it if the media was more sympathetic.
Then we got Reagan, Bush, and Trump, and he proved it.
The media almost singlehandedly bringing Watergate to the average American’s attention was why Murdoch created Fox News. It was created specifically so they could force control of the narrative to their advantage.
And then we allowed every other media corporation to be bought and do the same once they saw it worked so well.
The media almost singlehandedly bringing Watergate to the average American’s attention
If you really get under the hood of Watergate, it had all the fingerprints of a soft coup. Nixon was a shit and made for an easy fall guy, but also Trumpian in his stubbornness and his refusal to go whole hog on the Cold War. Ford toed the line - installing Bush Sr to clean Kennedy’s liberals out of the CIA, promoting Greenspan and Rumsfield to the Republican inner circle, and tapping the breaks on our openness with China.
There was no real reason to break into the Watergate given that Nixon was beating McGovern in a landslide. But it did a lot of favors for the movement conservatives like Goldwater and Reagan to get Nixon’s ass out on the curb.
The WaPo (a hotbed of spooks even back then) played a big roll in that for a reason. Ffs, Woodward was an agency man going back to his time in Naval Intelligence. He broke Watergate less than a year after joining the paper.
Now this a conspiracy I can get behind. Love it.
How Regan didn’t get impeached over Iran Contra is baffling.
He avoided impeachment the same way Clarence Thomas survived his confirmation hearing.
Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neal decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.
Well, yeah, thanks to Fox entertainment.
Also white supremacy is a hell of a drug.
That is why I move to bigger more ethnic cities or countries where I am wanted at and dont have to put up with that shit. Just worked with a nazi/neonazi/skinhead or whatever and I while he would talk to me about his beliefs I woulld always find an excuse to walk away
Thanks for that info, I never about the Ailes Nixon-Trump connection. This is so frustrating to see unravel in real time.
The problem isn’t that Harris is being held to a higher standard. The problem is that Americans think of elections the same way they think of a sporting match. It’s “my team is going to win!” not “I’m going to vote for the candidate that is best aligned with my beliefs.” A huge number of the people who are voting Republican are doing so because the Republican party is their “team,” and damn it, their team is going to win even if it kills them.
Many years ago, I was discussing politics with a coworker (always a bad idea, but whatever). It went something like this:
“So, you don’t think the less-fortunate should be able to afford medical care?” “No, of course not, everyone should be able to see a doctor.”
“You don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry?” “I’m not gay, but they can do whatever makes them happy.”
“You support the war in Iraq, then?” “I support our troops, but the war is kind of a waste.”
“We definitely should legalize weed, right?” “Um, I’d smoke it if I didn’t get drug tested.”
“So why are you voting Republican, then?” “My family is Republican; we always do.”
We call this indoctrination. Cult. And fucking sheep. Lmao
“So why are you voting Republican, then?” “My family is Republican; we always do.”
Republican politicians would eat this person and their family if it ever came to it
After raping them all first.
Then denying any abortion.
Sadly, they would probably volunteer to be eaten so they could “own the libs”
As an outsider looking in, I’ve seen a lot of footage of rallies and events (on both sides) that are just absolutely crazy to me. Almost dystopian. People with painted faces, all kinds of merch, hollering and shouting and cheering like it’s the X Factor or a rock concert or something. You see people being interviewed outside the events and it’s like a festival in the background. It’s really, really bizarre. We have problems with our politics here too but not like that. I can’t believe that all of those people are ACTUALLY that passionate about any policies themselves, it’s just vague culture wars nonsense with a bizarre personality contest as a proxy for it.
As I say, I’m not trying to act superior. My country has its share of problems too, just a very different sort.
You have to understand, you are seeing people of VERY low intelligence. I know that’s tough to accept, but demographics are really frightening in America. Millions of voters with intelligence not very much higher than outright mental retardation. And so, the system learned long ago, you don’t bother trying to get them to think you’re right for the job, you don’t want them thinking at all. So you just get them to ally with you as a tribe, and that way they’re yours even if you’re doing the opposite of what they want.
This is why The Founders implemented a Representative Democracy. They knew half of the populace were dumber than rocks.
Horse race politics
Because a cult leader is automatically the purest one can be and needs no scrutiny.
I understand the MAGA cult, but do moderates not see this?
There the opposite is true. They already know that the other guy is a villain. Their candidate will have to prove themselves not to be.
Plus since they are the figurehead of the party, if they are lackluster in their proof it could affect downstream elections.
Because moderates pathological like to bring up “both sides”
“Moderates” are a fiction. They’re just an excuse Democrats make for pandering to corporate donors while giving only the barest scraps to their leftist base.
That only explains the cultists, and I doubt the entire media industry is in the cult.
Can’t believe you are asking this now. In the 70s, I don’t believe any of these yokels would have been elected. Lauren Beaubert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, they’ve all done things and said things that are so far over the line, it isn’t even funny. Nixon? Please, he would be small potatoes today.
Why? Gerrymandering. Social Media. Lack of critical thinking skills. A sense of hopelessness. Apathy. Billionaire brainwashing. The list goes on. The strange thing is, conservatives want to go back to the way things were. For them that means when women had to go to back alleys to get abortions, when gays were stoned, when blacks weren’t allowed to vote. For me it means when people didn’t justify these ridiculous notions, but instead just said, “No!”
It’s wild that Trump has done things far worse than watergate, and still got the nomination.
It is. The world is stranger than I could possibly ever have imagined. Sometimes I play a thought game. What if I had to explain this to, an alien.
“Yes, this is how it works. Are you going to destroy us now? Yeah, we probably deserve this.”
My game is explaining this to my dad who died in the mid-80s. Cannot even summon words.
It’s not wild, it’s the GOP plan since Nixon got nabbed.
Drumpf just happened to have that crazy crowd draw, so they yoked their hopes that he would be the first king of America, and disregarded everything else to forward that goal.
Cheetolini could eat a baby live on national television and his numbers would barely dip.
I don’t think they took him willingly, since he is a narcissistic moron. I think they were stuck with him when he managed to win over the far right radicals they have been grooming for decades. He is a racist schoolyard bully making their enemies angry, that’s all they care about.
They’re probably just young.
MTG would have been right at home as a Dixiecrat.
She would have neen standing beside George Wallace.
If you say so. I’m more of an 80s person. All I know about George Wallace is that he was shot.
Because the media are largely in the hands of the oligarchy that will stop at nothing to get another tax cut.
You must be young. Because Republicans will vote for a criminal before they vote for “communism”. Because the Republicans attempt to destroy the educational system to keep people dumb enough to vote for them has worked. Because dispite the corporate media pandering and acting like they want Harris Because that’s what their viewers want, their billionaire owners don’t. They want the republican led centrist enabled tax breaks on their money. Harris has also brought in the progressives which have zero tolerance for the centrist mindset. She is in a situation where she has to dance a dance of trying to reel in the progressives even though they are going to throw a fit when she panders to the centrists and the corporate overlords.
The system is made and controlled by the billionaires. No hard progressive that doesn’t play the game a little is going to get elected… right now. They will destroy anyone that threatens their billions. Everytime she goes a little too hard left they throw a fit.
Welcome to end stage capitalism.
No hard progressive that doesn’t play the game a little is going to get elected…
Poor Bernie…
I still Bern myself, though at least Harris’s votes have aligned with Bernie’s more than any other congressman.
I still wonder where we would be if he won in 2016
That’s a suffering trap because we all know 1) how good it would have been, and 2) A true progressive will never be allowed the nomination as long as the DNC exists in its current form.
Better to use that time to figure out what up and coming politicians have Bernie’s heart for when the future sentiment shifts.
All those things you said against Trump are actually working in his favor. His base sees it as persecution of their chosen one.
But he can’t just win off his cult votes. He has to get moderate votes too.
That doesn’t seem realistic. I don’t see how you can vote for Trump 2024, and claim to be a moderate.
Can you imagine a woman or a black man (let alone a black woman) running for president while being three-times divorced with kids from multiple partners and having cheated multiple times on top of that? Even if they were rich like Trump, it would never fly.
Obama’s political career would’ve ended the second “grab em by the p****” got leaked.
Obama got so much leeway throughout his career, shit like PRISM and Snowden, Benghazi, the invasion of Ukraine, the rise of isis, all under his watch.
Drone warfare as we know it was popularized under Obama, say what you want about trump, but when he took over he stopped bombing Somalia, Obama and Biden bombed the shit out of somalia
I was curious about this, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and I don’t see this stopping you’re talking about. If anything I’m seeing less bombings during Biden’s term, not Trump’s.
Either you’re a troll or uninformed.
Trump is an outrage machine, and we have a media that deals in an economy of outrage.
Trump gets outrage. Outrage gets clicks. Clicks get money. It’s a pretty simple chain to follow.
We need to wake up and realize that a profit-driven instantaneous news system that leverages strong emotions is not good for anybody. Truth is subjective nowadays, (always has been, really, but it’s especially evident in the current media climate) and all that matters is getting information and narratives (not necessarily facts) out and people consuming it (and all the ads embedded with it) there, first, and right now.
I am shocked to see this pseudofascist apologia so highly upvoted.
It’s not the media’s coverage of the fascism that’s the problem.
You would rather deflect blame to the media than point the finger at the fascism. Shame on you.
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
It’s like My 600lb Life.
Trump is the bedridden 800lb lump of a human. And the news cycle that brings him hamburgers by the pallet is the enabler spouse.
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
That’s stupid!
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
fascism is enabled by those who delude themselves into believing they can control it. see: 1930s germany.
they knew hitler was a nutbag. but too many people and too many industries were ready for the profits militarism brought - see krupps, ibm etc.
Hitler wouldn’t have been shit if he wasn’t celebrated by German media during the Beer Hall Putsch trials. And he would’ve faded to obscurity pretty quick if not for Goebbels.
Fascists are bad. But they only get dangerous when they’re given a platform.
Because some Democrats have standards, and Republicans don’t.
I don’t believe it’s possible for anybody to be held to lower standards than Trump.
It’s a good thing she’s held to higher standards. I don’t want anybody held to his standards running anything.
You ever see one of those families where the drug addicted high school dropout gets everything handed to them by the parents but the successful honor student gets beaten because they passed the entrance exam to harvard but didn’t pass it good enough?
It’s like that.
2 of my cousins (brother and sister) are 2 very opposite people. The older brother has been a career fuck-up since grade school; always getting in trouble, failing, not caring, running with the wrong crowds, knocked up a girl when they were 16, got kicked out of 1 school and barely graduated. He’s never held a job more than 6 months, if that, each job is minimum wage with minimal skills, been kicked out of the house a few times, has a sordid legal history, dated some questionable women, and eventually got into a relationship with a single mom of 3 kids who inherited 6-figures when her dad died and dude thought he was on easy street from that point forward…until 6 months later when he blew threw half the money and she kicked him out to where he’s now crashing in a camper working a lawn job.
His sister, honor student in HS, went to college, got a degree but had difficulty finding a job in graphic design that wasn’t freelance. Seeing the 27 2nd chances her enabler-parents afforded her brother…she stopped caring and moved back in with the parents bouncing from middling job to middling job. He’s in his mid-30s and she’s in her upper 20’s
Because so many trump voters are low-information, rabid and impervious to fact and/or reason. They will vote orange even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue to death, or if there are 32-or-whatever felony indictments/verdicts.
Meanwhile, many potential Democrat voters are also low-information in their own way - impressionable, fickle and with little memory retention, they seem unable to act upon a clear and present danger until it punches them in the goddamned face (and by then of course it’s too late), somehow have normalized the orange threat and are easy prey to an algorithm pushing a “both parties are the same” divide-and-conquer propaganda.
The difference between a parasite-laden excrement chip cookie and a raisin oatmeal cookie, “But I wanted chocolate chip! bOtH cOoKiEs ArE tHe SaMe!”
- 34 felonies.
Genocide.
Genocide.
I respect your concern, and I am sympathetic to the people in Gaza, but I don’t understand why we’re blaming Kamala for a war on the other side of the world that’s been going on longer than I’ve been alive.
I’m pretty sure I’ve asked you this exact question multiple times, and I’m suspecting that you’re just a Russian spam bot now.
If not, I appreciate your dedication to your morals, and wanting to defend the lives in the middle east, but until you get a fucking clue about how the world actually works, nobody’s going to take you seriously.
Linkerbean is a well known troll whose only purpose is to dissuade left leaning folks from affecting the election. The concern is 100% fake. If you try to discuss what Trump’s position or the Republican party’s position is on Gaza, it won’t work, it’ll all just come back to why you shouldn’t vote for the Democrats.
“I sympathize with Palestinians but anyone who doesnt vote to Genocide them is a Russian bot”
Very well said
People who would ever consider voting for the Toupee have no standards. No bar, no logic or even thought goes in to who they vote for.
The people who are planning to vote against the Toupee have standards. And the Democratic party has continually failed to meet those standards. And the only time the people have any power to pressure a politician is when they’re running for office. Anyone claiming “just vote in the D, then we can focus on getting progress made” is a centrist who is ok being perpetually part of the oppressed class.
Yes, we need to vote against the Toupee, and the GOP in general. We also need a presidential administration who will get progress done. And since the human species has, at best, 30 years left before the majority of the world is uninhabitable, little baby steps won’t cut it.
So Harris and the Dems have a high bar. Because the alternative is fascism, or death by climate change.
That would add up if you thought people should choose fascism or death from climate change over some sense of chance.
We need to make larger demands, but voting for those options you listed shouldn’t be 50/50 as the post is questioning.
Your entire comment is written like Biden and Harris are not currently complicit in Genocide.
Okay do what are you doing to further your goals to stop the genocide?
That assumes this poster has a goal to stop the genocide. ;)
Yeah, the vast majority of the “genocide” screamers are Trump supporters trying to demotivate left leaning folks from voting Democratic.
Making people aware it is only happning because of Biden and Harris.
This poster doesn’t care one whit about the plight of Palestinians. It has but one goal – to be the nerdy girl that helps peel votes off the votes from the nerdy guy so her friend, the jerkish cheerleader favoured by the Jocks, can win the SGA election 49 to 48 to 3 (I’ve posted this example of how government works in First Past the Post if you’d like to understand what I mean by nerd girl and cheerleader in SGA). The purpose of this poster and others like it is to throw the election to Trump so we’re subjected to Project 2025, which incidentally aligns with Putin’s and Xi’s goals.
Please think carefully before you listen to this poster or any other like it.
“The only people who care about Genocide are those who vote in favor of it”
Thanks for the comment definitely not alt account that came out of retirement but acts like an active poster.
Linkerbaan, you have always been, and always will be, a Trump supporter masquerading as a leftwinger. You are here for one purpose only: to stop leftwing folks from voting.
Edit: for the record, the reply, which for some reason I can no longer see, said simply “cope”.
Cope
Because what passes for journalism these days subsists on engagement metrics, and Harris doesn’t say crazy off-the-wall shit every 10 seconds.
Don’t forget ‘and are largely owned by old rich conservative white men with a vested interest in keeping a black woman who would raise their taxes out of office’.
