Campuses have been mostly empty since June. The DNC provides an opportunity for the largest Gaza protest yet. It will be huge, but that does not mean it will be violent. More than anything, they just want to be heard. Throwing a wrench into Harris’ inauguration as the nominee gains them nothing.
ETA: @Railer13 two posts up.
I do not know. I’ve been a Floridiot for 10 years and I think that’s unchanged in my time here but cannot guarantee it.
But it would gain the Republicans a lot. Which is why I expect some dirty tricks, courtesy of Miller, Stone et al to be played.
That may be true, but you have to sell that to the people watching outright slaughter of civilians and rampant obliteration of children while waiting for a cease fire negotiation. That Trump would undoubtedly be worse doesn’t even register.
I’ve already had my nephew express the sentiment (pre-Kamala) that he needs to protest vote to send a message to the Dems about Gaza. He’s since changed gears, but if certain population groups feel the outcome is a certain win for Harris, that sentiment could reemerge. Maybe not with him, but certainly with the folks who are protesting at Harris rallies.
It takes a special kind of stupid to think
The Rs will never do what I want. The Ds might but aren’t right now. So I’ll vote R to tell the Ds to change their tune.
Yeah, sure that’ll work. OTOH, I too was once a 20yo and stupid.
I agree.
I used to be dismayed at how Trump could position himself as the champion of the little guy, the average, working class, the rural poor. He’s Mr. Silver Spoon up his butt, and yet they lap it up.
Well, I’ve figured it out. Identity politics is not one-dimensional. Regardless of Trump’s identity, of his selfishness and stiff- serving agenda, he is giving voice to the people who have felt put down and left behind by the progressive left.
The rednecks, the rural conservatives who have a persecution complex already about the transformation of society. Gay rights, gay marriage, in-your-face gay media, mixed race families all over TV commercials, relaxation of the hold of christianity on society, and now trans acceptance. These Americans see the casual putdown of rednecks as an insult to their values. They see the shifting culture as an abandonment of all they hold dear. They feel attacked.
The Republicans in general and Trump in particular have said it’s not just okay to be a redneck, it’s something to be proud of. It’s not just okay to want to fight the rapid cultural change, it’s laudable to stand up and vocally oppose it. To to back the clock.
Trump speaks to them and says they are right and they are good and they should be in charge. And thus sucks the working class away from the Dems, who are fighting for getting rid of fossil fuels where a lot of the rural make their living. Stressing college education that many of them don’t have. Giving debt forgiveness to college grads and students that they don’t qualify for. Pushing for gun control that rural culture sees much differently than urban life.
He makes them feel heard and valued.
So if the Dems decide to go on the assault, those voters will be pushed to Trump.
But if the Dems can speak to issues they value, like bronging back manufacturing jobs, like lowering prices while increasing wages, without insults and derision, some of those voters will realize that Trump and the Repubs haven’t been as good for them as professed. And the ones who never cared for Trump personally to begin with, or who’ve grown disillusioned by Trump’s actual Presidency and subsequent behavior, can be lured back.
No! When you’re riding high is exactly when you fundraise.
I just saw an ad for the US women’s Olympics gymnastics team going on tour. Because that’s exactly what you do. Channel the wins and excitement of the Olympics into a national tour and get people to pay you for it. Not say people for enough at the Olympics, give them more.
Sane principle. People are excited, use that. AND tour the country checking out FEMA sites with storm damage. And suck in media coverage for free publicity.
The industry has left them behind. Manufacturing is no longer a low skill industry.
This is like trying to tell the horse coach drivers you’ll get their jobs back.
It probably is true that money helps win in the Olympics. The U.S. earns far more medals per unit of population than China and India, and the U.S. being a richer country plausibly explains it. But politics is not the Olympics.
What plausibly explains Harris being such a better fundraiser than Biden is that people like donating to someone with a high chance of winning:
If anyone has ever been overexposed, it is Donald Trump. The one time he won was when he was outspent 2-1 in an election where he was not expected to win…
I think that Harris’s many TV ads – at least, many in my area – claiming she is tough on defending the border (meaning just the Mexican border, right?) did a good job of defining her as a centrist. She will further define herself at the convention and debate(s). So long as she then has a clear lead, she should sit on it.
One way Trump can win is for Harris to make a gaffe which campaigning. And even if Harris doesn’t make a gaffe, the local sinclair station, where she is campaigning, is liable to find one. To reduce that risk, she should spend less time campaigning and more doing the job my tax dollars are currently paying her to do.
Another way Trump can win is if Harris gets pinned down with unpopular positions on issues. Right now, Israel supporters can imagine/hope she is just as Zionist as past presidents, and those who lean more towards Palestine can imagine she is a breath of fresh air. This is probably why her web page does not have a issues section. It is unavoidable that in the next few months she will have to let herself be pinned down on issues where whatever she says will alienate someone. But a short campaign season helps there.
Yep.
Those are gone, since WW2 is long over. America became the manufacturing center of the world since we bombed Germany and Japan into rubble, and GB and france were damaged and broke. China was in chaos. However, Japan, China, Korea, Germany etc have all recovered. We can only bring back those crappy assembly line jobs is to pay Americans what they pay in China or Korea. Korea is $30K a year, but…
If you want a good manufacturing job, see
Ah yes, the Thomas Dewey formula.
This is a very good point that I had never considered before. The unprecedented prosperity of the mid 20th century that America enjoyed was largely due to the after effects of WWII. That world and those circumstances don’t exist anymore.
Trump supporters are pining for a time that literally doesn’t exist anymore. And given current circumstances can’t. It’s the ultimate in magical thinking.
Okay, you’ve convinced me. At least as far as that goes with the caveat of those recent results repeat or improve.
How much of the war chest resources, dollars and candidate time, are you will to divert to there from the Blue Wall plus AZ GA NC and NV? In 2016 HRC had 15 campaign stops each in FL PA and OH. Only 4 in MI and none in WI. Maybe things would have played out differently if she chased FL less and secured WI and though. Given superior funding and candidates with plenty of energy, spending some money and candidates time there that has to matched by a less well funded Team Trump with stops by a candidate who just no longer has the energy to do campaign stops every day … may pay off elsewhere. And a presidential GOTV effort could be synergistic with GOTV for the ballot initiatives.
But really careful to not divert too much from the states more likely to be tipping points.
Trump is facing total and utter devastation. This may be the earliest-called election race on Election Night since 1996.
Trump can’t win based on a gaffe or two at this point.
Trump, Vance, and Fox are already blaring that she’s a “radical left San Francisco Liberal,” etc. So let’s say she gets nailed down on a specific issue; what are they going to say? “You’re a radical left San Francisco Liberal–and here’s the proof!” It’s already baked into the current narrative.
Guys, this election isn’t about the finer points of messaging, though Harris has been very smart in that area so far (as has Walz). Did you see any of the clips of Trump going to vote early in Florida? The man is half-dead. Seriously. For the GOP, this is 100% a race to make it to election day without Trump mentally and physically imploding, and he’s not winning that battle. For the Democrats, it’s about seeing how much ass can be kicked in under three months. How high and far the wave can be ridden. Pick your metaphor.
That’s why I phrased the OP title as I did. Some (most?) experts are now openly saying that Harris would win if the election were held today. If trends continue–and they don’t have to continue much longer–Trump is going to be destroyed. Little things like a gaffe or one position not polling well are not going to throw Harris off her trajectory.
I agree. He’s not stable and he clearly has no more gas left in the tank. This is not a story of two strong campaigns battling to see which is stronger. This is one campaign running on the fumes of its base, and one surging.
Again, some kind of thing could change things, but a thing is definitely required.
I think the government and industry sold out American workers in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving them and small towns in the dust. The problem was that the economy looked great in the 1990s, and the bill for the damage came due long after there was a way to fix things. I definitely have empathy for people who suffered from this betrayal.
The problem is that humans are stupid and tend to lash out in self-defeating ways. Trump has been the ultimate conduit for such energy. So while I have empathy for downscale whites, it’s hard not to be royally pissed off at them for supporting someone who will only fuck them harder. And Trump is not even like Hitler, who at least created a lot of jobs through deficit spending before killing everyone in WWII.
On top of all that, there are plenty of Trump supporters who have money but are nazis at heart and want to go buck wild on their perceived enemies. For these fuckers, I have no empathy at all.
On another topic, manufacturing in the US, despite the above-mentioned Great Sellout, is actually very strong. I’ve seen it up close. I worked in the US steel industry 2017-2023 as an interpreter (Japanese). The fact of the matter is that, if you are a responsible person who will show up to work every day and have enough intelligence to learn how a machine works, you can get a good job these days.
The Great Sellout “worked” because China and other countries offered cheap labor. Now that those countries have built their industrial base, they are a pretty shitty deal for US companies looking to offshore. If you do go the Asian route, you are doing so because those countries have built up strong expertise in particular sectors, not because they are cheap. Mexico remains a good deal because it’s close and–people don’t know this–has become an industrial powerhouse with an extremely good workforce.
Peter Zeihan can have some flaky opinions on this and that, but he says that American manufacturing is about to enter another golden age–and I agree. The Great Sellout sucked, but it’s something that could only happen once. We are now poised for a very strong economy for the rest of the 21st century (and, under Biden, we have been very strong despite overall global softness).
Like “Hillary will win in a landslide with 380 EV’s” and “Biden will get close to 400 EV’s”?
We’re all on the same side here, but considering these mid-August “meh, nothing’s gonna happen, it’s a foregone conclusion that he has no chance in hell” posts, it reminds me of the “500-Star Lock Of The Millennium” NFL Sunday picks that those degenerate touts sell during the season.
Invariably, the more adamant and “guaranteed NO WAY this can lose” that they are with their spiel, the more money you can make in the long run by betting against them.
For the sake of my minority and LGBTQ friends and family I’m “praying” that she trucks him and shuts up all his deplorable cultists, but reading the last 20 - 30 posts, I’m now more apprehensive than before that it’s gonna go south.
I really don’t want the opportunity to come back to this thread in three months with an “I fucking told y’all so”. If that happens, it won’t be anything personal.
Because optimism jinxes it? That’s just superstition.
Take a look at this:
“We’ve had more calls from people wanting to volunteer, wanting merchandise, yard signs,” Cheryl Schultz, chair of the Vanderburgh County Democrats, told Axios. “I think there’s an increase in hope and excitement, too.”
I just so happen to live in Vanderburgh County. Evansville, specifically. I’ve been working at my mom’s house in Crown Point (the other end of the state), since she died in February, but I’m going back this weekend and I’m going to volunteer too. And donate to Harris’s campaign. So I’m going to put my money and time where my mouth is. As should everyone here, insofar as they are able.
By the way, and I did a thread here on this after the election, but Evansville, which has had both Democratic and Republican mayors over the past twenty years, currently has Democratic mayor: Stephanie Terry. The first woman mayor of the city. The first black mayor of the city. The first black woman mayor of the city. You don’t think that’s a sign of change? I sure as hell do. We’re going to have our first black woman president–and yeah, we’re going to fight like hell to make that happen.
Just as an aside: I hadn’t realized that Obama once carried your state. By 28 thousand votes, but carry it he did.
I think (but am not predicting) a blowout for Harris would be the best thing that could happen. And not because of her policies vs Trump’s. Because it would make the “stolen election” claims impotent, and because it would be a repudiation of MAGA and maybe the Republicans could start getting a little more normal.
As someone who is very much centrist, I’ll take the Dems over what the Republicans have become, but the Dems need something to counterbalance them. Any party does.