While there are Jewish and Arab voters who care a great deal about the war in Gaza, my gut feeling is it’s not a major issue for most American voters. Both the Jews and the Arabs vote, and the issue could certainly influence the election results. But i just don’t think enough voters care for it to make or break a “landslide”.
Another swing state poll, Nevada, with increasingly significant movement since Harris became the nominee:
Biden had been stuck behind there and now Harris is up by almost 6 in this poll. As always duly noted it is just one poll but the other recent poll, pretty much right after Harris became the nominee in late July, the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll, had her with a two point lead. So not a crazy outlier. More like a trend.
I watched Harris’ speech in Las Vegas tonight and I noticed she is also promising to stop taxing tips. Good to see that she is not afraid of any particular idea just because Trump happened to blurt it out first.
If she really wants to one-up him she could call for abolishing the minimum wage exemption for tipped employees.
She mentioned raising the minimum wage at the same time. I assume this is something where servers get paid a lower minimum wage than everybody else because they theoretically make up the difference with tips? There was something like that here in BC that a previous government put in and the current government was happy to get rid of.
Edit: found a link:
Under federal minimum wage law, tipped employees like waiters can be paid as little as $2.13/hour as long as what they make in tips adds up to federal minimum wage ($7.25). It’s not done everywhere - in WA, for example, tipped employees get the same minimum wage ($16.28) as everyone else.
It’s a dumb, pandering idea, but that’s what you’ve got to do to get elected sometimes.
Off-topic hot topic
Whats dumb is that we even have tipping in this modern age, other countries function just fine without it.
And being able to accept the idea even though it came from a MAGA republican just shows that she is open minded to ideas and willing to work with the other side. This is a win-win for her, it would dumb to let the republicans own this idea.
Just watch Trump cry about this was his idea.
Moderating: No debates on tipping in the thread. I’m hiding your first line.
We have no shortage of threads debating tipping or condemning the practice.
Don’t get me wrong, whatever I may think of the substance of the proposal, I’m a fan of a good political pander. The biggest political pander of the 2020 election was Joe Biden’s promise to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court, and it’s the reason why he’s President today. To be successful, a pander must be very important to a specific subsection of the electorate but not alienating to the rest of the electorate. It’s also important to deploy the pander sparingly, lest one get a reputation for being a panderer and interest groups begin to doubt the candidate’s commitment to their specific pander.
They’ll be consequences to be dealt with if she’s elected, but getting elected is the foremost thing.
Correction. That was registered voters. For likely voters it is - up MI 5 PA 2 WI 6
Sorry about that.
Those are nice numbers. I was rooting for Harris way back in the last primaries, and was disappointed when she dropped out. She would be a good leader, especially compared to the orange shitgibbon.
I probably wouldn’t pick her out of a large lineup of Democratic candidates, but it obviously doesn’t matter. I’d prefer Pete Buttgieg, Cory Brooker, and probably a few others.
I also prefer a younger Biden, who I really think is the best politician out there. I get he is getting old, but I think Lindsay Graham was right to say, “God never created a better man than Joe Biden.”
OK, that’s exaggerating, but he is a great guy.
I did. She was one of my favorites when they all ran against each other. If she hadn’t dropped out by the time it got to my state, there’s a decent chance I would have voted for her. I certainly liked her more than Biden. (In hindsight, I underestimated Biden.) I’m quite happy to see her running.
Cool, I’m cheering her on obviously. And voting for her first day our ballot comes to us.
Making fun of non-European names was probably considered a real zinger in the reform school that that fucking Fred shipped him off to.
In his interview today, President Biden said that he planned to campaign for Harris. He intends to focus on Pennsylvania.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-campaign-harris-battleground-state-pennsylvania-2024-08-11/
I wish he wouldn’t. He needs to save his energy for Presidentin’.
I think a US-brokered cease fire really would be a big deal. First, I think that most of both American Jews and Muslims want it. Second, while it’s not high on most Americans’ lists, I think that’s because most people just take violence in the Middle East for granted, as something that’s going to happen and we can’t do anything about. But if someone does do something about it, well, that’s impressive.
Bonus points if Biden can talk up Harris’s role in the process.
I’m not sure how much he needs to be “hands on” about, as opposed to letting his surrogates run out the clock, hopefully avoiding any huge negative developments and aiming at some favorable October surprise bump (a la Isr/Pal ceasefire). And I’d imagine much of that could be done in between campaign visits via phone calls.
What exactly - in terms of Presidentin’ - do you believe should keep him off the campaign trail?
My concern is, how does his age/apparent frailty sell? I could imagine him presenting a message of “Look what we accomplished, after the challenges of Chump. I responsibly decided to pass the torch to a younger generation.” But I could imagine him presenting an unfavorable image, reminding folk that he oughtn’t have lt it get to the point where he had to pull out… Interesting PR challenge.