I was walking my dog around the neighborhood this morning and saw a banner the size of a king size blanket across the front of a porch with a large cross on it and the words, I love Jesus and Trump is my president. I have no words.
I have one.
Prat.
I read this the first time as "I have one of those blankets, and you're a prat"--and had to blink really hard, several times.
"The affirmative action of generational wealth" is a brilliant phrase. (Edit: Michelle Obama said this -- I forget that not everyone is glued to their TV or computer watching the convention.)
Not really. Trump could just assume that the speeches will say something negative about him. Because he can't take criticism of any kind, he can then immediately bristle that they are being "nasty." As he always has with anybody who criticizes him. He could do all that with complete confidence without listening to a single word that was actually said.
Trump's view of politics is that nobody should ever say anything he disagrees with or they are "nasty" people. It is a childish and immature position that he has held for far longer than his more recent cognitive decline.
This morning Trump called the Obama speeches very nasty. Do tell.
That says he is watching.
Not necessarily but likely.
Trump was apparently attempting to live-tweetTruth Harris' speech last night. It mostly came across as pissy and petty ("Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH"), with a few weird personal obsessions thrown in ("WHERE'S HUNTER?").
When he was done with that he called in to Fox News, where they let him ramble for about ten minutes before cutting him off in favor of Greg Gutfeld. Once Fox cut him off he immediately called in to Newsmax.
For those who are curious, here is the party platform that the Democratic National Convention approved on Monday. It doesn't look like a single edit was made to the draft since Biden dropped out of the race. It has not even been edited to indicate that Biden is not running for a second term!
This is just further evidence of how little the party platform matters. Because the platform draft is from before Biden dropped out, Harris can distance herself from any specific policies in the platform and instead run on the very vague policy commitments she has made herself - with the exception of a few areas where she has gone beyond the commitments in the platform such as a $6000 child tax credit.
I'm afraid the same can be said for both parties. Trump certainly is not going to be bound by whatever platform the Republicans generated. I know he pretends to have known nothing of Project 2025, so he can or cannot follow that as his whim dictates. His other "policies" have been largely grandiose brags incapable of physically being implemented (like the mass deportation nonsense) or his one specific policy--his love of economy-destroying tariffs, which even Republicans will pressure him not to implement.
The formal party platform has been irrelevant for decades. Without a mechanism for dismissal for non-confidence, which the US lacks, party platforms are meaningless.
Wasn't Ann Coulter's tweet (apparently now deleted) about Mr Walz's son just so far below the belt it was actually underground?
On a par with Trump mocking that disabled journalist (which imho should alone have been enough to get him deselected).
Deleted, but still on view via the many screenshots being shared.
Many have pointed out that all boys and men, no matter their abilities, should be free to show such feelings without being mocked. The redefinition of manhood to include feelings is a necessary part of developing a freer and more equal society. More well-adjusted men would make all our lives better.
The mainstream media I follow seems to think Harris has succeeded in uniting the party despite deep divisions over the war in Gaza, although no Palestinian was given a speaking slot at the convention while family of Israeli hostages were. In her speech, Harris voiced support for Palestinian “dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination”, but that was only in brief comments after making an ironclad commitment to continuing to arm Israel. Pro-Palestinian delegates at the convention, including those who had been uncommitted to Biden before the convention largely over Gaza, said they were disappointed in the interviews I read but expressed optimism that Harris was showing greater “empathy” for Palestinians than Biden had.
The morality of all of this belongs in the existing Epiphanies thread on Gaza, but politically, has Harris succeeded in getting the progressive voters, young voters, and voters of color that are dismayed over US arming of Israel’s war in Gaza to vote and campaign for her just from her slight change in rhetoric if not policy, if for no other reason than the belief that Trump is worse and that some future change in policy might result in a generational change in leadership?
Is Harris’ only risk of losing over Gaza if Michigan comes down to a few thousand votes and enough Arab-American voters in places like Dearborn feel so betrayed that they don’t vote at all or vote for a minor party?
The same mainstream media I follow cites polling that indicates that only a very small percent of voters list Gaza as a top priority in their choice of a candidate, but in a close enough race, could this be enough?
And would Harris have been much less likely to win if she had said she might enforce existing US law banning arms exports to countries that violate human rights? Or if she had said that the US might at least contemplate recognizing Palestinian statehood unilaterally if Israel continued to expand West Bank settlements and refuse to offer Palestinians any realistic horizon towards statehood?
The morality of all of this belongs in the existing Epiphanies thread on Gaza, but politically, has Harris succeeded in getting the progressive voters, young voters, and voters of color that are dismayed over US arming of Israel’s war in Gaza to vote and campaign for her just from her slight change in rhetoric if not policy, if for no other reason than the belief that Trump is worse and that some future change in policy might result in a generational change in leadership?
I can only provide anecdata, but fwiw: Our son (almost 27) told us months ago that he just couldn’t vote for Biden. He was never going to vote for Trump, but he was just too turned off by what he saw as Biden’s unquestioning support for Israel and lack of concern for Palestinians. Our daughter (23), who has actively participated in pro-Palestinian events, had similar concerns, but hadn’t gone so far as to say she couldn’t vote for Biden. But she was very much hoping Biden would drop out of the race.
Both kids are excited about Harris. Son, who now lives in DC, told us a few days ago, he’s got a Harris tee shirt. So, yes, at least with them, she has succeeded, and she did so before her speech last night.
As for this:
In her speech, Harris voiced support for Palestinian “dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination”, but that was only in brief comments after making an ironclad commitment to continuing to arm Israel.
I heard both the statement on support for Israel and the statement of support for Palestinians as being more or less equally weighted. But that certainly may just have been me.
Sorry to triple post, but I wanted to go back to the earlier discussion of why Harris should do at least some interviews, press conferences, and/or televised town halls where voters can ask her questions. As problematic as current media coverage of politics now is, Harris has a very short time window to define herself to voters. People know Trump very well and nothing is likely to change their perception of him now, but most voters do not know Harris well at all.
If the polls are right, and they’ve somewhat underestimated Republican support in elections that have Trump on the ballot (ie, presidential and not midterm elections), the race is a toss up within the margin of error in swing states. She will need to win over more true independents and swing voters who feel that they don’t know enough about her to support her yet, and more soft-Democratic-leaning voters who have been so demoralized by the cost of living and other issues that they aren’t sure they will vote at all or might vote for a minor party. Making good campaign speeches to large friendly crowds is unlikely to make these voters feel they have a better sense of who she is and what policies she supports, and if she doesn’t do more to help these voters get to know her on her terms, these same voters are likely to get solidified in their minds either Republican attack lines on her record (which are out there in force on social media, despite Trump’s inability to stay on message), or a sense that Harris either stands for nothing or is hiding something, which the media will encourage by going on and on about how she is not doing interviews, press conferences, or town halls.
She also needs to do events like these to help her think on her feet in talking to an audience that isn’t predisposed to like her, which will be good preparation for her debate with Trump. Trump is a chaotic debater and Harris’ prosecutorial experience has done her well in previous debates, but she has little experience defending herself and her own record (as opposed to Biden’s) when submitted to hostile or skeptical questioning, and when she has buckled under such questioning (as she did when questioned about visiting the border early in her term as VP, regardless of whether her role in addressing the root causes of migration in Centeal America should have involved the border at all), it has been such a PR catastrophe for her that she has withdrawn from press scrutiny even further.
She needs to learn from Trump that the way to overcome bad press is to flood the airwaves with so much press exposure that people forget whatever her last gaffe was. Avoiding press appearances, or retreating to her shell whenever they go wrong, will not build up a positive view of her with voters. She needs to put herself out there and fine tune her public persona every day, and speaking from a podium to an adoring crowd is not enough to do that.
Not really. Trump could just assume that the speeches will say something negative about him. Because he can't take criticism of any kind, he can then immediately bristle that they are being "nasty." As he always has with anybody who criticizes him. He could do all that with complete confidence without listening to a single word that was actually said.
He listened. What he said indicated he listened, if not to the entire speeches, then to the highlights. My guess is he can’t resist listening, because it matters to him what people say about him.
The Obama’s speeches clearly got under his skin. And I’m pretty sure that was the intent.
No, he listened in real time. Harris' speech was 37 minutes during which the Orange Guy Trump sent out 40 tweets on Truth Social Yahoo News tracked some of the tweets,
If the polls are right, and they’ve somewhat underestimated Republican support in elections that have Trump on the ballot (ie, presidential and not midterm elections), the race is a toss up within the margin of error in swing states.
It's not so much that polls have underestimated Trump's support in past elections, it's that the meat grinder of the electoral college gives Republicans (any Republican, not just Trump) an advantage that takes two or three percentage points of nationwide popular support to overcome. So Harris' current lead of about three percentage points over Trump in national polling counts as a dead-even tie once the electoral college is factored in.
Candidates typically get a "bump" in public support after their party convention. Trump didn't this time, though that may be because Biden withdrew from the race the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, shaking up the race. We'll see where Harris shakes out post-convention around Labor Day (September 2), which should be enough time for new polls to be run. Traditionally most Americans don't pay attention to the presidential election until after Labor Day anyway.
Yesterday, as I was driving to Spokane I was listening to an NPR interview with Nate Silver about his new book On The Edge. The interviewer started the conversation by recalling Nate's 2016 prediction Hillary Clinton was ahead by three points, yet Trump won. "What happened?" asked the interviewer.
Nate replied he was not surprised by the outcome. As a professional gambler, he would have put his money on Trump because it was a matter of risk taking. Sometimes it is a matter of taking the risk for a huge payout.
Nate is not making any predictions, at this time, but he does note while Trump is still ahead in some of the swing states, Harris has the upward momentum in the swing states.
As usual, NPR has yet to release the transcript, but a quick search of Nate Silver and his book On the Edge shows quite a few results.
Of personal note: nine states will have reproductive choice initiatives on the ballot. Harris owns that issue. If those states come out in favor of anything restoring women's rights on that issue, there is no doubt in my mind she will win.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” .....Can someone please tell me what this is about ?
That the future going forward need not be dictated by the mistakes of the past. It’s sort of a variation on RFK, Sr.’s statement “some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not?’”
You can't see the prediction model without paying for it but the polling averages are free.
If you take those to 270towin, it suggests a comfortable Electoral College Win for Harris, but with close, correlated polls, the probabilities have to be very close.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” .....Can someone please tell me what this is about ?
That the future going forward need not be dictated by the mistakes of the past. It’s sort of a variation on RFK, Sr.’s statement “some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not?’”
Having heard them both, I am disappointed that Walz is not the main candidate
Are you sure about that after the latest Walz "scandal"? Apparently eighteen years ago Mr. Walz claimed that he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce. He didn't.
He actually received the award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce.
This comes from the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing propaganda rag for those who have never heard of it. No hard feelings there. Trying to manufacture scandals out of eighteen year old typos is their whole thing.
So why am I mentioning it (other than the obvious joke value as a response to @Telford )? Because this article trying to make a scandal out of an eighteen year old typo/mis-statement about a thirty-one year old minor award was Xitted about by Alex Thompson of Axios, which presents itself as a straight news organization. Apparently the American political press is so desperate for there to be some kind of Harris/Walz scandal that they'll stoop to pretending that this kind of thing is both newsworthy and scandalous. This goes a long way to explaining why the Harris campaign seems to regard the American political press as hostile.
Having heard them both, I am disappointed that Walz is not the main candidate
Are you sure about that after the latest Walz "scandal"? Apparently eighteen years ago Mr. Walz claimed that he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce. He didn't.
He actually received the award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce.
This comes from the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing propaganda rag for those who have never heard of it. No hard feelings there. Trying to manufacture scandals out of eighteen year old typos is their whole thing.
So why am I mentioning it (other than the obvious joke value as a response to @Telford )? Because this article trying to make a scandal out of an eighteen year old typo/mis-statement about a thirty-one year old minor award was Xitted about by Alex Thompson of Axios, which presents itself as a straight news organization. Apparently the American political press is so desperate for there to be some kind of Harris/Walz scandal that they'll stoop to pretending that this kind of thing is both newsworthy and scandalous. This goes a long way to explaining why the Harris campaign seems to regard the American political press as hostile.
It is but not for ideological reasons like the UK press, I think. It seems to be purely because Trump sells papers and they want the hype and the want the horse race.
I've been arguing with an idiot of Twitter who responded to one of my posts, claiming that the media won't hold Harris to account because they all have TDS...
Trump Derangement Syndrome. The idea is that the media is so “deranged” in their hatred of Donald Trump that they go out of their way to make up lies portraying him in a negative light. This is a term recycled from the aughts when negative media coverage of the Iraq War or Hurricane Katrina or the financial crisis or . . . was blamed on “Bush Derangement Syndrome”.
The Birthers are at it again. They now claim Harris is not a natural born citizen since she was not born to parents who were citizens of the US--one was from India, the other from Jamacia. For that matter, Nikki Halley, would have been ineligible too. Full story here
Note, every fact checking page that is reputable says this claim is bunk.
Sorry to triple post, but I wanted to go back to the earlier discussion of why Harris should do at least some interviews, press conferences, and/or televised town halls where voters can ask her questions. As problematic as current media coverage of politics now is, Harris has a very short time window to define herself to voters. People know Trump very well and nothing is likely to change their perception of him now, but most voters do not know Harris well at all.
If the polls are right, and they’ve somewhat underestimated Republican support in elections that have Trump on the ballot (ie, presidential and not midterm elections), the race is a toss up within the margin of error in swing states. She will need to win over more true independents and swing voters who feel that they don’t know enough about her to support her yet, and more soft-Democratic-leaning voters who have been so demoralized by the cost of living and other issues that they aren’t sure they will vote at all or might vote for a minor party. Making good campaign speeches to large friendly crowds is unlikely to make these voters feel they have a better sense of who she is and what policies she supports, and if she doesn’t do more to help these voters get to know her on her terms, these same voters are likely to get solidified in their minds either Republican attack lines on her record (which are out there in force on social media, despite Trump’s inability to stay on message), or a sense that Harris either stands for nothing or is hiding something, which the media will encourage by going on and on about how she is not doing interviews, press conferences, or town halls.
She also needs to do events like these to help her think on her feet in talking to an audience that isn’t predisposed to like her, which will be good preparation for her debate with Trump. Trump is a chaotic debater and Harris’ prosecutorial experience has done her well in previous debates, but she has little experience defending herself and her own record (as opposed to Biden’s) when submitted to hostile or skeptical questioning, and when she has buckled under such questioning (as she did when questioned about visiting the border early in her term as VP, regardless of whether her role in addressing the root causes of migration in Centeal America should have involved the border at all), it has been such a PR catastrophe for her that she has withdrawn from press scrutiny even further.
She needs to learn from Trump that the way to overcome bad press is to flood the airwaves with so much press exposure that people forget whatever her last gaffe was. Avoiding press appearances, or retreating to her shell whenever they go wrong, will not build up a positive view of her with voters. She needs to put herself out there and fine tune her public persona every day, and speaking from a podium to an adoring crowd is not enough to do that.
I've been reading a lot of mansplaining re: what VP Harris "needs to do," almost exclusively by people who aren't going to vote for her under any circumstances. That's funny to me. The cult of MAGA needs constant contact and affirmation from Tr*mp, who as a narcissistic wanna-be authoritarian, needs constant cadulation from his base. It's a nice little circle-jerk they have going.
Second, it's a mistake to think the Left needs the same kind of overwhelming input from VP Harris. She's not a raw populist, and Progressives aren't in some kind of MAGA lockstep. MAGA needs to see and hear their guy winning verbal sparring contests, dismissively, scathingly and even a bit abusively if possible. That's "strength" to MAGA. Whereas to others, it's mere bravado, bullying and bellicosity.
I've been reading a lot of mansplaining re: what VP Harris "needs to do," almost exclusively by people who aren't going to vote for her under any circumstances. That's funny to me.
One of the things that killed Harris' 2020 presidential primary run was her tendency to follow the advice of campaign "experts". Following that advice seemed to invariably harm her electoral prospects. She seems determined not to repeat that mistake.
The Birthers are at it again. They now claim Harris is not a natural born citizen since she was not born to parents who were citizens of the US--one was from India, the other from Jamacia. For that matter, Nikki Halley, would have been ineligible too. Full story here
Note, every fact checking page that is reputable says this claim is bunk.
This claim is based on the argument that "natural born citizen" isn't defined anywhere, and so must mean something special that couldn't be meant by any subset of those words, and chooses to assert that it must mean "born in the US to US citizen parents".
This claim is made up. It has no basis in fact whatsover. The phrase "natural born" has significant precedent in the English language, and there is no plausible case that this means anything other than a person who is American by right of their birth, rather than by naturalization.
These nonsense arguments are about as credible as the "sovereign citizen" nonsense, and are based on similar levels of creative interpretation of word choice.
We discussed a variant of this theory pretty much exactly four years ago when Harris was first nominated for the vice presidency. That version was propagated by now-disbarred attorney and multiply indicted January 6 conspirator John Eastman P01135735. Eastman hung his theory on the peg that while Kamala Harris' parents were legal residents of the United States at the time of her birth, they weren't permanent legal residents. The National Federation of Republican Assemblies takes an even more absolutist approach, that one is only a "natural born citizen" if they're "a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child's birth". So even having one American parent doesn't make you an American if your other parent is a non-citizen. They don't explain their reasoning for this, except citing six Supreme Court cases. One is the infamous Dred Scott decision. One of the others, interestingly, is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that Mr. Wong was an American citizen by virtue of being born within the United States despite the fact that his parents were non-citizens and also despite the fact that both of his parents were ineligible for naturalization.
The main problem with both of these theories is that, if applied consistently, it means that the descendants of American slaves are not American citizens. I've already discussed why this is the case with Eastman's theory. Similar problems apply to the NFRA theory. Since the enslaved were non-citizens it follows under NFRA's logic that their descendants are also non-citizens since both of their parents weren't American citizens. This even applies to the numerous cases where one parent was free, since NFRA specifies that both parents have to be citizens. It takes a pretty special view of the U.S. Constitution to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the previously enslaved from being citizens.
As a bit of historical trivia, three previous American presidents would fail NFRA's criteria for being natural born citizens by virtue of having at least one non-citizen parent: Andrew Jackson, Chester A. Arthur, and Barack Obama.
If you take that "born in the US to citizen parents" theory far enough, you disenfranchise everybody but the American Indians, for at some point the rest all had non-citizen parents, who would have rendered their children non-citizens under the theory, and they their children, etc. Bah.
If you take that "born in the US to citizen parents" theory far enough, you disenfranchise everybody but the American Indians, for at some point the rest all had non-citizen parents, who would have rendered their children non-citizens under the theory, and they their children, etc. Bah.
I think that the NFRA would say that someone born to two naturalized citizen parents would qualify as a natural born citizen, but I'm not sure how far their good will extends.
From Wikipedia: Before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the antebellum United States generally embraced the common-law doctrine of citizenship by birth within the country.
I am curious. Most, maybe all, of my ancestors, back in the day, came to North America before 1750. Do we say that the citizens of the colonies as of 1788 were automatically citizens ab initio, or do we say they were not citizens because their parents were not?
From Wikipedia: Before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the antebellum United States generally embraced the common-law doctrine of citizenship by birth within the country.
I am curious. Most, maybe all, of my ancestors, back in the day, came to North America before 1750. Do we say that the citizens of the colonies as of 1788 were automatically citizens ab initio, or do we say they were not citizens because their parents were not?
Art. II, § 1, cl. 5 of the U.S. Constitution states:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Essentially anyone considered a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted was "grandfathered in" as a natural born citizen, at least for the purposes of serving as president.
It looks like the debate is on with muted mics. I am glad for the muted mics; I do not want to hear his interruptions. His rambling will likely be evident without the mics being on.
@Crœsos I have asked you at least twice before not to link directly to potentially upsetting material without providing adequate warning of where the link goes. I have hidden your link above.
@Crœsos I have asked you at least twice before not to link directly to potentially upsetting material without providing adequate warning of where the link goes. I have hidden your link above.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
@Crœsos Repeatedly ignoring the hosts is a breach of the 6th commandment, if it happens again you will be suspended for two weeks.
Comments
I read this the first time as "I have one of those blankets, and you're a prat"--and had to blink really hard, several times.
“I want to know, ‘Who’s going to tell him? Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those 'Black jobs?’”
👏
That says he is watching.
Not necessarily but likely.
Trump's view of politics is that nobody should ever say anything he disagrees with or they are "nasty" people. It is a childish and immature position that he has held for far longer than his more recent cognitive decline.
Trump was apparently attempting to live-tweetTruth Harris' speech last night. It mostly came across as pissy and petty ("Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH"), with a few weird personal obsessions thrown in ("WHERE'S HUNTER?").
When he was done with that he called in to Fox News, where they let him ramble for about ten minutes before cutting him off in favor of Greg Gutfeld. Once Fox cut him off he immediately called in to Newsmax.
Sad!
On a par with Trump mocking that disabled journalist (which imho should alone have been enough to get him deselected).
You can get an audio only version on YouTube music. I think it's available worldwide. It's certainly accessible this side of The Pond.
Also available as a free YouTube video.
Nice. Thank you.
This is just further evidence of how little the party platform matters. Because the platform draft is from before Biden dropped out, Harris can distance herself from any specific policies in the platform and instead run on the very vague policy commitments she has made herself - with the exception of a few areas where she has gone beyond the commitments in the platform such as a $6000 child tax credit.
Deleted, but still on view via the many screenshots being shared.
Many have pointed out that all boys and men, no matter their abilities, should be free to show such feelings without being mocked. The redefinition of manhood to include feelings is a necessary part of developing a freer and more equal society. More well-adjusted men would make all our lives better.
The morality of all of this belongs in the existing Epiphanies thread on Gaza, but politically, has Harris succeeded in getting the progressive voters, young voters, and voters of color that are dismayed over US arming of Israel’s war in Gaza to vote and campaign for her just from her slight change in rhetoric if not policy, if for no other reason than the belief that Trump is worse and that some future change in policy might result in a generational change in leadership?
Is Harris’ only risk of losing over Gaza if Michigan comes down to a few thousand votes and enough Arab-American voters in places like Dearborn feel so betrayed that they don’t vote at all or vote for a minor party?
The same mainstream media I follow cites polling that indicates that only a very small percent of voters list Gaza as a top priority in their choice of a candidate, but in a close enough race, could this be enough?
And would Harris have been much less likely to win if she had said she might enforce existing US law banning arms exports to countries that violate human rights? Or if she had said that the US might at least contemplate recognizing Palestinian statehood unilaterally if Israel continued to expand West Bank settlements and refuse to offer Palestinians any realistic horizon towards statehood?
Both kids are excited about Harris. Son, who now lives in DC, told us a few days ago, he’s got a Harris tee shirt. So, yes, at least with them, she has succeeded, and she did so before her speech last night.
As for this: I heard both the statement on support for Israel and the statement of support for Palestinians as being more or less equally weighted. But that certainly may just have been me.
If the polls are right, and they’ve somewhat underestimated Republican support in elections that have Trump on the ballot (ie, presidential and not midterm elections), the race is a toss up within the margin of error in swing states. She will need to win over more true independents and swing voters who feel that they don’t know enough about her to support her yet, and more soft-Democratic-leaning voters who have been so demoralized by the cost of living and other issues that they aren’t sure they will vote at all or might vote for a minor party. Making good campaign speeches to large friendly crowds is unlikely to make these voters feel they have a better sense of who she is and what policies she supports, and if she doesn’t do more to help these voters get to know her on her terms, these same voters are likely to get solidified in their minds either Republican attack lines on her record (which are out there in force on social media, despite Trump’s inability to stay on message), or a sense that Harris either stands for nothing or is hiding something, which the media will encourage by going on and on about how she is not doing interviews, press conferences, or town halls.
She also needs to do events like these to help her think on her feet in talking to an audience that isn’t predisposed to like her, which will be good preparation for her debate with Trump. Trump is a chaotic debater and Harris’ prosecutorial experience has done her well in previous debates, but she has little experience defending herself and her own record (as opposed to Biden’s) when submitted to hostile or skeptical questioning, and when she has buckled under such questioning (as she did when questioned about visiting the border early in her term as VP, regardless of whether her role in addressing the root causes of migration in Centeal America should have involved the border at all), it has been such a PR catastrophe for her that she has withdrawn from press scrutiny even further.
She needs to learn from Trump that the way to overcome bad press is to flood the airwaves with so much press exposure that people forget whatever her last gaffe was. Avoiding press appearances, or retreating to her shell whenever they go wrong, will not build up a positive view of her with voters. She needs to put herself out there and fine tune her public persona every day, and speaking from a podium to an adoring crowd is not enough to do that.
The Obama’s speeches clearly got under his skin. And I’m pretty sure that was the intent.
It's not so much that polls have underestimated Trump's support in past elections, it's that the meat grinder of the electoral college gives Republicans (any Republican, not just Trump) an advantage that takes two or three percentage points of nationwide popular support to overcome. So Harris' current lead of about three percentage points over Trump in national polling counts as a dead-even tie once the electoral college is factored in.
Candidates typically get a "bump" in public support after their party convention. Trump didn't this time, though that may be because Biden withdrew from the race the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, shaking up the race. We'll see where Harris shakes out post-convention around Labor Day (September 2), which should be enough time for new polls to be run. Traditionally most Americans don't pay attention to the presidential election until after Labor Day anyway.
Nate replied he was not surprised by the outcome. As a professional gambler, he would have put his money on Trump because it was a matter of risk taking. Sometimes it is a matter of taking the risk for a huge payout.
Nate is not making any predictions, at this time, but he does note while Trump is still ahead in some of the swing states, Harris has the upward momentum in the swing states.
As usual, NPR has yet to release the transcript, but a quick search of Nate Silver and his book On the Edge shows quite a few results.
Of personal note: nine states will have reproductive choice initiatives on the ballot. Harris owns that issue. If those states come out in favor of anything restoring women's rights on that issue, there is no doubt in my mind she will win.
There are clips on YouTube.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” .....Can someone please tell me what this is about ?
That the future going forward need not be dictated by the mistakes of the past. It’s sort of a variation on RFK, Sr.’s statement “some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not?’”
You can't see the prediction model without paying for it but the polling averages are free.
If you take those to 270towin, it suggests a comfortable Electoral College Win for Harris, but with close, correlated polls, the probabilities have to be very close.
AFZ
Are you sure about that after the latest Walz "scandal"? Apparently eighteen years ago Mr. Walz claimed that he received an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce. He didn't.
He actually received the award from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce.
This comes from the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing propaganda rag for those who have never heard of it. No hard feelings there. Trying to manufacture scandals out of eighteen year old typos is their whole thing.
So why am I mentioning it (other than the obvious joke value as a response to @Telford )? Because this article trying to make a scandal out of an eighteen year old typo/mis-statement about a thirty-one year old minor award was Xitted about by Alex Thompson of Axios, which presents itself as a straight news organization. Apparently the American political press is so desperate for there to be some kind of Harris/Walz scandal that they'll stoop to pretending that this kind of thing is both newsworthy and scandalous. This goes a long way to explaining why the Harris campaign seems to regard the American political press as hostile.
It is but not for ideological reasons like the UK press, I think. It seems to be purely because Trump sells papers and they want the hype and the want the horse race.
I've been arguing with an idiot of Twitter who responded to one of my posts, claiming that the media won't hold Harris to account because they all have TDS...
It's all tedious...
AFZ
Trump Derangement Syndrome. The idea is that the media is so “deranged” in their hatred of Donald Trump that they go out of their way to make up lies portraying him in a negative light. This is a term recycled from the aughts when negative media coverage of the Iraq War or Hurricane Katrina or the financial crisis or . . . was blamed on “Bush Derangement Syndrome”.
Note, every fact checking page that is reputable says this claim is bunk.
I've been reading a lot of mansplaining re: what VP Harris "needs to do," almost exclusively by people who aren't going to vote for her under any circumstances. That's funny to me. The cult of MAGA needs constant contact and affirmation from Tr*mp, who as a narcissistic wanna-be authoritarian, needs constant cadulation from his base. It's a nice little circle-jerk they have going.
First, *adulation* -- sorry.
Second, it's a mistake to think the Left needs the same kind of overwhelming input from VP Harris. She's not a raw populist, and Progressives aren't in some kind of MAGA lockstep. MAGA needs to see and hear their guy winning verbal sparring contests, dismissively, scathingly and even a bit abusively if possible. That's "strength" to MAGA. Whereas to others, it's mere bravado, bullying and bellicosity.
One of the things that killed Harris' 2020 presidential primary run was her tendency to follow the advice of campaign "experts". Following that advice seemed to invariably harm her electoral prospects. She seems determined not to repeat that mistake.
Not at all. "Cadulation" is actually a pretty good portmanteau.
This claim is based on the argument that "natural born citizen" isn't defined anywhere, and so must mean something special that couldn't be meant by any subset of those words, and chooses to assert that it must mean "born in the US to US citizen parents".
This claim is made up. It has no basis in fact whatsover. The phrase "natural born" has significant precedent in the English language, and there is no plausible case that this means anything other than a person who is American by right of their birth, rather than by naturalization.
These nonsense arguments are about as credible as the "sovereign citizen" nonsense, and are based on similar levels of creative interpretation of word choice.
The main problem with both of these theories is that, if applied consistently, it means that the descendants of American slaves are not American citizens. I've already discussed why this is the case with Eastman's theory. Similar problems apply to the NFRA theory. Since the enslaved were non-citizens it follows under NFRA's logic that their descendants are also non-citizens since both of their parents weren't American citizens. This even applies to the numerous cases where one parent was free, since NFRA specifies that both parents have to be citizens. It takes a pretty special view of the U.S. Constitution to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the previously enslaved from being citizens.
As a bit of historical trivia, three previous American presidents would fail NFRA's criteria for being natural born citizens by virtue of having at least one non-citizen parent: Andrew Jackson, Chester A. Arthur, and Barack Obama.
I think that the NFRA would say that someone born to two naturalized citizen parents would qualify as a natural born citizen, but I'm not sure how far their good will extends.
I am curious. Most, maybe all, of my ancestors, back in the day, came to North America before 1750. Do we say that the citizens of the colonies as of 1788 were automatically citizens ab initio, or do we say they were not citizens because their parents were not?
With certain
Hidden text- link to article about American slavery - la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Art. II, § 1, cl. 5 of the U.S. Constitution states:
Essentially anyone considered a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted was "grandfathered in" as a natural born citizen, at least for the purposes of serving as president.
It looks like the debate is on with muted mics. I am glad for the muted mics; I do not want to hear his interruptions. His rambling will likely be evident without the mics being on.
@Crœsos I have asked you at least twice before not to link directly to potentially upsetting material without providing adequate warning of where the link goes. I have hidden your link above.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
@Crœsos Repeatedly ignoring the hosts is a breach of the 6th commandment, if it happens again you will be suspended for two weeks.
Doublethink, Admin
/Admin