could she blow it badly by choosing the wrong running mate?

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in history. She’s about 20 years younger then him. She’s unburdened by all of Biden’s failures, and can claim all his successes. Also not being catholic she doesn’t have to be weird about abortion and can be pro choice, which post-Roe is a HUGE deal for about 50% of the population. Trumpworld’s best hit against her is her laugh, which is absolutely not doing numbers because… c’mon.

    So yeah she’s got a decent chance, but obviously anything can happen.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      The only point I’d argue is that whenever I see pictures of people protesting outside abortion clinics there are plenty of women there too…

      The abortion topic might not necessarily pull the womens vote as hard as you might think.

      • cabbage@piefed.social
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        There are of course women on both sides, but generally speaking the prospect of being forced to carry a child they do not want is off-putting for most women.

        • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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          Sure, but how many of those people are ignoring that fact and instead applying an arbitrary moral standard onto other women?

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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        See you’d think that but in practice women almost never imagine the men want restrictions that are actually as strict as the rhetoric suggests.

        No exception bans are so beyond the pale that even blood red Nebraska will go 60 to 40 against them. Hitting the abortion button is one of the Dems’ best strategies right now, if the Republicans defend it too much they alienate the center, and if they don’t defend it enough they sap the right’s energy for them, and they themselves have polarized the issue enough that there’s not nearly as much of a goldilocks zone for keeping enough voters grumbling but not turned off to skate by as there may have been in the past.

        Also applies to Project 2025 more generally but the abortion issue is the locus around which that broader case can be built from since it’s the “right now” manifestation of just how crazy it will all be.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        You’re conflating volume with popular support. The Nationalist Christians and related religious fundamentalists are extremely loud, obnoxious, and annoying, and that group does include women. It’s just important to also acknowledge that religious fundies, despite how noisy they are, are not a majority of the populace at this point.

        And moreover, part of the reason they’re being so loud, obnoxious, and annoying, and the core reason of why they’re trying to solidify their hold on power, is that they can see demographic tea leaves - religiosity is plummeting across the country for a lot of very good reasons. But instead of adjusting their stances to be more inclusive, they’ve taken the Fox News route and are going for outrage. As long as we can make it through this and the next election relatively intact, I think and hope that this particularly cancerous tribe of fundies are destined for the dustbin of history.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        Most of those women think the only moral abortion is their abortion. Most of those men abortions are a means to an end of getting women back into the kitchen. This has way more to do with women’s suffrage than it ever did about babies. Just look at how they treat babies/mothers after they are born.

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        From the outside - I read a comment about a " possible second black president" and it took me a minute to figure out they were talking about Harris

        If I do more than a few hours gardening in summer I’m darker-skinned than her 😂

        Why are they so obsessed with someone’s…hue?!?

        • solrize@lemmy.world
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          It’s about African ethnicity more than albedo per se. GOP also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy is about the same hue as Obama but it’s less of an issue for him. Quite a bit of US racism lingers from the Jim Crow era and even the Civil War. Most African-Americans are literally descended from antebellum slavery and are still seen by some as something like escapees who need to be rounded up and put back on the farm. Obama himself didn’t have that in his ancestry (his father came to the US from Kenya, which didn’t “count”) and that helped him, I think, though of course he was still subject to racism. Basically there is a chunk of the US that misses the plantation system and wants it back.

        • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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          If I do more than a few hours gardening in summer I’m darker-skinned than her 😂

          This is your privilege talking. Because if someone targets you for your skin color, all you need to do is stay in the shade for a couple of weeks. “Lol!”

          But more to the point, you’re right. Unfortunately, American politicians have a history of not liking non-whites in positions of power. Under Obama, the GOP shut down the government twice, and the famous “you lie!” line was uttered to him by a Republican during an official act - something that has never happened before. All because he was black.

          • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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            I will never forget that clip during the Obama vs. McCain race where a woman says Obama can’t be trusted because “he’s an arab”

            • wjrii@lemmy.world
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              And McCain corrected her. I don’t want to sugar coat that era, but it would be nice if Republicans today had that basic connection to simple reality and personal-level decency. One, you can negotiate with that. And two, I was a lot less worried about John McCain or Mitt Romney destroying the political infrastructure that would let their bad ideas be replaced by something better.

      • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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        I’ve lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. I’m “Mexican from South America” like many Trumpists would call me.

        It’s not as bad as it looks.

      • The Assman@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Hillary won the popular vote

        Moot point because winning the popular vote is just as meaningless today as it was then

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That may work in Harris’s favor. She is a woman and she isnt white…

      Now I know theres minorities and women who do vote red but if you look at the population based on percentages white men are only 31% of the population, White women 30%, 12% black, 18% Hispanic. If she pulls white women, and the POC (not to mention the LGBT+ vote) she could absolutely walk it in. She just needs to convince those people to get up off their asses and vote in record numbers.

    • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      We don’t like because she’s a piece of shit cop, not because of her gender or her race

      Unpacking Kamala Harris’s Record on Trans and Sex Work Issues - From denying affirming healthcare to a trans inmate to barring forums sex workers used to protect themselves, the former “top cop” has a concerning record of endangering our community’s most marginalized members.

      https://www.them.us/story/kamala-harriss-record-on-trans-and-sex-work-issues

      And…

      Kamala Harris is a complicated choice for some LGBTQ+ people

      https://19thnews.org/2020/08/kamala-harris-complicated-lgbtq-choice/

      And…

      Kamala Harris Takes ‘Responsibility’ for Opposing Trans Surgeries

      https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2019/1/22/kamala-harris-takes-responsibility-opposing-trans-surgeries

      She kept prisoners past their parole or release dates so the prisons wouldnt lose the labor

      https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/

      • pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works
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        So is the conclusion from that that LGBTQ people would rather vote for Trump (directly, or indirectly by voting for some small candidate or not voting)? I don’t get why this would be a reason for them to not support the democrats

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          It’s like if you have a choice of getting tickled for an hour or getting shot in the chest, and you focus on how much you dislike being tickled.

      • SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.worldOP
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        Joe Biden was one of that main sponsors on making harsher drug sentences in the 1980’s and yet he changed with the times and science, and so can she.

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            Weird, because Biden publicly and through action changed his views on those very same prison sentences.

            But sure, let’s shine a flashlight and the least dangerous candidate and ignore the party actively trying to delete queerness

        • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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          Don’t care about downvotes, like liberals don’t care about a democrats past. And they wonder how they suddenly turn to shit.

          • dipshit@hilariouschaos.com
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            Numerous accounts have discredited the official US bullshit about Tiananmen Square and the fake Uyghur Genocide.

            Lmao you actually said this

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            Ah, that’s a liberal problem so conservatives must care so much about their candidate’s past huh? So what you’re suggesting is they vote for Trump because he is a racist, rapist and fraud?

            I bet you still shit in diapers since people are incapable of changing lmao

  • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.autism.place
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    I think Harris is an interesting Democratic nominee to beat Trump, and I think the Democratic Party played a smart move by letting Biden take the hit of the GOP’s initial attack campaign. Now, the Democrats can use the same old age and whatever else they were attacking Biden for on Trump. Additionally, if people were on the fence about Biden, Harris could possibly resolve the issues they were hesitant on. Plus, look at these contrasts:

    • Trump has raped women. Harris is a woman.

    • Trump is anti-choice man. Harris is a pro-choice woman.

    • Trump is a felon. Harris is a prosecutor.

    • Trump is a racist. Harris is a person of color.

    • Trump paints himself orange. Harris has a natural skin tone.

    • Trump is old and has been running a campaign against old age. Harris isn’t even 60 yet.

    • Trump fucks up everything he touches. Harris was an effective Attorney General.

    I think her nomination makes the election really about hypocrisy vs congruence.

  • outdated2139@lemmynsfw.com
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    She could completely blow it by picking the wrong running mate. For instance if she picked Hillary, it would be over. That isn’t going to happen though and she has good options for a running mate if they choose to accept.

    People are high on her now because it’s refreshing news they won’t have to vote for Biden. We’ll see if the momentum can carry over into the election and if Kamala shoves her foot in her mouth. I don’t think she will inspire a lot of people to vote but Trump will inspire a lot of people to vote against him.

    • This is the one area where I’m optimistic. Of all her failings, she seems to present well.

      I think she has more charisma than Hillary. I went to a Hillary speech once - smaller audience at a university, Obama-era - and while she’s a good and compelling speaker when speaking to her base, I think she’s prone to phrasing that’s too easily taken out of context out simply easily misinterpreted even in context. The famous example being, of course, when she told middle-America that she wanted to destroy their way of life and put them out of jobs. What she said was that she was going to shut down the coal industry, but that means different things to different people. Kamala is less prone to that, I think. And Hillary was hard to warm to, and I’m kind of a fan of hers.

      But we haven’t really seen a lot from Kamala yet.

      What I think she has in her favor:

      1. 4 years in the White House. That’s tremendously valuable experience, even if she was only a proxy and exigency case.
      2. She might draw support from law enforcement, who’ve been solidly in Camp Trump. She’s going to have to play that carefully, because she could also easily alienate another entire sector. If all she accomplishes is to drive a little wedge in there, that’d be a big win. If you look at polling, Trump leads in “tough on crime.” Kamala could shorten that lead.
      3. She’s a woman. Yeah, this is one of those big questions of whether it’ll hurt more than help, but there’s an ocean of women (and men) who are still furious about Hilary’s loss, and the fact that the USA is one of (maybe the only?) developed country which has never elected a woman leader. And she’s pro-women’s rights. If she can rally the feminist community, carefully, without alarming the misogynists (is that possible?) such that it becomes a club the One-Eared use against her… I think it’s a potential positive.
      4. She’s a woman of color. Hell, she has not only a black heritage, but Asian as well. I don’t really know how the mixed race thing plays; I’ve heard that it can hurt more than help. Again, it’s a card that, if she plays it carefully, could bring in a lot of votes. Shit, 5% of New Jersey residents are of south Asian heritage.
      5. So far, she’s a Middle-East wild card. You publicly support your boss, and her boss was Israel Über Alles. But we don’t know what position she’ll take when she’s making decisions. This gives her wiggle room. Frankly, I think openly supporting Palestine is political suicide - Israel has invested far too much in lobbying, and Palestine hasn’t; she’d lose more votes than she’d gain, despite the outrage on Lemmy about the genocide. But she at least has an opportunity to pick her own position that could offer hope to the victims in the West Bank, without giving Israel the finger and sending their vast financial resources in the US to Trump.
      6. The debate will be huge. She’ll need to learn from the mistakes in the format, and try to arrange something more debate-ish. But she’s hella sharper than Trump, and that’ll show if she gets good coaching. Look, everyone knows how Trump is going to present; it should be easy for some smart people to use that to maximize making him look more like an idiot. Maybe a little baiting, to get his ego talking more than his incoherent ranting full of dog-whistles. I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But Kamala can hire experts.
      7. Biden’s staff are incompetent boobs. They’ve mishandled this entire election cycle, giving him bad advice, and bad support. They’ve been so bad, it’s hard to believe they don’t have saboteurs in his cabinet. His performance at the debate? It’s like someone gave him Nyquil, when they should have given him amphetamines. Fuck, if there’s any time to risk a stimulant and pay the price tomorrow, it was at that fucking debate. Anyway, Kamala has an opportunity to hire her own West Wing team, and frankly, that alone can make or break her campaign. She needs a smart, savvy, experienced, and maybe a little devious and ruthless team, and she has a chance to hire them without it looking like she’s chaotically shuffling the deck like Trump’s term.

      Look people shouldn’t vote based on heritage, or skin color, or gender - but they do, and you work with what you’ve got when the stakes are this high, and you’ve only got a few months to capture votes.

      I think she has a lot going for her. We don’t even know if she’ll be the nominee; maybe someone stronger will win. I think Booker wouldn’t be a bad choice; he’s white, male, and young - that’s removes a lot of variables and is safer. But it it’s Kamala, I think she’s got a lot to work with. If she, or her team, can play her cards well.

      • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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        I never liked reddit gold but this comment is a masterpiece worthy of it. I don’t really have anything to add because you basically covered it all, and each point is a 10/10 take.

        I really hope you’re right, that she can play both sides on issues like law enforcement and the Situation (genocide) in Gaza to really swing those swing voters. I’d really like to know how much of this had been planned from the get-go and how much is really just the democrats scrambling for some semblance of control again. I’m not proud to admit I’m susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that there are huge teams of people with aligned interests who have no job but to make sure that their political master plans have contingencies on contingencies. Politics used to look too coherent for it to be as disorganized as it has become.

  • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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    Hope she says nothing about guns. Everytime I hear a dem bring it up I can hear muricans running to vote gop.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      Yep there are a lot of Republican single issue voters, guns rights and abortion bans are two of the biggest of those issues.

      But damned if the Democrats don’t do it to themselves nearly every time, I’m surprised Biden didn’t.

      • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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        They should just all campaign on “read my lips: no new gun reforms” just to get the votes

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      As someone who’s extremely left leaning, it’s so goddamn infuriating, because there are so many pro-gun Dem leaning voters that wind up voting ® down the ticket, almost solely because the Democratic candidate went on an idiotic speech about AK-15s and their 30 caliber per second clipazines. It’s not like the anti-gun Dems they’re pandering to are going to vote Republican because the Democratic candidate said nothing about guns during their campaign.

      It’s literally one single issue that the Dems could just not say a word about. Literally, no work involved. No campaigning, canvassing, or fundraising. Just don’t bring it up, and it would massively improve their odds in some of the most critical swing states. But no, they just have to virtue signal to the areas that are basically ultramarine blue, and it fucks them over every goddamn time.

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    Tbh, that’s been one of my big objections to the whole dump biden insanity.

    She isn’t a good candidate, a lot of democrats hate her because of her history before going after bigger offices. And those of us further left that would likely vote democrat in most cases are even less happy (see the one more extreme comment that got vote nuked for an example of that kind of opinion), and may either not vote, or vote green or another party.

    I’m kinda stuck voting democrat whether I want to or not because there is zero viability beyond the two parties, and the alternative is abhorrent, but I would love a change to the voting system that would allow me to place a vote for better matches to my beliefs rather than voting against a party that’s lost to extremists and oligarchs.

    I don’t think she’s got the juice to rally as many votes as she’ll alienate, in other words.

    And, as much as it sucks, she’s not a lily white man. That’s going to have plenty of the conservatives rallying against her that are otherwise not pro trump (they do exist). If the whole point of dumping Biden is that he couldn’t win, she’s a horrible choice. I just don’t think she’ll pull swing votes, and I’m certain she’ll receive a coordinated opposition. I’m fairly certain that the farther left is going to be lukewarm at best, and this is a race where a few hundred thousand votes are going to matter.

    Again, I’ll vote for her despite not liking her because the alternatives are worse in one way or another. But damn, this whole thing is a cluster-fuck.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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      If the whole point of dumping Biden is that he couldn’t win,

      That was certainly a part of it, but think about why everyone was saying that. He really is old and it is abundantly clear he is struggling every day to remember and carry out basic tasks. Additionally, think about this: What would happen if Biden had gotten sick from the flu or something a few weeks before the election and died (which isn’t that far-fetched)? We’d have no time to mount another candidate and get them the national coverage needed to sway those swing voters. Biden stepping down is a good thing, both for his own health and to significantly reduce the risk of a freak incident occurring the closer we get to election day.

      I get it, Kamala isn’t an excellent choice, but she already has national name recognition and is already experienced at that level. Most polls conducted in June and early July had her on almost even footing with Biden’s numbers, with a couple giving her an edge and some showing her slightly behind. However, those polls were conducted before a media blitz and country touring kicks off. I can easily see those numbers only increasing as her campaign’s momentum builds. Biden was already predicted to win the electoral college, and I suspect the same will occur with Kamala. I hope I’m right.

      And lastly, I agree, we desperately need to get rid of First-past-the-post voting and move to Ranked Choice Voting. The current status quo of the two-party system has crippled our government for far, far too long. Luckily, more and more states have looked to switching to that system (with some already adopting it). Hopefully, that trend continues into the future.

    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I am hoping for Harris to channel her inner persecutor and bull rush Trump off stage.

      • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That I would just truly savor. Her calling out each and every lie that oozes out what he calls a mouth.

  • nobody158
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    I doubt it, the only complaint I ever heard about Biden was he is old. She is way younger. I wouldn’t be surprised if she can pull a lot of Republicans since she is an ex DA and known for being tough on crime.

    I guess she could choose Don Jr as her running mate and blow it that way but I see that as impossible.

    • adarza@lemmy.ca
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      if a president and vice president on the same winning ticket hailed from the same state, and it was a close election–things would get messy. really messy. like, even worse than they are now.

      an elector’s votes (at that stage of the process, there are two: one for president, one for vice president) in the electoral college cannot both be for a candidate from their own (the elector’s) home state.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        What does “from” mean? Could Obama have been voted in with someone from Hawaii or Illinois(for simplicity’s sake, the other person is a lifelong resident in their respective state)?

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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    I think she has a good a chance as anyone and I doubt any running mate pick would blow it unless it was like that one guy that was a dem and went independent because hes basically a republican.

  • solrize@lemmy.world
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    I wouldn’t say she has no chance, but the present situation is chaos. Harris could blow it, Trump could blow it, the GOP could throw enough legal flak to keep Harris off important ballots, who knows. Biden on the other hand was at a disadvantage vs Trump, but still had winning chances, as we say in chess.

    Very recent yet now obsolete:

    https://www.newsweek.com/allan-lichtman-accurately-predicted-elections-joe-biden-can-win-1927988

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    More of a chance than they did. The dems were definitely going to lose before, now things are shaken up, Trump still has an edge but if they play their cards right who knows.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    4 months ago

    We should make this a fair fight… VPs only this race. Harris vs Pence