this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
201 points (84.3% liked)

News

23259 readers
3379 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Tbh, I think that Harris is a big ol nothingburger of a candidate. Fox news got conservatives to hate her easy enough for the crime of being a [black, woman] Democrat, but that doesn't mean anything to independents. Harris is disappointing to more libertarian minded and further left folks (like me) because she was kind of a stupidly aggressive DA, but I don't think that really bothers independents either. Harris herself had a middling debate performance in 2020, but still managed to beat the pants off Biden, who appeared DOA on the 2020 primary stage. She's never espoused any especially strong policy positions that I know of, either, besides being another authoritarian centrist.

All of this kind of wraps up into a very boring, plain vanilla candidate, which could well work to the democrats' advantage in this election cycle. Here's my opinion: Harris has several key advantages over Biden.

  • People are tired of feeling like we're on a cursed timeline, a normal candidate without obvious sundowner's or a serious case of fascism would likely be welcomed. Harris is about as average as they come, imo.

  • She can actually talk. Let's face it, the Biden of 2020 and 2012 is mostly gone, he can't communicate like he used to, and pretending otherwise isn't helping. Harris was a DA in her past life. Lawyers, and especially DAs, have to be able to communicate effectively. My guess is that if you put a little polish on her, an absolute bull of a speaker/debater will shine through. It's just that the democrats haven't really given her a chance to shine. That or the possibility that same as they've been hiding Biden's condition, they're hiding that Harris is a truly wretched communicator who has wound up here through a comedy of errors, but I'm relying on Occam's Razor here.

  • The one time she stood out at all in the primary debates was when she put Biden on absolute blast for his record with regard to the black community. It wasn't smooth, it was obviously rehearsed, but it still landed a haymaker. It's not a stretch to think she could do the same to Trump.

  • Being a nothing candidate could actually be advantageous because, I mean, how do you attack that? She has almost no real baggage compared to Biden or Trump, and it wouldn't be hard for her to just set up a smorgasbord of different policy choices without sounding like a hypocrite or flip flop.

I really wish the democrats had had the foresight to prepare for this moment by picking a much better VP, or having an open and honest primary, but we're here now and there's nothing we can do about the past. Imo, Harris is the best chance we've got of keeping the fascists out for the next four years.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I wouldn't vote for Harris in a primary, but there's nothing egregiously wrong with her. My biggest complaints in the primary were her prosecutor-history and her unreliable policy positions. I don't even think she's a centrist, I think she doesn't really have much in the way of policy at all. A blank slate willing to tack to the center if the progressive lane is full, or tack to the left if that's where the energy is. And the law and order history is basically no worse than Biden and kind of useful when one of Trump's big issues is all his court cases.

I wish we had a primary, I wish Biden hadn't effectively chosen the next nominee, and I wish that, if that was the intention, he would have put some effort into building her up rather than dumping shit jobs on her, but if we need to do an emergency replacement, she's fine.

Play up her former DA status. This year the election is between Law and Lawlessness.

Harris: "I would be happy to prosecute the case against the felon in the next debate, let's just see if he shows up for his court date or if he's too busy taking bribes from his rich tech bro friends."