Vice President Kamala Harris gave the public its first real look into her nascent presidential campaign with a stop at her organization’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday night.
Harris’ first applause line came when she discussed her background as California attorney general and as a courtroom prosecutor.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, earning cackles while she beamed, clearly enjoying the joke. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done, starting from trump “university” all the way up to the catastrophic covid response, the ukraine phone calls, the stolen documents, and on and on.
she needs to dial it up to 11 and keep it there. it’s time to throw out this “let’s take the high road” attitude that’s accomplished exactly jack fucking shit over the last too many decades
she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done
There isn’t enough hours left until election day to list all of it.
Also, maybe she should try another tactic than the one that BARELY worked for her predecessor the last time around playing on the much easier “people are experiencing how awful Trump is as president RIGHT NOW” difficulty level.
If she wants to win and win big (which is the only outcome that isn’t humiliating and dangerous for democracy), she needs more than “Trump bad”. She’s going to need some “Kamala good” to energize the base.
I’m all for it. Give me something to look forward to, not something to run from, for once this decade
Fear drives people to the polls though. It’s kinda sad but true. So there needs to be a mix.
HOPE worked pretty well for Obama
obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote. similarly, it wasn’t “biden good” messaging that made him win.
when more people vote, dems win. that’s why republicans are desperately trying to disenfranchise, gerrymander, and otherwise suppress all the votes they can.
“kamala good” campaigning will accomplish nothing. she needs to make the people who are sitting on their ass angry enough to get up and vote. not FOR her, but AGAINST trump
obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote
Either your knowledge of history is bogus, or you’re too young to have experienced the 08 election between Obama and McCain. Obama didn’t win ‘because people hated bush’, he won because he ran on the (now obviously bogus and intentionally vague) message of hope and change.
Obama literally won based on his messaging, so I hope no one listens to you on this matter.
Well that and he’s an incredibly charismatic person, exceptionally well spoken and handled himself well in almost all public engagements.
Change from what?
What did people want to change?
What was wrong that we all wanted to change… Away… From?
Yeah it was deliberately vague bullshit, but I was there. We wanted to change away from Bush and war and bigotry and callous disregard for our fellow citizens.
Obama’s genius was retorical, not substantial. This country doesn’t know what it wants because we have vastly different ideas about what would be best even inside the Democratic party, let alone independents and Republicans. Laying out specific policy goals is mostly a trap. Because whoever you piss off cares a lot more about that than whoever you please.
Trump does the same thing by vomiting so much bullshit that voters can imagine he will give them whatever their hearts desire is because he said he would at some point. He won’t, but his voters are mostly already praying to a sky angel so they have a lot of experience projecting love and benevolence for them onto a distant figure that doesn’t care about them at all.
Obama had a huge advantage on McCain because McCain seemed comparatively old, feeble, and not nearly as well-spoken. Then McCain picked Sarah Palin as a running mate and America heard her try to form sentences in real time.
GW was on his way out. The choice was McCain’s version of conservatism plus whatever the crazy cat lady was going to say along the way, or Obama’s promise of hope and change, with a very well-understood Biden at his side.
Mcain’s primary win was a rebuke of Bush. McCain lost to Bush in the 2000 primary. He ran again in 08 and that time he got it because he represented a different “maverick” path from Bush’s Neoconservatism.
McCain was also a neoconservative, but his brand was a straight shooting veteran with principles.
But the voting base wanted more change than that. McCain was still a Republican. The people wanted the Opposite of Bush, as seen in the down ballot races giving Dems a supermajority. People were predicting the end of the Republican party in 2009.
We all know how that turned out. But at the time it seemed transformational.
Though Palin kind of twisted it right back to W-ism, but even more so.
People voted for Obama because they believed in change. Democrats can’t just win by making people hate their opponents. Democrats would have no agenda if all it took was making people hate their opponents.
Democrats can’t just win by making people hate their opponents. Democrats would have no agenda if all it took was making people hate their opponents.
You just described the Republican party.
you’re talking like this is a normal election. republicans are trying to turn this country into a theocratic dictatorship, and if you think there won’t be violence (again) if/when they lose, then honestly you’re either not paying attention, or are deluding yourself.
everyone’s absolute top priority from now on should be keeping trump out of the white house. that means getting everyone out to vote. “agenda” or no
People know Trump is a bad guy. If that is your own message it isn’t going to win the voters you want it to.
Obama is maybe the best example of making a campaign about you and giving people a reason to believe in you.
Not everyone cannot pull it off like he can though and Kamala is no Obama.
Every fucking time he opens his mouth, she should interrupt him with “prove it”. Like, he says the sky is blue? Fucking prove it.
She got off to a good start already.
“Biden may have accidentally called Zelenskyy Putin. At an open meeting, but Trump likely calls Putin ‘boss’ in hidden ones”
I think you meant “daddy.”
I doubt she wants to spend 12 hours listing off Trump’s shitty behavior and crimes. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
And anyone who doesn’t know about what a piece of shit he is by now probably won’t listen to it anyways.
…listing off Trump’s shitty behavior and crimes.
New filibuster strategy just dropped.
Naw, she’ll just rattle it off like a summary of charges: “115 counts of lying directly to the public, 14 counts of ignoring the CDC during a pandemic, …” Short, pithy, with all the bite of a courtroom prosecution.
I’m waiting for the “abortions after birth” challenge to the lying coward treasonous pedophile rapist.
Sometimes Biden’s mental decline wasn’t capable of challenging
There’s no low road here. That dude’s in a submarine.
Pity it’s not the Titan
Hell yeah. I like to say that when they go low, kick them while they’re down there!
she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done
The problem there is that there are so bloody many valid things to call him out on that it just turns into white noise if you just hit on every single one of them, and the message just becomes “Trump is a shitty person and a shitty president,” which has been said a million times already. Focusing in on high-profile offenses is a good way to fix specific examples in the public consciousness.
I’d also suggest something like “The Daily Trump ScumLog.” A video series where every day a new example of Trump being shitty gets called out in however much detail the medium allows. Every week, the spiciest gets edited for time and made into a commercial for wider broadcast. This would make it easier to focus in on specific examples, while still emphasizing that the list is Vast.
“The Daily Trump ScumLog.” A video series where every day a new example of Trump being shitty gets called out
i dont’ listen to podcasts or watch vid series or any of that, but i would subscribe and donate to that one in a heartbeat
And let’s jump to the debate. I want to watch her turn him upside down and use his head as a mop.
It’s just impossible. It would take a small army of staff to compile his catalogue of lies, and Harris doesn’t have the time to recite it. What she needs to do is grab him by the pussy. Drive home that he is a felon, a rapist, and that he himself is willingly raped by Putin, that he is owned by bitches and he is a bitch. She needs to leverage her biography as a black woman to utterly humiliate him. To deeply wound him. To haunt him with the eventuality of his incarceration and inevitable end as a failure.
Opens Fire On Trump
Glad to see they didn’t shy away from using this terminology, considering recent events.
Gives Trump An Ear Full
Some double entendre there. Love it.
Draws Blood By Calling Out Trump’s Criminal History
Shoots Trump with a M1911
sounds deliberate honestly
She said building up the middle class would be a defining goal of her presidency,
Go on Kamala, you are making me hope you might be better than just “not trump.” Let’s hear some details that will be resistant to the 1% and their greed and get prices under control.
What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.
When it comes to economic reform (rather than compression, according to that show with the hand job calculations), from the bottom up is many times more effective than the middle out shit the Dems keep trying.
What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.
Um, OK. I’m on board. Are we supposed to argue now?
Nah, I’m good
Not OP, but good on you two.
Id argue middle class are now also the working poor
Id argue middle class are now also the working poor
I had the same thought but (in complete sincerity) then I thought that might be my privilege telling me that. We (my family personally) have it rough on what is legitimately a decent salary and are very much paycheck to paycheck, but there sure are a lot of folks worse off than we are, either in creature comforts, living situation, income, or all three.
On the other hand, I think measures that help the true working poor seem unlikely not to also help the struggling middle class, who seem to be slowly getting absorbed into the working poor in any case. So I think a rising tide will float all boats anyhow.
I have thought the same thing before - used to live in a house where the windows didn’t even close, calculate food budget to the cent, could feed myself dinner for 35c and would spend two hours driving for an extra hour of pay. Not there any more fortunately.
I think saying “we shouldn’t complain as others are worse” is putting thinking in the wrong direction. If you can’t enjoy your life with enough to get by then that also needs to be fixed - don’t short your own efforts and struggle.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t at all feel “we shouldn’t complain as others are worse”.
My situation is not nearly as bad as your former situation, nor that of many others. If I use the same terms to describe my situation as theirs, I feel I’m minimizing their difficulties by doing so. Yes, it would only take a couple of substantial setbacks to put us in that situation now, but that’s a very different thing than already being there.
In any case, I do think prioritizing the “working poor” is fine, and also that the “struggling middle class” are likely to be co-beneficiaries of many improvements that help the working poor if steps are taken there.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the working poor in America consider themselves “middle class”. So that’s how you have to direct your message if you want it to reach the most people.
Getting low income people to the polls is a big part of this. If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.
https://nlihc.org/resource/new-census-data-reveal-voter-turnout-disparities-2022-midterm-elections
If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.
Other way around: if a politician doesn’t care about you and people like you, you have little incentive to care about them beyond avoiding a greater evil.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes, not the job of voters to enable complacency and corruption.
While it’s of course best when everyone votes and I’ve never missed a chance myself, I can kinda understand why a lot of people don’t feel up for waiting in line for hours just to cast a vote for “not the complete monster”
While I understand the complaints, I completely disagree with your argument. We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up. They can vote third party if they choose, but if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise. The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged, and it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged. It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up, an already safe bet is more likely to win than a risky one.
We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up
Bullshit. 90%+ of all federal level politicians are much more likely to pass a bill or support an initiative if the richest and most powerful 10% but nobody else supports it than if it has majority support in the broader population. That’s the DEFINITION of top-down
if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise
That kind of attitude is exactly what caused the current situation where there’s a right wing to far right party, a literal fascist party, and at most a dozen or two center left politicians in all of Washington.
The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged
Nor do the people have any guarantee that the politician is worth waiting in November weather for several hours.
If you hired a plumber who did nothing about your clogged toilet, would you celebrate not hiring the other plumber who would have broken your pipes and kicked your dog?
Politics is work and voters are customers, NOT employees.
it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged
In other words, the miserable status quo that benefits the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up
If you completely ignore any possibility of a politician enticing voters by promising and doing good things, sure. That’s a pathetically meek mentality that enables corruption and bad performances, though.
Except the only reason those donors have that power is due to our campaign finance laws, which only exist because republicans in the SC allowed infinite money into politics with Citizens United. If we had far greater voter turnout, this would have been impossible, as that puts dems in power and they do not believe in unlimited money in politics. Will play by those rules once those rules are made, though.
The idea that the US should never become fascist is a value, likely one that you and I share. It is not some high law though. If voting voters want fascism, then fascism is what we should get. It is our responsibility as voters to prevent this.
No, voters are absolutely not customers. We are 100% employees of the greater political sphere. From regular every day voters, to volunteers running polling places and campaigns, to people standing up to run for office. It’s all, 100% on us. We cannot simply shirk our duty, otherwise our democracy will change, as was intended by the framers.
It’s the people that do not vote that enable all the corruption. Not the people that go out and make themselves heard.
I would argue that building up the middle class involves uplifting the working poor class, you gotta get those middle class people from somewhere.
Yeah. This is getting me slightly excited again. I’m an independent voter and have never voted Democrat but I may just well do that this time. Couldn’t stomach Biden but she seems to actually know what the hell she is talking about. Please go after Congressional term limits, tax the crap out of the rich, and reform lobbying with solid game plans. Talk is cheap.
I have a lot of concern about how progressive she will actually be - her pre-VP track record doesn’t seem great to me, but she’s not Trump and I really hope I can feel OK about voting for her second term. She gets my vote this time because Trump, but if she’s going to sprint right back to 2016-era corporatist Democrat behavior then all we’ve done is delay the inevitable rightward creep and continue to enable rampant corporate greed.
Her voting record in the Senate is actually super progressive. I don’t think there’s much to worry about there.
I don’t think there’s much to worry about there.
Despite that I’ve spent most of my Lemmy time today defending my criticisms of Harris or Dems in general, I truly want you to be right, and I hope that’s what we’ll see when she starts influencing policy as President. (Assuming she wins, and I have a good feeling she will unless something truly batshit happens between now and then.)
Honestly, this is the kind of down-in-the-dirt campaigning I had hoped to see from Hillary back in 2016 before she tied an apron on and tried to convince everyone she was a sweet little motherly person. You can’t be sweet and kind with someone like Trump. You need to gather up the shit he’s piling up around the place and drown his ass in it.
So if Kamala is gonna bring the pain, I’m here for it. Trump needs to be beaten bloody on the pulpit. Because bullies can never handle being bullied themselves. Especially ones as thin skinned and stupid as Trump is.
To be fair to Clinton, she did do some pain. Remember when she called many of the people who supported Trump, “deplorables”. This riled up America as if she was going too far with describing them this way. Here we are almost a decade later, and we are starting to realize that she was right.
The political landscape is far different now than it was when it was Hilary vs. Trump. Trump has done his four years, and we have now seen the damage he and his constituents have done. We see now that the republican party watched Handmaid’s Tale and agreed with the fictional government in that story. There is no hiding how deplorable some of these folks are especially with the publishing of Project 2025.
Yeah this is another example of how fucking stupid she was during that campaign. She attacked his supporters instead of him directly. The person who should have been the brunt of every single attack she could muster should have been Trump and only Trump. Instead she riled up his base and convinced a bunch of independents that she was an asshole, which she actually is but she kept unleashing her assholiness on the wrong people.
I remember watching one of the more freeform debates with her and Trump and I kept waiting for her to wreck his ass and she kept acting like some kind of stupid nicey nice person (that she most definitely isn’t). I was like, “What the fuck? Where’s the dragon lady I bought tickets to see eat Trump for lunch???”
And then as if that wasn’t all stupid as fuck, after the campaign failed and Trump got elected as president, she fucking goes out and starts blaming all the fucking left wing voters and Berniecrats for “not voting enough” even though it was her dumbass fault she lost the election. I’m a fucking Bernie voter and I pointlessly cast a ballot for her dumb ass.
So yeah fuck Hillary eternally. I hope she spits in her fucking corn flakes when Kamala wins and becomes the first woman president.
I am frustrated that we didn’t get to pick our candidate in the primaries, I don’t know if Harris is my style. She might be.
But God damn I am looking forward to her going head to head with Trump. She is sharp as hell on her feet.
I was not a harris booster previously but the biggest complaint I have about her, “Copmala” is actually a significant strength in this election. Then I started reading into her voting record. Combine that with her being a woman in the post roe v wade world, and a woman of color against the most xenophobic party that any of us have experienced and I think she’s EXACTLY what we need.
The American public has swung back towards more moderate policing. Progressive approaches were rebuked in the Pacific North West. It’s absolutely a strength right now
I am really really liking her. A lot. She is giving me rockstar vibes like Obama.
Convicted felon, rapist and racist.
Harris opted for liable of scamming, sexual abuse, and guilty of fraud on thirty-four counts instead of fraud, rape, and convicted of thirty-four felonies. Great start, but she should not shy from harsh rhetoric.
Finally, someone who is actually willing to treat Trump’s many flaws as weakpoints.
I want that debate between her and poor Donnie. This woman ia going to roast the shit out of him with her professional experience.
That’s what’s needed. The older boomer republicans (not die hard MAGA’s, there’s a lot more of the at least rational ones out there) need to see her wipe the floor with him with facts and tough questions he outright lies to, to have a chance of changing their vote.
With respect, anyone who would vote for Trump probably isn’t worth spending time convincing. Some of them might come around, but if she has one, Kamala’s value will be in getting undecided and first time voters to the polls. One of the most popular choices every election is “not going to vote”
I remember people saying the same thing about Clinton leading up to their debates. At least Harris has a few more years of criming to draw on.
HRC was a genuinely awful debater and she still arguably won all debates against 2016 Trump. Harris is a great debater and she is up against 2024-Trump. He’s no match.
I hope you’re right but I have my doubts.
She was a career prosecutor. Her bread and butter was tearing people open for others to see. No idea where your doubt is coming from.
I guess we’ll find out but I don’t think she’s going to publicly humiliate Trump like some people here seem to.
We’ve seen already he doesn’t have the software to feel humiliation. I think we’ll see him get so angry he becomes kind of incoherent, but even that’s barely a stretch.
Has he ever done that in public before?
First woman president is a hail mary in the last months of election year? Sounds like humanity to me.
Well, we’re a lot more interested now, aren’t we?
We do love dangling victory into the jaws of defeat for a few moments. I haven’t been alive to see a lot of my favorite moments in this timeline, so I’m glad I’ll be here for this legendary one.
She should point out, repeatedly, that the man has no financial skills at all. Keep hammering how bad he was for workers and the economy in general but still turned a tidy profit for himself. He would actually have more wealth now if he had just invested his inheritance in the S&P (according to Forbes) instead of starting all his cockamamie businesses. The man ran how many casinos into the ground? He went bankrupt in businesses where people say “the house always wins” because the odds are literally stacked in the house’s favor.
She needs to go, repeatedly like, “I mean… He bankrupted a casino… A casino” and, “Speaking of predator, this manchild lied about his associations with Epstein while also flying on his private plane at least 7 times. Would you let him watch your daughter? HELL NO.”
I wouldn’t even let him watch his own daughter
Oh he wants to do more than just watch his daughter. Ivanka not Tiffany.
All she has to do is keep calling him weak publicly and he will fucking lose it
I don’t know. He seems to have more restraint than we think he does. I expected his head to explode during the debate when his mike was cut off.
Oh yeah… That’s the stuff!
Sans paywall https://archive.is/3ufz9
The Dude abides.
Bold phrasing from The Daily Beast.
He’ll just put a big wad of gauze on his feelings until the election.
Trump has the impulse control of a squirrel on meth, and an assertive brown woman is pretty much his nightmare (and the sum of all reactionary fears). Trump being made sport of by a minority woman is going to drive him off the rails. The racism and misogyny will be fully unleashed and I suspect he will die by the ugly sword he himself forged.
Watch Trump go into Bobby Newport mode:
“Hey… that hurt my feelings!”
Good. He’s hurt enough feelings by just existing.
