With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Realistically, what, if anything, is going to change from a culture war perspective because of this? Will the DNC conduct an election "autopsy" to determine what they got wrong here? They outspent and our raised Trump, a convicted felon with a negative approval rating, and still could not win. Will the Democratic party take a hard look in the mirror? Will the Republican party completely abandon moderates/the establish in favor of the winning populist rhetoric? Will nothing change at all?
The lesson is clear: do not run women
Maybe pick a woman worth running? Hillary was famously loathed by a large percentage of the country. Harris... an empty suit would have been an improvement.
Can you name a woman worth running? Hell, can you name a man worth running? Most people here would argue every president since Jefferson has been a low iq moron, which usually makes me think they either don't understand the incentives involved or drastically underestimate our politicians.
Anyone tried cloning Margaret Thatcher yet?
Vance is looking real, real good to me right now.
...But those aside, Harris was, legitimately, an absolutely terrible choice, and I am pretty sure she was chosen because the better candidates, male and female, saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to tank their future prospects trying to salvage an election that Joe Biden's dementia had already pretty clearly lost.
The legacy media gave her every possible advantage they could, at considerable cost to their own dwindling credibility. She couldn't do interviews. She couldn't field basic questions on policy or on her record. So they let her hide in a closet and spun their guts out trying to astroturf contentless, mean-girls-style social consensus ex nihlio, while claiming all possible policy positions to the point of obvious self-contradiction. She claimed she'd protect the Second Amendment from Trump, man.
In her prime, I can't imagine Nancy Pelosi would have been this bad. Clinton wasn't anywhere near this bad. I'm pretty sure AOC wouldn't be this bad. I can't imagine Oprah or Michelle Obama being this bad if they threw their hats in. I would strongly oppose all of those women if they ran because I disagree with their values and their preferred policies. But Kamala is all that and a bag of rancid chips. Oprah is a billionaire businesswoman, an expert on public relations and communication. She boot-strapped herself into a commanding position as one of the richest and most influential women in America. Kamala sleazed her way into a position under one of the most corrupt politicians of the modern era, made a career for herself personifying the worst stereotypes of a "tough on crime" caricature, was massively unpopular as a presidential candidate, was tapped for VP explicitly on the basis of identity-politics checkboxes, and has now lost an election to Donald Trump. She outperformed Joe Biden in
zero counties in the entire nation.[EDIT] - This is false; I missed the clarification on CNN last night. Apparently she outperformed Biden in by at least 3% in 58 of 3144 counties, and presumably by less than 3% in more.Blues need to take the L and ask themselves some serious questions about the long sequence of bad decisions that brought them to this moment.
Ah, Margaret Thatcher, universally loved and respected across the political spectrum. Not to mention a bizarre choice for a Trump supporter given her antipathy for the working class, out-of-touchness robotic character and neoliberalism. This smacks more of someone you agree with rather than an objective measure of quality or intellect, no?
Vance? Silicon valley, VC 1%er Vance who happens to have a convenient origin story and connections to an ecosystem of companies weaponizing AI to surveil our citizens?
You're missing the point. 8 years ago you were sitting here writing that Clinton was a historically unpopular candidate, manipulative, stupid, whatever. 4 years ago you were sitting here writing how useless Biden is, he can't even leave his basement to campaign, dementia means he doesn't have two functional brain cells left to rub together. 4 years from now you'll be sitting here writing that Pete Buttigieg was the worst candidate in history, who tries to nominate a goddamn secretary of transportation man, at least Kamala ticked some diversity boxes and had some funny coconut memes or something.
Most criticism of politicians is hopelessly facile and ignorant (I assume, this isn't my field) of the realities on the ground or the workings of the system we've created. And most criticism in general is just people playing Monday morning quarterback to feel smart.
Kamala was a candidate who, so far as anyone could tell, had a 50% chance of becoming president yesterday. Sure, hopefully the dems learn from the experience (insofar as they really had that much control over events), but I don't believe the over-the-top criticism of Kamala and Hilldog is warranted.
And yet she was evidently damn good at her job, and it seems to me that it ain't the same working class, nor the same neoliberalism, nor the same world for that matter. She fought for liberty and against bureaucracy and communism.
He's the first politician I've listened to who could bring up interesting data-points I hadn't heard of before. I'm looking forward to his presidential bid. His "convenient origin story" happens to be his actual life, born to drug addicts and working his way up to the vice-presidency of the united states. Certainly his story looks considerably better than Kamala's.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't. I was planning to vote for Hillary until Trump cinched the nomination, because I wanted the neoconservative wing of the Republican party destroyed forever. She was quite unpopular in much the way Trump is, but 2016 was a very close election. I am pretty sure that I have never agreed with the moderate talking point that Hillary was a uniquely bad candidate and the only one the Dems could have picked that would have lost to Trump. I think if Trump could beat her he could likely beat most of the other Democrat contenders. I think she's a very bad, very corrupt politician, but that doesn't make her bad at securing power or an unserious candidate in the way Kamala was.
And he was, in fact, actually suffering from dementia, a problem that only got worse throughout his term. And Progressives sticking their fingers in their ears about it is how he was allowed to vegetate in office, which is why they had to dump him at the eleventh hour, couldn't get their actual talent to sign on, and were left with running Kamala. His dementia actually was real, actually cost him the race, and after more than a decade of Progressive claims that Republican presidents were senile (a common accusation against both W and Trump), they collectively missed their own candidate actually going senile right in front of them. And sure, I claim Biden was a bad president, because I think the record pretty clearly shows that his policies had numerous woeful effects in the real world. The exception, of course, was the Afghanistan Pullout, which I think was a masterful achievement and which I will defend against all comers.
I'm not on your side. I'm opposed to your candidates, because I disagree strongly with their policies and values. But I, at least as an individual, am actually trying to speak honestly here: Progressives have suffered multiple, severe unforced errors due to believing their own bullshit. Their control of the consensus narrative has made them lazy, and now that this control is failing, they're stuck in a position where the main effect their spin is having is to compromise their own decision-making. Biden was in fact too old, as was RGB when she tried to hang on till Hillary. They should have picked a running mate who could actually run for his VP, but they were too busy playing identity bingo, and besides, it was an article of faith that he was sharp as a tack. They did this to themselves.
I am pretty sure it is in my direct interest for Progressives to see things the way you do.
I predicted a Trump win, with weak confidence, based on a lot of factors that seemed to be leaning his way. This does not appear to have been a coin-flip election; pretty much every state in the country shifted right by significant margins, with Donald Trump as the candidate. As recently as two years ago, IIRC, Democrats were still directly funding Trumpian candidates in Republican primaries, hoping that public revulsion for him and his supporters would make them unelectable in the general. But as I said above, I am pretty sure that Progressives doubling down further is pure advantage for my side. By all means, don't let me dissuade you.
I think pulling out of Afghanistan was the right call. I think how they executed was terrible. They were managing to a sept 11 timeline. That’s dumb.
Even the Biden administration gave strategic credit to Trump in trying to defend their tactical blunder. “This was the timeline Trump negotiated” was their refrain.
Yet it seems plainly obvious that if you’re going to exit the county, you retreat to your strongest position and exit from there. And you don’t leave unspoiled equipment for the enemy to use.
Why in the world would the last point of exit be the civilian airport and not the military airbase?
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