i personally dont think it has anything to do with her specific competence or ability. the democratic party in this country is fundamentally broken, both in terms of vision and execution. and it really has nothing to do with her specifically.

Meatwad i think the big issue is the people who wont vote at all. i think democrats waste too much time pandering to the people in the center. most republicans will never ever vote for a democrat, especially a pro choice democrat. they'll write in ronald reagan or some dumb shit like that. if you are trying to convince some 62 year old white man that he shouldn't vote for the guy who is now glorifying hitler, you are already losing imo. i cant believe there are any actual undecided voters in terms of preferring trump or kamala. they are undecided whether they are going to bother voting at all. democrats need to give these apathetic people a reason to go out and vote. and "trump is scary" isnt enough, i dont think. most people dont think about the well being of their neighbor or their community or anything else. they think about themselves. dems need to make a compelling case about how they will make their lives better. the actual policies clearly will make people's lives better. but most apathetic or non-engaged voters probably arent online reading policy papers. they need to be reached in better ways and pushed to actually activate and vote.

    Meatwad what the fuck is up with you people always interjecting in our elections?

    I guess it's that the USA casts such a huge shadow across the world - and particularly here that we're all watching very keenly to see what happens.

    I don't really understand how we've got to a place where January 6 happened (amongst many, many other things) and the guy that caused it to happen is not only not doing prison time for it, but seems to have an even chance of winning again.

    I don't think, as Jazz does, that whoever gets in it'll be the same shit - Trump has signalled as much. Personally, I find the thought of him taking power again incredibly worrying - but I acknowledge it's not really my business.

        Meh - this forum has threads on UK, French and German elections. The US isn't particularly singled out relative to their influence on world affairs.

        But I can understand the gripe when people make assumptions about the folks living in a completely different society without actually being there.

        RocktheCasbah I don't really understand how we've got to a place where January 6 happened (amongst many, many other things) and the guy that caused it to happen is not only not doing prison time for it, but seems to have an even chance of winning again.

        That’s just the thing. Trump being elected and January 6 don’t just happen out of the blue. There’s at least two decades of lead up to this moment, if not more of an increasingly mobilized conservative movement. But there is a longer thread of other things like guns, racism, abortion which point to a country lean further to the right than many liberals care to admit.

            Claudius yeah, it's like that line in the Sopranos "out there it's the 1990's but in this house it's 1954”.

            Except that the house is the United States. And it's more like 1854.

            Just to add to the Sopranos comment, I recently watched a brilliant documentary about David Chase and the Sopranos. Chase said the joke at the heart of the Sopranos was that the modern world was so fucked, a gangster was appalled by it. I think that sense of sickness about the world as it is maybe has led some people to hanker for times they perceive to be simpler - and rosier.

              I think many left/centre parties in the west are struggling at the moment to define what they stand for and to counter the right at the moment.
              Whist there may have been mistakes in the strategy I don't think it's anything to do with Harris' competence. If you think Harris is incompetent what on earth is your impression of Trump, that is truly incompetent leader and very much a malicious individual so competence is not what's driving the issue in my view because if it was there is no way trump wins that battle. With trump and people like Boris you just have the public (or a proportion) tolerating some awful behaviour and seemingly not holding them to account.

              Funny you should say that, I've just finished a book called the Assault on Truth. It goes on a bit, but Peter Oborne lays out the case for how Johnson and Trump systematically dismantled the norms of politics and converted the truth into something that means whatever they want it to. All the while watched on by a compliant media and client journalists and, to your point, cheered on by a public who haven't quite realised the joke's on them.

                this lawsuit is so diabolical, but because of venue shopping, they are almost certain to win in district court. the case will likely die in the court of appeals or, god forbid, scotus, but its just incredible the lengths the right will go to make women third class citizens.

                “Remote dispensing of abortion drugs by mail, common carrier, and interactive computer service is depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers in Plaintiff States,” the attorneys general allege in the complaint, which was filed before forced birth enthusiast Judge Matt Kacsmaryk in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo Division. They claim that decreased births constitute “a sovereign injury to the state in itself,” and causes downstream injuries like “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are reduced.” In other words, uteri are state slush funds, and girls owe the state reproduction once they are capable of it.

                https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/mifepristone-lawsuit-republican-ags-more-pregnant-teens/

                RocktheCasbah yeah they have undermined the idea that this stuff should matter and made it a bit of a joke but it's really not and these kinds of people never have any intention to help the groups they pander to.

                  bezos apparently interjected on the Washington post editorial board endorsing Harris, which caused some staff to resign in protest. something similar happened with the LA Time a few years ago. then you look at the fact that trump will give elon musk unprecedented favours if he actually wins, you can see the rot that sets in when oligarchs have unlimited wealth and reach. and this is all in the wake of jan 6th (I don't even like referring to it as that - it was a months long, pre-mediated misinformation campaign that culminated in jan 6th). I don't think these problems go away even if trump loses tbh. it's almost inevitable that oligarchy puts you on a road to autocracy, and the US has been accelerating towards it for the last few decades ever since both parties were consumed by special interests.

                    Gazza M the LA times thing happened just a few days ago, not even years ago. the guy who owns the LAT is best friends with elon musk. bezos is panicked that if trump wins, he'll cut a bunch of amazon's federal contracts.

                        @mdgoonah41 there is other early vote data in bellwether areas that is a bit more rosy for dems, but I get the panic. it's wild that it's going to be close. the other thing is that trumps campaign has run an average ground game - stunts like musk giving 1 million bucks away to pennsylvania voters for example. in a tight race the dem get out the vote machine can make a difference. Hillary didn't really do that in the rust belt and Biden couldn't due to covid.

                          Gazza M the early data in nevada is really bad for dems. nevada isnt essential, but biden won nevada by 2.5 points, a trump win there would be a bad sign elsewhere, imo

                              Isn't Musk basically paying money to people who vote for Trump? The whole thing is fucked.

                              RocktheCasbah I don't think, as Jazz does, that whoever gets in it'll be the same shit - Trump has signalled as much. Personally, I find the thought of him taking power again incredibly worrying - but I acknowledge it's not really my business.

                              I think we should revisit this in 4 years time,

                                  mdgoonah41 hard to compare to 2020. older republicans and rural areas have taken up early voting in force now, which was to be expected since the trump campaign realised that their 2020 strategy of telling people that 'any vote that's not in person is fraudulent' wasn't the smartest move. republicans might be eating into their 'day of' vote. too early to say definitively either way. if she does lose Nevada, Arizona is most likely toast as well.

                                    speaking of eating into, the absolute barrage of advertising and phone calls ive been subjected to the last few weeks is eating into my will to live. living in the epicenter of this election has been brutal.

                                    From Allentown to Erie, mailboxes are bursting with campaign literature like trash cans at the end of a music festival.
                                    Television, TikTok, and sports talk radio broadcast a barrage of blunt ads and Pennsylvanians’ commutes are increasingly snarled by candidates headed to a McDonald’s or a historical site, or a podium in another swingy part of this internationally known battleground state.
                                    The 2024 presidential election moved into Pennsylvania and never left, an Inquirer analysis of the last year of campaigning shows.
                                    Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and their allies, have dumped more than $538 million in advertising dollars to reach Pennsylvania voters.

                                    That’s the most of any swing state and about $185 million more than the next closest battleground, Michigan, according to ad tracker AdImpact.

                                    this afternoon alone, ive gotten 4 calls on my cell phone (i dont have a landline, obviously) from unknown PA numbers which are obviously calling to either poll me or remind me to vote.

                                      mdgoonah41 I'm from PA, but don't live there. Most of my peeps vote Trump, though. I feel pretty guilty.