And when Kamala had the entire DNC establishment behind her, what was stopping her from distancing herself from Biden? What was she afraid of?
My guess? The entire DNC establishment wasn’t behind Harris. They were behind Biden, and supported Harris as Biden’s successor rather than on her own (nonexistent) merits. She hadn’t earned their support, and knew it.
Exactly. And the Democrats made it even worse for themselves by claiming there was no economic crisis - that Biden had beaten inflation, beaten unemployment, and claims of a bad economy were just Republican propaganda. The American people looked at their paychecks and grocery bills and called bullshit. Harris was right that Trump would govern as a fascist dictator with Project 2025 as the roadmap - but the Democrats lied to America’s face about the economy and that made everything else they said sound untrustworthy too.
If the Dems had taken America’s economic struggles seriously, Harris would be President now. But Biden refused to admit his economy was bad and Harris didn’t have the guts to contradict Biden. And here we are.
Unfortunately not. She’s already moving to run for governor of California in 2026, as a platform for another 2028 Presidential run.
Was it really an imaginary rule? I think it was Original Sin that talked about how Biden made his support for Harris contingent on “protecting his legacy” - ie, no criticizing Biden, no claiming she would do things different than Biden.
Edit: the claim comes from “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”:
But the day of the debate Biden called to give Harris an unusual kind of pep talk — and another reminder about the loyalty he demanded. No longer able to defend his own record, he expected Harris to protect his legacy.
Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so. He needed just three words to convey how much all of that mattered to him.
“No daylight, kid,” Biden said.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5191087-harris-trump-biden-harris/
Yes. Exactly. Harris lost, and it is her fault, and her responsibility.
The average American is not a political expert. (Duh.) They rely on information, and persuasion, from the actual political experts, to decide whose policies fit their values and who their best choices as political representatives are.
If a political party has the best policies, but fails to make the case for those policies to the American people, the fault is not with the American people, but with the party that failed to make its case.
In this case, Trump waged a vicious propaganda campaign based on blatant fucking lies. And the Harris campaign was too incompetent or cowardly to effectively call out those blatant fucking lies - partially because Trump was so much better at social media than Harris, and partially because Harris was afraid to stand up for the trans people and immigrants and other marginalized groups Trump was attacking.
(Biden shit the bed so badly nobody in his administration could have won by running on his record, of course, but that doesn’t absolve Harris for her own failures.)
Any political party that starts blaming voters for not agreeing with it, instead of accepting its own responsibility to convince voters, is headed to permanent minority party status. And as happy as I’d be to see the Democrats permanently marginalize themselves and make room for an actual progressive party, right now they’re the only roadblock in Congress against Project 2025.
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That makes a certain amount of sense. Cartels go after the families of snitches, so I imagine this guy wanted them safe in the US before he cooperated.
Wouldn’t a law that exempts a law enforcement agency from constitutional limits be an unconstitutional law - and therefore an illegal law - and therefore not lawful?
The plan is to argue that only two consecutive terms bar someone from running for a third term, and have the Supreme Court’s Republican majority rubber stamp it, so Trump can run and Obama can’t.
Newsom has generally been pivoting conservative over the last few years, most commenters think in preparation for a 2028 presidential run, and has turned it up since Trump was elected.
The American people aren’t stupid. They’re poorly educated and brainwashed by propaganda.
When a kid without developmental disabilities gets to 12th grade and still can’t read or write his own name, we don’t blame the kid for being stupid - or at least we shouldn’t - we blame the parents and teachers. The kid was failed by the people who had the responsibility to teach him.
Same with politics. Voters don’t have degrees in political science. They make the best decisions they can based on the information they have. Biden presided over the worst economy for the poor and middle class and the biggest wealth transfer to the ultra rich in my lifetime, Harris told voters “I’m not going to do anything different from Biden but Trump will destroy America so vote for me”, Trump told voters “I know you’re hurting, Biden and Harris failed you, and my policies will help you”, and voters made the best decision they knew how to make.
Which was a stupid fucking decision. Granted. But the lion’s share of the blame has to go to Biden, Harris, and their enablers. They were the experts. It was their job to keep America from making that stupid fucking decision. And they failed America.
Immigration law is based on the idea that deportation is not a punishment. So people in immigration court don’t get the same protections people in criminal court do - lower standards for evidence, no right to an attorney, guilty until proven innocent instead of the reverse, etc.
Because technically (coughbullshitcough) we’re not convicting or sentencing them, we’re just sending them back to their home country.
Which has always been offensive and cruel, but with the goal of this administration being to hurt as many immigrants as possible as badly as possible, the cruelty is turned up to 11.
It is weird. Except, thinking about it, it’s not.
All sides of American politics have been encouraged to hate and fear other Americans who disagree with them politically.
So when liberals have a choice between blaming their own political leaders for fucking up, or blaming the conservative Americans they hate anyway, a lot of them will make the wrong choice. Just like conservatives do when their leaders fuck up.
The plan was Project 2025. Trump didn’t write it but he certainly followed it.
The economic failures of the Biden administration consisted of what, failing to have a populous who votes for a good legislative branch?
“The people” are not an unchanging monolith. A Republican-led House and Senate were not a foregone conclusion.
If Joe Biden and his staff actually cared about getting stuff through Congress they would have been out stumping for local and state candidates every day in 2022, pushing a very simple message: here’s our big ambitious plan, here’s what we want to do, here’s how it will make your life better, these senators and representatives are stopping us, give us the House and Senate and we will transform America for the better.
And if they failed to get the Congressional support they needed in 2022, Biden and Harris needed to come back in 2024 with that big ambitious plan, and tell Americans what they tried to do, and what they would do in their second term, and what they need from the American people to make that transformation, and go back out and stump in every single state in every single election in the United States to earn the people’s support.
But to do that they needed an ambitious plan - a Green New Deal - that would genuinely help Americans. And they needed to admit the economy was failing and people were hurting.
Biden didn’t have an ambitious plan. Biden didn’t have any plan. Biden sat on his hands and pretended the biggest wealth transfer in history was actually good for American consumers and the economy was going great, and then Harris ran on that record in 2024 and refused to suggest anything she would have done different than Biden.
And of course she lost, because Trump did have an ambitious plan to transform America, and he convinced Americans his plan would leave them better off, and Americans looked at how they were better off under Trump’s first term than they were under Biden and made the obvious choice.
We still live in a democracy. And blaming voters for making the wrong choice is a great way to permanent minority status. It was Biden’s job - it was the job of the Democratic Party as a whole - to recognize the problems facing the American people, offer genuine solutions, and convince the American people to support their plan.
Don’t blame the American people for Biden’s failure to lead.
It’s a horrible thing Trump won.
But it was pretty much inevitable.
The Biden administration was weak, cowardly, and incompetent. It didn’t understand - or refused to admit - how bad the US economy really was and how many people were struggling and suffering.
The student loan debacle exemplified the Biden administration’s “strategy” on the economy, the environment, everything - make a half-ass attempt to slightly improve things, give up at the first challenge, and pat yourself on the back for trying.
The economic failures of the Weimar Republic pushed Germany into the arms of a fascist who promised security and prosperity.
The economic failures of the Biden administration did the same for America.
This administration sent out millions of emails giving immigrants from certain black and brown countries seven days to leave the U.S. voluntarily before being deported.
Seven days. A fucking eviction notice comes with thirty days. Seven days to pack up their entire lives, quit their jobs, buy plane tickets, find somewhere to live and work in a whole different country - fuck, if you had to buy plane tickets for your family at $250 per, could you even afford it? Most American families would have to go into debt for that, never mind immigrants from desperately poor countries who sold everything they had to get here in the first place…
The cruelty is the point, is my point.
Just like immigrants, college educated Americans from lower castes - people smart enough to go to college but too poor to pay for it out of pocket - are enemies of the Trump Administration.
And they want to make their enemies suffer.
They don’t want it to “work”. They want it to hurt people.
This is Trump’s strategy too. Make a brutal enough example of a few universities, or law firms, or immigrants, or other countries’ economies, and the rest will comply in advance. Like Trump said in his West Point commencement speech recently: "As much as you wanna fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight. I just wanna look at them and have them fold.”
Reminder: Ender Wiggin is not a fucking hero.