Kamala doing a longform podcast like Joe Rogan would quicken the already sinking ship- so in a way, it may do us all a favor. Listening to Kamala for more than 10 minutes proves one thing to most people: she has never thought deeply on any subject, ever. In fact, I'm not sure she's properly displayed she can think on any level- any answer she has given is from a completely rehearsed stack of around 10 notecards. What also becomes apparent is that she is on anti-anxiety medication during these interviews. You can tell from her appearance and vocal cadence, in addition to the previously released articles detailing her anxiety.
When you are losing you do want to take more risks, but the hand the left has to work with is unsalvageable.
Yours is a pretty typical sexist trope. Women are not intelligent. Women are too emotional, they suffer from anxiety and depression. If a candidate doesn’t speak boisterously and confidently (even if they have no idea what they are talking about - like Trump and Vance) then they are not really worthy.
Biden was very clear before he picked his V.P. candidate that the selection would be a woman of color. That was VP Harris' primary qualification. Yes, she's smart, maybe even brilliant. Yes, she is good at winning elections. But there was nothing distinguished about her Senate career and, again, if she wasn't a woman of color, she would never have been in the running for VP. And there is absolutely nothing about her background that even begins to suggest that she will be able to deal with our international adversaries.
Now, that doesn't mean people can't choose to vote for her as an anti-Trump. This is America and people can vote for whichever candidates they choose for whatever reason(s) they choose. Anti-Trump is certainly a powerful reason, and, to some, it is reason enough.
But, don't fool yourself. Harris is not up to the job of being President, and there is nothing in her background to suggest she is. If you choose to call that sexist or racist, that's your right. You describe the other writer's words as a, "...typical sexist trope". Give me a break. Attributing broad generalities about motives to someone else's motives is ridiculous. I might just as well call your entire post, above, as a "typical loser's trope".
Look, if Trump wins, all the Dems will scream from the rooftops that he won because everyone is a sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mentio a likely White Supremicist. And, they will scream "voter suppression". If Harris wins, the Trumpers will likely repeat illegal voters and all the other thijngs he's done in the past.
Just cool down and give it a break. Everyone is entiltled to his/her/its opinion. An, people who differ from you are not automatic sexists, racists or anything else. They just disagree with you.
She had a reputation as a disaster though. In fact the gossip is that Biden selected her because the consensus view on her was that she was such a terrible candidate that she represented no threat from his flank.
Citation you asked for: "Mr. Myzlpx said that Harris is smart, maybe even brilliant". That citation is about as good as "Dr. Fauci said that 6 ft spacing was required".
I’m a woman and your comment sounds pretty sexist to me. You assume the only reason a woman and a political candidate could be considered unintelligent by a man is sexism? I’m sorry but pretty much every political candidate since the dawn of democracy has been called unintelligent by their opponents and those candidates have been 99.9% male. Maybe try and make an actual argument to refute the commenter’s points (or just don’t post); when you pull out the woman card willy nilly you make us all look… well… unintelligent.
He said Harris was not intelligent not that all women were. People say Trump is a terrible person. Does that equate to all men being terrible. There are 2 candidates and people will share their opinions which is how it shd be
I appreciate what Nate has tried to do by limiting comments to paid subscribers, and I don't doubt that things are better than they otherwise might have been. But it seems inescapable at this point that that's not enough, and there still needs to be more active moderation in these forums.
We had a good thing going for about five minutes, with rational adults from across the political spectrum coming together to engage in intelligent conversation, but it has been predictably hijacked by astroturfers and shrieking ideologues: left-wingers like Penny baselessly accusing other users of misogyny as well as right-wingers like GU_Wonder baselessly accusing other users of pedophilia by virtue of their transgender identity.
As someone with experience in the field, I can attest personally that when trolls are tolerated, it's only a matter of time before trolls are the only commenters left. And that's not to mention the legal jeopardy Nate may be exposing himself to by allowing comments that in many cases cross the line into full-fledged hate speech (preemptively: no, I'm not talking about this particular comment, but it's depressingly common).
I'm with you Joe, this comment section is a shitshow. But I don't know if hiring a moderator would be "plus EV" as Nate says -- would it result in more subscriptions? Unclear to me that it would. So we get the downward spiral until nothing in the comments is even worth reading anymore. Which we're not far from already.
I doubt it would attract new subscribers, but I'm quite sure it would make a difference when existing subscribers have to decide whether to reup. I've been an ardent admirer of Nate since his 2012 tour de force and even I am starting to waver.
Not the main thrust of your comment which was about the really vile comments but I honestly can’t understand who these trolls are that are willing to PAY to comment stuff like “polls aren’t real”. It just boggles my mind that people are giving Nate money to be able to (completely ignorantly) trash his approach in the comments, but I guess good for Nate?
I intentionally didn't indicate in my comment who I support or oppose politically, so I don't know where you came up with conclusions like "what [I] want is silencing of [my] opponents" and that I "don't tolerate disagreement".
Also, if my "holier-than-thou intolerance is so accepted at this point" then the bar for acceptance is laughably low, because I barely comment on this site anymore, which is largely due to the atmosphere that mods' negligence has fostered.
Yes she identifies as one you can see her pronouns in her Twitter bio. Basically all that she has listed there because it's the only thing that's relevant to her as a presidential candidate.
Objectively speaking, on what topic has Kamala Harris demonstrated a command of? She talks purely in generalities and bromides. To say, on any topic, that she has a better command of the details than JD Vance (certainly) and Donald Trump (mostly) is as of yet, completely unproven. She reads teleprompters and takes questions from friendly press who then break long held journalistic standards to try and protect her. It's not about how you talk, it's about being knowledgeable and having the credibility to lead. She is simply a bad candidate. Which is fine...it's not because she's a woman.
Unfortunately the bar is real low. Trump is senile and clearly extremely challenged with bowel movements during speeches and rambles that are incoherent. Reading off a teleprompter, in other words being prepared, seems to me like an asset right now
Not sure how you can, in good faith, say that Kamala Harris is a particularly intelligent person, any more than you can say, in good faith, that Trump is a particularly intelligent person. In fact, they're both demonstrable idiots. Nothing sexist about it. Also, wild in 2024 to claim that there's a widespread "trope" that women are unintelligent. Maybe you're the sexist one.
Don't feel bad, she's trying to tell you your comment did an effective job at challenging her false beliefs and put her at risk of expanding her thoughts beyond the bubble she's trapped in, but in her own roundabout way.
Calling anyone who criticizes progressives in a day you don’t like a misogynist is silly. If that’s all it takes to be a misogynist, then I’m proud to be one. Even though I like women quite a bit. Especially hot and smart ones.
What a monumentally stupid thing to say. As if a party fielding a candidate in any way they decide (within their rights) is the same as a riot at the capital where police officers were beaten in defense of our capitol and shit was literally smeared the on the walls as they hunted down the politicians they planned to execute. You people with your false equivalencies are truly absurd.
J6 was a protest that morphed into a riot, just like all the BLM protests that mutated into riots at night when all the families went home. Context for that year is necessary.
I don’t agree. I don’t think Harris is unintelligent by any means, but after watching the CBS interview, she comes across to me as someone who will literally say anything to win the election. She also talks in vague generalities. I also understand that politicians circumvent unfavorable questions, but Harris’s response to the border question was baffling to me. I do not think interviews help her. The only thing that would help her is another debate with Trump, where she can play off him well and come out a winner. He has so far (very smartly) declined to engage her again.
I think it has but that's more to do with how the Harris and Biden campaigns both attempted to portray the Trump/Vance ticket as outrageously radical, weird and insane. When JD just comes across as a quite normal and obviously intelligent person, it makes a lot of the claims against Trump and Vance seem suspicious. That's my uneducated take, anyway!
You made the right observation but the wrong attribution. People like myself and Vance used to not trust Trump. But we've come to realize that, for the most part, he says what he means and he tries to do what he says. And that's worlds apart from the typical Uniparty politician. That's why Trump is drawing so many low propensity and first time voters, why he's almost even with Hispanics, and why he may get the most black votes in generations for the GOP.
Yep is no inherent sexism involved in how the American male voter views Kamala Harris. Thanks for mansplaining that to me, now I see the error of my ways.
Yeah, what a wild take: "Harris isn't enough of a deep thinker so people are going to flock to Trump instead." This sort of mirrors the ridiculous "people want to learn more about her policies" narrative from earlier. or the more recent "she's flip flopping" narrative.
It's an insane double standard where there are headlines like these about Harris while Trump can start a sentence with one policy position, end in another, pivot to race science, then stop talking and sway back and forth for half an hour in the middle of an event.
If GS up there truly believes what he posted, it's a sign that he's in a pretty bizarre right wing media bubble, but I assume it's just gaslighting. (I'm a little surprised that so many SB readers seem to be in that same bubble).
Just because they don't vote for Harris doesn't mean they will "flock to Trump instead " You're forgetting, people don't have to vote for either of them.
She has a reputation for delivering statements that are simultaneously lengthy and vacuous. Best case is that she continues the trend.
Worst case is that he presses her on issues that objectively terrible for her. It's hard to imagine any decent response on the question as to why Biden isn't the nominee, for example, and yet that subject has largely not been broached by the mainstream media.
That has a lot to do with every Trump sentence running on for five minutes. It would be quite the feat to be coherent with that many verbal comma splices.
LOL. Every non partisan news outlet says Trump completely crumbled when pressed on his economic plan. Everyone knows his plan is garbage and will do nothing but exacerbate our economic woes.
What are these "non partisan" news outlets you refer to? I don't believe there is such a thing. If so, why is he receiving a standing ovation? Really, your TDS is getting out of control. I suggest filling a script for Xanax. You'll need it Nov 6 when the GOP sweep the presidency, Senate and the House.
Point to anytime during that campaign that Kamala's campaign has outplayed Trump. They're wildly incompetent. And it's not as if Trump has run a good campaign, at all, Kamala's has just been truly putrid.
Oh, I most definitely watched every minute of the debate. I just don't think it did for any undecided voter what it did for partisan Democrats such as yourself.
The question is whether the debate was primarily useful as a speech club artifact or whether it represented Harris' first shot at introducing herself to the public.
I mean he keeps doing rallies in states that aren't competitive. It might help him get more votes in New York, but those votes are wasted since he will never win the state.
I think it's a great idea. Trump acts like a person who cares about the whole country, not just the swing states; he helps his down-ballot party members win in both the House and the Senate; and he lessens the popular over-vote in New York and California so that Harris may not get enough national popular vote to push her over to a win, as with Hillary. Since Trump has so much energy it makes a lot of sense to rally in states that he can't win outright.
And for the Democrats saying this is just “good strategy,” if it was simply good strategy to engage with less-friendly media, why hasn’t she done so for the past 3 months?
The polls are undoubtedly narrowing. RCP's margin for Harris' lead nationally is down to 1.4 and Trump is now leading in the swing states. Here the model now has the odds at 51-4?, still a coin flip but moving in the wrong direction for Harris. Plus Trump is increasingly taking a commanding lead in the betting markets.
On what basis would Trump decide that he is winning other than the chaotic noises in his head. What he believes has at best a tenuous connection to reality.
Trump's pollsters will be telling his campaign that they're winning and the campaign professional who run things will be devising strategy based off of that.
I paid $20 to not read poop like this, hoping conversations would be insightful and better than Elons cesspool twitter. Nate can you up to $50 to price out people like this hopefully.
Seems Generic Subscriber has clearly never heard Donald Trump speak.
Or that he’s desperately attempting to bridge an obvious chasm between the candidates via the favorite tactic of the right: complete and utter bullshit.
Can't believe people are so dumb they still respond to trolling like this. Ignore it, walk away. I'm violating that by even posting this (I usually wouldn't even do that), but so many have already failed by responding it can't do much more harm just to post this.
Do not feed trolls. Do not respond to them. Turn away. If you care about the election, talk to legit sources or commenters if you must, but better yet, roll up your sleeves and do something. So many ways to engage productively, this generic subscriber ain't it.
The other candidate literally defecates on stage and listens to music swaying before his handlers have to walk him off. But ok…Harris has prepared notes on what to say.
Honestly this comment seems delusional. We saw Trump and Kamala debate, and you really think Kamala is the one who comes across as lacking deep thought on topics?
Also, how exactly are you interpreting any of Trump's rambling statements as "deep thought"? You really think somehow Trump is the candidate for people who want to make sure their vote goes towards someone who thinks hard about what they say?
Nate, Vance may be an unpopular VP choice among liberals, but my conservative friends really like how he is showing up in the debate and other interviews. He is smart and quick on this feet and he stays on point.
Yeah, I am really relieved that Trump chose a competent person as VP. Because even leaving aside foul deeds, presidents DO pay their debt to nature sometimes before their term is up. I am not amused by this new fashion of choosing incompetents (such as Harris) as vice-presidents or lieutenant-governors by picking someone for their victim class. We have seen a lot of this in recent years.
He made a great choice despite a lot of pressure to pick a Burgum or Scott. Vance is extremely smart and comes from rural poverty. He is the right person to be the standard bearer for years to come.
Maybe to the NPCs who blindly follow mainstream media talking points. Not to anyone who has taken the time to listen closely to his answers. He's likely the smartest person in Congress (which, admittedly, may not be a high bar).
Unfortunately his backbone is as flexible as a jellyfish. He is smart enough to know just what to say to get power and he has no true principles that aren't repugnant. He has the lowest approval rating of any VP candidate in history.
The same D+10 polls that have Harris ahead? He will make for an excellent president in 2028. I don't envy you having to say the words President Trump and then President Vance.
Yeah, the anti-Vance talk is so telling of somebody living in the New York City bubble. The difference between Vance and Kamala in likeability numbers is genuinely miniscule.
I've got Kamala at -0.6 and Vance at -3 on RCP. So not only literally statistically tied, but also considering the systematic error of our pollsters in question, and the fact that we're dealing with a intangible emotion in the question, I could at best say I was wrong to say there was a a miniscule difference between, there is absolutely no difference between them.
So, Trumps negative rating is still higher than Harris’s. No matter who wins, it seems they are likely to be very unpopular. Should Trump win, I have a feeling the backlash against the GOP in future elections will be intense, as I don’t think he gets more popular if he gets a second term. If anything, his policies are likely to hurt people’s finances and plunge is popularity into unseen lows.
And a lot of observers think this is the last iteration of the current version of the Democratic Party. After this they lose too many minority voters to continue to flog the interests of white college graduates.
hes unpopular among any living breathing human in this country. pre debate he was one of the most unpopular national candidates in the history of modern opinion polling. hes physically off putting and if hes so quick on his feet, why cant he order donuts.
Pollsters claim they have solved the hidden Trump vote by leveraging their polls. But have they? Even if they underestimate the Trump vote by 1 or 2 percent that could doom Harris.
He was underestimated in Wisconsin by 7 points and Pennsylvania by 5 points in 2020. Not even the pollsters absolutely certain that their new methodology will work. Pretty sure that’s one of the main reasons why the Harris campaign is nervous.
I think this is the right. I also think there’s a chance that they over adjusted. On the ground it looks like Harris enjoys more base enthusiasm than Biden or Clinton did.
What are we, chopped liver? Darn. There's a numbers problem here. If 48% don't like Trump (or Harris at 48% too) what species are all the rest who do like him? Whales? Bluejays? This claim that Trump is unpopular among any living breathing human in this country doesn't make much sense, considering he's running for president.
Nope, the "massive division" is the simple result of obscenely wealthy people buying up the media and brainwashing people with vanishingly rare examples of human depravity, ridiculous hypothetical catastrophes and outright lies about their intentions.
Illogical. No one who is running for president can reasonably be said to be massively unpopular, at least not across people. Maybe within someone, you for instance.
Voter registration is a tailing indicator. When people switch the party they vote for long before they switch their registration (if they ever do). So those registration numbers don’t give that much information. Lots of people registered as Democrats vote Republican, just like lots of registered Republicans vote for Democrats. Also, there are as many or more independent in many states and they tend to lean Democratic.
Yeah. They could just play a jingle every 45 seconds with her uptalk voice saying ERMERGERD I HAVE ALL THE RIGHT OPINIONS LIKE PLEASE LIKE LIKE ME and it'd be less annoying.
Please make this happen. Any podcast Nate Silver goes on is binge worthy. Impolitic and Honestly already happened. I’ll throw a few other faves in the mix: All-In, Megan Kelly (go on and hate, she’s awesome), Commentary Magazine, Liberal Patriot, Hacks on Tap.
This. I'd love to hear Nate on Rogan. Actually I'd love to hear Nate in any format other than with that hateful broad he for some reason thinks he has to do podcasts with.
Same with that Amanda whatsherface from LA from 538. Utterly retarded, somehow allowed on the team.
Joe’s going to have Jamie bring up the clips of Biden going full dementia during the debate, the clips of her saying he’s still all there, and grill her about it. I think for the most part he’ll let her say her piece but he won’t let that one go. He’s going to ask her how she can claim to be defending democracy when she was complicit in lying about the mental state of the president. And minimum 20 million people are going to listen to it, tens of millions more, maybe 100 million, will hear the viral clips in the aftermath, all while early voting is open. I see no upside for her no matter how well she performs.
In the last week Kamela released some version of her medical records, challenging Trump to do the same, while kind of ignoring Uncle Joe’s lack of a mental exam. It is inconsistent and just really “weird”.
You don’t think it matters that Harris was complicit in covering up the mental decline of the sitting president? That she gaslit the American people?
I don’t mind people who think Harris (or Trump or RFK or my dog) is the better candidate but to pretend like this isn’t relevant at all smells of pure partisanship.
Some good news for people who care about elections being run in accordance with the law:
"A county judge in Georgia has rejected an argument by allies of former President Donald J. Trump that local election officials have the power to refuse to certify election results, finding the process to be mandatory and one that must meet critical deadlines." (NYTimes)
I don't see the point in having anyone certify just anything that isn't an honest vote ---- I read all that today and apparently if the election official has reason to believe there is a problem with the vote, too bad, certify it anyway. Wha--aaa-aaaa??
Yeah but you can't just give that much power to election officials, where they could just throw out votes based on a hunch. The judge pretty much said that is up to law enforcement and the courts.
Quote from the Judge's ruling: “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” Judge McBurney wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”
There are only certain kinds of problems that these election officials are allowed to rule on. They can't rule on the legality of the rules, for example. So it isn't mandatory in all cases, but it is limited to specific situations, and then they need to have solid evidence.
I always thought the perfect retort to that would have been Trump merch that said "Keep MAGA Weird" akin to "Keep Austin Weird" and "Keep Portland Weird", playing on the leftist pride of weirdness and not being ashamed of the weird label.
Whats odd is that trump had this 8 years ago with the deplorables flub. clinton had a similar moment using one word to decry the entire GOP, and they embraced it, made "deplorable" a calling card for MAGA loyalists. but now they literally cant do that. part of the problem is that the "basket of deplorables" hillary was specifically talking about essentially became the mainstream GOP
Deplorable was probably a bit more mean spirited and at that point Trump was very clued into the elite resentment of that particular persona of American. The weird label they applied to JD Vance is more of the white-incel-gamer weird, vs the Austin/Portland one which is more anti-normie/smoke dope/be more carefree weird. So my retort wouldn't have been apple to apples but could have been effective at shaking it a bit.
I guess the weird label didn't hit as hard as deplorables or have a lasting effect, but I did see conservatives on Twitter really struggle to find a clever way to talk their way out of the label. So it did work at first and flustered them a bit. I think the debate just turned the page for both Tim and JD.
Why do Democrat campaigns seem to be filled with Ivy-League educated strategists who are so stupid they think the secret to winning the next election is to call Trump another name?
Why is the mainstream media filled with journalists who are so stupid that they think putting out another report showing the economy is doing well, or that violent crime is historically low, or that actually the borders are very secure, all according to top "experts," is going to make people believe that over their lying eyes?
Kamala must be down by 5 points across the battleground states in her internal polling right now to even suggest she would go on Joe Rogan. That'll be a bloodbath. And I don't mean she'll literally murder Joe Rogan, I mean she'll look awful for 3 hours, for any liberals reading this who weren't sure. She's talking like she thinks she has less chance to win than Bob Dole did.
Ah, yes, sentiments about the economy are driven purely by fox news, not by increases in grocery bills and rent lagging far behind their annual raises.
"Why do Democrat campaigns seem to be filled with Ivy-League educated strategists who are so stupid they think the secret to winning the next election is to call Trump another name?"
Yeah, this is so counter-productive. It does nothing but alienate millions of the nice voters: why do Dems always, always think insulting half the country is somehow a GOOD idea? Calling us "clingers," "deplorables," "should be put in re-education camps" --- and now the non-stop name-calling against our candidate. It's like they want to lose the election as long as they can freely express their contempt the whole election period.
And Trump and Republicans are above name-calling and expressions of contempt? Trump is constantly guilty of these, and lots of voters who are put off by it are going to hold their nose and vote for him anyway because of the economy, not because the Democrats are mean.
Maybe you are right; but a lot of others are going to vote for Trump because Dems are the mean girls and the school bullies. I was intrigued by people here saying that people vote their hatred --- I think there's a lot to that. Which leads me to the thought that it might be politic not to stir up too much hatred against your side. Or mine.
Well it might cost a party some votes, but how many votes do they gain from acting like bullies? Trump has definitely lost some moderate voters due to it, but I would bet he's picked up even more votes from his base as a result. That kind of rhetoric is very effective at motivating people to vote based on their hatred of the other side.
Unfortunately, intensely combative and insulting rhetoric has become the norm in our shitty two-party system, and I think Trump's success with his style of antagonistic populism has played a major role in that.
TURNOUT, TURNOUT, TURNOUT. This election boils down to GOTV - Get Out the Vote. Whoever can do that, wins.
At this point in time, polls are worthless. It's like trying to get a fine cut with a hatchet, when you need a surgeon's scalpel. Polls are simply not accurate enough, when it is this close. I don't care how many interviews are done or not done, rallies, etc. None of that matters, especially when you have a candidate like Trump, where everybody already has an opinion of him.
Minds aren't going to be changed in the next couple weeks. Whoever has the better ground game will win. Not complicated.
Democrats have an experienced team, both in the campaign and in the ecosystem of groups that have been active for years. After failing to get out the vote for Clinton in 2016, they basically had success in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Meanwhile Trump fired the excellent Republican turnout operation in the RNC and forced them to start from scratch with outside groups who have never run a large turnout operation before. If you do some web searches, you will numerous articles about this.
Another factor is that the Trump turnout operation depends mostly on paid people while Harris has mostly volunteers. People doing the work for a paycheck are not so reliable so they have to wear GPS trackers. One was found to have lied about his door knocking - his tracker showed he was gambling at the casino. He got fired. These things don't happen with volunteers.
PS - Here is another contrast. Dem turnout focuses a lot on college students. As more highly educated young people, they lean strongly Democratic. And they all just showed up for a new term on campus. So they are easy to find, just set up a table in the quad or outside the student union. Thousands walk right by every day - they come to you. And sometimes the voting booth is on campus too.
By contrast, more conservative young voters are among the most transient in the electorate. They move more often and change jobs more often than any other voter group. They often live with somebody and don't even have their own address. They are almost impossible to even get ahold of. Boosting turnout of these potential voters is nearly impossible.
You are misusing the term "conservative", badly. "Conservative" means "a group or person which strives to maintain the norms, beliefs and institutions of a society". Democrats are the true conservatives now.
The GOP was the party of technocrats until Richard Nixon sold it to the Segs of Dixie. Modern Republicans are vandals -- the smartasses at the back of the class snickering at the nerds up front -- eager to level all of the institutions which maintain our modern civilization in a spasm of mindless retribution at the nerds who now make ten times what the spitballers do.
That's putting a lot of trust in polls. Especially with the likelihood of a stronger turnout operation on the Harris side. But we Democrats don't mind if you are taking a victory for granted. For my part, I hate phone banking, and I just signed up to do one.
Historically the polls have underestimated Trump by significant margins. It's impossible to say for certain but for that reason I think a lot of observers are more likely to suspect that Trump will outperform his numbers compared to Harris.
I don't really have a horse in this race but for the record my position is that closest thing we have to an objective measure is the polling, and that indicates a toss up.
In terms of a "hunch" however? Those polls have gotten a lot closer over the last few weeks. I suspect that's why Trump has the advantage in the betting markets that he currently holds.
Conversely, you seem to be placing a lot of faith in the polls. If the polls are undervaluing the Trump vote by the same margin as they did in '16 and '20, you're staring down the barrel at a near Trump landslide, and even if they're half as off, Trump still wins comfortably. The pollsters told us they solved this in 2020. They were wrong. What has changed now that hadn't change then?
Good for you! I’m now retired in Ireland, but was heavily involved with Houston-area Democratic politics from 1999-2005. Yes, I remember doing phone banking.
Plus, knocked on many doors, in addition to anything else the campaigns asked for, such as being a poll worker. Honestly, it was great to be a part of it. It’s one thing to talk about the issues, but getting involved takes your passion to an entire new level.
Plus, you understand something that many don’t. That is, there is an entire infrastructure behind the scenes that must be in place to help elect someone. While elections are about issues at a high level, there is a ‘nuts and bolts’ aspect to campaigns, also. And it takes money and time to put in place.
I’ve already voted for Harris weeks back. Won’t make any difference since I vote in Texas. However, maybe we can knock off Cancun Cruz. That guy is surreal.
Ehh, the Republican turnout machine was a complete dumpster fire as recently as 2012, and they certainly didn't work miracles in 2022.
I suspect the baseline performance is so low that there's no reason to bet on things being worse for them this election.
(I'd have a harder time defending this position, but I personally suspect GOTV/turnout efforts are highly overrated in presidential elections outside of a handful of historical political machines that still have some life in them)
The theory that the Trump team is operating under is that they want to get a bunch of young black and Hispanic men to vote for them and they are very infrequent voters--like one out of the last four presidential elections type of voters.
The primary reason that the base will turn out is that they hate the other side. That's true for both parties.
The Trump team says it is focusing on rural turnout. As somebody who has done turnout operations for smaller campaigns, low density rural turnout is very inefficient. You spend more time looking for rural addresses than you do talking to people.
Maybe not for Trump alone, but for the economy? That's the question that's been killing Harris I think.
In addition that's clearly why Trump has been doing podcasts with comedians. He's trying to reach this group of voters.
Lastly, today's young black man is tomorrow's middle aged black man. The Democrats are hoping they can squeak by one more time before the future makes them change.
Nate’s point has salience because he is talking about LIKELY voters who are, nonetheless, undecided. Their decision making is likely to be impulsive and volatile. Figuring out a way to slant that in Harris’s direction is a challenge- volatile and impulsive is Trump’s brand.
How conservatives seem to agree with you. The large set of websites in the Townhall family has a lot of writers in each website and all of them seem to have beaucoup commenters pushing the "Swamp the Steal" meme. I was a little alarmed by that -- I thought maybe they meant it, believed that the Left was out in force to steal this election -- but this morning I figured it out, that it's a tactic to push turnout. The idea seems to be to say that everyone has to vote so that the Dems can't steal enough votes to overwhelm the honest conservative vote.
Incredible entertainment value. The next best thing, is if Trump walks out in hour two and they do an impromptu debate with Rogan moderating. Greater than 50% shot Joe offers her a blunt, too.
There is one unstated theme that runs throughout this entire piece...the fact that Kamala has no identity or governing principle. She doesn't know who she as is painfully evident every time she's forced to do an unscripted Q&A. Doing Fox, Joe Rogan, etc., while otherwise worthy endeavors, is only going to expose her further. Thankfully, identity politics has run its course. Love him or hate him, we all know who Donald Trump is. He doesn't change who he is in order to win votes or when speaking to any one specific audience. After 4 years as VP and 3 weeks out from an election, Kamala is still trying to 'introduce' herself to the American people. She'd do well to start with developing her own principles first.
The other side of this theme is that JD Vance, Trump, Republicans are not the caricature the left paints of us. The JD Vance as 'weird' attempt didn't work because, as it turns out, JD Vance isn't weird. He's pretty damn smart actually. He's proven that. And Trump isn't the Project 2025 carrying dictator you all portray him as. He ran the country for 4 years, any objective observer would recognize that it wasn't all that bad...certainly not an authoritarian hellscape.
You're not going to win over voters by spending years insulting them, assuming the absolute worst of them, and then flipping on a dime to pander to them 3 weeks out from an election.
Kamala may pull this out in the end, but she and the Democrats absolutely deserve to lose.
Yeah, I never got the P2025 boogeyman either. The Dems have a decent--not great--hand against a guy holding a bunch of rags but a great player, and they have not played it very well at all.
It's almost like the Dems took a "throw it all against the wall and see what sticks" approach, versus a KISS approach.
Remember, these are the same people who screamed about Russia for 4 years straight, only for the special counsel to find literally nothing, and that the Steele Dossier was made up…
Same people to scream about the covid vaccine, even making people lose their jobs over it, until it came out it wasn’t so effective after all. Now who still even gets it?
It's not collusion - it's about being a useful idiot.
And when 80+% of people are vaccinated (and higher in the most vulnerable populations), the fact that 20% of deaths are among the vaccinated tells us that the vaccine is pretty effective! Just do a little math and don't think "if it wasn't 100% then it must have been 0%".
And yet Putin did not invade Ukraine until Trump was out of office.
80% of the population received at least one dose of the vaccine but the full course for the two most popular vaccine variants was two doses. Only 70% of the population actually got the full monty.
The Mueller report was a bust. If anybody is still talking about this stuff in the current day it's Trump's partisans who hold it up as a great miscarriage of justice and an example as to how career politicians and bureaucrats abused the system to try and get Trump.
Trump flipflops constantly, just no one cares because he's not a policy-driven candidate. The meme during his presidency was that he supported the positions of the last person who had spoken to him.
It all makes sense when you understand that the left projects. Whatever they attack others with, is what they themselves are. "JD is weird", Walz was the weird one. "Russian collusion!", they were the ones colluding with a fake Russia hoax. "Insurrection!", they were the ones who removed a candidate who won the most primary votes and installed someone who didn't win a single primary vote.
I would not put much faith in party registration data. I live in a red state, know a lot of Democrats and 75% of us are registered as Republicans to vote against the most extreme Republican candidates in the primary. There really has not been much impetus to be a registered Democrat recently without a competitive Democratic presidential primary.
The registration numbers on their own don't mean much, but the concern regarding them is more about the direction they've been trending. Maybe they're being overblown, but it's a bad omen for not just Harris in 2024, but for Democrats in future elections too.
Valid point, but this election will be decided by which party can get people off the couch to cast a ballot in their favor who would otherwise be quite content to stay at home. It's about turning your people out. A good ground game would overwhelm any changes in registration at that level.
My point is that the political partisans will turn out to vote regardless of their own candidate. What motivates them is primarily their hatred for the other side.
Plus with Trump you do have the whole cult of personality thing.
You overestimate how representative you and the people you know are. The fact you're commenting on here means you are far more politically engaged than the average. Likely who you associate with would also be more politically engaged than the average. Hell the fact you not only vote in a primary but vote strategically in the opposite party's primary puts you far outside the norm. Most people registering for a party are part of that party.
What this change shows is that the party's coalitions are flipping in the following way: it used to be republicans had a smaller tent but more politically engaged coalition and democrats had a bigger tent but far less politically engaged coalition. Hence democrats had more registered voters but underperformed in off year elections. The reverse is now happening. This is a realignment.
Look at the _change_ in voter registrations. Last week or the week before Republicans had twice as many new sign up's in Pennsylvania as the Democrats, and it is far too late to vote in any primaries now.
Plus the R's are doing extremely well in self ID polling. Harry Enten on CNN just had a segment on this.
There are quite a few Democrats and Independents not voting for Harris as well. Don't get caught in the echo chamber with your friends. Many people will say they aren't voting for Trump (I used to be one of those) and then go pull the lever that way anyway. I've just gotten to the point I could care less about others opinions anymore about me. Haters will just hate. It's actually entertaining now.
people love talking about party ID in pre election polling, but its a somewhat fickle figure. its very easy to change, and often times in surveys people respond shifting with their mood. and when you talk to "independants", theres few actual independents who split their ticket. what is there is lots of democrats and republicans who feel weird about putting a D or R next to their name but actually vote party line consistently.
I was somewhat surprised by the ranking of priorities of young voters and thought from all the noise that Gaza Israel would have been higher rather than at the bottom. It caused me to think that Harris and the dems got faked out and intimidated into not having the Pa Governor as VP versus Walz. PA is really important and the governor is popular and forceful. I think they avoided him because he is Jewish and they already have Dougie. She is dancing on a knife’s edge re supporting Israel versus being sympathetic to Palestinians. After the initial love fest for “coach” walz has not be forceful and was not great at debate other than one key gotcha.
Think should have gone with the PA guv. What think?
It is true that the college riots died out almost immediately, so Shapiro wasn't a problem there. However, Kamala may still lose Michigan because a half-million Arab voters there are still mad about anybody saying a good word to people fighting the peace-loving Hamas types ------- that plus the startling discovery of widespread antisemitism in the U.S. makes me think she didn't need that focus on Shapiro being Jewish. Still, Walz turns out to have been a bad choice. Somebody besides either of them, preferably.
Shapiro was a two edged sword. He is popular in Pennsylvania. 18 electoral votes I think. He is Jewish. Jews not popular in Michigan Arab community and there is weirdly viral and virulent antisemitism running rampant in America
There is a difference between supporting Israel and supporting the Israeli government’s policies or personnel. Shapiro was far more harsh in his comments on Netanyahu than Walz or most other vp contenders. It’s his Jewishness that was the reason why he was a no go, as op correctly points out (and as many did before).
In the NY Times/Siena poll a few weeks back Trump was ahead of Harris among Jewish voters in New York. I think it's reasonable to guess why a traditionally Democratic leaning constituency would make a huge leap to the other side.
That sounds like a small sub-sample of a single poll, so I would want to be careful about reading too much into it, if there's not more support for that drastic change in vote preference.
There is a large degree of correlation between Jewish voters and their support of Israel. There are definitely populations in the US that support the Israeli government in its wartime conduct. I suspect that a major factor driving Jewish voters to Trump is perceived hostility on the part of Democrats to Israel.
This slate of comments seems to mostly be: Harris is dumb for ignoring interviews with non-traditional media to get her message out and Harris is dumb for risking doing interviews with non-traditional media.
P ∨ ¬P is a tautology and P ∧ ¬P is a contradiction.
Edit: I mean that premise of those two hot takes aren’t compatible. In one Harris campaign is ignoring the podcasts etc, in the other they are engaging in the podcasts etc. So they are at odds before they get to the assessment of the decision that’s been made.
It’s Gingrichism, where facts are all subjective & personal possessions.
*That* would at least make sense! It's many of the same people, in one comment thread saying Harris will obviously make viral mistakes if she attempts it, and in another criticizing her for not doing so already.
I don't care for Trump, and I can't speak as an expert on the expected value and opportunity costs of him doing various podcasts, but if that's a winning strategy, I certainly can't criticize him for it.
Kamala doing a longform podcast like Joe Rogan would quicken the already sinking ship- so in a way, it may do us all a favor. Listening to Kamala for more than 10 minutes proves one thing to most people: she has never thought deeply on any subject, ever. In fact, I'm not sure she's properly displayed she can think on any level- any answer she has given is from a completely rehearsed stack of around 10 notecards. What also becomes apparent is that she is on anti-anxiety medication during these interviews. You can tell from her appearance and vocal cadence, in addition to the previously released articles detailing her anxiety.
When you are losing you do want to take more risks, but the hand the left has to work with is unsalvageable.
What a thoroughly misogynistic comment.
Sorry, where did I talk about her sex? https://theweek.com/speedreads/876431/kamala-harris-occasionally-struggles-performance-anxiety-current-former-aides-say
Yours is a pretty typical sexist trope. Women are not intelligent. Women are too emotional, they suffer from anxiety and depression. If a candidate doesn’t speak boisterously and confidently (even if they have no idea what they are talking about - like Trump and Vance) then they are not really worthy.
Penny,
Biden was very clear before he picked his V.P. candidate that the selection would be a woman of color. That was VP Harris' primary qualification. Yes, she's smart, maybe even brilliant. Yes, she is good at winning elections. But there was nothing distinguished about her Senate career and, again, if she wasn't a woman of color, she would never have been in the running for VP. And there is absolutely nothing about her background that even begins to suggest that she will be able to deal with our international adversaries.
Now, that doesn't mean people can't choose to vote for her as an anti-Trump. This is America and people can vote for whichever candidates they choose for whatever reason(s) they choose. Anti-Trump is certainly a powerful reason, and, to some, it is reason enough.
But, don't fool yourself. Harris is not up to the job of being President, and there is nothing in her background to suggest she is. If you choose to call that sexist or racist, that's your right. You describe the other writer's words as a, "...typical sexist trope". Give me a break. Attributing broad generalities about motives to someone else's motives is ridiculous. I might just as well call your entire post, above, as a "typical loser's trope".
Look, if Trump wins, all the Dems will scream from the rooftops that he won because everyone is a sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mentio a likely White Supremicist. And, they will scream "voter suppression". If Harris wins, the Trumpers will likely repeat illegal voters and all the other thijngs he's done in the past.
Just cool down and give it a break. Everyone is entiltled to his/her/its opinion. An, people who differ from you are not automatic sexists, racists or anything else. They just disagree with you.
Current senator, former AG, 3 State wide election wins in the largest state, center left.
Harris would have been on any long list.
Her qualifications were much better than Vance's, for example.
She had a reputation as a disaster though. In fact the gossip is that Biden selected her because the consensus view on her was that she was such a terrible candidate that she represented no threat from his flank.
"Yes, she's smart, maybe even brilliant."
Citation needed.
Citation you asked for: "Mr. Myzlpx said that Harris is smart, maybe even brilliant". That citation is about as good as "Dr. Fauci said that 6 ft spacing was required".
You don’t become a senator after working at McDonalds if you’re not.
I’m a woman and your comment sounds pretty sexist to me. You assume the only reason a woman and a political candidate could be considered unintelligent by a man is sexism? I’m sorry but pretty much every political candidate since the dawn of democracy has been called unintelligent by their opponents and those candidates have been 99.9% male. Maybe try and make an actual argument to refute the commenter’s points (or just don’t post); when you pull out the woman card willy nilly you make us all look… well… unintelligent.
Uh, no actually it’s very unusual in the past for candidates to call their opponents unintelligent.
Ahh yes I suppose when people called Abraham Lincoln “Ignoramus Abe” they meant it as a compliment
Hahahahaha
When someone calls you dumb, " try and make an actual argument to refute the commenter’s points" actually makes you appear dumber.
He said Harris was not intelligent not that all women were. People say Trump is a terrible person. Does that equate to all men being terrible. There are 2 candidates and people will share their opinions which is how it shd be
And what objective evidence is there for Harris’ lack of intelligence?
Same as Trump: have you listened to them speak on any issue of substance?
Have you listened to her talk at all? Word salad.
I appreciate what Nate has tried to do by limiting comments to paid subscribers, and I don't doubt that things are better than they otherwise might have been. But it seems inescapable at this point that that's not enough, and there still needs to be more active moderation in these forums.
We had a good thing going for about five minutes, with rational adults from across the political spectrum coming together to engage in intelligent conversation, but it has been predictably hijacked by astroturfers and shrieking ideologues: left-wingers like Penny baselessly accusing other users of misogyny as well as right-wingers like GU_Wonder baselessly accusing other users of pedophilia by virtue of their transgender identity.
As someone with experience in the field, I can attest personally that when trolls are tolerated, it's only a matter of time before trolls are the only commenters left. And that's not to mention the legal jeopardy Nate may be exposing himself to by allowing comments that in many cases cross the line into full-fledged hate speech (preemptively: no, I'm not talking about this particular comment, but it's depressingly common).
“the legal jeopardy Nate may be exposing himself to by allowing comments that in many cases cross the line into unfettered hate speech…”
Will active moderation also police objectively ridiculous assertions?
I'm with you Joe, this comment section is a shitshow. But I don't know if hiring a moderator would be "plus EV" as Nate says -- would it result in more subscriptions? Unclear to me that it would. So we get the downward spiral until nothing in the comments is even worth reading anymore. Which we're not far from already.
I doubt it would attract new subscribers, but I'm quite sure it would make a difference when existing subscribers have to decide whether to reup. I've been an ardent admirer of Nate since his 2012 tour de force and even I am starting to waver.
My claims of misogyny are not baseless.
They are baseless, and they have been demonstrated baseless by others' responses to you, so I'm not going to waste my time belaboring that point.
Not the main thrust of your comment which was about the really vile comments but I honestly can’t understand who these trolls are that are willing to PAY to comment stuff like “polls aren’t real”. It just boggles my mind that people are giving Nate money to be able to (completely ignorantly) trash his approach in the comments, but I guess good for Nate?
Your holier-than-thou intolerance is so accepted at this point that the only resistance is mocking you.
If you had just an ounce of integrity, curiosity or - dare I say - tolerance, we could discuss politics.
Alas, what you want is silencing of your opponents. And against tyranny only one weapon truly works: mockery.
Find a bit of humility, then we'll engage. Until then, your opinions are truly not worth engaging with. Why would we? You don't tolerate disagreement.
I intentionally didn't indicate in my comment who I support or oppose politically, so I don't know where you came up with conclusions like "what [I] want is silencing of [my] opponents" and that I "don't tolerate disagreement".
Also, if my "holier-than-thou intolerance is so accepted at this point" then the bar for acceptance is laughably low, because I barely comment on this site anymore, which is largely due to the atmosphere that mods' negligence has fostered.
I frequent other online forums. Disagreement is common.
Wait, Kamala’s a woman?? I gotta rethink this.
Yes she identifies as one you can see her pronouns in her Twitter bio. Basically all that she has listed there because it's the only thing that's relevant to her as a presidential candidate.
Objectively speaking, on what topic has Kamala Harris demonstrated a command of? She talks purely in generalities and bromides. To say, on any topic, that she has a better command of the details than JD Vance (certainly) and Donald Trump (mostly) is as of yet, completely unproven. She reads teleprompters and takes questions from friendly press who then break long held journalistic standards to try and protect her. It's not about how you talk, it's about being knowledgeable and having the credibility to lead. She is simply a bad candidate. Which is fine...it's not because she's a woman.
Unfortunately the bar is real low. Trump is senile and clearly extremely challenged with bowel movements during speeches and rambles that are incoherent. Reading off a teleprompter, in other words being prepared, seems to me like an asset right now
You come across like a 13 year old conservative impersonating what he thinks is a 15 year old liberal
Not sure how you can, in good faith, say that Kamala Harris is a particularly intelligent person, any more than you can say, in good faith, that Trump is a particularly intelligent person. In fact, they're both demonstrable idiots. Nothing sexist about it. Also, wild in 2024 to claim that there's a widespread "trope" that women are unintelligent. Maybe you're the sexist one.
Exactly. Trump is an idiot. But it sure seems Kamala is, too.
Yes. JD Vance is arguably the only intelligent one of the 4.
Trump was an intelligent person. Senile now. Harris is an intelligent person. Most people are who get that far. They go into decline in late 70s.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/12/1705902/-Former-Wharton-Professor-Donald-Trump-Is-the-Dumbest-Goddam-Student-I-Ever-Had
Not a lot of evidence that Trump was ever smart.
Perhaps "street smart", but even that isn't clear.
He did bankrupt several casinos, which does demonstrate some special talents.
Don't feel bad, she's trying to tell you your comment did an effective job at challenging her false beliefs and put her at risk of expanding her thoughts beyond the bubble she's trapped in, but in her own roundabout way.
Now we have a mansplainer. Really going hard for the female vote…
Lol! You are a stereotypical Kamala voter. Let’s ruin the Country so that you can feel empowered!
Serouosly!. Biden was called all sorts of things and much worse just a few months back.
Ah, you're actually a good troll. Well done.
Calling anyone who criticizes progressives in a day you don’t like a misogynist is silly. If that’s all it takes to be a misogynist, then I’m proud to be one. Even though I like women quite a bit. Especially hot and smart ones.
this comment is precisely why Kamala will lose.
this comment is why i don’t want to
empower many of harris’ core supporters, but better feminist scolds than insurrectionists
The real insurrectionists are the ones who forced Joe out of office and installed a person who didn't receive a single vote from state primaries.
What a monumentally stupid thing to say. As if a party fielding a candidate in any way they decide (within their rights) is the same as a riot at the capital where police officers were beaten in defense of our capitol and shit was literally smeared the on the walls as they hunted down the politicians they planned to execute. You people with your false equivalencies are truly absurd.
J6 was a protest that morphed into a riot, just like all the BLM protests that mutated into riots at night when all the families went home. Context for that year is necessary.
J6 was a walk in the park compared to what Antifa and BLM did on a) Trump's inauguration day and b) the summer of love.
I'm sure you've seen the videos of police opening doors and allowing protestors to enter?
Have you also seen the video where Pelosi admits it was her fault?
Trump offered both Pelosi and Bowser 10,000 National Guard troops which they declined.
I don’t agree. I don’t think Harris is unintelligent by any means, but after watching the CBS interview, she comes across to me as someone who will literally say anything to win the election. She also talks in vague generalities. I also understand that politicians circumvent unfavorable questions, but Harris’s response to the border question was baffling to me. I do not think interviews help her. The only thing that would help her is another debate with Trump, where she can play off him well and come out a winner. He has so far (very smartly) declined to engage her again.
The same can be said of Trump or Vance.
I wouldn't say it's true of Vance, but definitely true of Trump
Agreed - honestly I think the case may be able to be made soon here that Vance’s VP debate performance actually has helped the Republican ticket
I think it has but that's more to do with how the Harris and Biden campaigns both attempted to portray the Trump/Vance ticket as outrageously radical, weird and insane. When JD just comes across as a quite normal and obviously intelligent person, it makes a lot of the claims against Trump and Vance seem suspicious. That's my uneducated take, anyway!
Ok you are right Vance doesn’t talk in vague generalities he just lies “Trump saved the affordable care act?”
I'm not here for a partisan debate. It's about framing not about which candidate or candidates we like better.
So Vance actually believes Haitians are eating pets? Vance says just as much nonsense as the others.
You made the right observation but the wrong attribution. People like myself and Vance used to not trust Trump. But we've come to realize that, for the most part, he says what he means and he tries to do what he says. And that's worlds apart from the typical Uniparty politician. That's why Trump is drawing so many low propensity and first time voters, why he's almost even with Hispanics, and why he may get the most black votes in generations for the GOP.
Vance came across well in the debate.
Typical leftist. In the face of any criticism, label your opponent as a sexist/bigot/racist/etc.
Knee-jerk insert racism, sexism, etc. exactly Nate’s point of the holier-than-thou left failing to connect in a nutshell. Way to the prove that point.
Yep is no inherent sexism involved in how the American male voter views Kamala Harris. Thanks for mansplaining that to me, now I see the error of my ways.
I’m a woman and I disagree.
Good thing she's up against a man who can't maintain a single coherent thought through to the end of a sentence.
Yeah, what a wild take: "Harris isn't enough of a deep thinker so people are going to flock to Trump instead." This sort of mirrors the ridiculous "people want to learn more about her policies" narrative from earlier. or the more recent "she's flip flopping" narrative.
It's an insane double standard where there are headlines like these about Harris while Trump can start a sentence with one policy position, end in another, pivot to race science, then stop talking and sway back and forth for half an hour in the middle of an event.
If GS up there truly believes what he posted, it's a sign that he's in a pretty bizarre right wing media bubble, but I assume it's just gaslighting. (I'm a little surprised that so many SB readers seem to be in that same bubble).
Just because they don't vote for Harris doesn't mean they will "flock to Trump instead " You're forgetting, people don't have to vote for either of them.
Gaslighting… forgot that go-to one besides racism and sexism. How could anyone dare disagree with your holiness?
Rogan’s pretty coherent most of the time
He’s not running though.
I knew who you meant, I was just being silly
The danger is that he decides to grill her and she melts down.
She'll do fine.
It won't matter much, but may gather a handful of votes.
She has a reputation for delivering statements that are simultaneously lengthy and vacuous. Best case is that she continues the trend.
Worst case is that he presses her on issues that objectively terrible for her. It's hard to imagine any decent response on the question as to why Biden isn't the nominee, for example, and yet that subject has largely not been broached by the mainstream media.
That has a lot to do with every Trump sentence running on for five minutes. It would be quite the feat to be coherent with that many verbal comma splices.
Interesting that Trump went to the Bloomberg hosted Economic Club of Chicago interview, but Harris declined.
Interesting, what did the economists there think of his plan?
They cheered regularly throughout, and gave him a standing ovation when it was over. Videos are on X - https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1846264466201366599
LOL. Every non partisan news outlet says Trump completely crumbled when pressed on his economic plan. Everyone knows his plan is garbage and will do nothing but exacerbate our economic woes.
What are these "non partisan" news outlets you refer to? I don't believe there is such a thing. If so, why is he receiving a standing ovation? Really, your TDS is getting out of control. I suggest filling a script for Xanax. You'll need it Nov 6 when the GOP sweep the presidency, Senate and the House.
ah, the old Silver Bulletin comment section rears it's lovely head once again
I paid money to avoid garbage like this, by all means post pro trump stuff, but some of it is so disingenuous.
Thank you for elevating the conversation. Whatever would we do without the insightful comments of Izzi T!
So you'd rather just watch Trump dance awkwardly on stage without saying anything for 30 minutes?
The suspicion is that Trump is winning so he can afford to indulge himself.
Otoh Harris is losing. That means venturing onto enemy territory (Rogan, Fox News) as a Hail Mary.
If he keeps acting like he’s winning, he could very soon not be winning any more. Very shortsighted to let your opponent outplay you.
Point to anytime during that campaign that Kamala's campaign has outplayed Trump. They're wildly incompetent. And it's not as if Trump has run a good campaign, at all, Kamala's has just been truly putrid.
Lots of words to say you missed the debate.
Oh, I most definitely watched every minute of the debate. I just don't think it did for any undecided voter what it did for partisan Democrats such as yourself.
The question is whether the debate was primarily useful as a speech club artifact or whether it represented Harris' first shot at introducing herself to the public.
I mean he keeps doing rallies in states that aren't competitive. It might help him get more votes in New York, but those votes are wasted since he will never win the state.
Doing occasional rallies in blue states generates media buzz, rather than doing *yet another* one in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
FTR, Trump is doing 2 or 3 times as many rallies/campaign stops as Kamala is doing at the moment.
He's doing tons of events, I hardly see how that's any real problem.
I think it's a great idea. Trump acts like a person who cares about the whole country, not just the swing states; he helps his down-ballot party members win in both the House and the Senate; and he lessens the popular over-vote in New York and California so that Harris may not get enough national popular vote to push her over to a win, as with Hillary. Since Trump has so much energy it makes a lot of sense to rally in states that he can't win outright.
And for the Democrats saying this is just “good strategy,” if it was simply good strategy to engage with less-friendly media, why hasn’t she done so for the past 3 months?
For sure, they're already in hail mary territory. The internals must be really bad.
Yup. At the very least she would have gotten some practice in giving interviews.
She was pulling together her campaign and specific policy proposals.
What is Trump's excuse for only having a concept for a plan for healthcare?
He just gave an interview to Bloomberg this morning.
Does that mean he presented a health care plan?
I don't subscribe to B-berg, and the secondary coverage didn't mention it.
"Harris is losing."
Please provide any evidence at all that this is true.
The polls are undoubtedly narrowing. RCP's margin for Harris' lead nationally is down to 1.4 and Trump is now leading in the swing states. Here the model now has the odds at 51-4?, still a coin flip but moving in the wrong direction for Harris. Plus Trump is increasingly taking a commanding lead in the betting markets.
Nice "evidence"
What do the polls say again?
I don’t think that Trump knows what is going on. He’s a very different person to 2016.
Then the people running him think they're about to win. Same difference.
On what basis would Trump decide that he is winning other than the chaotic noises in his head. What he believes has at best a tenuous connection to reality.
I doubt Trump is looking at the polling and crunching the early returns. It's the professional campaigners and pollsters that he employs.
Right, but you were trying to explain Trump’s motivation, not the confidence or spin of campaign professionals
Trump's pollsters will be telling his campaign that they're winning and the campaign professional who run things will be devising strategy based off of that.
Yeah instead of a longform podcast Harris should do something better like nod her head to Ave Maria for a half an hour.
And Trump has thought deeply on any subject? Listening to him for more than ten minutes is worth our time?
Most objective Trump supporter analysis
I paid $20 to not read poop like this, hoping conversations would be insightful and better than Elons cesspool twitter. Nate can you up to $50 to price out people like this hopefully.
Seems Generic Subscriber has clearly never heard Donald Trump speak.
Or that he’s desperately attempting to bridge an obvious chasm between the candidates via the favorite tactic of the right: complete and utter bullshit.
Can't believe people are so dumb they still respond to trolling like this. Ignore it, walk away. I'm violating that by even posting this (I usually wouldn't even do that), but so many have already failed by responding it can't do much more harm just to post this.
Do not feed trolls. Do not respond to them. Turn away. If you care about the election, talk to legit sources or commenters if you must, but better yet, roll up your sleeves and do something. So many ways to engage productively, this generic subscriber ain't it.
dude, the other guy is Trump. can't put together 2 sentences without bringing out the dementia side of him. 2 sentences v 10 minutes sounds like a win
The other candidate literally defecates on stage and listens to music swaying before his handlers have to walk him off. But ok…Harris has prepared notes on what to say.
Boring. Another Russian bot. This site is about analysis, not BS electioneering.
Honestly this comment seems delusional. We saw Trump and Kamala debate, and you really think Kamala is the one who comes across as lacking deep thought on topics?
Also, how exactly are you interpreting any of Trump's rambling statements as "deep thought"? You really think somehow Trump is the candidate for people who want to make sure their vote goes towards someone who thinks hard about what they say?
wow you're really profound thank you for this great comment - a new Voltaire!
Ok now do Trump
Nate, Vance may be an unpopular VP choice among liberals, but my conservative friends really like how he is showing up in the debate and other interviews. He is smart and quick on this feet and he stays on point.
Yeah, I am really relieved that Trump chose a competent person as VP. Because even leaving aside foul deeds, presidents DO pay their debt to nature sometimes before their term is up. I am not amused by this new fashion of choosing incompetents (such as Harris) as vice-presidents or lieutenant-governors by picking someone for their victim class. We have seen a lot of this in recent years.
He made a great choice despite a lot of pressure to pick a Burgum or Scott. Vance is extremely smart and comes from rural poverty. He is the right person to be the standard bearer for years to come.
Also, less popular amongst the electorate than venereal disease.
Maybe to the NPCs who blindly follow mainstream media talking points. Not to anyone who has taken the time to listen closely to his answers. He's likely the smartest person in Congress (which, admittedly, may not be a high bar).
Unfortunately his backbone is as flexible as a jellyfish. He is smart enough to know just what to say to get power and he has no true principles that aren't repugnant. He has the lowest approval rating of any VP candidate in history.
The same D+10 polls that have Harris ahead? He will make for an excellent president in 2028. I don't envy you having to say the words President Trump and then President Vance.
Yeah, the anti-Vance talk is so telling of somebody living in the New York City bubble. The difference between Vance and Kamala in likeability numbers is genuinely miniscule.
Looks like right now Walz is at +1, Harris is at -0.5, Vance is at -5.5, and Trump is at -8.5 in favorability.
https://elections2024.thehill.com/national/vance-favorability-rating/
I've got Kamala at -0.6 and Vance at -3 on RCP. So not only literally statistically tied, but also considering the systematic error of our pollsters in question, and the fact that we're dealing with a intangible emotion in the question, I could at best say I was wrong to say there was a a miniscule difference between, there is absolutely no difference between them.
https://www.tampafp.com/msnbcs-steve-kornacki-breaks-down-kamala-harris-decline-in-popularity-as-election-day-approaches/
So, Trumps negative rating is still higher than Harris’s. No matter who wins, it seems they are likely to be very unpopular. Should Trump win, I have a feeling the backlash against the GOP in future elections will be intense, as I don’t think he gets more popular if he gets a second term. If anything, his policies are likely to hurt people’s finances and plunge is popularity into unseen lows.
Trump can't run again.
And a lot of observers think this is the last iteration of the current version of the Democratic Party. After this they lose too many minority voters to continue to flog the interests of white college graduates.
Trump absolutely can run again, if he loses this time and survives four more years.
That story seems to be based on a single poll, rather than an average of recent polls.
It's recent and it's a major poll, which is why I threw it out there. The trend certainly seems to be that Harris' approval ratings are falling.
hes unpopular among any living breathing human in this country. pre debate he was one of the most unpopular national candidates in the history of modern opinion polling. hes physically off putting and if hes so quick on his feet, why cant he order donuts.
Eh, you don't have enough conservative friends. Plenty of "living, breathing humans" like him.
The polling seems to indicate a coin toss, and the question on everyone's mind right now is whether the polling is biased against Trump again.
Pollsters claim they have solved the hidden Trump vote by leveraging their polls. But have they? Even if they underestimate the Trump vote by 1 or 2 percent that could doom Harris.
If they underestimate Trump by half a percent in the swing states that could doom Harris.
He was underestimated in Wisconsin by 7 points and Pennsylvania by 5 points in 2020. Not even the pollsters absolutely certain that their new methodology will work. Pretty sure that’s one of the main reasons why the Harris campaign is nervous.
Yeah - that is the issue.
There are a handful of states that could be Trump's tipping point where polls average to Harris being up by a half a percent or less.
If any of those flip, Harris needs to pick up places where polls show Trump is up by over 1%.
Not great odds based on straight math.
I think this is the right. I also think there’s a chance that they over adjusted. On the ground it looks like Harris enjoys more base enthusiasm than Biden or Clinton did.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/13/cnns_enten_party_registration_data_better_for_republicans_today_than_average_in_elections_theyve_won.html
What are we, chopped liver? Darn. There's a numbers problem here. If 48% don't like Trump (or Harris at 48% too) what species are all the rest who do like him? Whales? Bluejays? This claim that Trump is unpopular among any living breathing human in this country doesn't make much sense, considering he's running for president.
Straight to the ad hom makes it pretty obvious you have no real argument.
"My friends, who would vote for Trump's corpse over a living Harris, think JD Vance is really great."
Wow, no shit?
His net unfavorability rating is +9.4. (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/jd-vance/)
Nobody gives a shit what your mouth-breathing chud friends think. It is a fact that he is massively unpopular.
Seek help
This lack of civility is why we have such division between liberals and conservatives.
Nope, the "massive division" is the simple result of obscenely wealthy people buying up the media and brainwashing people with vanishingly rare examples of human depravity, ridiculous hypothetical catastrophes and outright lies about their intentions.
Illogical. No one who is running for president can reasonably be said to be massively unpopular, at least not across people. Maybe within someone, you for instance.
Be civil.
He's not. He just lies and lies. Period. He said it himself I'll lie to make my point.
Voter registration is a tailing indicator. When people switch the party they vote for long before they switch their registration (if they ever do). So those registration numbers don’t give that much information. Lots of people registered as Democrats vote Republican, just like lots of registered Republicans vote for Democrats. Also, there are as many or more independent in many states and they tend to lean Democratic.
You know who SHOULD go on Joe Rogan? Nate freaking Silver. That would be an episode I would binge immediately.
Would be nice to hear him talk uninterrupted by Maria Konnikova for once
Yeah. They could just play a jingle every 45 seconds with her uptalk voice saying ERMERGERD I HAVE ALL THE RIGHT OPINIONS LIKE PLEASE LIKE LIKE ME and it'd be less annoying.
Huh? He probably has more speaking time than her on the podcast.
I second this. Yes please.
Please make this happen. Any podcast Nate Silver goes on is binge worthy. Impolitic and Honestly already happened. I’ll throw a few other faves in the mix: All-In, Megan Kelly (go on and hate, she’s awesome), Commentary Magazine, Liberal Patriot, Hacks on Tap.
This. I'd love to hear Nate on Rogan. Actually I'd love to hear Nate in any format other than with that hateful broad he for some reason thinks he has to do podcasts with.
Same with that Amanda whatsherface from LA from 538. Utterly retarded, somehow allowed on the team.
Nate's way better than these people.
I have a hard believing the Harris campaign actually wants to go on Rogan. I think it’s more likely they want us to think they want to go on Rogan.
If she does well, it will counter some of Trump's "she's too stupid" echo chamber in some demographics.
Joe’s going to have Jamie bring up the clips of Biden going full dementia during the debate, the clips of her saying he’s still all there, and grill her about it. I think for the most part he’ll let her say her piece but he won’t let that one go. He’s going to ask her how she can claim to be defending democracy when she was complicit in lying about the mental state of the president. And minimum 20 million people are going to listen to it, tens of millions more, maybe 100 million, will hear the viral clips in the aftermath, all while early voting is open. I see no upside for her no matter how well she performs.
In the last week Kamela released some version of her medical records, challenging Trump to do the same, while kind of ignoring Uncle Joe’s lack of a mental exam. It is inconsistent and just really “weird”.
And she could point to the D-Day press conference on international issues and say the debate was not representative.
In a reality based conversation, Trump's mental acuity is the issue now, and Harris will move on to that issue.
So she's going to make that point on Rogan and Fox News?
Dunno. It might have been focus grouped out of her.
People pretending it matters in selecting between Harris and Trump are not paying attention.
You don’t think it matters that Harris was complicit in covering up the mental decline of the sitting president? That she gaslit the American people?
I don’t mind people who think Harris (or Trump or RFK or my dog) is the better candidate but to pretend like this isn’t relevant at all smells of pure partisanship.
As far as I can tell the Harris campaign has shifted to talking about the economy because it is driving minority male defections to Trump.
how would that do any good?
I don’t think it does. But it doesn’t actively harm her so that’s an improvement
It is somewhat surprising, isn't it? That's why I'm guessing that if it's not a ruse it's desperation.
She is doing a Fox interview though.
Fox News isn’t going to have Jamie on demand for 2 hours fact checking and bringing up the clips.
Was thinking the same thing. It's 36% on Polymarket for her going on.
Some good news for people who care about elections being run in accordance with the law:
"A county judge in Georgia has rejected an argument by allies of former President Donald J. Trump that local election officials have the power to refuse to certify election results, finding the process to be mandatory and one that must meet critical deadlines." (NYTimes)
And yet, Democrats in the house are threatening to not-certify if Kamala loses. Weird times we live in.
Who said that?! I don't want anyone doing that in any party.
Indeed. I can't condone that kind of talk on either side of the aisle.
Thanks magpie. I agree with you as well by the way.
I don't see the point in having anyone certify just anything that isn't an honest vote ---- I read all that today and apparently if the election official has reason to believe there is a problem with the vote, too bad, certify it anyway. Wha--aaa-aaaa??
Cases like that go to the courts, where dishonesty/wrongdoing has to be proven.
If you have standing ;)
Yeah but you can't just give that much power to election officials, where they could just throw out votes based on a hunch. The judge pretty much said that is up to law enforcement and the courts.
Quote from the Judge's ruling: “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” Judge McBurney wrote. “Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen.”
I hope you are right. It sounded hinky to me, but I only read the one article about it all.
There are only certain kinds of problems that these election officials are allowed to rule on. They can't rule on the legality of the rules, for example. So it isn't mandatory in all cases, but it is limited to specific situations, and then they need to have solid evidence.
I always thought the perfect retort to that would have been Trump merch that said "Keep MAGA Weird" akin to "Keep Austin Weird" and "Keep Portland Weird", playing on the leftist pride of weirdness and not being ashamed of the weird label.
Whats odd is that trump had this 8 years ago with the deplorables flub. clinton had a similar moment using one word to decry the entire GOP, and they embraced it, made "deplorable" a calling card for MAGA loyalists. but now they literally cant do that. part of the problem is that the "basket of deplorables" hillary was specifically talking about essentially became the mainstream GOP
Walz was very explicit, purposeful in ONLY referring to the two candidates
Deplorable was probably a bit more mean spirited and at that point Trump was very clued into the elite resentment of that particular persona of American. The weird label they applied to JD Vance is more of the white-incel-gamer weird, vs the Austin/Portland one which is more anti-normie/smoke dope/be more carefree weird. So my retort wouldn't have been apple to apples but could have been effective at shaking it a bit.
I guess the weird label didn't hit as hard as deplorables or have a lasting effect, but I did see conservatives on Twitter really struggle to find a clever way to talk their way out of the label. So it did work at first and flustered them a bit. I think the debate just turned the page for both Tim and JD.
Why do Democrat campaigns seem to be filled with Ivy-League educated strategists who are so stupid they think the secret to winning the next election is to call Trump another name?
Why is the mainstream media filled with journalists who are so stupid that they think putting out another report showing the economy is doing well, or that violent crime is historically low, or that actually the borders are very secure, all according to top "experts," is going to make people believe that over their lying eyes?
Kamala must be down by 5 points across the battleground states in her internal polling right now to even suggest she would go on Joe Rogan. That'll be a bloodbath. And I don't mean she'll literally murder Joe Rogan, I mean she'll look awful for 3 hours, for any liberals reading this who weren't sure. She's talking like she thinks she has less chance to win than Bob Dole did.
According to the polls, people are relatively optimistic about their own economic situation.
Fox has convinced many of them to not believe their own eyes
Ah, yes, sentiments about the economy are driven purely by fox news, not by increases in grocery bills and rent lagging far behind their annual raises.
Read what I wrote again.
Look at the number of car repossessions. That's an objective measure and one not subject to polling bias.
"Why do Democrat campaigns seem to be filled with Ivy-League educated strategists who are so stupid they think the secret to winning the next election is to call Trump another name?"
Yeah, this is so counter-productive. It does nothing but alienate millions of the nice voters: why do Dems always, always think insulting half the country is somehow a GOOD idea? Calling us "clingers," "deplorables," "should be put in re-education camps" --- and now the non-stop name-calling against our candidate. It's like they want to lose the election as long as they can freely express their contempt the whole election period.
And Trump and Republicans are above name-calling and expressions of contempt? Trump is constantly guilty of these, and lots of voters who are put off by it are going to hold their nose and vote for him anyway because of the economy, not because the Democrats are mean.
Maybe you are right; but a lot of others are going to vote for Trump because Dems are the mean girls and the school bullies. I was intrigued by people here saying that people vote their hatred --- I think there's a lot to that. Which leads me to the thought that it might be politic not to stir up too much hatred against your side. Or mine.
Well it might cost a party some votes, but how many votes do they gain from acting like bullies? Trump has definitely lost some moderate voters due to it, but I would bet he's picked up even more votes from his base as a result. That kind of rhetoric is very effective at motivating people to vote based on their hatred of the other side.
Unfortunately, intensely combative and insulting rhetoric has become the norm in our shitty two-party system, and I think Trump's success with his style of antagonistic populism has played a major role in that.
All true, IMO -----
TURNOUT, TURNOUT, TURNOUT. This election boils down to GOTV - Get Out the Vote. Whoever can do that, wins.
At this point in time, polls are worthless. It's like trying to get a fine cut with a hatchet, when you need a surgeon's scalpel. Polls are simply not accurate enough, when it is this close. I don't care how many interviews are done or not done, rallies, etc. None of that matters, especially when you have a candidate like Trump, where everybody already has an opinion of him.
Minds aren't going to be changed in the next couple weeks. Whoever has the better ground game will win. Not complicated.
I think that's true. And it's the Democrats who have a better ground game.
Democrats have an experienced team, both in the campaign and in the ecosystem of groups that have been active for years. After failing to get out the vote for Clinton in 2016, they basically had success in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Meanwhile Trump fired the excellent Republican turnout operation in the RNC and forced them to start from scratch with outside groups who have never run a large turnout operation before. If you do some web searches, you will numerous articles about this.
Another factor is that the Trump turnout operation depends mostly on paid people while Harris has mostly volunteers. People doing the work for a paycheck are not so reliable so they have to wear GPS trackers. One was found to have lied about his door knocking - his tracker showed he was gambling at the casino. He got fired. These things don't happen with volunteers.
PS - Here is another contrast. Dem turnout focuses a lot on college students. As more highly educated young people, they lean strongly Democratic. And they all just showed up for a new term on campus. So they are easy to find, just set up a table in the quad or outside the student union. Thousands walk right by every day - they come to you. And sometimes the voting booth is on campus too.
By contrast, more conservative young voters are among the most transient in the electorate. They move more often and change jobs more often than any other voter group. They often live with somebody and don't even have their own address. They are almost impossible to even get ahold of. Boosting turnout of these potential voters is nearly impossible.
You are misusing the term "conservative", badly. "Conservative" means "a group or person which strives to maintain the norms, beliefs and institutions of a society". Democrats are the true conservatives now.
The GOP was the party of technocrats until Richard Nixon sold it to the Segs of Dixie. Modern Republicans are vandals -- the smartasses at the back of the class snickering at the nerds up front -- eager to level all of the institutions which maintain our modern civilization in a spasm of mindless retribution at the nerds who now make ten times what the spitballers do.
Given how close the polling is I don't think Trump needs to activate a lot of them to come out on top.
That's putting a lot of trust in polls. Especially with the likelihood of a stronger turnout operation on the Harris side. But we Democrats don't mind if you are taking a victory for granted. For my part, I hate phone banking, and I just signed up to do one.
Historically the polls have underestimated Trump by significant margins. It's impossible to say for certain but for that reason I think a lot of observers are more likely to suspect that Trump will outperform his numbers compared to Harris.
I don't really have a horse in this race but for the record my position is that closest thing we have to an objective measure is the polling, and that indicates a toss up.
In terms of a "hunch" however? Those polls have gotten a lot closer over the last few weeks. I suspect that's why Trump has the advantage in the betting markets that he currently holds.
Conversely, you seem to be placing a lot of faith in the polls. If the polls are undervaluing the Trump vote by the same margin as they did in '16 and '20, you're staring down the barrel at a near Trump landslide, and even if they're half as off, Trump still wins comfortably. The pollsters told us they solved this in 2020. They were wrong. What has changed now that hadn't change then?
Good for you! I’m now retired in Ireland, but was heavily involved with Houston-area Democratic politics from 1999-2005. Yes, I remember doing phone banking.
Plus, knocked on many doors, in addition to anything else the campaigns asked for, such as being a poll worker. Honestly, it was great to be a part of it. It’s one thing to talk about the issues, but getting involved takes your passion to an entire new level.
Plus, you understand something that many don’t. That is, there is an entire infrastructure behind the scenes that must be in place to help elect someone. While elections are about issues at a high level, there is a ‘nuts and bolts’ aspect to campaigns, also. And it takes money and time to put in place.
I’ve already voted for Harris weeks back. Won’t make any difference since I vote in Texas. However, maybe we can knock off Cancun Cruz. That guy is surreal.
Ehh, the Republican turnout machine was a complete dumpster fire as recently as 2012, and they certainly didn't work miracles in 2022.
I suspect the baseline performance is so low that there's no reason to bet on things being worse for them this election.
(I'd have a harder time defending this position, but I personally suspect GOTV/turnout efforts are highly overrated in presidential elections outside of a handful of historical political machines that still have some life in them)
This is true, since they have invested in this in the past. Trump outsourced this to Musk, which was a big mistake, since this all takes time.
The theory that the Trump team is operating under is that they want to get a bunch of young black and Hispanic men to vote for them and they are very infrequent voters--like one out of the last four presidential elections type of voters.
The primary reason that the base will turn out is that they hate the other side. That's true for both parties.
The Trump team says it is focusing on rural turnout. As somebody who has done turnout operations for smaller campaigns, low density rural turnout is very inefficient. You spend more time looking for rural addresses than you do talking to people.
Trump is showing up on podcasts like Theo Von's and the Paul guy's because he is targeting young men. That is not a traditional voter demographic.
Very true - and those infrequent voters most likely won't turnout this time, either.
Maybe not for Trump alone, but for the economy? That's the question that's been killing Harris I think.
In addition that's clearly why Trump has been doing podcasts with comedians. He's trying to reach this group of voters.
Lastly, today's young black man is tomorrow's middle aged black man. The Democrats are hoping they can squeak by one more time before the future makes them change.
Nate’s point has salience because he is talking about LIKELY voters who are, nonetheless, undecided. Their decision making is likely to be impulsive and volatile. Figuring out a way to slant that in Harris’s direction is a challenge- volatile and impulsive is Trump’s brand.
How conservatives seem to agree with you. The large set of websites in the Townhall family has a lot of writers in each website and all of them seem to have beaucoup commenters pushing the "Swamp the Steal" meme. I was a little alarmed by that -- I thought maybe they meant it, believed that the Left was out in force to steal this election -- but this morning I figured it out, that it's a tactic to push turnout. The idea seems to be to say that everyone has to vote so that the Dems can't steal enough votes to overwhelm the honest conservative vote.
Whatever works, I guess.
Yup. Leveraging the lie.
It will be interesting to see if it works.
"Hey Jamie, bring up that clip of Kamala...." Completely suicidal going on Rogan for her. God I hope she does it.
Incredible entertainment value. The next best thing, is if Trump walks out in hour two and they do an impromptu debate with Rogan moderating. Greater than 50% shot Joe offers her a blunt, too.
There is one unstated theme that runs throughout this entire piece...the fact that Kamala has no identity or governing principle. She doesn't know who she as is painfully evident every time she's forced to do an unscripted Q&A. Doing Fox, Joe Rogan, etc., while otherwise worthy endeavors, is only going to expose her further. Thankfully, identity politics has run its course. Love him or hate him, we all know who Donald Trump is. He doesn't change who he is in order to win votes or when speaking to any one specific audience. After 4 years as VP and 3 weeks out from an election, Kamala is still trying to 'introduce' herself to the American people. She'd do well to start with developing her own principles first.
The other side of this theme is that JD Vance, Trump, Republicans are not the caricature the left paints of us. The JD Vance as 'weird' attempt didn't work because, as it turns out, JD Vance isn't weird. He's pretty damn smart actually. He's proven that. And Trump isn't the Project 2025 carrying dictator you all portray him as. He ran the country for 4 years, any objective observer would recognize that it wasn't all that bad...certainly not an authoritarian hellscape.
You're not going to win over voters by spending years insulting them, assuming the absolute worst of them, and then flipping on a dime to pander to them 3 weeks out from an election.
Kamala may pull this out in the end, but she and the Democrats absolutely deserve to lose.
Yeah, I never got the P2025 boogeyman either. The Dems have a decent--not great--hand against a guy holding a bunch of rags but a great player, and they have not played it very well at all.
It's almost like the Dems took a "throw it all against the wall and see what sticks" approach, versus a KISS approach.
Remember, these are the same people who screamed about Russia for 4 years straight, only for the special counsel to find literally nothing, and that the Steele Dossier was made up…
Same people to scream about the covid vaccine, even making people lose their jobs over it, until it came out it wasn’t so effective after all. Now who still even gets it?
The special counsel found nearly 200 pages of material about ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.
So the complete opposite of "literally nothing".
And check out Covid death rates among the unvaccinated.
You need to broaden your information sources.
Nobody seriously believes the Russian collusion stuff these days. It's been completely discredited.
At the height of Delta some states were reporting that 20-33% of all Covid deaths were among the vaccinated.
It's not collusion - it's about being a useful idiot.
And when 80+% of people are vaccinated (and higher in the most vulnerable populations), the fact that 20% of deaths are among the vaccinated tells us that the vaccine is pretty effective! Just do a little math and don't think "if it wasn't 100% then it must have been 0%".
The vaccination rates in the entire African continent was quite low, yet they had far fewer deaths than we, or European nations, did.
And yet Putin did not invade Ukraine until Trump was out of office.
80% of the population received at least one dose of the vaccine but the full course for the two most popular vaccine variants was two doses. Only 70% of the population actually got the full monty.
Links to "discrediting" evidence?
No one in the Trump campaign was indicted for Russian collusion
There is no such thing as a crime of "collusion"?
It would be hard to file an indictment about it.
Even Republican senators documented ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.
The Mueller report was a bust. If anybody is still talking about this stuff in the current day it's Trump's partisans who hold it up as a great miscarriage of justice and an example as to how career politicians and bureaucrats abused the system to try and get Trump.
Trump flipflops constantly, just no one cares because he's not a policy-driven candidate. The meme during his presidency was that he supported the positions of the last person who had spoken to him.
It all makes sense when you understand that the left projects. Whatever they attack others with, is what they themselves are. "JD is weird", Walz was the weird one. "Russian collusion!", they were the ones colluding with a fake Russia hoax. "Insurrection!", they were the ones who removed a candidate who won the most primary votes and installed someone who didn't win a single primary vote.
The weird messaging died when Walz joined the ticket—and showed himself to be weird too.
Likely all that comes out of a Rogan interview for Kamala is more memes to make fun of her. Extremely risky move.
I would not put much faith in party registration data. I live in a red state, know a lot of Democrats and 75% of us are registered as Republicans to vote against the most extreme Republican candidates in the primary. There really has not been much impetus to be a registered Democrat recently without a competitive Democratic presidential primary.
I agree. Voter registration information doesn't matter since you don't have to vote for the party you are registered with. It's old data.
The registration numbers on their own don't mean much, but the concern regarding them is more about the direction they've been trending. Maybe they're being overblown, but it's a bad omen for not just Harris in 2024, but for Democrats in future elections too.
Valid point, but this election will be decided by which party can get people off the couch to cast a ballot in their favor who would otherwise be quite content to stay at home. It's about turning your people out. A good ground game would overwhelm any changes in registration at that level.
I have a hard time believing Trump's fanatics are not going to get off the couch, regardless of whether anybody calls them or not.
It's not about the fanatics - it's about the people who aren't particularly enthusiastic.
My point is that the political partisans will turn out to vote regardless of their own candidate. What motivates them is primarily their hatred for the other side.
Plus with Trump you do have the whole cult of personality thing.
Trump fanatics need to learn to leave their poor couches alone.
That's hilarious!
They'll be getting off the couches because the couches have had enough.,
Hey, registering as a Republican is a start --------------- we have hope for you. [:-)
Ha! Dream on
You overestimate how representative you and the people you know are. The fact you're commenting on here means you are far more politically engaged than the average. Likely who you associate with would also be more politically engaged than the average. Hell the fact you not only vote in a primary but vote strategically in the opposite party's primary puts you far outside the norm. Most people registering for a party are part of that party.
What this change shows is that the party's coalitions are flipping in the following way: it used to be republicans had a smaller tent but more politically engaged coalition and democrats had a bigger tent but far less politically engaged coalition. Hence democrats had more registered voters but underperformed in off year elections. The reverse is now happening. This is a realignment.
Look at the _change_ in voter registrations. Last week or the week before Republicans had twice as many new sign up's in Pennsylvania as the Democrats, and it is far too late to vote in any primaries now.
Plus the R's are doing extremely well in self ID polling. Harry Enten on CNN just had a segment on this.
There are quite a few Democrats and Independents not voting for Harris as well. Don't get caught in the echo chamber with your friends. Many people will say they aren't voting for Trump (I used to be one of those) and then go pull the lever that way anyway. I've just gotten to the point I could care less about others opinions anymore about me. Haters will just hate. It's actually entertaining now.
This wasn’t what my comment was about but Ok.
people love talking about party ID in pre election polling, but its a somewhat fickle figure. its very easy to change, and often times in surveys people respond shifting with their mood. and when you talk to "independants", theres few actual independents who split their ticket. what is there is lots of democrats and republicans who feel weird about putting a D or R next to their name but actually vote party line consistently.
I was somewhat surprised by the ranking of priorities of young voters and thought from all the noise that Gaza Israel would have been higher rather than at the bottom. It caused me to think that Harris and the dems got faked out and intimidated into not having the Pa Governor as VP versus Walz. PA is really important and the governor is popular and forceful. I think they avoided him because he is Jewish and they already have Dougie. She is dancing on a knife’s edge re supporting Israel versus being sympathetic to Palestinians. After the initial love fest for “coach” walz has not be forceful and was not great at debate other than one key gotcha.
Think should have gone with the PA guv. What think?
It is true that the college riots died out almost immediately, so Shapiro wasn't a problem there. However, Kamala may still lose Michigan because a half-million Arab voters there are still mad about anybody saying a good word to people fighting the peace-loving Hamas types ------- that plus the startling discovery of widespread antisemitism in the U.S. makes me think she didn't need that focus on Shapiro being Jewish. Still, Walz turns out to have been a bad choice. Somebody besides either of them, preferably.
Shapiro was a two edged sword. He is popular in Pennsylvania. 18 electoral votes I think. He is Jewish. Jews not popular in Michigan Arab community and there is weirdly viral and virulent antisemitism running rampant in America
Are there really people who are still supporting the Israeli government here and wish we had candidates who were more supportive of Netanyahu?
There is a difference between supporting Israel and supporting the Israeli government’s policies or personnel. Shapiro was far more harsh in his comments on Netanyahu than Walz or most other vp contenders. It’s his Jewishness that was the reason why he was a no go, as op correctly points out (and as many did before).
In the NY Times/Siena poll a few weeks back Trump was ahead of Harris among Jewish voters in New York. I think it's reasonable to guess why a traditionally Democratic leaning constituency would make a huge leap to the other side.
That sounds like a small sub-sample of a single poll, so I would want to be careful about reading too much into it, if there's not more support for that drastic change in vote preference.
Looking at the polls over the last few weeks it sure looks to me like the national race has narrowed and Trump is ahead in the swing states.
I don't see how that tells us anything about people supporting the Israeli government as they invade Lebanon.
There is a large degree of correlation between Jewish voters and their support of Israel. There are definitely populations in the US that support the Israeli government in its wartime conduct. I suspect that a major factor driving Jewish voters to Trump is perceived hostility on the part of Democrats to Israel.
Yes, indeed!! Count me in.
Funny coincidence that the EC odds today (51% vs. 48,7%) line up precisely with the % of the vote needed by both candidates.
This slate of comments seems to mostly be: Harris is dumb for ignoring interviews with non-traditional media to get her message out and Harris is dumb for risking doing interviews with non-traditional media.
P ∨ ¬P is a tautology and P ∧ ¬P is a contradiction.
It's almost as if the comment section is made up of people who have differing views. How strange.....
You’d hope they’d at least agree on some basics about what the question is 😛
I hope you're not suggesting people should try and understand where someone is coming from before vehemently disagreeing with them? How absurd!
You just did. 🤷♂️
😛
Edit: I mean that premise of those two hot takes aren’t compatible. In one Harris campaign is ignoring the podcasts etc, in the other they are engaging in the podcasts etc. So they are at odds before they get to the assessment of the decision that’s been made.
It’s Gingrichism, where facts are all subjective & personal possessions.
Methinks you missed the sarcasm.
*That* would at least make sense! It's many of the same people, in one comment thread saying Harris will obviously make viral mistakes if she attempts it, and in another criticizing her for not doing so already.
I don't care for Trump, and I can't speak as an expert on the expected value and opportunity costs of him doing various podcasts, but if that's a winning strategy, I certainly can't criticize him for it.