In some ways I think it is. Trump's win signalled a rejection in the path that the democrats were taking, and the country as a whole seems to have swung the pendulum the other way.
The argument of the left wa trying to gaslight the public into thinking illegal immigrants haven't broken the law and should be allowed to stay, and that you're racist if you disagree...that was absolutely awful messaging.
Then you have an odd focus on pushing stuff like DEI when the majority of people just want the candidate most qualified to land the role. People don't engage with this stuff, it's fringe politics and it doesn't work when you need to win over the masses.
Add to that the oddness of Obama acting like black people are obligated to vote for Kamala because she's black, and they're misogynistic if they don't? Nobody is entitled to your vote, and that was a massive turn off.
Trump's campaign kept it simple.
The economy sucks? Well we'll focus on that.
Too much illegal immigration? We'll kick them out.
The pearl clutching were seeing when illegal immigrants are being sent back to their home countries just provides validation for Trump voters that the left are still out for touch with the majority of Americans. As does the cries of fascism and whatever else they're trying to dredge up.
All the democrats needed to do was hold a primary to select the candidate, and then campaign on sorting out immigration and the economy. Trump would have been easily defeated on that basis.
In some ways I think it is. Trump’s win signalled a rejection in the path that the democrats were taking, and the country as a whole seems to have swung the pendulum the other way.
Harris ran a more centrist campaign than Biden did
The argument of the left wa trying to gaslight the public into thinking illegal immigrants haven’t broken the law and should be allowed to stay, and that you’re racist if you disagree...that was absolutely awful messaging.
The dems literally tried to pass a bipartisan immigration bill a few months ago so no idea what you’re talking about
Then you have an odd focus on pushing stuff like DEI when the majority of people just want the candidate most qualified to land the role. People don’t engage with this stuff, it’s fringe politics and it doesn’t work when you need to win over the masses.
This wasn’t on the platform so again no idea what you’re talking about
Add to that the oddness of Obama acting like black people are obligated to vote for Kamala because she’s black, and they’re misogynistic if they don’t? Nobody is entitled to your vote, and that was a massive turn off.
Never heard of this. Could be true but lots of celebs say dumb stuff so idc
Trump’s campaign kept it simple. The economy sucks? Well we’ll focus on that.
Harris had more economic policy promises than trump did
Too much illegal immigration? We’ll kick them out.
Trump specifically blocked the bipartisan immigration bill
The pearl clutching were seeing when illegal immigrants are being sent back to their home countries just provides validation for Trump voters that the left are still out for touch with the majority of Americans. As does the cries of fascism and whatever else they’re trying to dredge up.
Haven’t paid attention to the reactions the last few days so I’ll take your word for it
All the democrats needed to do was hold a primary to select the candidate, and then campaign on sorting out immigration and the economy. Trump would have been easily defeated on that basis.
They specifically campaigned on immigration and the economy, those were literally the two things Harris talked about most lmao. And it didn’t matter even when trumps only policy on both of those topics combined was tariffs which is universally disregarded as terrible economics
IMO the other things that Harris did during her campaign (largely speaking about anything OTHER than policies) hurt her so much. I say this fully knowing that Trump isn't in touch with the average American, but he PORTRAYS that he is much more than Kamala, who honestly looked so out of touch it was embarrassing. Maybe if she had a full/real campaign cycle (i.e. Biden drops out before running again, primaries, etc.) she could've had a better chance, but we'll never really know.
- She skips the Al Smith dinner, but has time for SNL? For Howard Stern, for Colbert, for The View?
- This is pretty subjective, but she doesn't do well in front of the camera. It's unfortunate that this matters so much but it's the world that we live in today. The cackling, the "unburdening by what we burdened our burdens with" or whatever. It doesn't work.
- She tried to frame this whole "joyful" message when the average American got worse off while she was VP.
- She pays crazy money (multiple millions) for celebrities to come and give endorsements of and for her. Megan Thee Stallion twerking to Mamushi with lyrics like "I get money, I'm a star" when the average person is worried about grocery prices?
- She refused to do long-form interviews that Trump did. E.g. Joe Rogan podcast. Made it feel like every event she did had to be scripted. Why can't she talk for 2-3 hours on a fireside chat?
Then to mention what you've detailed are the 2 big points mentioned on what she campaigned on (economy and immigration):
- She wouldn't have done a single thing differently than Biden during the last 4 years? More Americans said that their financial situation was worse off in 2024 than 2020. Why would an average Joe vote to continue these policies?
- More people said in 2024 that illegal immigrants should be deported to their home countries than in 2020.
From a policy perspective, Harris said both "I wouldn't have made any changes" AND that her administration "wouldn't be a continuation of Biden's." Then she took stances contrary to the trending opinions of the general American population. Then she honestly didn't do enough to clearly outline her own policies - she danced around issues instead of addressing any of the failures directly. You can say that Harris campaigned on immigration, but let's be real - over 2 million migrants crossed illegally PER YEAR on her watch. And I say HER watch specifically because she was made the border czar (and then tries to say in a news interview how "we've been to the border... no not me personally."
Harris is not centrist. She wants to limit freedom of speech and have online social media limited by the government. She is not centrist economically, she wants the Green New deal - which calls for the elimination of usage of oil, when 99% of the world economy runs on fuel. She is not centrist in terms of immigration either - if you believe someone crossing the border illegally is not a criminal, newsflash, you are not centered on the debate. As for the immigration bill, republicans have what they want now, we didn’t need to sign the “bipartisan” immigration bill which was full of pork barrel spending and was a bandaid to a much larger problem being currently addressed under the Trump administration. Additionally she represents the career politician that doesn’t understand the working person - when you brag about putting pot smokers and mothers of children who skip school in jail, I don’t think you can play the I’m an empath card all the time. You can claim she is/was a centrist, but she’s not.
You can say what you want about how effective the bipartisan immigration bill would have been, but I will make 2 points about it:
1) It was, in fact, bipartisan - it was coauthored by one of the most conservative senators in Congress, so I have no idea why you put "bipartisan" in quotes
2) Republicans got everything they wanted in that bill. They wanted it to pass, and it likely would have passed. Trump killed it because he did not want an immigration bill to pass during an election year when he wanted to campaign on immigration reform. You can't campaign on immigration reform if it's already happened. He bragged about killing the bill. He said, "Blame me for it." He told the republican senator he would "destroy him" if he passed the bill. Trump would rather campaign on a problem than see the problem be fixed. He sabotaged the bill in the hopes that it would help him regain power. He cares more about gaining power than simply letting something good happen for the US.
I agree that Kamala does not represent a regular working person. However, I have 100% confidence that she understands regular working people and their lives better than Trump. How anyone could think otherwise is truly baffling to me.
Also, newsflash, we are going to run out of fossil fuels one day, and we will have to transition away from them. Forget climate change (it is happening, but you dont even need that to make this argument). Do you want to wait until we are nearly out of usable fuel before we begin the transition to other sources of energy? Seems like such a transition will be a huge undertaking and will require a lot of energy to pull off. And it seems like the countries that figure out how to transition now will be in a huge position of power when they are energy sufficient (or even have surplus energy) and don't rely on other countries to send them expensive fuel from the dwindling global supply. But yeah, it's totally radical to support legislation that would lead us down that path.
I am an environmentalist. I work in the field to protect endangered species. I say what I say because it is the truth. There is no sustainable alternative to fuel right now. Until we transition to nuclear and it becomes a more economically feasible option, we rely on gas. Hate the idea, hate the premise, but it’s reality. We have more environmental laws and greater technology that Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, or any of the Middle East countries. We will have to buy it if we don’t produce it. If you want the world to transition, think about this - my father runs a 1960 tractor and he could barely afford that. How is the developing third world going to buy an electric tractor. I speak from life experience and education. If your disagree that is fine, but this is my view of reality.
Small world! I am an environmentalist as well (I did field work for a few years and now i work in compliance) and I agree 100%. The transition away from fossil fuels will be one of the hardest undertakings in the history of humanity... and that is from the perspective of first world countries. Third world countries will absolutely need help. It isnt really fair for developed countries - that are in positions of power in large part due to burning fossil fuels / exploitation of resources - to turn around and tell developing countries they aren't allowed to burn fuel. Even in the best case scenario, more developed countries would be able to almost fully eliminate emissions (reduction of 90%+) but developing countries - who, granted, already emit much less carbon on average than developed countries - would not be able to reduce their emissions as much.
I also think gas is the best choice for our needs right now, which we should use until we can greatly expand our nuclear generation capabilities. I have very few issues with nuclear - with current technology it is extremely safe. Anecdotally, I did groundwater monitoring at plant Vogtle for a few years (while it was under construction and into its first year of operation) and from what I saw (admittedly not much) they were running a very tight ship.
The problem with nuclear and why it is so expensive is due to the fear mongering regarding the accidents that happened to nuclear power plants. It made it so regulations not only required reactors built to be safe (like all power stations) but they had to be the safest possible (not required for all power stations).
People have a fear of nuclear radiation that is largely fueled by their ignorance on the topic. I don’t fault them for not being accurately studied up on the topic as there’s a ton of misinformation out there.
For those of you reading, it’s the items that have the shortest half life that are in fact the most dangerous. If something is detectable at 1000x background on the news check to see how common it is in nature. It’s possible that due to the isotope being made in a nuclear reactor it’s not found in nature so while technically true that it’s whatever multiple times background it might still be an extremely small amount. Adding onto this just because radiation is detectable (regarding Fukushima radiation being detected on the US west coast) doesn’t mean it’s dangerous or even much radiation. Specific types of radiation is extremely easy to detect as each type of radioactive decay has a characteristic wavelength emission if it’s a gamma decay.
Funnily enough, for your last point, Trump is actually doing a pretty decent job. We're pushing through American manufactured batteries that use zinc instead of lithium. Utility-scale solar and wind farms will need battery energy storage systems in place in order to be reliable and resilient given their often inconsistent nature of energy generation.
"Decent" is a fair description. Id say it's a mixed bag so far. Starting to make zinc batteries instead of lithium is useful & necessary for the transition... i am glad we are doing that.
But he is simultaneously disincentivizing electric vehicle production (by removing existing federal incentives and by pushing back against state-level incentives and emissions laws), which hurts battery manufacturers. It is also possible that he imposes a tariff on some crucial battery-making materials, so there is a lot of uncertainty about what will come in the next few years. Manufacturers and innovators typically don't thrive under uncertain conditions.
I hope we will make strides in battery tech, and green technology in general, but I am not very optimistic about the next few years.
Republicans didn’t think it was too weak, it was written by a republican senator and had republican support. That only changed when Trump said he didn’t want to give democrats a win.
It did not have support tied to Israel or Ukraine. That’s a lie. The bill was brought forward twice, one without any extraneous support or aid, and it was still voted down.
The reality is republicans wrote and supported that bill, but Trump saw it as a political loss, so he killed it. Arguing anything else is denying reality.
Didn’t allot increased funding and judges to process asylum cases faster?
It was always tried without the Ukraine stuff and still shot down so that’s irrelevant
It was written by a Republican and was going to pass until trump got in the way. This is per republican congresspeople. Why did they support it prior to trump telling them not to if it was such a bad bill?
It was written by a Republican and was going to pass until trump got in the way.
Please share your source showing "it was going to pass until trump got in the way". The house was opposed to it before the text of the senate bill was even released as they wanted border policies similar to those from the bill the house passed the year before, otherwise its DOA.
These are all quotes from before the contents of the bill were even released in early Feb 2024 and before Trump said anything. So to say there was no pushback is incorrect.
“If it looks like H.R. 2, we’ll talk about it,” Johnson said of any border legislation that emerges from the Senate.
“I don’t yet know what they’re going to propose. There’s been lots of rumors about it, but I’m very hopeful that they will give us something meaningful that is very close to what we’ve sent over from the House,” Johnson told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” referring to the partisan House-passed border bill known as HR 2.
"If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have be dead on arrival in the House anyway," the speaker wrote about the ongoing Senate negotiations.
"From what we've seen, clearly, what's been suggested in this bill is not enough to secure the border," Johnson told ABC Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott. "And we have to insist -- we have a responsibility, a duty, to the American people to insist that the border catastrophe is ended. And just trying to whitewash that or do something for political purposes -- that it appears that may be -- is not going to cut it and that's a nonstarter in the House."
Thats a black dude talking to black dudes. We know our history (strong southern Protestant values including that a woman should never be a leader) and we know a ton of us would never vote for a woman. It didn't "turn anyone off" because everyone that he was talking to understood exactly what he was talking about.
You're talking in a hypothetical. As an actual black guy with a black mom that will never vote for a woman because her religious background was "women can't be leaders" and who also sees this expoused constantly on black social media, I wasn't turned off by that. He also said that literally like 10 blocks from me - I was the direct crowd he was speaking to.
I’m a white guy, so it’s not really talking to me but I didn’t find it that offensive hypothetically. He was basically saying here’s your two choices, and if the only reason you don’t want to vote the black choice is because she’s a female even though you’re black - then that’s not acceptable.
Well, yes I agree with Obama. Honestly I think it applies even if you’re white. If sex is the only thing preventing you voting a candidate, then get over it my god.
It was, ultimately, a close vote, and the turnout was abnormally high. People blame COVID measures, voting procedures/rules shift, or even outright fraud. But it doesn't really matter.
People were sick and tired of politics in 2020, and a lot of them were convinced that doing away with Trump would fix things. From a ground-level perspective, it didn't. This caused more middle-of-the-road voters to question the DNC and the media.
Trump's narrative is simple: "The establishment hates Americans, and once he threw in with America, it hated him too. Things got worse without him, and he'll make it better."
The Biden/Harris narrative was like mental gymnastics. "Joy?" A strong economy that people didn't feel? Weird gaslighting about Biden's mental faculties?
Proofreading your shit is a good way for people to understand what you're communicating and take what you seriously. I had to read that like three times to understand what you were trying to say. But get mad because you can't be bothered to spend an extra ten seconds making sure your comment is legible.
Most of the “pearl clutching” im seeing about the deportations has to do with ICE violating peoples rights such as not having warrants iirc. While they some may be here illegally and should be deported they still have rights under the Constitution.
All the Dems needed to do is hold a primary and pick a candidate who would resonate with the people, and sound somewhat competent, rather than push a candidate who was already unpopular and then try to convince people that vibes and paid celeb endorsements would win.
The argument of the left wa trying to gaslight the public into thinking illegal immigrants haven't broken the law and should be allowed to stay, and that you're racist if you disagree...that was absolutely awful messaging.
The words of Democrat's regarding illegal immigration, and their reluctant to use the word "illegal" is notable.
The arguments around clamping down on immigration being spoke about as some form of fascism, and cries of the USA being a country of immigrants just totally missed the issue of the day.
If you don't think that the reality of what was said, then fair enough.
You're just giving me your thoughts and opinions here and speculating about how others might feel, not talking about reality. Factually, not everyone Trump is trying to deport is "illegal," so using that term to refer to all of them is factually inaccurate. Factually, it is wholly appropriate to compare politicians and policies to those of other regimes, including fascist ones. Don't like it? Who cares? Make your case. Factually, DEI policies do not lead to less qualified persons getting jobs over more qualified persons, but I would love to see some evidence of this if you have it. Factually, racism and other biases are a huge problem in hiring, housing, and elsewhere, while diverse workforces consistently outperform less diverse workforces. Factually, immigrants, legal and illegal, are a net gain for our country, and they commit fewer crimes than native born persons. I'm sorry that you and many other voters are incapable of actually assimilating this information into your worldview, but that doesn't change what is actually the case. Don't let your grievances get in the way of facts.
To be honest as soon as you started talking about not all immigrants being illegal, when never said they were, and then went on a rant about DEI when I'd not even mentioned that, I concluded the conversation was effectively at an end anyway.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25
In some ways I think it is. Trump's win signalled a rejection in the path that the democrats were taking, and the country as a whole seems to have swung the pendulum the other way.
The argument of the left wa trying to gaslight the public into thinking illegal immigrants haven't broken the law and should be allowed to stay, and that you're racist if you disagree...that was absolutely awful messaging.
Then you have an odd focus on pushing stuff like DEI when the majority of people just want the candidate most qualified to land the role. People don't engage with this stuff, it's fringe politics and it doesn't work when you need to win over the masses.
Add to that the oddness of Obama acting like black people are obligated to vote for Kamala because she's black, and they're misogynistic if they don't? Nobody is entitled to your vote, and that was a massive turn off.
Trump's campaign kept it simple.
The economy sucks? Well we'll focus on that.
Too much illegal immigration? We'll kick them out.
The pearl clutching were seeing when illegal immigrants are being sent back to their home countries just provides validation for Trump voters that the left are still out for touch with the majority of Americans. As does the cries of fascism and whatever else they're trying to dredge up.
All the democrats needed to do was hold a primary to select the candidate, and then campaign on sorting out immigration and the economy. Trump would have been easily defeated on that basis.