Vice President Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump 2024

By 'no excuse' he means, I believe, that no-one can say it was just a choice between 2 old men and we picked the slightly less doddery one. Or we only voted for Trump because that Hilary wan has a lot of baggage and is fundamentally unlikable.

KH is a younger vibrant candidate without any prior political baggage (not to say she doesn't have flaws). She is what many of the undecideds apparently wanted. A win for Trump this time clearly means that America prefers Trump. No excuses, on either side.

what’s this about HC being very disliked when Trump beat her ? Did she not win the popular vote at the time. ? On that basis one could say that she was LESS DISLIKED THAN DT at the time

US is in a situation where the corporate media along with a number of special interest groups and individuals have controlled the narrative since at least the 1990s but probably more correctly since Nixon was ousted. If you were to end or even reduce the power these groups hold over the country it would massively deal with many of the issues the country currently faces.

Saying its more fractured than its ever been is far from the truth. The political situation in the US in 1968 was far far far more dangerous than it is today. We aren't close to a civil war either like back in 1850s.

Actually on any scale the US is thriving. Crime is at 50 year lows, unemployment is low, GDP last summer was highest in decades. The US are still #1 economy on planet by a distance.

Hillary also lost because there was a huge bang of entitlement off her. She came across as someone who just felt entitled to both the Democratic nomination (which the Dems helped her get rather than the likes of Sanders) and then entitled to the Presidency, especially since she was running against Trump who wasn't a political figure. It just helped her come across as deeply unlikeable, and she wasn't all that likeable to many Dem voters to begin with anyway.

It wasn't just people voting against her, but also people just deciding not to vote. It wouldn't have to be a strong personal animus against her, but just apathy in general.

HC brought baggage with her, I think in the swing states that counted against her in a negative way.

Look at what say PJ O'Rourke has written about reluctantly backing 'smug' Hilary Clinton, someone who was well known for backing Republicans.
Not every swing state voter overcome that reluctance.

"I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises," O'Rourke continued. "It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters… Hillary, I endorse you although you don’t belong in power—you picture of self-satisfaction out of doors."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pj-orourke-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton-the-devil-we-know

This section is perceptive:

Yes, Hillary sent twenty-some top-secret State Department documents to her personal email server. But this shows that she can keep a secret, even if she doesn’t know where to put it and it ends up decorating her Pinterest site. Trump would have sold the top-secret documents on eBay. Also, at least the CIA and NSA and so forth tell Hillary secrets. Would you tell a secret to Donald Trump?

Catching up on some of the speeches last night, and Stephanie Grisham's was pretty good.

I do wonder if this could be the death of a thousand papercuts to take out Trump? I am aware that a lot of the Republican party would be "The MAGA Faithful" but is it a massive overwhelming majority? Can he survive the Non-MAGA heads if they hold their nose and vote the other way?

I'm thinking that there is still a lot of sensible Republicans, and maybe this very steady drip, drip of people that are Republican, coming out and speaking publicly against Trump will eventually flip some, if not all.

I have no hope for the fervent MAGA crowd. They are a lost cause and all I can see is a split in the party happening within 10-20 years, much like whats happened to The Tories in England. Great for Democrats, bad for democracy.

@Leroy42

Surely the attempted coup, the sexual assault finding, and the 34 fraud cases are throwing this away.

Not really. I mean, you'd think so alright, but Trump had successfully normalised the sea of shtt around him and his appeal to his base was so visceral that they were willing to forgive or dismiss every criticism.

All that stuff was already included in the electoral calculus. If he stayed on message, even Kamala probably wouldn't be clawing the numbers back in the way she appears to have. His VP pick has also been disastrous.

Hubris is a dangerous thing and Trump's campaign has been making poor choices on the basis that they thought they were cruising to victory. Hillary had 'basket of deplorables' to pit voters against her. Trump and co have had questioning Kamala's ethnic identity at a black journalism conference, JD Vance slagging off single women and chief architect of Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, bragging on TV that the US was about to undergo a second revolution which would be as bloodless as the left allowed.

Yup, that was his pitch that swung the vote in 2016, eg.

Except he's no longer "something new" he's tired and old and Americans know exactly what they will get under Trump - especially. Black. Americans.

All of that is true, but Trumps/Vance complaint that Harris hasn't done an interview has merit and it betrays, IMO, the fear they have.

The gains that Harris has made is not because of anything she has done. Rather it is the removal of the obstacle of Biden and the new energy showing up the paucity of Trump that is the issue. How can Trump counter that? And that is why I am of the opinion that it isn't down to a lack of focus or a need to stick to policies. These would help but Trump has never done that so expecting him to chance now seems odd.

IMO, the race has fundamentally shifted because the drag of Bidens age, must like the drag of HC unlikeability was in 2016, has now been removed. There is really nothing to persuade any undecided voters to vote for Trump

supercut of RNC vs DNC roll calls

Pretty glaring, you could hear a pin drop at the RNC while Mrs. Foghorn called the delegates

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/a-tale-of-two-roll-calls-morning-joe-opens-with-supercut-contrasting-rnc-with-dnc-party/

They had all the energy of a wake, and that was before Harris entered the race.