I think that most of damage has been done a while back and is irreparable, adding Waltz has not improved matters. Granted Shapiro would have most likely inflamed a tiny portion of the base that is already gone for now at least.
Thankfully through most of this thread, youâve been quite clearly shown to be rather out of touch with the preferences of the actual voters.
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Trumpâs âlie machineâ has failed to take down Kamala Harris and Tim Walz: analysis
Story by Brad Reed
Former President Donald Trump and his campaign have been trying to drive up Vice President Kamala Harrisâ negatives.
However, if the polling averages at FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics are anything to go by, these efforts have been failing as Harrisâs favorability rating has trended into positive territory whereas Trumpâs have remained negative.
Writing in his Off Message newsletter, progressive Brian Beutler argued that Trumpâs thus-far unsuccessful attempts to drag Harris down to his level demonstrate that his âlie machineâ appears âbroken.â
To illustrate his point, Beutler examined the attempts to run a âSwift Boatâ-style campaign against Harrisâs running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, by attacking his military record.
âThey plucked a handful of comments and innocent misstatements he made over his 20-year political career out of context to disparage his military service and portray him as a faker,â he wrote.
âThey lied about his gubernatorial record, and tried to insinuate that he was a predator and a pervert. They deployed the same kinds of tactics that helped Republicans defame and defeat John Kerry, Max Cleland, Hillary Clinton, and other high-profile Democrats over the years. And yetâŚ. Today, Walz is the most favorably viewed of the four candidates at the top of the ticket, and the only one whoâs been consistently popular. It all amounted to nothing.â
What makes this particularly remarkable, wrote Beutler, is that Trump has not improved his own favorability numbers despite being the target of two separate assassination plots in recent months.
While a more cunning politician might express regret for past rhetoric and pledge to tone down his rhetoric, Trump has moved on to pushing lies about Haitian immigrants eating peopleâs pets.
âThe Trump we have, and the sleazy pretenders who mimic him, have taken the opposite tack of claiming Democrats keep trying to kill him,â Beutler contended. âLetâs set aside that this is gross and untrue. The main thing is: Nobody outside Trumpâs existing pool of supporters has time for his sât anymore. Everyone at some level knows that he sowed the maelstroms that now threaten to sweep him into oblivion.â
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Lower interest rates wonât have a stimulus effect that quickly, but voters with variable mortgages or credit cards might seen an immediate effect. Not actually that massive, but psychologically it can have an influence that then drives other changes - particularly on the housing market.
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Actually, I think what Shapiro would have done would be make it impossible for Harris to just keep ducking the question, which would appear to be their strategy.
As a counterpoint, I think Walz has been a massively effective VP pick, where generally I donât think they matter that much. As noted above, the âweirdâ framing is clearly having a significant effect. Walz is actually starting to get away with some fairly extreme and inaccurate characterizations of what the GOP and/or Project 2025 want to do. Hard to say how relevant they will be, but the GOP has really been forced to play that kind of defence since the 1980s when Lee Atwater really made them disciplined about messaging.
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I would very much hesitate to use a TAN thread as a basis for characterizing the thoughts of actual US voters. Canadian voters probably have a closer understanding of American voters than any other non-American population in the world, and even among Canadian conservatives Trump likely barely beats Harris.
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I was referring more to @Nobluffâs views about what voters would want, what motivates them to vote, what disincentivises them from voting, versus the people whose job it actually is to study these things.
I donât think TAN is particularly representative of anything except for people who use TAN. And the terminally online @Limiescouse
If anything I would say this thread is entirely non-representative. Maybe if Trump were not running then it would be this unbalanced. If this thread was the election the margin for error would be 90%.
I think of all the active participants in this thread, only @LuisSuarez and @Limiescouse actually live in the US, no? Bit difficult for the thread to be representative of US voters at large.
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ok, actual voters, misunderstood. To be fair, you donât need to be something to have a accurate opinion on it.
No you donât.
But you donât.
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I live and vote in the US. Trump backers are absurd. Nothing bad will allegedly stick to him because he is so admittedly rotten already. But at the same time, his rottenness is awesome because it reflects their own.
Of course, he was a great debater until the actual debate and then he clearly wasnât and that has stuck. And that tells me swing voters can and will be influenced to vote for Momala as Trump and his misogynist and racist VP choice keep melting down. Thatâs why I think Momala needs to do nothing other than express astonishment at their stupidity and depravity. Iâm with @Arminius: if it ainât broke, donât fix it especially if the weirdos are hellbent on breaking themselves.
Having said that, it will probably come down to 4000 votes somewhere, weirdos filing law suits, and another Jan 6.
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And this is what makes one of the global âbastions of democracyâ a complete and utter farce.
99.9% of the votes cast simply do not matter.
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And this is why Iâm buying the house next to you after I am deported as a legal alien.
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If it goes up for sale, I will buy it. Just so that you canât.
But âdemocracyâ isnât much more effective here; after all, Labour have just won a landslide with only 33.7% of the vote.
Proportional representation needs to be brought in in both the UK and the US.
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What if I agree not to eat cats dogs and geese?
Weirdos.
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Bloody foreigners.
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Thatâs at least 75 million of your fellow Americans, you must have a miserable time walking out you front door if you truly believe that. It pretty much sums up the division in the country from at least the pov of negative retoric.
Thankfully Iâm in California. Iâm generally fine. Iâve had 4 racist incidents since Trump took over even though I have not eaten cats, but whatever.
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I thought conservatives were all about calling a spade a spade and all that?
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