Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

[sophie]

Trump wanted a wall; Kamala got a walls.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Walz's Midwestern Dad Energy is fantastic

I had a midwestern Dad. He obviously didn't look or sound anything like Walz, but he definitely had that powerful Dad energy.

What I think of / what comes to mind when I hear "Midwestern Dad" is reliability, dependability, stability, resilience, capability, predictability, constancy, consisistency... the kind of person who treats their neighbors and family with care and steps up to do things that need to be done.

That video going around of Walz telling folks how to fix a burned out signal bulb in a Ford was classic Dad stuff.

 

[Gori the Grey]

He can be "Coach," "Sarge" "Teach," "Pops." Some people on line are calling him a replacement for the Dad you lost to Fox News.

So Angst has got the core of it:

i don't think the appeal of walz will be completely lost on the centre. he's like... a former teacher, he coached football, he has working class appeal, talks like a normal person, kind,

He somehow blends left-of-Harris and right-of-Harris in one person. He's an astonishingly good choice (whose very existence I didn't even know of before yesterday).

 

[JollyRoger]

Walz is certainly an outsider in this campaign - the only one of the four that doesn't regularly sport make-up.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Trump wanted a wall; Kamala got a walls.

That's all that's necessary. Biden says that in campaigning he has always had a mantra, "I don't have to be better than the Almighty, just better than the alternative."

For that I have no doubt.

Though my perspective on things is a little bit different than "good enough" in re: America's position as a whole, as that just contributes to least common denominator-style politics. The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

 

[JollyRoger]

whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

Trump has a record of kneeling to those guys.

 

[Core Imposter]

For that I have no doubt.

Though my perspective on things is a little bit different than "good enough" in re: America's position as a whole, as that just contributes to least common denominator-style politics. The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

I believe that the Democrats are moving to a form of governing where the principals aren't really making decisions, or better stated, have moved. I am not sure who is actually calling the roll, most likely there are competing power centers involved.

 

[Hygro]

I for one am so very happy with how this is going.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...

Again, in this election we will get a choice of one from two possibilities, on that and every front, and

Trump has a record of kneeling to those guys.

Walz was a soldier, if you think that kind of experience gives one toughness.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But perhaps I'm just wasting my time around here: in light of Trump being her opponent, whatever Harris does will automatically be the greatest thing ever. Because that's how it has to be,

Why deny the new optimism among Democrats because Biden is now out of the race? For Dems and the country, bating Trump is all that matters. If the Dems had run cabbage, it would get my vote. With only 90 days to go, what seemed a lost cause has turned into a bright opportunity. The harris Walz team is who we have, woulda coulda shoulda doesn't matter now. Get on board the hype train!

For that I have no doubt.

Though my perspective on things is a little bit different than "good enough" in re: America's position as a whole, as that just contributes to least common denominator-style politics. The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

We know already that Trump will not stand up to any of those guys. All they have to do is wave some cash at him or his family and he will bend over and stay bent over as long as they ask. Harris will not do that.

I believe that the Democrats are moving to a form of governing where the principals aren't really making decisions, or better stated, have moved. I am not sure who is actually calling the roll, most likely there are competing power centers involved.

You mean like letting the Heritage Foundation set GOP policy or Trump changing his policies based on who is giving him the most money? You frequently imply that Obama is some kind of puppet master without any actual evidence while ignoring the corruption in the GOP rich who manipulate both Trump and the Supreme Court. "Remove the beam from your own eyes, before you tell others to remove the speck from theirs."

 

[choxorn]

Here's just one opinion, but Nate Silver estimates that the Walz pick was designed to cause the least amount of problems for Democrat supporters and for them to not appear divided (particularly over Gaza, which I think the party discounts at its peril). Now how that exactly transfers to more votes being generated among independents than not, is anyone's guess:

Tim Walz is a Minnesota Nice choice

It's fine. But Shapiro was the higher-upside option that was probably worth the risk.

www.natesilver.net

With all due respect to Silver, he's never been much good at doing this sort of punditry type analysis where he tries to guess how political events will unfold based on things that don't have a ton of hard data around them, and "how much does a VP pick even matter" is one of those things. There's reasons why Shapiro could have been a better choice and reasons why he could have been a worse choice, Silver is just glomming onto "picking someone from Pennsylvania might have made the Democrats slightly more likely to win Pennsylvania" and ignoring other factors that might or might not matter.

Walz was a soldier, if you think that kind of experience gives one toughness.

And Kamala was a DA and Attorney General, again, if you think that gives one toughness.

 

[Lexicus]

He only won by 15 because he was against a literal crazy person. Shapiro is useless and you're majorly underestimating how much his right leaning stances would hurt in turnout which is way more important now. Undecideds don't exist in large numbers and those that are aren't moderate. The moderate undecided is a myth.

For context, Klaus is by all indications a conservative Republican whose opinions about Democratic Party matters should simply be ignored. I would guess he is either going to vote for Trump, or possibly the libertarian, or not vote.

In fact, the giveaway that Shapiro would have been a mistake is how it's really only Republicans who are lamenting Walz and saying it should have been Shapiro. Even Shapiro is (publicly) happy that it was Walz.

 

[Gori the Grey]

And Kamala was a DA and Attorney General, again, if you think that gives one toughness.

Which I do.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

For context, Klaus is by all indications a conservative Republican whose opinions about Democratic Party matters should simply be ignored. I would guess he is either going to vote for Trump, or possibly the libertarian, or not vote.

In fact, the giveaway that Shapiro would have been a mistake is how it's really only Republicans who are lamenting Walz and saying it should have been Shapiro. Even Shapiro is (publicly) happy that it was Walz.

I consider issues like this to be of much greater importance than "Democratic Party matters", thank you very much. So I'll just discount your latter assumptions about me.

 

[JollyRoger]

"Standing up" to the Bad Guys - Make America Ingratiate Again:

“How smart is [Xi]? Could you tell?” Carlson asked.

“Top of the line,” Trump replied. “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find [them], there’s nobody like that: the look, the brain, the whole thing,” he added.

Later on, Trump also gave Putin a shoutout, saying the Russian leader is “very smart”

***

“Congratulations to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his big and well deserved victory in Turkey,” Trump wrote. “I know him well, he is a friend, and have learned firsthand how much he loves his Country and the great people of Turkey, which he has lifted to a new level of prominence and respect!”

***

In October, Trump lauded Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has described his own governing style as an “illiberal democracy.”

“There’s a man, Viktor Orbán, did anyone ever hear of him?” Trump said. “He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world,” before misidentifying him as the “the leader of Turkey.”

Trump has stayed in touch with Orban since leaving the White House, and hosted him at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey last summer before the Hungarian president gave a speech at CPAC in Dallas.

***

“President Xi is like central casting,” he said. “There’s nobody in Hollywood that could play the role of President Xi — the look, the strength, the voice.”

***

“It’s good to have a good relationship with Putin and Xi and all these people they have lots of nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “And Kim Jong Un I have a good relationship with. He’s a tough, smart guy.”

Around the same time, Trump took aim at his domestic opponents and detractors, calling those who oppose him “vermin” and suggesting the threat from within is greater than that posed by countries like Russia, China and North Korea.

***

The former president told supporters at a rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Nov. 18 that Xi is both “fierce” and “very smart” and “strong like granite” — unlike Biden, who Trump slammed as “weak” and “very stupid.”

“Now, the press doesn’t like it when I say good things about [Xi],” Trump said. “What can I say? He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron hand.”

***


“Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s, and this is a quote, politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” the former president told rally-goers.

Orban and Kim also got shoutouts: Orban for being the “highly respected prime minister of Hungary” and Kim for being “very nice.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/18/trump-praise-authoritarians-00132350

 

[KMRblue1027]

For context, Klaus is by all indications a conservative Republican whose opinions about Democratic Party matters should simply be ignored. I would guess he is either going to vote for Trump, or possibly the libertarian, or not vote.

In fact, the giveaway that Shapiro would have been a mistake is how it's really only Republicans who are lamenting Walz and saying it should have been Shapiro. Even Shapiro is (publicly) happy that it was Walz.

I don't chill here enough to get a beat on every poster but I had been able to guess that he's right-leaning when actively dismissing how pissing off the biggest union in the country by supporting vouchers wouldn't depress turnout seemed odd. Confirmation is nice though and yeah the fact that nearly all non-republican reaction to the pick (and Harris for that matter) has been positive is a bad sign for them.

 

[Voidwalkin]

The media narrative, presently, is an unbroken string of good news for Harris, which is.. more good news.

It's eaten into Trump's media marketshare. His attacks on Harris' heritage are probably not unrelated. He wants the headlines back.

 

[Angst]

For that I have no doubt.

Though my perspective on things is a little bit different than "good enough" in re: America's position as a whole, as that just contributes to least common denominator-style politics. The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

what do you mean by "stand up to", and how the hell isn't trump "scraped" in this metaphor

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Did I say he wasn't?

Man I really don't feel like prefacing each statement I make re: Kamala Harris here with "meanwhile Trump this and Trump that" for you folks.

 

[Cutlass]

The question one ought to be asking themselves is not whether Walz, Shapiro, or anyone gives them a good "feeling" but whether that can really stand up to someone like Putin, Xinping, and the ayatollah scraping them off the bottom of their shoes...
That will take an assessment of character more than anything performative.

It's a certainty that they will be better than Trump or Vance. It's almost certain that they would be better than any current major office holding Republican.