Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

Who do you think will win in November?

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Klaus Hergersheimer said:
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.
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there was two parts of my question. so answering here and indeed referring to your former post, if you want to be pretend-annoyed about people not understanding what you mean, say what you mean. so again, what do you mean by "stand up to", and getting "scraped"
 
I wonder if Harris should support full Cannabis legalization. I lean towards yes. Ethically I'm in favor, though I haven't smoked in 19 years(how time flies)

Benefits: big with young, childless single men, a demographic less concerned with abortion, the focus of her present policy-related rhetoric. Some testosterone-filled supporters would be good, too, especially in red states and rural areas, where conservatives tend to dominate conversations at the ground level.

Disadvantages: it would piss off the traditionalists and right leaning moralists... they weren't gonna vote for her anyway. I suppose it may give Trump some rhetorical angles? I think she's avoiding controversy presently, to avoid interrupting the positive news feedback loop. That will inevitably end, which would be the time to announce support.
 
My guess is that she won't announce any striking initiative.

One advantage she has is that she's a bit of an empty vessel. People can read into her whatever they hope she might end up standing for. That was something that both Obama and Trump made work to their advantage. The press will try to pin her down on some things, and should. But as far as she can, I suspect that she'll try to preserve that advantage.

Just a guess.
 
Angst said:
there was two parts of my question. so answering here and indeed referring to your former post, if you want to be pretend-annoyed about people not understanding what you mean, say what you mean. so again, what do you mean by "stand up to", and getting "scraped"
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I believe I did say what I mean. Please don't interpret that because you don't get it that I'm not being clear.

Anyway.
So I'll just rephrase and say more wordily that: the connectivity now arcing between Harris and Walz is not indicative of any broader coalition building, to the effect that it is better than Trump picking JD Vance as his running mate. In the same sense, they are both stuck. As their VP picks only serve to parallel their own ambitions. And I think that will signal to more hostile world powers that neither candidate is particularly interested in creating an American electorate with anything more than a very left or very right ideological backing.

in context:
- Barack Obama arguably picked Joe Biden because he was a much (much) senior US Senate member and could be a mover-and-a-shaker and that regard.
- Donald Trump picked Mike Pence in the same sense that he wanted to soften his image vis a vis social conservatives and maybe tamp down his philandering image.
- Biden picked Kalama Harris because, according to him at least, he wanted a woman of color VP and he felt that that was quite important
- Harris picks Walz because..."vibes"? "Midwest Dad"? What? I guess we will learn more later.
 
From what I've read so far, Walz is the political equivalent of tofu-bland, and made to not offend anyone.
 
Klaus Hergersheimer said:
I believe I did say what I mean. Please don't interpret that because you don't get it that I'm not being clear.

Anyway.
So I'll just rephrase and say more wordily that: the connectivity now arcing between Harris and Walz is not indicative of any broader coalition building, to the effect that it is better than Trump picking JD Vance as his running mate. In the same sense, they are both stuck. As their VP picks only serve to parallel their own ambitions. And I think that will signal to more hostile world powers that neither candidate is particularly interested in creating an American electorate with anything more than a very left or very right ideological backing.

in context:
- Barack Obama arguably picked Joe Biden because he was a much (much) senior US Senate member and could be a mover-and-a-shaker and that regard.
- Donald Trump picked Mike Pence in the same sense that he wanted to soften his image vis a vis social conservatives and maybe tamp down his philandering image.
- Biden picked Kalama Harris because, according to him at least, he wanted a woman of color VP and he felt that that was quite important
- Harris picks Walz because..."vibes"? "Midwest Dad"? What? I guess we will learn more later.
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it was really unclear and still is. so, i asked about the scraped-ness in question. there's still really nothing concrete here as to what you're actually explicitly worried about when it comes to the hostiles, that is, china, russia, and iran. you still haven't outlined a concrete connection between a concrete worry and harris/walz's potential lack of solution.

for them building something that's "very left" ideological backing... i'll remind you that i'm european and that's all kind of american-right noise to me. it's nonsense. it doesn't even make domestic sense, looking at the stats.
 
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I guess it makes you wonder why there are even two major parties... *shrug*
I would say the ambitions of either are nonetheless constrained by our US Constitution.
To a casual observer, the mantra that "the majority gets what it wants" does not always hold here.
In that sense I would generally regard US politics are "center right" in the context of the rest of most democracies. But that was by design; after all the alternate political ideology in vogue at the time of our inception was Jacobinism.

Sarin said:
From what I've read so far, Walz is the political equivalent of tofu-bland, and made to not offend anyone.
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She doesn't want anyone outshining her. Can't say I blame her.
Hillary Clinton's Tim Kane was like that too in 2016. "Safe".
 
Klaus Hergersheimer said:
She doesn't want anyone outshining her. Can't say I blame her.
Hillary Clinton's Tim Kane was like that too in 2016. "Safe".
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I think she was looking first, for a man and second for a guy who could help her win MI and WI, all the while not being controversial. Trump is the guy who will not allow anyone to shine brighter than him.
 
Sarin said:
From what I've read so far, Walz is the political equivalent of tofu-bland, and made to not offend anyone.
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There is literally nothing normal about the US situation, or Trump.

You don't want to be in a race to try to out-weird Trump anyway.

Working with contrast just might do it.

And clearly he will be hugely offensive to lots of people – just your own write-up what might be "wrong" with him bears it out in spades. Bland and inoffensive? People will go nuts.
 
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Klaus Hergersheimer said:
- Harris picks Walz because..."vibes"? "Midwest Dad"? What? I guess we will learn more later.
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He has elements that appeal to the left of her, e.g. support for gender-affirming care, and elements that appeal to the right of her, e.g. military service. As a white man he has elements that appeal to different demographics than she can directly appeal to. Insofar as people care about a VP, he widens the electorate to which she directly appeals. He adds Midwestern to her coastal, rural to her urban. He's like the Platonic ideal of a VP pick.
 
What are the odds that Trump will decide to kick Vance off the ticket?
 
Possibly a scam, on his part, though.

He also unilaterally announced a debate on Fox on the 4th. If she doesn't agree to that, then he might say "well, then, why should I hold to the one the 10th? You were the first to chicken out."

Or if she agrees to the Fox one, he does just that one and says "I think the American people have heard all they need to hear" and skips the others.
 
it's all business book posturing. a big part of implying dominance in the old books is to choose the site of a meeting, change the site for no point, make people wait, etc.
 
EvaDK said:
What are the odds that Trump will decide to kick Vance off the ticket?
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I wouldn't put anything past Trump. My sense is that Trump would say or do anything drastic if he wanted the spotlight and felt it was necessary to reclaim control of the media narrative.

However, on that note... the folks on CNN yesterday were making a big deal about the fact that Trump hasn't done many rallies recently and didn't have any public appearances scheduled for almost a week, while Harris, Walz and Vance are appearing almost everyday. At first blush, I thought maybe it might be that his age is starting to show, dare I say... cognitive decline? His last several speeches and interviews lately have been more and more off-the-rails, even for him.

However, to be fair... inasmuch as you would want to be fair to Trump, which... meh... it did occur to me that he did recently survive a literal assassination attempt, and the Secret Service hasn't even sorted out the investigation yet (they were having Congressional hearings on it today). So Trump and his camp could be excused for being a little bit more cautious about scheduling his appearances.

Which brings me back to JD Vance. As the running mate, Vance really has been carrying the water for the campaign this week, so I don't think Trump would be too keen to dump him at this point. He seems to need him to carry the load right now.

That said, Harris seems to be gradually taking a clear lead in the polls. On rcp She had been ahead in every national poll so far this month until today and was building a lead. That is until today when the Rasmussen poll swooped in... to do what it always does... prop up the Republican candidate. Also, seemingly out of nowhere, CNBC also released a poll (they apparently hadn't released any for a very long time) that was in Trump's favor, The CNBC poll was nowhere near what Rasmussen was though. In any case, Harris still has the lead on rcp by 0.5%. We may see soon how the Republican-leaning Harvard/Harris poll affects the rcp averages.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

BTW the FiveThirtyEight ("538") polling aggregator has Harris up by a full 2%. 538 does not acknowledge Rasmussen currently though. They did however include the recent CNBC poll in their averages.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
 
My seat-of-pants response is to wonder if it isn’t a strategy on the part of the Trump campaign to let Vance be the lightning rod while all of the media attention is focused, for the time being, on the Walz pick. I suspect Trump will be back more frequently once the Walz pick becomes old news.
 
People in the media are currently trying to pretend it is a microaggression to heckle the Vice President of the United States while she makes a speech
 
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