Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped “wars with France,” after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to “close the deal.”

…

Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate.

Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    9·
    6 days ago

    I hate to be a downer, but “it’s not fair” doesn’t really matter at this point. Trump continues to gain, and he’s babbling incoherently most days and being quite clear that he plans to be a fascist from day one. Whether it’s fair or not, there’s is a huge double standard. If Harris does anything wrong she loses support. Trump daily explains gleefully how he’s going to take away civil rights, begin mass deportations, purge the federal government and fill it with loyalists, and on, and on, and on, and on, and he’s been slowly but steadily gaining support for a month.

    Is there a huge, glaring double standard? Yes, absolutely. Does it matter for the blunt reality of the upcoming election? No, not at all.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
    8·
    7 days ago

    Trump is targeting mostly far-right evangelicals who have a common vision on what they want the country to look like. He has a lot of energy when doing so, and because of how similar their interests are he could get away with all sorts of stuff and they would still vote for him.

    Harris (and Democrats in general) is the only alternative mainstream candidate that everyone else has, and that “everyone else” consists of all sorts of people with conflicting interests: liberals, neoliberals, centrists, progressives, leftists, different religious groups or cultures, varying economic demographics, racial minorities, LGBTQ, and immigrants for instance. They’re trying to appeal to all of them at once, but because they don’t have a shared vision, nobody is happy and they get more scrutinized. To make at least some of them happy, they need to focus on certain groups and deprioritize the interests of other groups. However, once they do that then the groups they deprioritize get angry since they no longer have representation, and the groups that are still there remain skeptical because of the history of not working for their interests in the past.

    The advantage that third parties like PSL have is that from the start, they’re trying to appeal to a specific group of people with a common vision like Trump is instead of trying to play both sides with conflicting groups and making nobody happy. The problem (aside from the election duopoly bought out by corporations) is that they are a very small political minority so they have no real chance of winning the election without winning over people from other groups which is a challenge, especially when there are many more unknowns when it comes to progressing than there are when it comes to reverting to a previous state so there is more fragmentation due to those sort of disagreements.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      7 days ago

      It’s the image that each candidate has crafted. Harris is running as an ultra-competent bureaucrat who will follow all the rules. Trump is running as an angry old fart who will break them.

      Fascists in the media lionize Trump because they love the idea of a Rebel Billionaire breaking all the rules to MAGA.

      And because so much of the media is owned and operated by fascists, you get a stark Trump bias.

      But what are Dems going to do about it? Break up these mega-corp news conglomerates? Prosecute flagrant violations of election law by billionaire media magnets? Threaten these oligarchs in any conceivable way?

      No. They’re just going to get strung around by the nose, then complain that The Low Information Voter didn’t see through the bullshit filling up their screens and airwaves.

  • Krauerking@lemy.lol
    104·
    7 days ago

    It’s not about being perfect. It’s about not regressing to a 2004 republican. That doesn’t appealt to Republicans who have moved further right and not to the left who refuse to budge.

    It’s willful ignorance to complain that she needs to be perfect when the people complaining are often specific about the things they care about that are being ignored.

    And if those are being ignored you can be shocked they won’t vote for her and you must admit she’s clearly not courting those voters either.

    This is either a non-issue cause she is going for exactly the voters she wants or she’s willingly creating a flaw by deciding to court votes that won’t be enough to win.
    I don’t get how this is still an argument. It’s happening exactly as participants are making it happen.

  • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
    63·
    7 days ago

    Democrats credentials for presidency - they are not Trump.

    Edit - In any other election cycle this is a legitimate question.

    What are you bringing to the table? What is your policy position?

    For both the parties.

    Just because this election only party is eligible to represent doesnt mean that the questions shouldn’t be asked. Browbeating undecided voters for the questions is wrong and might give the result no one wants.

    • SupahRevs@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 days ago

      In a two party system this is always true. But what do you mean by “Trump”. What does it mean to not be like him?

    • SupahRevs@lemmy.world
      22·
      7 days ago

      The position is to acknowledge results of an election. That should be enough. For more information there is a ton of resources like Harris’ website.

        • argarath@lemmy.world
          53·
          6 days ago

          R is wanting to come directly for the Americans as soon as trump becomes president while D is still wondering how to distance themselves enough from the current genocide to just keep profiting from the far away war.

          Are both options not good? Yes, but one is CLEARLY much much much worse than the other (it’s the R one, if it isn’t clear enough). With D you can at least talk and slow down the horrible shit which gives you time to work with third party politicians to actually improve stuff, while with R they will just add you to their hit list and you’ll get screwed a million times over. Under a D government you can actually work on improving shit and getting third party candidates in, under a R government you’ll be lucky if you can still vote for the next election

  • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.mlEnglish
    56·
    7 days ago

    “You criticized her for not being good at X so she did X a bunch!”

    Yeah but she’s bad at it and it went really poorly for her and hurt her numbers.

    These people are fucking idiots.

      • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        I have a hard time believing that but I don’t know anything about it. I saw clips of the CNN town hall and she was horrendous.