It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.
Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.
Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.
Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?
Okay so here’s dinner context you may be unaware of. I believe it was Newt Gingrich who either came up with or standardized the core modern republican propaganda pillar: Attack attack attack, always attack, never compromise, concede only if you have literally no choice, then attack harder. That’s why the left has slid so far center; they keep trying to compromise and the right will not budge. Now the Democrats look like the Republicans back in the 80s, which is why I call them Republicrats.
Meanwhile Dems are trying to hold themselves to at least some level of standard. Add to that that Trump and his kind are authoritarian; their psychology allows for no criticism of any kind, seeing them exclusively as attacks against them. So now you have not only GOP and Trump cultists jumping on every single thing they can as hard as they can, and the self-aware Democrats calling out what they perceive as bad. The Republicans won’t do that; they never attack their own side without orders from the top, which indicates to them that the target is out of favor with the leadership.
Tldr; because the Democrats refuse to accept that the Republicans can’t be beaten by playing nice.
key distinction here, what the left needs to do is not to concede, but demonstrate moral superiority, and political strength. Conceding is the part that fucks us, and it also confuses the republicans when we don’t.
We just need to treat the republican rhetoric like it is, rather than real words actually being said, it’s mostly bullshit, ruthlessly destroy and deconstruct it, don’t leave them anything to stand on, they put themselves in this situation.
we should also probably consider focusing more on rhetoric and specifics, rather than individuals, ignoring extremes like trump. Trying not to alienate the moderate conservative is going to be a huge potential boon for the democratic party here. If we can demonstrate that we’re a real party that actually exists and does things for the public good, the republican party has no choice but to disintegrate.
They kind of did that at the DNC.
yes, and we need to lean into it more, and we need to lean into it harder. This is why the “weird” allegations work so well.