American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 50 of 53)

The polls are surely moving into the blue corner, as well as the prediction models like Polymarket, Nate Silver, etc.  The RCP averages are still slightly in Trump's favor, though I expect that to change over the next few weeks.  Harris will be ahead; however, the reality is that unless Trump's numbers sink, it's going to be within the margin of error.  That means voter turnout, and voter enthusiasm, are going to decide this.  Harris-Walz seem to have supporters, and others, revved up.  There's a ways to go though. 

I think old timer Jeff Greenfield gets it right.  Then again, it's what many like myself have been shouting from the rooftops for over a year.  The polls could not have been more clear, Trump and Biden are TOO OLD to be President, according to the vast majority of voters.  That includes huge swaths that were fully committed to voting for either of them. 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … d-00173406

Trump literally told someone the other day, "I am who I am," which means no, GOP backers will not be getting a disciplined candidate.

The key is that Trump voters actually get out and vote.  People have curtailed a lot of spending, on vacations, and other options, as expenses driven by inflation remain very high.  Not sure how anecdotal, but my gosh the number of brick and mortar chains of every kind that are closing or going bankrupt.  It's crazy, where are people working?  That's why I remain cautiously optimistic.  As dour and deranged as Trump will continue to be, he can very easily win.  I remain skeptical, because Harris could well accumulate the majority of late deciders, and STILL lose.  Trump's support is close to it's ceiling, but it's also rock solid, I do not expect slippage there.

I do agree with QuinnSlidr that enthusiasm for Harris is close to what it is for Trump.  I also wonder if there are portions of Trump's coalition that are fracturing a bit.  Some people don't love the Vance pick.  Some of the white supremacists don't love that Vance has a non-white wife.  He's losing momentum with some of the blue collar workers as he attacks unions.  He's lost some of the "anti-Biden" vote (although I assume a lot of that was also anti-Harris). 

People love to vote against someone as much as they love to vote for someone, and at the moment, I don't think the average person hates Harris.  I think they either don't know anything about her or like her a little bit.  Her approval is actually above water in a lot of polls which seems crazy at this polarizing time.

My point was that Trump still seems to be peaking, and he's still losing in the polls.  Since he doesn't ever reach out to the center, he's going to struggle to make up that difference.

But even then, I think there's all types of scenarios where Trump wins.  Whether it be Election Day chaos, post-election day chaos, shy Trump voters, polling errors, or whatever.

She needs to start meeting the criticism.  She needs to lay out her policy plans, and she needs to start doing interviews / press conferences.

Yeah I guess I mean she needs to nail it.  What I'd like to see:

- Some sort of compromise on the Trump tax cuts.  Either she only increases taxes on the wealthy / wealthier segments, or the taxes don't go all the way back to pre-Trump levels.  No matter the rationale, raising peoples' taxes is not popular.
- Tax protections for families - for childcare, tax credit, etc.  Will help with the "anti-family" argument.
- Something concrete to tackle inflation, even if it's something that just sounds good in theory.
- Something about protection for blue-collar workers.  Trump and Musk attacked unions the other day, and Democrats can reclaim some of the voters Trump might have upset.
- Trump's stupid no tax on tips thing.  I don't think it would have the impact some think it would, but it is popular.
- Very clear explanation for what people will get for their taxes, whether they are increased or not.  I think people are fine paying taxes if it goes toward things they like.

Rogan's weird.  I think people associate him with Trump, but I think he falls more into the RFK Jr. crowd.  I've never listened to him or his podcast (I don't watch MMA so I don't see him there either), but the sense I get from reading others is that he's much more in the RFK camp.  Now since RFK and MAGA overlaps, I assume he needs to keep those people happy.

He's actually been in trouble with MAGA before and had to backstep what people assumed was an endorsement of RFK.  Interestingly enough, Kyle Rittenhouse had to do the same thing when he was bullied by MAGA after he said Trump wasn't pro-gun enough.

RFK Jr. IS Trump. They are mutually exclusive. He backs Trump, Trump backs him. Can't have one without the other. He's MAGA.

Georgia is making me a little nervous.  Not only is it the state that Harris is doing worst out of the six battleground states, but they recently amped up their election denialism.  No one seems to be panicking about it, but I'm also having a lot of trouble figuring out what happens if the state can't certify its own results.  I know Congress signed some sort of update to help with their certification process, but if a state decides from top to bottom that their results can't be trusted, what even happens?  Do the votes just not count and potentially less than 538 votes could be counted?  Or do the votes have to be cast and there's just a greater likelihood that Trump could essentially steal the state?

I guess the hope is that Kemp and Raffensperger, while both Republicans, don't have a ton of love for Trump.  So even if lower level election officials don't certify the results, I think they have the ability to push it through regardless.  But that's what I worry about.  In my head, we can't count on Georgia to get to 270, even if Harris wins it.

Harris Campaign's Legal Team 10 Times the Size of Biden's in 2020

They just added Marc Elias to their team. Go, Kamala!!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/us/e … ;sgrp=c-cb

The campaign is adding Marc Elias, one of the party’s top election lawyers, to help Democrats counter what they expect to be a contentious postelection period.

==========================================

Amid threats of certification battles and mass voter challenges, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has assembled an expansive senior legal team that will oversee hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers in a sprawling operation designed to be a bulwark against what Democrats expect to be an aggressive Republican effort to challenge voters, rules and, possibly, the results of the 2024 election.

The legal apparatus within the Harris campaign will oversee multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts and general election litigation, and it is adding Marc Elias, one of the party’s top election lawyers, to focus on potential recounts.

The legal group is headed by Bob Bauer, who served as personal counsel to President Biden for years, and Dana Remus, the general counsel to the 2020 Biden campaign, and also includes Maury Riggan, the general counsel for the Harris campaign. Josh Hsu, formerly from the vice president’s office, will join the team, and Vanita Gupta, a former director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a top Biden Justice Department official, is an informal adviser.

The campaign will also lean on the top lawyers at three prominent law firms — Seth Waxman, Donald Verrilli and John Devaney — to handle litigation, and deploy local counsel to eight battleground states and four other states of interest.

Mr. Elias, who has had tensions with Mr. Bauer and other Democratic lawyers in the past, will also bring lawyers from his growing firm, Elias Law Group. He has also previously worked for Ms. Harris, serving as general counsel for her primary campaign in 2020.

Ms. Remus said in a statement that the legal team had been working “uninterrupted over the last four years, building strategic plans in key states, adding more talent and capacity, and preparing for all possible scenarios.”

“This year, like in 2020, we have the nation’s finest lawyers at the table, ready to work together tirelessly to ensure our election will be free, fair and secure — and to ensure that all eligible voters will be able to cast their ballots, knowing their votes will be counted,” Ms. Remus said.

The origins of the effort date back to July 2020, when Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, called top officials on Mr. Biden’s legal team saying they needed to create “something we’ve never created before,” because the Trump campaign and its allies were beginning to bring cases and lay the groundwork for litigation.

With the lessons of 2020 still fresh in Democrats’ minds, Harris advisers claim that the legal team is about 10 times the size of the 2020 operation.

The expansive new Democratic legal team, and the opposing group at the Republican National Committee, is a reflection of the legal arms race that is the new reality of American elections since Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2016. The battle over whose votes count — not just how many votes are counted — has become central to modern presidential campaigns.

Lawsuit from Taylor Swift incoming in 5...4...3...she will destroy him.

https://x.com/Kanew/status/1825374995163251108

Same here. I hope Trump pisses her off just enough to let loose and just do it. She's endorsed Biden before too.

Hillary nailed it with her incredible speech, you anti-Hillary biased shill. If you don't like dems, perhaps republicans are more your thing?

The reason why Hillary is given prime time is because she is still doing important work to move the democratic party forward. She still won the popular vote in 2016 by 2.9 million votes over Trump (Hitler). If it weren't for the electoral college FRAUD in 2016, she would have been president. Not that horrible excuse of a human being.

And oh yes, both Hillary and Warnock were excellent.

You have absolutely zero knowledge of these individuals and their speeches to even bother commenting with your own uninformed opinion. And it shows with your ridiculous, asinine comments that I find zero value in reading when all they amount to are shallow attacks against dems. And you still wonder why I think you're a republican plant operative trying to claim you're democratic? It's because of comments like these.

Why don't you stick to polls?

I mean you're both right. 

- Hillary did mangle her campaign.  She misused resources to go for a landslide against Trump (and essentially doing a victory lap) and completely ignored the Blue Wall.  If she had done what Harris is doing (focusing on the battleground states), I think she would've won.  She also cut off the legs of her own campaign by forcing the Democrats to clear the path for her in the primaries.  If she'd run a true primary, I think either her weakness would've been exposed or she would've come out a stronger candidate.  Instead, she struggled to beat Bernie, and even worse, pissed off all the Bernie people. 

- And of course QuinnSlidr is correct that the electoral college is stupid.  My vote doesn't matter.  Grizzlor's vote doesn't matter.  I don't know where QuinnSlidr is but I doubt their vote matters.  About 100,000 votes scattered around 7 states are all that's going to matter.  It is stupid.  But it also isn't changing.  There's a really outside chance that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact makes it irrelevant, but that's probably the only hope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ … te_Compact

- Grizzlor is also right that he called the Biden thing before anyone else, and that's the only hope the Democrats had.  I agree that if Biden had stayed in, this week would've been morose.  I think Biden did fine last night, but I'm so much happier with Harris (and she wouldn't have been in my top 5 Democratic candidates honestly).  The party and the country needed a new face, and if she wins, that will be most of the way.  I agreed with Grizzlor but I felt like complaining about Biden was like complaining about the Electoral College.  I figured he was the guy and there was no reason to even worry about it.

- I do think Grizzlor is wrong about Warnock.  I think he's great.  I've also softened on Hillary in the last few years.  I still think she was absolutely the wrong candidate for 2016, and I don't think she should've been made into the hero that she's ended up being.  But I think she deserved a spot.

- I was thinking last night that it would've been super interesting if Harris didn't have any of the former presidents or candidates speak.  No Clintons or Obamas.  Maybe no Biden.  Just young and exciting Democrats who can speak to modern issues and the future of the party, not the past.  Or maybe structure it like Night One - Obamas and Biden (the past).  Night Two is your Warnocks and your AOCs and your Mayor Petes (the present).  And maybe Night Three is the future - really young, really diverse speakers talking about the future.  And then Night Four is Walz and Harris to bring it back together?

I don't know.  I know the Clintons and Obamas are big draws and still popular, but I think it would be a great signal to try and show that Democrats are the party of the future.  Especially as Trump looks older and is constantly talking about the past.

No personal attacks, guys.  One of the great things about our democracy is the ability to disagree and still speak civilly (I've never used this word before in text and it looks super weird written out).  We're all on the same team, and Grizzlor isn't some sort of secret MAGA person.  He wants Trump to lose, but coming at it from a different angle.  I've been a part of this board with him for years and I'll vouch for him for whatever that's worth.

And I think it's clear to separate the difference between interference and fraud.  Fraud implies that votes were switched or conducted illegally.  That's the language that Trump (and tons of republicans) use.  There's very little evidence of any fraud in 2016 or 2020.  There was interference in 2016 (and 2020 and there will be in 2024), but Trump's election win (like Biden's) was legitimate.  And it's counterproductive for our democracy to say otherwise.

And to be fair, there were irregularities in 2020 related to laws that were (maybe illegally) changed for covid that possibly assisted in Biden winning.  That's also not fraud, despite what Trump and his allies and his voters want you to think.

Again, we need to be careful about the language we use.  Trump and his campaign were involved in illegal activities, and I think he *attempted* voter fraud.  But voter fraud involves using fake votes for a candidate or throwing out legitimate votes for an opponent.  There has been very low numbers of true voter fraud in any election and nowhere near enough to change any results.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-looked-20 … wijLJ8GxNj

The Trump campaign (and Republicans in general) are responsible for gerrymandering, voter suppression, manipulation of facts and news that harm Trump's opponents), and tons of election interference.  But I wouldn't consider any of that to be voter fraud.

The difference, in my opinion, is that accusations of voter fraud hurts democracy and undermines our elections.  Trump is a criminal responsible for all kinds of election-related crimes.  But we have to be very clear when we talk, otherwise we open up the idea that democracy is broken.  And it is not.  Our elections are secure enough that true voter fraud is extremely rare, and that's a good thing.  If Trump stole an election then it opens up the idea that Biden stole an election and Harris can steal an election.  And I don't want to go down that path.

Trump did a lot of bad things in 2016 and 2020, but he won in 2016 and lost in 2020.

Oh don't get me wrong.  The Harris campaign, local election officials, state election officials, and every citizen needs to be on guard.  Trump is not a normal candidate and will do anything he can to win.

That being said, Trump is also not a normal candidate and gets away with so much more than most people.  Look at Kari Lake, who is just as Trumpy as Trump but didn't any traction at all when she accused people of stealing the election from her.  I'm not saying that someone couldn't follow in his footsteps, but Trump seems (so far) to have a unique combination that no one else has been able to replicate to the same extent.

That is true. He does have every right to speak critically of a politician. Just like I have every right to say that he is wrong.

Would you want to stay silent when someone says 2+2=5? It's not just a disagreement in that regard. He's subtly saying that he hates black people and women without actually coming out and saying so. Notice how he disparaged the women and black speakers but praised only the white man speaker? You can't hate both women and black men and praise only the white man without being a racist and a misogynist.

That's not going to stand with me.

After an atrociously poorly managed first night, featuring an embarrassing slight to the current President, night two was a bit less disjointed, and featured three terrific speeches by Doug, Michelle, and President O.  Michelle brought the house down with a one liner (as she's become famous for) about "Trump applying now for one of those 'black jobs'"  I nearly fell off my chair.  Obama himself was typically on a roll.  I'm not sure how many people on the East Coast saw them, as once again, they all went on it seemed past 10PM.  Truly hope the rest of this campaign is better managed than this.  Just hope eyeballs in WI, MI, AZ, and NV were watching, because most of PA were asleep, again.

Professional pro-Gaza protestors have literally been walled off from the proceedings outside, while more of the news yesterday was generated by Nichole Shanahan, Kennedy's running mate, complaining on a podcast that their campaign was effectively finished after Biden dropped out.  She even opined openly about whether to simply quit and endorse Trump.  For those who would immediately be freaked out by this, I'm not one of them.  RFK Jr., who is currently blaming Democratic PAC's for keeping him off state ballots for technicalities (has a point actually), has his remaining support with true independents, and those who refuse to support either party.  Yes, some supporters would wind up voting Trump, and might do so whether he stays in or not.  I would argue that most simply won't vote, largely feeling betrayed if Kennedy backs anyone else.  I'm unconvinced he would do that though.  Trump and Elon Musk has been babbling about making him "Secretary of Efficiency," a post that does not exist, cannot exist without Congress, and thus is completely meaningless.  Trump would never go through with an RJK Jr. appointment, despite railing against lobbyists the other day.  Trump is betrothed to a laundry list of billionaire CEO's that collectively would become targets for Kennedy's ideology.  I feel like Bobby knows this, he's not an idiot. 

-----------------------------------------------

PS: Hillary is controversial (among Democrats) because of her backhanded tactics, not just political positions.  She drove millions of people to Donald Trump for Heaven's sake, because they viewed her as corrupt and conniving.  Even my old man, a life long Democrat, skipped that election due to how much she displeased him.  I understand having her speak, but at the expense of Biden, completely stupid.  BTW, despite my hatred of black women, I found the best, shorter speech of that night to have come from Texas representative Jasmine Crockett, who went viral for putting Marjorie Taylor Green in her place during a hearing.  Sorry, Warnock went TOO LONG and his preacher rabble rousing does nothing for independent voters.  Andy Beshear, a white guy, was also boring.  The point remains, the current President deserved to be given the primary speaking slot, and the DNC screwed up.

My opinions remain in line with my stated viewpoint since this election began, defeating Trump.  Had I had yours, Joe Biden would still be in this race and well on his way to a double digit loss.

Wow, you're admitting you hate black women on this board?

Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Not sure if its recalibration or not (I assume it's too early for convention bumps), but Harris now leads in the polling averages on 538 in MI/WI/PA/NV/NC/AZ.  Trump still leads in Georgia, but it's essentially the same map as 2020 with NC replacing GA.  That would be phenomenal.

If these numbers can be trusted (hard to say) and if there's no huge issues in getting votes cast (harder to say), then I think Harris needs to do three things (in addition to doing a great speech tonight):

1. National interviews.  Multiple interviews with multiple outlets, including getting on as close to conservative media as she can.  It's free advertising and it eliminates one of the few attacks that has stuck to her.
2. Nail the debate.  It doesn't need to be a grand slam like Biden needed, but she needs to look strong and confident and comfortable.
3. Reinforce. Stick to the plan, focus on battleground states, and focus on the votes you need.  Don't work too hard on votes you won't get, but don't leave any stones unturned.

75 days.  Let's do this.

One other interesting thing.  I'm not entirely sure how Trump counters any national coverage that Harris gets.  Harris was on national TV with her speech, and then her speech was covered by the morning shows (local and national).

Trump called in to Fox News and then Newsmax.  He didn't reach anyone undecided.

Not only that, I haven't seen a single ad for him.  Now I'm in Texas and my YouTube algorithm should clearly know that not going to vote for Trump, but I haven't seen anything.  I see a Harris ad almost every time I turn on YouTube.  I haven't seen a Harris ad on TV (which is good, I think, no reason to spend the money), but I have seen some ads for Colin Allred on Hulu and on the morning news.

So how is Trump reaching undecideds with his strategy?  Is it all TV advertising in certain states?

Night 3 was pretty good.  Bubba went a bit off script and rambled.  Tim Walz was great. 

Night 4 was superb.  Steady stream of successful governors, Republicans, even cops.  Kamala gave what I would call a "I'll run through a brick wall for you" speech.  When I was screaming for Joe Biden to get off the train tracks, like most I really had no clue what to expect from the VP.  The instant super star rise in the polls was a massive surprise.  Really amazing just how many topics she covered in that speech, barely missing a beat.  There was something for everyone, but the most forceful I felt was when she spoke about keeping a "lethal military" and defending allies and standing up to dictators.  Wow, look out world, you do NOT want to mess with this woman!!!!!

I would say the theme coming from this convention is clear, Donald Trump is old, withered, and mentally bankrupt.  As it should be.  He is in serious trouble on September 10th.

Supposedly RFK Jr. is dumping his financially bankrupt campaign about an hour from now.  Most believe he will then appear alongside Trump in Phoenix, although this hasn't been confirmed.  If he does that, frankly, he will need a divorce lawyer.

Yeah, that was the roundtable I talked about.  She won over all but two of those people (one said she wasn't going to vote, the other said he'd vote for Trump).  Let's hope that was a good sample, but these are blue collar people so that's gotta help.

Still needs to do some hostile-ish interviews so people can see how she handles it.  And she's going to have to handle herself in the debate.  There's no question that she's smarter and more polished than Trump, but debating him isn't a real debate.  She's going to have to balance whether to answer the question she's asked, whether to call out his lies, whether to respond to a personal insult, etc.  And she's going to have the misogynist double standard of looking presidential without looking "bitchy" - unfair but true.

I do wonder what happens to the GOP if Trump loses.  I will choose to speculate on that once that is a reality.  But there's probably two wildly different roads they're going to be on, but I have a feeling they're going to do whatever Trump wants.

Not if he dies before then he won't. Don't forget, he's 80.

None of that bothers me, you have to see the group texts I have with "MAGA" friends of mine!  The old saying goes, to know one's enemy, blah blah blah, from Sun Tzu's Art of War.  I purposely seek out what the other side are saying, as well as independent sources.  If you ignore their opinions and viewpoints, then you become something like the Hillary campaign, which was caught entirely flat-footed and lost.  That's why I keep harping on inflation and immigration, because there are issues that people who don't have a ton in common with conservatives, yet they value those and will vote for them.  One cannot simply disregard them, because after you've lost, and you're wondering what the hell just happened, it's better to sniff these things out, and adjust. 

The Democratic Party, as the great James Carville says, has a "male problem."  Just as Trump is disgusted by 2/3 of the women in the country, Democrats continue to be unable to "speak to men," particularly those aged 25-44 and older.  They're too preachy, too in your face with, "you can't say this, you can't do that," and men don't like it.  Too late for this election, but it's something they need to do an about face on.  The young female-led, almost nonstop, social media cancel police from the left is completely un-American, and has chased so many from the party.  It's why, even if Harris wins, it will be by the skin of her teeth.  She's going to get clobbered with male voters, pray not as badly as Clinton did.

Kamala gave a speech that Reagan would have enjoyed.  In turn, RFK Jr. did in fact suspend his campaign.  He's pulling his name from 10 "battleground states," but keeping him on the rest.  He endorsed Trump for three main reasons.  First, how he was treated by the media and the DNC as well as the courts.  There's no question that, despite what Kennedy's positions were, he was given no quarter by the Democratic Party, and the media largely blocked him.  Granted he had low support percentage wise, but it's a continued problem with both parties.  They purposely craft rules to keep only the select candidates from running.  Granted, the other guy Dean whatever his name was, he was able to get on the ballot for DNC.  Biden was never going to debate him, but he also got almost no votes, and the media barely gave him the time of day.

The 2nd reason were the "forever wars," in particular Ukraine and Israel.  One can debate that till we're green in the face, but there's no doubt that Donald Trump is a rampant isolationist.  And so they are compatible on that.

The 3rd reason, Kennedy said, was that his long time cause for removing chemicals from the food supply (and of course vaccines).  Now this is the one that makes no sense.  Granted I am 100000% with him on food processing, a completely unnecessary process that involves additives which are making people obese and sick and do NOT happen in most of the rest of the world, as they don't allow this.  The vaccines are another story, but to pretend that Trump is going to stick a knife into the food corporations is completely comical.  He won't do squat, nor would he ever challenge big pharma.

Anyway, as I stated the other day, I do not believe RFK's endorsement will do much of anything.  If Ukraine is THAT much of a problem for you, you're already with Trump.  Nobody cares about who the DNC or RNC allows to get onto primary ballots.  However, the "free speech" aka anti-woke crowd is again, already converted to Trump.  Food processing and forced vaccinations, regardless where one stands on those, are not major issues.  The food one should be, but this is America after all.

Well Carville is a tad crass, and he generalized that to be, "don't eat hamburgers, don't watch football, don't drink beer."  Referring to the problem as ""The message is too feminine." 

Gina Carano is a prominent example.  She refused to conform to the pronoun police, and lost her job.  The backlash to corporate wokeness nearly put Bud Light out of business, and recently threatened to take Harley-Davidson of all things down, too.  It's not specific Democrat Party language but many of them have been caught in it.  The George Floyd/BLM demonstrations frequently turned violent, and Joe Biden was often the ONLY major party leader condemning it, that included Kamala who stupidly created bail programs which were used by violent criminals.  There was also a firing line, both by Democratic leaders, pundits, members of the press, pointing to anyone who attempted to suggest a lab leak on COVID, as well.  Then you have civic leaders of major cities, who hide tributes to Founding Fathers and other past American leaders, out of fear of the woke left, while they allow rampant mentally compromised homelessness, and continue to be blind to repeat violent criminals who seem to be unable to be kept in prison. 

Again, I felt like Kamala Harris spoke to some of this, but it's not where the larger party has been.  That's why I said it is difficult to argue with Robert Kennedy Jr.'s dismay with the left and its clamp down on free speech.  And yes, the party's platform has been a problem with blue collar men in this country.  It's soft on crime (bail reform, condoned shoplifting), far too supportive of migrants, and well too entrenched in the "equity" game.  Men see all this, and get very concerned over their collective future, especially economically.  That's at least how I can best explain it.  This is why I feel like a lot of men have gone to Trump.  I have many, many anecdotal examples of people I know.  And as Carville continues to harp, the identity politics from the far left have been a major burden to this party nationally.  Kept alive only by the far WORSE of the right.  These were principles that Bill Clinton led on decades ago, where have they gone?  The party has allowed the dumb left to hijack it.  Again, thank goodness for Kamala willing to go with American Exceptionalism in her speech.  Enough with the left's overt hatred of America because it keeps them in business, the business of racial identity politics.

In any event, it's really irrelevant at this point.  There's two months left, I'm not sure there's many minds left to change.  RFK Jr. probably should have been allowed to at least speak to Kamala.  His ideas on food safety, microplastics, and climate change are very critical to the Democratic agenda.  Unfortunately, because he questions the efficacy of the pharmaceutical industry, he is person non grata.  I still don't think it will matter much in this election, but it might.  Either way, it's something that is bubbling out there.  The FDA, USDA, CDC, and EPA are close to useless.  The American people are poisoned to death.  Just look at the incredible growth in cancer diagnoses among younger and younger age groups, who don't abuse alcohol or use tobacco products.  Something needs to be done.  It's an issue that I highly doubt Trump will give much oxygen to, which is why Kennedy is an idiot, but I do believe that if he did, that's a much stronger platform than he had a week ago.

Gina Carano is a nutjob. Studios have a moral obligation to not have transphobic anti-vaxxers using the platform of studio projects to espouse and disseminate bigotry and false health information. When people complain about consequences for transphobic comments or fake health information, they're complaining about being held responsible for incredibly harmful behaviour.

I am a big fan of her work especially on the movie HAYWIRE but even my adoration for Gina Carano isn't going to blind me to what she is: a delusional bigot whom Disney would no longer supply a platform. No one is entitled to international stardom to perpetuate prejudice and to tell people not to protect themselves from COVID-19.

James Carville Jr. is a retired Democratic strategist and... a mixed bag. He's had ridiculous comments, claiming that women are to blame for the struggles of present day Democrats when maybe, just maybe, the problem was the tired white dude at the top of the party. (Maybe. I'm still thinking about that.)

Carville's argument is: the Electoral College means that a small amount of American voters ultimate determine who wins the White House, the Senate and the House -- and campaigns focused on "woke left" voters don't acquire the numbers needed to win in the unbalanced political system of America.

The Black Lives Matter protests were often met with police officers attacking protestors to trigger fights to justify arrests, or firing upon vehicles just passing by. But the protests were also just really destructive; burning down police precincts strikes me as insane no matter what issues one has with police.

The situation in Israel and Gaza is incredibly difficult and I find that anyone saying they stand with Isreal or Palestine is lacking in nuance and simply picking a brand. Grizzlor highlighted the ignorant lunacy of the "Gays for Palestine" banners when homosexuality is criminalized in Gaza. The October 2023 attack on Israel was horrific. The support for Israel's attacks on civilians is deranged.

The Biden presidency is in an impossible situation, funding and supplying Israel because it gives them a seat at the table for ceasefire negotiations, and Biden has called Benjamin Netanyahu an "asshole" for this genocide in which Biden is resistantly complicit. There are no easy answers, no good solutions, and I would suggest a civilians-centric message over supporting one side or the other.

The whole Bud beer promotion is absurd and ridiculous on every level. People are absurd and ridiculous to criticize Anheuser-Busch for marketing their beer with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney like diversity is to be shamed. Anheuser-Busch is absurd and ridiculous for not recognizing that a massive portion of their sales come from transphobic individuals and the loss of their custom would affect their sales.

Anheuser-Busch was further ridiculous in cutting ties with Dylan Mulvaney which led to the LGTBTQ boycotting Anheuser-Busch, which meant Anheuser-Busch was now boycotted by both bigots and allies on both sides. America is absurd and ridiculous for being a country where a transgender woman holding a beer on social media is some sort of crisis.

Grizzlor seems to be implying that diversity needs to be curtailed, that transphobia needs to be respected, and that consequences for sexual harassment and falsehood (which he describes as cancel culture) need to be suspended. That sounds insane and ridiculous to me, so perhaps I'm misreading him.

Perhaps he is saying that Anheuser-Busch wandered into a fight they were not equipped to win if the goal was to sell beer to everyone including the transphobic.

Perhaps he is saying: the devotedly woke-left demographic is too narrow a coalition to win Electoral College victories where a handful of votes can make all the difference.

Perhaps he is saying that, fairly or unfairly, Democrats can't win by campaigning on social justice ideology alone.

Perhaps he is saying that Democrats need votes from aggrieved white men, from people who don't subscribe wholeheartedly to Black Lives Matter, from people who get weirdly triggered when a transgender woman holds a beer on social media.

He wouldn't be wrong; Democrats need those voters too.

ireactions - You did ask for a representative. The other James above that you mention is not a government rep. Otherwise I probably would have included who you did.

Semantics, I know...oh, well...

I think you are confused. The James Carville Jr. you mentioned and quoted is the same person I quoted. Carville Jr. is not a Republican. However, Carville Jr. is also strongly opposed to the social justice focus of a number of Democrats, in particular Bernie Sanders.