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?
2 things:
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Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.
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People know who Trump is at this point. He’s awful in a way that’s really easy to see and either you’re someone that’s a problem for or you’re someone who loves the awful.
Whoever is the current corporate lackey being put forward by the DNC is the one that needs to claim to be the good one, co-opting the language of progressives while taking corporate money and maintaining the brutal status quo.
So for people who come looking for someone who’s gonna do good, the bad stuff represents inconsistencies with that narrative and despair at a lack of representation in a supposedly democratic system.
Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.
2016? Shit the press gave him all the free press when he was doing the birther shit with Obama.
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Because the people who own news corps are hella rich, and hella rich people mostly prefer Trump because he’s gonna give them a HUGE tax break again.
They either just don’t give a fuck at all about future humans (including their own children) and just want all the profit for themselves now, or they are genuinely stupid and don’t actually understand economic theory at all.
Because long-term Trump’s policies will wreck the country economically.
Either way is a bad look. It reveals them as either outstandingly stupid or outstandingly selfish.
They’re just trying to min/max their personal financial gain:effort ratio.
Rich people believe that no matter how rough the world gets they will be fine as long as they remain rich. History has shown repeatedly that this is a false assumption, demonstrating that the rich in America really are just as dumb as poor conservatives who get suckered into voting against their own interests every election.
Also many of the absurdly wealthy are sociopaths and narcissists (because our economic system allows people like that to succeed by stepping on everyone else). To them, all that matters is how they look among their “in group.” So if they think they’ll look better by being a few billion richer they do whatever it takes to get there… No matter the long term consequences. Either to them or anyone else.
Because the Billionaire owners of the media— FOX NBC ABC CNN are all conservatives who support project 2025.
They are predominantly white and they want their tax cuts while passing the bill to the plebeians.
USA as a society is mentally ill, where sociopathy is often seen as a virtue. For instance denying poor people health care and food, denying pregnant women with potentially lethal complications the right to abortion. Allowing (white) people to kill (black) people without reason based on stand your ground rules. Refusing stricter gun rules despite countless school shootings. The list of sociopathy permeating US society goes on and on.
Now I know that despite this, about half the population see the problems. There are also Americans that fight this, and are world class people. But the other half, somehow confuse Trump’s sociopathy with strength, and admire him for it. Yes this is how it is in USA, sociopathy is widely not only accepted but admired, people want Trump to hurt people, the poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. Many Americans want all these people to suffer, for no other reason than their mere existence. Somehow this is OK to even extend to women in general too! As Trump is clearly a major misogynist.
If you are a normal well functioning person, it’s near impossible to grasp that such hate can be this widespread, and Trump is fueling it, and before him Republicans have been fueling it for decades.
This makes all the hateful illegal stuff Trump does nearly irrelevant, people simply don’t care, they just want to see the people they hate burn. It’s not that Trump isn’t called out at times, it’s just that it doesn’t really make a difference.
If you are a normal well functioning person, it’s near impossible to grasp that such hate can be this widespread, and Trump is fueling it, and before him Republicans have been fueling it for decades.
the only reason this shit ever gets this popular is literally because of fascism.
For what it’s worth, alot of us see the problem and are doing what we can to help. To stick up for queer folks, to not buy products from places like Walmart, and tell everyone we know to vote for people with empathy.
Greed is good, became the norm.
Conservative folks want to conserve what they have, at any cost. Simple as that. Fuck you, I got mine.
people want Trump to hurt people, the poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. Many Americans want all these people to suffer, for no other reason than their mere existence. Somehow this is OK to even extend to women in general too!
I can understand that this might be true of people, but sooo many people in this country are women, poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. To have as much support as Trump manages to have, clearly there are people within these groups that target themselves… it makes no sense.
Common things that pop up in regards to Republicans voting against their own interests:
Women with the attitude that “the only moral abortion is my abortion.”
Immigrants who are angry at other immigrants, wanting to close the door behind them. (Just look at Cubans in Florida)
Log Cabin Republicans, LGBT+ members who are somehow shocked when the party turns on them.
What do most of these people have in common? Money.
Trump supporters are more likely to be small business owners. Capitalism doesn’t care about your skin color, your creed, your nationality, your history, it just wants your fucking money.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair was talking about jobs, but this can be extended to… women who financially rely on their husbands becoming more politically aligned with their husbands (especially if they like the lifestyle), immigrants financially relying on the “good people” willing to hire them as an immigrant (stockholm syndrome?), and the number of rich white gay dudes who may as well have been rich white straight dudes at any other point in history is too damn high (they love to hide behind their sexuality when anyone critiques their horrible positions, “You can’t critique Tim Cook for tax dodging at Apple, he just came out, he’s BRAVE!”).
Remember in 2016 there were LGBT for Trump?
It was absolutely insane!! No it doesn’t make sense, but there are always a percentage that are delusional, and sometimes they manage to convince others.
Probably there are people who actually believe they don’t deserve equal rights, this can be indoctrinated through religion, and religiousness in USA is VERY high.
There are probably also people who don’t see themselves as part of one of the groups even if they clearly are.
Remember the MAGA woman who was extremely surprised when her husband was expelled because he was an illegal alien? That’s how stupid people can be!
Because it’s “all the others” not “me” they think.Upper middle class gays somewhere in Gilbert Arizona who just want to see their retirement savings to go zoink. You have your walled swimming pool and Trader Joe’s nearby.
Because racism and sexism is still very prevalent in the US.
She is a minority. And she is a woman.
The news is a shit hole funded by the ultra wealthy who will benefit from Trump’s tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. Which explains the coverage.
Many voters are still racist and sexist. Which explains the polls.
Because not only do women have to work 10x as hard to be seen as being on the same level as men, but she has scruples. Trump doesn’t care about perception.
It’s worth noting that Harris is still pretty new when it comes to being the presidential nominee. Nobody even considered it until the Biden debate.
So partly the media is making up time when it comes to analyzing her and asking and expecting answers.
Trump has been running for president since the day he lost, so we all know everything there is to know about him.
I don’t expect trump to be decent. I expect the democrat to be.
It is the way of Dems vs GOP.
And Fox essentially being a GOP mouthpiece.
“See! She’s not perfect, so you cant criticize trump for any of his flaws or you are a hypocrite!”
All politicians are the same! Our quarterback is cooler than your girl! Go Red team!
MAGA terrorists have assaulted newspeople, destroyed cameras, whole 9 yards. Might be some of that mixed in with everything else. Fear of retaliation or whatnot. Most of these people have public-facing jobs with little to no security detail and Trump’s supporters range from civil to psychotic
I don’t get why my restaurant gets so much scrutiny over a few rat turds in the soup when Gusteau’s has a literal rat village in the kitchen
Meanwhile, you doubtless have a restaurant you can point to which is rat and insect free?
Enjoy the rat shit.
Corporate media likes elections to be close and exciting because that draws ratings. Hence the reason they put on kid gloves for the idiot fascist.
It’s really hard for some people to believe that this would ever be the truth. At the very minimum, this is like 50% of the truth, and the other 50% is worse.
Because we can’t mock Trump and their supporters if Kamala fumbles. As long as she doesn’t fumbled we can mock them with impunity
Because apparently half of the active voters in this country are either greedy corporate cunts, wealthy sociopaths, MAGA morons, authoritarian Christian ideologue crazies, psuedo-intellectual “centrists”/independents that somehow conflate basic human respect for minorities and outright fascism as “both sides are the same”, or some combination thereof. Those type of people are the type that think the ends always justify the means and that the ends they want is a US that looks like a cross between A Handmaid’s Tale, Atlas Shrugged, and modern day Russia. It is one of the most disheartening realizations of my adult life to learn that so many of my fellow Americans are fucking vile people.
Do keep in mind, that roughly half of voters is not the same as roughly half of Americans. The highest turnout of voting eligible people in the last century was only 66.6% in 2020. Basically every Trump nut votes. It is there entire reason for being these days, to support and vote for Trump. And in 2020, Trump only got 46.9% of the popular vote, i.e. only 33.03% of the US voting eligible actually cast a vote for Trump. The rest of us are either actively trying to stop Trump or are at least not actively supporting him. The absolute BEST thing we can do as a country is to bump those numbers up. There is no excuse for 1 in 3 people to not vote, leaving another 1 in 3 people to have disproportionate power over everyone else’s lives. Complacency and apathy or counting on enough others to do their civic duty so you don’t have to is how Trump wins again. Vote and make every single person you know go vote too. Tell them to register. Tell them to vote early if that is more convenient for them. Whatever. Just go vote.
You know what was eye-opening to me? I was once talking to a couple homeless women sitting outside a parish on a cold Canadian winter day, they were saying government needs to restrict access further to free and subsidized programs.
Apparently there were too many undeserving homeless people using the program that can’t take care of a place if it’s free, so according to these poor women, they shouldn’t let people like themselves have a roof over their head unless they can put up a $1-5k deposit for a unit. I wished them a good day, and gave them $10 each and my gloves…
It is one of the most disheartening realizations of my adult life to learn that so many of my fellow Americans are fucking vile people.
I think this is one of the single most important realizations of my societal awakening as well. I actually think a lot of the cognitive dissonance we see daily is a refusal to accept this premise. People refusing to believe that evil people exist in a real, meaningful capacity HAS to have some effect on the amount of people that deny republican politicians are That Bad and attack the left for truthfully acting like they are.
