Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are veering sharply in how they gear up for Tuesday’s presidential debate, setting up a showdown that reflects not just two separate visions for the country but two politicians who approach big moments very differently.
The vice president is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate’s rules. She’s been working with aides since Thursday and chose a venue that allows the Democratic nominee the option of mingling with swing-state voters.
Trump, the Republican nominee, publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate. The former president is choosing instead to fill his days with campaign-related events on the premise that he’ll know what he needs to do once he steps on the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
“You can go in with all the strategy you want but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” he said during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
I don’t think that’s the case at all regarding Lemmy.
I think Lemmy Dems vastly agreed that Biden was not the choice they would have preferred, however he was not a bad president and had some really good policy gains (and definitely some fails). Even if people were sick of old white men being President, they would vote for Biden because he was still a damn sight better than trump. Him stepping down was not really on the table because the only people beating that drum were the “genocide Joe” crowd who were just as critical of democrats in general.
For a lot of people, him stepping down wasn’t on the table because of Genocide Joe, it was because he wasn’t going to win the election against Trump no matter how much his supporters hoped.
But of course, on Lemmy, the Dump Joe camp was all painted by the same brush as naysayers that didn’t understand that he was the only shining light that could save the election. That was proven wrong in several ways in the days since (though who knows what happens yet), but I would hope in retrospect that the people that were shitting on the many other people that wanted a change have figured out that they were plainly wrong.
I doubt the veracity of everything you just said. You essentially repeated what the previous poster said that I disagreed with, and as far as I know the polling showed Biden and trump relatively equal despite Biden’s poor performance at the debate.
Again, nobody saw Biden as a savior (edit: as in someone who can effect great change to the country, he was a decent president who was saving us from trump), he was simply the only available choice thanks to the way politics work in the US. Until he stepped down, anyway. We are now left with the de facto “choice” of Harris, who, like Biden, is who we are stuck with. I don’t doubt her being a better candidate at all.
Exactly this! There weren’t Joe Biden fanatics about! There were people looking at the polling and hedging their bets on Biden. It’s easy to say we were wrong in hindsight. But we weren’t really wrong at the time.
No one knew how popular or unpopular Harris would turn out to be (although up until that point she was certainly UNPOPULAR).
Don’t know why you’re downvoted. That’s pretty much it. I don’t know if Lemmy has the memory of a gnat or is just being hypocritical, but after Biden’s debate performance there were some calls here for him to step down and probably just as many “wait and see, he’s still better that trump” replies. Nobody was fanatical, more than a few pointed out his accomplishments as ameliorating factors, but nobody was really happy about it. Also, people looked around for other candidates who the wished were in the running, from Buttegieg to several others. Lemmy all but ignored Harris, or at least offered soft criticism of some of the negative aspects of her time as a prosecutor and how she’s essentially a centrist with left leaning social stances. She wasn’t popular at all here.
i think ultimately, biden fulfilled the term and position he needed to, and now is a good time to hand it off to another candidate who can do more work piggybacking on the back of the previously successful admin.
The voter cost of not dropping biden may have been significant, but i doubt it would’ve mattered in terms of governmental policy. His admin was good this time around, it would likely be good the next time around.
I think we have enough potential to be able to do even more in this cycle specifically though.
Agreed on all counts.
I must be misreading this or something. How can you say him stepping down “wasn’t on the table” when he, you know, stepped down?
It wasn’t. Nobody expected it. The DNC didn’t want it. Biden didn’t want it.
You do realize that things can change, right? Stepping down wasn’t on the table…until it was.
I guess we must have different definitions of “on the table.” Where I come from, it means that there’s a reasonable possibility that it could happen, not that it’s guaranteed to happen. There was always a reasonable possibility that it could happen.
Perhaps. I used the term “on the table” as “being considered” in an official sense, not as in what we on Lemmy think. I think both definitions are correct, however I’m sorry it wasn’t clear that I’d restricted my use to official consideration of stepping down.
It was never going to be officially considered until it was a done deal. You don’t just go, “I was thinking of dropping out of the race out of concern that I’m too old… but I decided to stay in!” That just legitimizes criticism that you’re too old. The moment it was officially acknowledged as a possibility, it had already been settled privately.