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.
Can we stop putting up articles stuck behind paywalls please?
They just want the headline anyways
One side’s supporters partook in the education system while the other went to church?
They’re accustomed to gibberish…
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.
People know it’s a vote for or against the constitution. Voting for Trump means Civil War. Harris has to be better than that. A lot of people want to kill their neighbors right now.
This is a feature not a bug in a slaver’s system.
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.
The FTC is just starting to go after oligopolies. So yes, institutions supported by Democratic bureaucrats are going after powerful conglomerates. Results can be seen in the denial of the Capri tapestry merger and the language used by the judge in the case.
The FTC is just starting to go after oligopolies.
Will Harris replace Lina Khan once she gets into Biden’s seat?
Depends if she goes behind Israeli lobby.
sigh
Laughing out loud bruh… A next level one liner burn… ʘ‿ʘ
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.
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.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.
they are not… a sexist, traitorous sellout and that’s scratching the surface
This election is the Party of Fear vs the Party of Hate.
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?
What does it mean to not be like him?
That is the rhetoric that is prevalent on lemmy.
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.
Anyone who equates “not perfect” with supporting a genocide is not worth being read and taken seriously.
Not sure that’s what the op’s point was
It’s their title on the internet so who the fuck cares about the rest behind the paywall.
Are we still reading Washington Post?
“Not supporting genocide” is a pretty low bar for perfect.
Better just let the genocidal fascist win I guess vOv
First they came for the Muslim and you did nothing cause they were not you.
R and D killing Americans for a foreign power.
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
The dead don’t care, only those that survive. Muslim communities are on one side of that line and you the other.
Those in this article are literally giving their lives for you, you ungrateful fuck.
nearly perfect anyway
“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.
Seriously? Even Fox News admitted that she handed them their own ass.
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.
because most major media supports trump.
You mean the ones whos mega-rich owners are being promised massive tax cuts by trump? Those very same ones?
I’m shocked to my core. I’m glad I was sitting down when I read your comment.
But but but there’s no direct physical evidence of these major media owners handing giant round bags of cash with big dollar signs on them to trump personally while they twirl their moustaches!!!
Don’t you see - we can’t know if they support him or not!
/s obvs christ some people on here are russian trolls or steadfastly refuse to understand a goddamned thing
A lot of them aren’t just in it for the tax cuts but because they like the ideology.
What if they disguised their sociopathic greed as ideology?
You forgot the racism.
Imo, when it comes down to it, a lot of them won’t give a care what colour their wage slaves are, in much the same way that most of them aren’t really Christian or are secretly gay etc.
Imagine having to come out as a non-rascist to your conservative parents
Fuck that
They make feinting chairs for a reason, after all 🤔
Fainting is passing out. Feinting is bluffing.
I suppose that poker chairs would be Feinting chairs.
Lol my bad 🙃
Or mimics
Those too.
And the few sources that may not be owned by Trump-backing Nazis still have to have their horse race. They want to make it seem close to get clicks and sell ads.
Trump is the best thing to happen for News Media since 9/11.
And they would do anything to have another 4 years of people obsessively watching/viewing/clicking all day every day to see what insane thing hes done to the country next.
Weird 34 is their headline-grabbing fat cash cow.
“Moo for us! Cha ching! Yeah!”
The truth is not better but there’s some nuance. Major media do not usually care about being for or against fascism. They care about clicks, and following “journalistic ethics” that boil down to Enlightened Centrism™ and bothsidesism.
Their billionaire owners don’t even have to interfere (most of the time). The system self-selects to make money through a shared set of beliefs in what constitutes “proper journalism”. This makes journalists, as a profession, ontologically incapable of fighting against fascists. They truly, honestly, firmly believe that “Fascist about to win US Presidency” is not a statement of fact.
It’s the same ideological pitfalls that makes Serious Media pit science against whichever anti-science fad is trendy right now. Vaccines, “climatic skepticism”, etc. anything goes and the journalists in charge truly genuinely from their heart believe that is a fair and balanced approach.
Not to say there aren’t actual conspiracies from time to time of course, but even actual independent traditional journalism has generally failed to accurately report on the rise of fascism.
No, they definitely care for Trump to be elected. Major media is owned by oligarchs. Oligarchs support fascism. Plan and simple
Like most conspiracy theories, there is a huge grain of truth there. Bush should have done 9/11 because it benefitted him in literally every way. Yet he did not.
Today’s WaPo scandal illustrates the more real situation quite well: usually the billionaires take a mostly hands-off approach to owning a paper. They don’t need to meddle. The journalists are ontologically incapable of being truly disruptive regardless of if the paper is owned by Bezos or funded by an independent government committee. That Bezos presumably felt the need to prevent the WaPo from endorsing Harris was unusual and a big enough deal for the journalists to raise a big stink. And as someone who lives in a country that has a strong tradition of independent and state-funded journalism (that doesn’t shy away from criticizing the government)… I can tell you it’s not very different from the rest. Certainly not as left-wing as it gets, and just as vulnerable to the fallacies I described.
That is not to say there is no outright corruption of big prestigious papers, or that oligarchs owning the press isn’t a massive, glaring threat to Democracy. But beware of oversimplifying such issues. For one because you might regret making such sweeping statements when the billionaires actually decide to wield their power, Murdoch style. And for two because you might be disappointed to find that prestigious independently owned papers aren’t so much better. Don’t expect them to start printing Marxist pamphlets any time soon if that’s what you are into.
No, we are not talking about Marxist. In fact I said fascists which you keep stesteering away from. Who pays you toispread propaganda?
Fucking propaganda machines.
…but the magabrained keep telling us that the corporate media is all liberal! Their proof? Supposed polls of the help at those MNCs. I’d like to know in what universe the help determine the direction of a MNC.
Major immediate supports the GOP. This is hardly new or unique to Trump. It’s been like this for decades.
What’s new is how far down they’re willing to go to continue to do that.
“New” as in - in the last decade. Not like, new new.
With someone so stupid and weird and gross as donnie, it’s become nearly impossible to hide the corporate game.
I’ll take the downvotes, but a large part of this is because she’s a woman. “One candidate (a man) can rant about gibberish while the other (a woman) has to be perfect.” doesn’t just apply to politics, this sounds like every office I’ve ever worked in.
a large part of this is because she’s a woman.
the slogan I’ve seen on some shirts, “Good thing we are only looking for equality and not revenge” comes to mind.
As a straight white man, I wouldn’t mind wearing a shirt that says “Good thing they only want equality and not revenge” and let people guess who it is referring to.
the slogan I’ve seen on some shirts, “good thing we are only looking for equality and not revenge” comes to mind.
Jesus Christ, I love that so much.
For sure.
It does not help that her town hall tone was very… very … I don’t know… pleading/worrying/low energy. I almost had Hillary feelings at some points.
She had fire, spirit… her campaign has toned down a lot since the DNC… Which is unfortunate.
Edit! For the Down voters, I never said trump good… he’s horrible. I was merely pointing out that her messaging changed, probably under the directions of the DNC. Cookie cutter plain answers… everything focus grouped.
For sure.
It does not help that her…
And there it is, folks.
There is what? I can see the difference between pre DNC Kamala and post DNC, can’t you? The tone is more tempered and she is sometimes almost whiney in her conversations, way too coached.
Before the DNC she was way more relatable, joyous, and direct. A powerfully woman that I think a lot of people looked up to. Now every answer goes back to the talking points… she hardly answered any questions or committed to anything. Even her running mate toned down.
She is still a better choice over a rambling senile fascist but I think the US deserve the pre DNC Kamala and I hope that’s what they get when she is elected. A powerfully woman that is not controlled by the democratic party.
The double standards applied to her are misogynistic and the media is doing everything to samewash trump and put weight on Kamala to be perfect. Trump has concepts of a plan and the media goes on and on how Kamala should show direct policy plans and have it all figured out. Trump was president for 4 years but her track record as VICE president seems to be the point of debate. It’s disgusting.
From a non Americans viewpoint I also have to say that it probably does not help that the Dems platform now seems very close to bush republicans on a lot of things… the Overton window moved… a lot.
As a gay black man I see no reason to believe you are who youre claiming to be and I don’t care for identity politics anyway.
You’re wrong. Most people here don’t agree with you. Get over it.
This is a result of the electoral college. It is more important to get centrist states to vote than for millions urban voters to be excited.
There is what?
there’s the ridiculous double standard.
take every critique you have for her - pleading/worrying/low energy - they all apply in spades IF NOT MORE to trump.
and no one’s questioned Kamala’s loyalties, but Trump’s talking to putin on the regular.
YET SOMEHOW THIS IS STILL A CONTEST? double standard bullshit
1000000% the double standard that is applied to kamala compared to Trump seen in the media makes my blood boil. And it should do so for everyone. But the propaganda machine of the billionaire class is very effective.
I wasn’t comparing Kamala to Trump (as there is no comparison possible, she is leagues beyond anything he can even dream of… although Id favor bernie over her any day), I was merely observing a difference between pre and post DNC Kamala. Now she feels more like a Hillary bot in the town hall.
I also believe there are no centrist or undecided voters in the US, only people still ashamed to say out loud they will vote for an open fascist.
But the propaganda machine of the billionaire class is very effective.
and their control over endorsements see LA Times & Wapo. It’s… fucking demoralizing.
BUT!
I think he did a great job. Would be fantastic to see this reaction widespread.
Oh wow… good on him. More people need to do this.
Edit! For the Down voters, I never said trump good… he’s horrible
No centrist cares. They see any admission that Harris is anything other than perfect as Trump support.
While any sane person can see a ham sandwich is preferrable over trump…
Of course. But that doesn’t mean that people who would prefer pastrami support Trump.
When pastrami has never been on the menu, and your sandwich choice is left to the minimum wage dipshit behind the counter; it matters very much.
Nice try with your false equivalence!
I voted Harris. Congratulations on getting thr genocide sandwich you want.
This is the most 🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅comment I’ve read all day.
Keep it weird, US
It’s obvious that there is a double standard but it’s too late to point it out.
Time is up.
If people are “undecided” they aren’t going to even consider media fairness or maybe even logic at this point.
It’s Donald Fuckin Trump. Rapist. Fascist. Liar. Cheat. Insert hundreds of other negatives and reasons why he should not have power and be in jail.
It’s voting time. That’s all that’s left. He won the media and the narrative enough to make it a race at all. Pointing it out now is fruitless - he got away with that shit for his purposes.
Looking at the fivethiryeight predictions pages, Trump already has a lock or lean right on 262 votes, and Harris is at 226. Harris has to take Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan or its over, and her voters are in disarray and are half hearted while trumps always vote stronger than polling indicates. It looks to be effectively over unless Harris makes some big changes to energize her base. She’s sure as hell not going to get anything by pissing off even more people by digging rightward, but I’d bet real money that thats what she will try.
If she’d pledge to stop the weapons flow on day 1 she’d have the race, but she wont do that, for whatever reason.
I think she’ll take Michigan.
It has been pointed out for as long as Trump is running against any candidate but it didn’t change a thing. If anything, the double standard only got worse over the years.
I was hopeful when media figures started to ask themselves how to better cover Trump after 2016. NPR and On The Media had some decent journalism panels where they dug into the problems with obeying long-standing rules/norms to cover a candidate that weaponizes them. I saw a possibility for real reflection and maybe a significant course correction. That door slammed shut like 2 fucking years ago, and they’ve played EXACTLY the same game over this campaign. I knew we were fucked when a reporter came on after the Biden-Trump debate to say, essentially, “…and some of Trump’s supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Joe Biden has died.”
That’s it. That was the end of her coverage. They can’t even bring themselves to open their eyes long enough to observe unequivocally THAT THE PRESIDENT IS NOT DEAD. If the American experiment fails, a shitload of blame will lay at the feet of the media, who have long since abandoned their pursuit of "T"ruth in favor of the toxoplasma of rage.
I completely forgot about this until I read your comment. My grandmother whole-heartedly believed Biden was a clone or had been replaced by a doppelganger by the middle of his first year as President, and that he had died of covid. By then she had stopped watching FOX and moved on to OANN.
It’s weird that there’s a person that you can call a liar, rapist and con man and not be afraid of being sued for libel or slander, and lots of people think he’ll be great at running a country.
It’s obvious that there is a double standard but it’s too late to point it out.
For this election, sure, but there is still a good reason to acknowledge the double standard that has been ongoing for decades now that it is comically blatant. It might be acknowledged by low information idiots in the future.
A lot of people are answering undecided on polls in protest over Harris support for the Israeli genocide but intend to actually vote for her due to the significantly worse threat posed by Trump. She could massively improve her polling numbers by just committing to stopping arms shipments to Israel and imposing sanctions on them.
You getting downvoted for your suggestion with no replies as to why shows that this place has a lot of hasbara operating in it. They are actively destroying the democratc party, and the US as a whole, and they couldnt care less about that.
This is highly unlikely to cause a statistically significant difference in the polls. Having this strong of a view point on the matter is largely isolated to a specific demographic of younger, progressive voters, who are notoriously difficult to reach and accurately account for via traditional polling methods.
It registers as the 15th most important issue via a Gallup poll, and that doesn’t account for which “side” the individuals polled support.
Of the 30% of the population saying it is an “extremely important issue,” it gives no indication of what their desired resolution is.
On the extreme end of the spectrum, consider that 30% of our nation is in a death cult that believes Israel plays a role in their eventual salvation, not to mention how many people are blatantly racist and view anyone with darker skin as a terrorist.
I am registered, politically active, not difficult to locate and have had the same phone number for 20 years, yet, I MIGHT have been polled once in that time!
This isn’t to say there aren’t those who are doing as they say, but it is not likely to move polls one way or another.
That’s actually a pretty idiotic way to “protest.”
Wow, we’ve got inaccurate polls. Good job?
Well, the poll is accurate in so much as they really don’t “support” Harris and her policies. If we had a proportional voting system they would be voting for her near the middle of the pack with Trump of course in dead last. She’s just the second worst choice between the two choices we’re given.
She’s just the second worst choice between the two choices we’re given.
“Best choice”. Seems way easier to say.
Arms deals to Israel are codified into law. President can’t just “stop” them.
Talk to Congress.
Nonsense, Not shipping arms to countries plausibly beleive to be involved in genocide is the Leahy law. All she’d have to say is “I beleive theres concern here and thus the shipments stop, according to our compliance with our own laws”. She doesnt need congress.
Until House Republicans pass a bill to force the scheduled shipments to continue. Again. (Didn’t get to the floor of the Democratically-controlled Senate the first time.)
