#but....it's also a vp debate

[margridarnauds]

My overall impression: I can understand the practical reasons for keeping the debate (mostly) civil, especially as a means of getting to people who are still undecided/on the fence, but I can't really consider it a victory when we're discussing people's lives. I give Walz credit for when he did press on issues, particularly school shootings, the demonization of undocumented immigrants, and reproductive rights, but...I still kind of find myself disappointed. I really feel like the Democratic side should have pressed more on the offensive, especially since we're discussing people's lives. I agree, keep a cool head, don't let anger distract you from functioning, but I don't really know if I consider civility to be the ultimate goal here.

[writing-is-hard-af]

Interesting the way they have not once said the Biden Administration and have instead said the Harris Administration. Like... just, huh.

[perplexed-penguin]

"Only mexican guns are used to commit crimes, American guns cannot harm the pure of heart"

[roseworth]

i LOVE dream talk its my favorite conversation topic ever. whenever someone starts a sentence with "last night i had a dream" i am tuned in and listening. tell me everything i will never get bored of hearing the shit that happens in your dreams

[mariners-death]

Hey jaz how are you feeling about Cecil Palmer tonite

normal :]

[gasstationsoda]

My grandpa said that Vance is blinking a lot and now I can't unsee it

[fugakuu]

have fun being secretary of HUD tim scott :) i hope it was worth it

[akascow]

favorite thing about the VP debates are that literally nobody gives a fuck about them

[mr-snailman]

practice continues... almost filled up the page. at this point im just groping around in the dark trying to figure out where I dropped my rhythm but i think im getting closer now... maybe all i needed was a page of b/w studies :)

[writing-is-hard-af]

Not to bring West Wing into my debate commentary, but the repetition of Margaret will not allow me to not think of West Wing during this

[qqueenofhades]

I got political whiplash on Threads. First, everyone was screaming, “All is lost!” I came back an hour later, and everyone was screaming, “We Ride at Dawn!”

The right-wingers are in panic mode. Steven Miller was practically screaming on Feckless news. 🤣

I mean. The right-wingers' entire mentality, the fuel for the January 6 attempted coup, the recent SCOTUS President God-King Immunity ruling, and all the rest, is premised on the simple fact that the president is indeed, Almighty God King who serves for life and will never, ever willingly give up his power. So that's how I can guarantee that the GOP, because they are short-sighted fascist morons, did not plan for this. Their entire strategy was built around attacking Biden, because they hate him. Like, really hate him. He defeated Trump the first time and there was still a good chance that he could do it again. Trump got impeached the first time for trying to extort Zelenskyy for dirt on Biden, because he didn't want to face him. That's why they went after Hunter on largely bogus charges, tossed around the idea of impeaching Biden, actually (uselessly) impeached Mayorkas, etc.

And yet, because Biden (even if he was forced to do it) decided to step away and voluntarily give up his presidential power instead of wrecking American democracy to hold onto it, that has broken their little shriveled fascist brains. They literally can't comprehend it, and I can guarantee they're now shit scared about having to face Kamala, a brown woman, who is the epitome of everything their tiny evil brains hate. As noted by those bangin' fundraising numbers, there is also a lot of excitement around her. And suddenly, after MONTHS of "this election is a referendum on which old and mentally declining man you hate more," that has been removed as a factor. (Watch the media suddenly forget all about age and/or mental competency as a factor now that Biden is out. Does it apply to Trump, you ask? CRICKETS.)

Kamala is going to mop the f'n floor with Trump at the next presidential debate, and I guarantee that the GOP knows that too. Because yes, if Biden had another bad debate, or if he has a bad case of COVID that might end up giving him long-covid symptoms or keeping him off the trail for days or weeks, that would have been very, very hard to recover from. Now the GOP is the one stuck with an old, mentally baffled, virulently hated presidential candidate and the most pro-Russia, anti-woman, demonstrable-sellout whitebread VP pick imaginable, that they had to choose because Trump nearly got the last one killed and he wasn't interested in the job again, for some weird reason. And as we have pointed out before, this is the last-chance saloon for Trump in any number of ways, and he has been demonstrably overconfident the last few weeks as the media was consumed with discussion of Biden's stumbles rather than Trump's manifold unfitness, treason, felonies, and all the rest.

I don't agree with Biden on everything he has ever done in his long career in public service, but I will say that I don't think he would have actually done this if he wasn't eventually convinced, for whatever reason that might be, that it was the right decision. And my one big fear about him stepping down was that the party would instantly fracture, people would start flogging unrealistic Magical White Boy replacements, and otherwise insist on an "open mini-primary!" or some other fucking bullshit. Now, there are still a few idiots trying that, but by and large, the Democratic power apparatus has instantly thrown its weight behind Kamala. That doesn't excuse them for the weeks of wibbling Anonymous Sources self-sabotage beforehand, and I still vote that we destroy the billionaires at our next opportunity, but if we can stick with that and keep up those mongo fundraising numbers, we might indeed actually have a better chance than before, and that was what this was all about.

As I noted yesterday, Black women have been disproportionately influential in taking Trump down (think Leticia James, Fani Willis, etc) and there is undoubtedly a huge, HUGE amount of poetic justice if Kamala can be the one to stick the knife in his greasy orange gut once and for all. I can likewise guarantee the GOP is well aware of that, and the fact that while they can yell even louder and trot out the same old racist, sexist, misogynist fearmongering dirtbag attacks they used on HRC, that is a strategy with demonstrably diminishing returns (it sure as hell isn't going to help them win any more female or suburban or black voters or anyone else we always hear about how they're Making Inroads with). And we're not going to talk about how it's Obvious that America would never elect a black female president. Obama won two terms. Even with all that weight of frothing misogyny and DECADES of Republican smear machines, HRC won the popular vote and was ratfucked out of the Electoral College by the slimmest of margins, after a massive interference campaign by the Russians. It is fucking possible, we are going to do it, and the Republicans are so, SO FUCKING SCARED of having to live in an America run by a brown woman, that can only be for the good.

Kamala Harris 2024. Let's go.

[afloweroutofstone]

Would love to hear more about your personal take on Walz, if you feel like it.

He's the most progressive of the Boring White Guys who were on Harris' shortlist for VP. To be fair, he's not actually that progressive himself— his record in congress was quite moderate, and he's generally seen as being more moderate than the Democrats in the Minnesota state legislature. But this image as a Normie Democrat can actually pair quite well with his record of progressive accomplishments in office. The stuff he's signed into law while governor has been absolutely incredible, arguably enough to make him the best governor in the country right now (even if the hard work behind most of these reforms came from state legislators to his left).

This is the gubernatorial record that Walz can run on: protecting abortion rights, universal school meals, guaranteed paid leave, legalizing weed, a plan for 100% renewable energy, banning LGBTQ conversion therapy, free college for families earning less than $80,000, automatic voter registration, increasing spending for public schools, universal gun background checks, expanding public transit, strengthening workers' rights, improving infrastructure, new public housing, (underwhelming) police reform, banning non-compete agreements, a strong child tax credit, and more. To compare, Harris' other top choice was a guy who compared pro-Palestine protesters to the KKK, likes charter schools, and wants to cut his state's corporate tax rates. You can see why progressives are happy with Walz as the outcome.

Also Walz does seem to have an electable personality IMO, what little I've seen of him makes him look like a good messenger. VP picks don't really matter that much, but he seems like a good choice if they're looking for someone to wipe the floor with Vance in the debate.

[perplexed-penguin]

What plan? He only has concepts of a plan.

[justhereforpirates]

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned from the VP debate is that JD Vance doesn’t know what the VP does and also what the president does and also what Congress does

[centrally-unplanned]

(Link embed not working? Okay)

Okay a bit surprised at this one! Back during the July Crisis I had a very clear logic in mind. I thought Kamala was a weak candidate, she was a very bad pick in 2020 for all the wrong reasons and being BIden's VP was bad baggage. Biden stepping down and having a process where a strong candidate with none of the Biden stain could emerge seemed ideal to me - US campaigns are way too long anyway, it being "rushed" could be a blessing in disguise.

However, that was impossible - the Democrat's org structure is just too sclerotic to throw that together. If it hasn't been approved by eight committees over the course of two years of debate, it can't be done. So in practice, Kamala was the only bet. She is the VP, that is literally their job and why they exist, so we could all default to Kamala, throw Biden into an early grave, and sail off into the tail end of Brat Summer to go down actually putting up a fight.

(And she did better than I expected! Props to her, pity about that last bit)

What all this means is that my assumption was that Biden endorsing Harris was something everyone was on the same page about! It was the only option, and so who would bother dissenting? But now Nancy Pelosi is out here telling me it was a fait accompli and she was actually discussing having an open primary? Was that really in cards?

So Pelosi is definitely a bit of a schemer, so I wouldn't be shocked if this is a bit of a white lie to burnish her rep. Still, she is also very much a schemer, and so maybe she actually could have pulled off getting the DNC to commit to an open primary? My respect for her would go way up in that case - way to really understand the problem at the critical moment.

And my respect for Biden would go way down. We all know Kamala was a mistake at this point as a VP choice, the entire logic behind it was backwards (Why was the candidate earning the overwhelming support of black voters feeling compelled to choose a black woman to double-represent them? Oh, she didn't, she represented the white vote? Uhhhh). But it was a mistake of the past, and so you had to deal with it. Now, though, it comes off as doubling down on that mistake! Just not acknowledging the political errors of the past four years.

Which is a recurring theme of this year - constant whining from the Biden camp that their record wasn't being "sold hard enough" to a voting public that fucking hated him. I can almost imagine it as a moment of stubborness - fine, you don't want me? Then you get my VP; my choice, *I* get to decide.

I don't want to read too much into one article of course, but it is one more datapoint for my already strongly held prior that the Biden team just completely lost the plot in 2024.

[brazenautomaton]

so here's a conversation I had with a friend just now that sums up a lot of what I think so well I don't want to bother rephrasing it

them

Oh boy are we ready for 48 more months of hearing the Most Sanest Normalest People on the internet act like a right-of-center candidate getting elected when put up against another nagging scold of a progressive "It's Her Turn"-er was a surprise

me:

The Democrats and their wider supporters don't seem to realize people can remember the things they say. They said Biden was fine, it was a wild right wing conspiracy to think he was unfit for office. Then he is clearly, actively disintegrating on stage at the debate, so now it's Harris! Of course it's Harris, what are you talking about, we've always been about Harris! Harris who was, it's important to note, a diversity hire. She was not a popular candidate. She did dismally in the primary, and was chosen as VP because it was Time For A Strong Woman Of Color

them:

Y-E-P God imagine taking the VP of an unpopular incumbent and saying "Yep, she's the one" and being surprised when that goes poorly It is genuinely alarming, though, how absolutely temporally untethered a lot of the discourse coming from the left is. Like, genuinely just "don't believe your lying memories" level of attempt to disregard stuff that happened not just in living memory, not just in the last decade, but happened during the current presidency. The lack of humility is also not just distasteful, but actually alarming. If you make predictions that are wildly off the mark to try to get people behind your candidate, you cannot then treat your wildly off-the-mark predictions as if they did not matter.

the primary strategy of the "guys who spent five years using 'gaslight' to mean 'disagree with'" appears to be attempted gaslighting. you just aren't allowed to notice things they say and do. every time someone is like "I don't like this thing you're doing," the democrats as a whole are all "That didn't happen and you're a bad person."

this is an effective strategy for winning conversations with people and a very bad strategy for winning elections. when people are upset about things you did or allowed to happen, "nuh uh you bad person" is not a response. "that shouldn't count" is not an effective counter even if you genuinely believe it should not count. a million morlocks-holmes saying "this has nothing to do with the democrats because no democratic holder of office has introduced a bill with explicitly racist language" isn't going to convince anyone who wasn't already convinced. you are not entitled to votes, you have to actually do things to win the election.

focusing on how bad and threatening Trump is is a losing strategy when we had a term of Trump and none of the fascist future we were warned of came to pass. Trump had a fucking vision of the future to really behind that more than zero people believed in. Now, I'm not a "typical" ad-watcher because I only saw campaign ads on YouTube (but I feel like this is not super atypical any more), but I saw a lot of Kamala Harris ads, and zero of them were about any of her plans or ideals or vision and all of them were about "You need to give us money right now to win the election." Like if you're using the money to make ads like this, that's kind of like a one-person pyramid scheme.

the Trump presidency will be terrible in a predictable, expected way. there will be no fascism, just a slow crumbling of our already-dismal institutional competence. I don't think the Democrats would have been much better. They'd still be beholden to an activist core of psychopaths and doing everything they can to cover for those people, while also governing incompetently and completely unable to capitalize on or draw attention to any good things they actually manage to do. Leftists and progressives are already going through the whole "the Democrats move us all to the right they only want to move to the right!" but the Democrats don't move at all; they don't think they should change their behavior, because when they lose an election it is because the voters failed them and not the other way around.