Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/23/kamala-was-not-what-bidens-betrayers-wanted-too-bad.html
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I don’t have a dog in this race, but in what respect is Harris not centrist?
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She’ll tax the rich. That’s it. That’s the one that matters.
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Graeme Wood sounds like he misses the glory days of his high school debating team, where he used to pride himself on cobbling together a contrary argument out of spit and baling wire.
Here’s his violence-really-isn’t-that-bad essay from just after T***p got shot.
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At this point it should be clear that the corporate media, including so-called liberal outlets like The Atlantic, are very happy with the MAGA party having a real chance to win a tight horse race. A young, dynamic, tough Dem candidate makes that narrative more difficult to sell.
To the owners and senior executives of the outlets (e.g. Joe Kahn at the NYT). I don’t know why columnists who aren’t multi-millionaires would willingly care about people making $50-million+ seeing their taxes go up.
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Apparently various GOP funded (I assume?) PACs are already running ads about how she is “too tough” on crime. I guess attempting to chip a little support off the corners?
I mean Trump already had the important felon voting bloc in his corner anyway?
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Everyone has a dog in this race. If you are a resident of earth, the outcome of this election will affect you and your children and your children’s children.
I’m not any happier about that than you are, but we are at a critical juncture to respond to the challenges of global warming, and Trump is somehow in favor of actively increasing greenhouse gas emissions. I’m not even joking; he wants to roll back every environmental regulation on the books.
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We all knew that old men die suddenly all the time. Four years ago the populace considered Kamela good enough to be a “back up president”. What’s changed between then and now? Nothing?
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Actually, most of the pundits I’ve seen are very happy with Harris. This is cherry-picking to make some point about “betrayers.” Most of the donors too seem happy, who are the other people cast as the “betrayers.”
I genuinely believe that most of the people who were trying to get him to drop, including most of his party, including, as it turns out, all the members of his party that were supporting him in public but clearly wanted him to drop, were doing so because they were terrified that sticking with Biden meant another Trump term.
Is it so impossible that they were actually believing the non-stop polling that said he was going to lose? We can debate the quality of polls, but the party was clearly believing them, as well as their own internal polling.
Point is, I’m sick of this narrative of his “betrayers,” and I also think the argument that the pressure was entirely invented by the media who “wanted Biden out for the clicks” is asinine.
Note, I’m not taking about this Atlantic piece, I haven’t read it, I don’t care about some opinion writer’s contrary view. Just the general cynical attitude of people on this forum about why people were pushing Biden to step down. I think people like Adam Schiff and Hakeem Jeffries and all the rest care about this country and are clear-eyed about the threat of Trump as any commenter here.
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I get that it is tempting to treat Trump as a Comic Book Villain. Like addressing climate change is good, so Trump opposes it because he is bad.
He is mostly against it because he won’t be alive long enough to be impacted by it, and giving more money and influence to people with money will be a gain for him, and any gain for him no matter how minor outweighs any amount of pain for others.
Also he is a comic book villain, and stamping out some goodness makes him feel bigger.
Well, plus as best I can tell most people that vote for him think if they want something to be true badly enough that it will be. So climate change is bad, they don’t want it to be bad, so they are just going to claim very loudly that it doesn’t exist, or it exists but nothing we did made it happen so we don’t have to change anything and it will go away.
It isn’t burying their head in the sand like an ostrich level of stupid, it is barking shrilly at a bear and challenging it to a fight like a chihuahua level of stupid.
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Mitt Romney voice : “pundits are cops too, my friend”
Not all pundits, obviously.
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It wasn’t that minor.
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I’m philosophically very opposed to the “smoke filled room” approach to the Democratic Party’s approach to picking their nominee but I think the movers and shakers in the party were probably right that a suboptimal nominee without a bruising convention battle was better than a slightly better nominee who had to fight tooth and nail to get the nomination.
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Saves Big Oil $110B, but we are talking about Trump, so what does it get for him personally?
Sure, he is a craven asshat, and will sell out the future of humanity for another gold plated toilet…but does the bribe really need to be that big to get him to do something awful? I’m going to assert not. It probably had to be bigger than Big Oil acting like he was important and wise and powerful. Maybe not much bigger though…
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Yes, but if you’re a lesser-known columnist whose livelihood is dependent on clicks and engagement from readers it’s really hard to get that by writing a story about how you agree with the current strategy of the Democratic Party and and with the preference of a majority of Democratic voters, especially if a lot of other columnists have already written that.
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He’ll siphon some of that off for himself. Other the other hand, he does have to campaign now.
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Good point. A lot of them – and not just obvious conservatives like Bobo and Cardinal Douthat – are guard labour for the ultra-wealthy.
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With all the calls to quit running from Democrats, my one question was “who are you going to run in his place?” No one serious was really vocal up to this point. In fact even people I would consider having presidential ambitions were supporting Biden.
The fact the party seems to have rallied around Harris is a bit of a relief. I personally don’t have a big preference at this point, just whoever it is needs to have a united party support, and it appears she does in the political establishment.
Anecdotally she seems popular with actual Democratic voters. I kinda wish there was an actual primary season to suss out who was the most popular candidate, but at this point she seems like a breath of fresh air and people are significantly more excited to vote for Harris, vs just against Trump.
The attacks I’ve seen so far is she was chosen by the elites, vs elected via a primary. I guess that’s a little fair, but if Biden died, she would still be going through on the ticket, so I don’t really have a problem with it. Other than that it’s just a whole lot of sexism, racism, and xenophobia. Like, wow. a lot. I knew it was coming, but shit that was fast. Oh and she doesn’t have kids? Christ these people need to STFU forever. (
The left criticism I’ve seen is that she’s a “cop”. And yeah, you probably can’t say you support everything she did as a prosecutor. Though maybe that plays well with moderate Republicans or those who were supporting Haley. I mean, it played well enough for Trump to give her money. LOL.
I wish this was done sooner, but I think it’s the right political move (shocking the Democrats got out of their own way for once). And the timing might actually work out well (on purpose or not). The right has to re-pay for all of their attack ads and propaganda (gotta buy new flags, cultists). I think one advantage is because of the short time between now and the elections, she won’t have support fatigue. I think support and excitement will continue to grow, and won’t have time to level off and people get bored/complacent with their support.
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100% Agree. This narrative of “Biden was forced out by backstabbing centrist elites” sounds dangerously similar to the Republican narrative of “deep state coup against Biden”. It needs to stop.
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Hmm. Who do you think would’ve been a better nominee than Harris?
It’s tough for me to imagine anyone generating the enthusiasm she has.
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