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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldtopolitics @lemmy.worldThe Case for Kamala Harris
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    7 days ago

    Like you, we wish for the return of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, a party animated by actual ideas.

    Emphasis mine. They’re pining for the party of Bush because it was grounded in truth and ideas.

    If you’re saying that Kamala will restore the GOP, then it seems that the American people will never be prioritized. In which case, we should all leave and emigrate to Scandinavia where their people are treated like human beings rather than servants

    How on Earth did you get that from this endorsement? In fact, they said exactly the opposite:

    only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health

    That whole paragraph is prefaced with “If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies”. They’re not talking to you, they’re addressing conflicted conservatives.

    You really should have read it more carefully.




  • This endorsement will not be controversial to Trump’s antagonists. Nor will it matter to his supporters. But to the voters who don’t much care for either candidate, and who will decide the country’s fate, it is not enough to list Harris’s strengths or write a bill of obvious particulars against Trump. The main reason for those ambivalent Americans to vote for Harris has little to do with policy or partisanship. It’s this: Electing her and defeating him is the only way to release us from the political nightmare in which we’re trapped and bring us to the next phase of the American experiment.

    Trump isn’t solely responsible for this age of poisonous rhetoric, hateful name-calling, conspiracies and lies, divided families and communities, cowardly leaders and deluded followers—but as long as Trump still sits atop the Republican Party, it will not end. His power depends on lowering the country into a feverish state of fear and rage where Americans turn on one another. For the millions of alienated and politically homeless voters who despise what the country has become and believe it can do better, sending Trump into retirement is the necessary first step.

    If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health—then you’ll be free to oppose President Harris wholeheartedly. Like you, we wish for the return of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, a party animated by actual ideas. We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.

    If you’re a progressive who thinks the Democratic Party is a tool of corporate America, talk to someone who still can’t forgive themselves for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000—then ask yourself which candidate, Harris or Trump, would give you any leverage to push for policies you care about.

    And if you’re one of the many Americans who can’t stand politics and just want to opt out, remember that under democracy, inaction is also an action; that no one ever has clean hands; and that, as our 1860 editorial said, “nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers.” In other words, voting is a right that makes you responsible.

    Trump is the sphinx who stands in the way of America entering a more hopeful future. In Greek mythology, the sphinx killed every traveler who failed to answer her riddle, until Oedipus finally solved it, causing the monster’s demise. The answer to Trump lies in every American’s hands. Then he needs only to go away.




  • That’s a good point. Independents and third party candidates should ABSOLUTELY run for Senate in deep red states. They don’t have the cultural baggage of being a Democrat, and so they can triangulate on platform issues in a way that a party-affiliated Democrat couldn’t, and in so doing they might actually be able to exploit GOP candidate weaknesses with centrist or disaffected voters.


  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldMtoNews@lemmy.worldHow Republicans could take the Senate
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    9 days ago

    Yes, by organizing at the grassroots level in Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maine, and Georgia so that they send two blue Senators to Congress every single year. Vote totals in those areas are close enough to overcome the GOP’s structural advantages, but it will require a ground-up operation that bridges the divide between different coalitions on the left and builds a deep bench of community-connected candidates with good name recognition.