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.”
Anyone with sense was saying Biden needed to step down before the debate. It was plain as day to everyone except the Democratic strategists, and, well, Lemmy.
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.
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.
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 wasn’t in favour of him stepping down. And all the polls at the time showed Harris as being less popular so it just didn’t make sense.
After that debate I was still not really in favour of him stepping down from a pure just looking at the numbers stance that I’m sure still showed him as being more popular than her.
However when he called Zelensky, Putin, I knew the game was up. It was clear that he literally couldn’t function even when he wasn’t in a pressurised debate.
I don’t think it was obvious that there was a chance that Harris was going to be more popular than him until before that point really. Even then you couldn’t say for sure.
But it was obvious he just wasn’t going to make it to the election. You can’t mix up Zelensky and Putin and just carry on after that. I really think that was a much lower low than the debate.
The Democrats fucked up by not replacing Biden from the beginning, that was the time when it made sense to get rid of him. I was fully in favour of it at that point.
To change your candidate THIS close to the election of course seemed like an insane idea. The choice just got taken away in the end and he just had to go.
Thankfully it’s worked out really well but it’s easy to say that we should have changed him straight after or before that debate. The choice was not as obvious as you are making it out to be beforehand. Because the dem voters weren’t obsessed with Biden like the reps are obsessed with Trump. Everyone wanted whoever would be the best candidate to beat Trump. Literally no one gave a shit whether it was Biden or not, he just looked like the best choice until very late on.
We should’ve held a goddamn primary. If the Democrats were so convinced that the incumbency effect was worth skipping on a primary, they should’ve put it to the test and asked the American voters if they thought Biden was still the best guy for the job. Not a choice between Biden and Trump, but a choice between Biden and a number of other qualified candidates.
If we’re being honest, pre-debate I would have still chosen Biden. I still think he’s capable of doing the job of President despite the poor showing, because I know that’s not Biden 100% of the time, that’s him 1% of the time when not on top of his game.
Couldn’t be happier with the Harris replacement, though. It brought the energy we were sorely lacking. I’m just crossing my fingers and praying that people show up in November. Please, god, don’t let that fucking crook back in.
I think Biden would have still won. Incumbency and name recognition is huge advantage among people who bother to vote in primaries.
It would basically be Biden on one side with several candidates splitting the anti-Biden vote.
now to be clear, we didn’t quite lose the incumbency advantage, given that kamala is a VP currently, so there’s actually a much less significant cost here in this case.
Not everyone with sense. The question was if Harris is electable, if the dems would rally behind her instead of infighting, and if there was enough time to spin up a campaign. Biden was previously electable, had the majority of dems supporting him, and didn’t need to spin up a campaign.
Now, in hindsight, Kamala was the right choice. She’s been great and people have responded well. But that was by no means a sure thing
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