President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

It was close

 

Their entrance theme to the meeting:

 

I mean, lets not kid ourselves. The Dems threw Al Franken under the bus because of the special Alabama race with Roy Moore's history of predding on teenage girls coming out. It worked, the Dems won that seat for a little while. But only because they knew Franken would be replaced by another Dem. They've had a higher tolerance for bad Senators when their majority is in play (See Menendez, or the failing health of Feinstein, Byrd etc.

 

I'm not arguing that there are no shitty Dems. I'm asking about examples of one of those shitty Dems costing the party a seat, cause it sure seems like the GOP is racking up a bunch of Ls in races they could have or should have won.

 

Doug “I’m going to write doomsday fan fiction for my doctoral thesis” Mastriano.

 

Cunningham in NC is probably the most recent example. It’s definitely more rare.

 

Nuzzi did more than just root in the press box.

 

And Donald "Bing Bing Bong" Trump should have been on that list.

 

Trump had the "advantage" of everyone KNOWING he was/is a douchebag. It was baked into the pie. These other GOPers come out of nowhere, try to portray themselves as Godly men who eat, sleep and drink family values, and people are "shocked" when they find out it isn't true.

 

My wife tuned us into the Kamala Harris meetup hosted by Oprah last night.

It was a pretty effective presentation, but I’m not sure it reached many voters who weren’t already in the Harris/Walz camp.

I think it would be good if the campaign came up with quick, to-the-point answers for the “What would you do?” questions about major, sometimes thorny issues. Last night, when she was asked what she would do about border security, she got a bit wrapped up in the fact that Trump torpedoed the bipartisan bill. Oprah wound up redirecting her and Harris said she’d sign that bill if it made it to her desk.

I would hope that her campaign team could come up with a few basic plans of action for the issues that are continually asked about such as border security/immigration, women’s reproductive health, gun violence, foreign trade, the economy, etc., without too much detail, but as a way to show that there is more to the issue than, “Trump bad!”

Kamala sometimes goes into a bit of word salad mode and doesn’t connect answers to plans or policies. She could do a better job of explaining why tariffs should be considered de facto sales taxes, how over-zealous deportations will cut into available labor to the degree that it will spur inflation, basic steps to reign in gun violence, legislative steps that could be taken to guarantee women’s rights, etc.

These sorts of questions come up again and again. It would be nice to have prepared answers to some of them, hopefully without stepping into details which the opposition might spin.

 

For all the ways that parachuting in late helped her, I think this is an area where the lack of reps in training camp shows. And whatever policy shop operation she inherited is having to retool on the fly as well. But I largely agree with you.