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outdated2139@lemmynsfw.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

She could completely blow it by picking the wrong running mate. For instance if she picked Hillary, it would be over. That isn’t going to happen though and she has good options for a running mate if they choose to accept.

People are high on her now because it’s refreshing news they won’t have to vote for Biden. We’ll see if the momentum can carry over into the election and if Kamala shoves her foot in her mouth. I don’t think she will inspire a lot of people to vote but Trump will inspire a lot of people to vote against him.

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sxan@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the one area where I’m optimistic. Of all her failings, she seems to present well.

I think she has more charisma than Hillary. I went to a Hillary speech once - smaller audience at a university, Obama-era - and while she’s a good and compelling speaker when speaking to her base, I think she’s prone to phrasing that’s too easily taken out of context out simply easily misinterpreted even in context. The famous example being, of course, when she told middle-America that she wanted to destroy their way of life and put them out of jobs. What she said was that she was going to shut down the coal industry, but that means different things to different people. Kamala is less prone to that, I think. And Hillary was hard to warm to, and I’m kind of a fan of hers.

But we haven’t really seen a lot from Kamala yet.

What I think she has in her favor:

4 years in the White House. That’s tremendously valuable experience, even if she was only a proxy and exigency case.

She might draw support from law enforcement, who’ve been solidly in Camp Trump. She’s going to have to play that carefully, because she could also easily alienate another entire sector. If all she accomplishes is to drive a little wedge in there, that’d be a big win. If you look at polling, Trump leads in “tough on crime.” Kamala could shorten that lead.

She’s a woman. Yeah, this is one of those big questions of whether it’ll hurt more than help, but there’s an ocean of women (and men) who are still furious about Hilary’s loss, and the fact that the USA is one of (maybe the only?) developed country which has never elected a woman leader. And she’s pro-women’s rights. If she can rally the feminist community, carefully, without alarming the misogynists (is that possible?) such that it becomes a club the One-Eared use against her… I think it’s a potential positive.

She’s a woman of color. Hell, she has not only a black heritage, but Asian as well. I don’t really know how the mixed race thing plays; I’ve heard that it can hurt more than help. Again, it’s a card that, if she plays it carefully, could bring in a lot of votes. Shit, 5% of New Jersey residents are of south Asian heritage.

So far, she’s a Middle-East wild card. You publicly support your boss, and her boss was Israel Über Alles. But we don’t know what position she’ll take when she’s making decisions. This gives her wiggle room. Frankly, I think openly supporting Palestine is political suicide - Israel has invested far too much in lobbying, and Palestine hasn’t; she’d lose more votes than she’d gain, despite the outrage on Lemmy about the genocide. But she at least has an opportunity to pick her own position that could offer hope to the victims in the West Bank, without giving Israel the finger and sending their vast financial resources in the US to Trump.

The debate will be huge. She’ll need to learn from the mistakes in the format, and try to arrange something more debate-ish. But she’s hella sharper than Trump, and that’ll show if she gets good coaching. Look, everyone knows how Trump is going to present; it should be easy for some smart people to use that to maximize making him look more like an idiot. Maybe a little baiting, to get his ego talking more than his incoherent ranting full of dog-whistles. I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But Kamala can hire experts.

Biden’s staff are incompetent boobs. They’ve mishandled this entire election cycle, giving him bad advice, and bad support. They’ve been so bad, it’s hard to believe they don’t have saboteurs in his cabinet. His performance at the debate? It’s like someone gave him Nyquil, when they should have given him amphetamines. Fuck, if there’s any time to risk a stimulant and pay the price tomorrow, it was at that fucking debate. Anyway, Kamala has an opportunity to hire her own West Wing team, and frankly, that alone can make or break her campaign. She needs a smart, savvy, experienced, and maybe a little devious and ruthless team, and she has a chance to hire them without it looking like she’s chaotically shuffling the deck like Trump’s term.

Look people shouldn’t vote based on heritage, or skin color, or gender - but they do, and you work with what you’ve got when the stakes are this high, and you’ve only got a few months to capture votes.

I think she has a lot going for her. We don’t even know if she’ll be the nominee; maybe someone stronger will win. I think Booker wouldn’t be a bad choice; he’s white, male, and young - that’s removes a lot of variables and is safer. But it it’s Kamala, I think she’s got a lot to work with. If she, or her team, can play her cards well.
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- Wilzax@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I never liked reddit gold but this comment is a masterpiece worthy of it. I don’t really have anything to add because you basically covered it all, and each point is a 10/10 take.
  
  I really hope you’re right, that she can play both sides on issues like law enforcement and the Situation (genocide) in Gaza to really swing those swing voters. I’d really like to know how much of this had been planned from the get-go and how much is really just the democrats scrambling for some semblance of control again. I’m not proud to admit I’m susceptible to conspiratorial thinking, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that there are huge teams of people with aligned interests who have no job but to make sure that their political master plans have contingencies on contingencies. Politics used to look too coherent for it to be as disorganized as it has become.
  
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  - sxan@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thank you!
    
    TBH, when he was first elected, I thought this was the plan. Run the first term, give Harris huge exposure, make her a household name, basically a 4-year movie about how presidential she is… and then Biden bows out and Kamala is the heir apparent. Maybe with some luck break the 8/8 cycle and get 12 years of Democrats in the White House.
    
    But then, nothing. Kamala disappeared, Biden was always in front. And then, Biden ran for a second term, costing valuable campaigning time, spending a ton of money on the wrong person (if your plan was to have her take over); the fiasco at the debate, which did the Democratic party no good, and then a further delay wasting more time before bowing out.
    
    Maybe political strategists had some reason to play it this way - 3D chess. Maybe Biden had to stay large and in charge to get anything done in legislature. But it just looks fumbling, and wasting time, and why the hell wasn’t she given more face-time on behalf of the White House? That was 4 wasted years of publicity.
    
    No, I don’t see it. This wasn’t their plan. Or, maybe it was, but Harris just polled so low they abandoned it. It wouldn’t have been a bad strategy. Ending a second term at 84? It’s, like, the most stressful, aging job in the world. You go in looking fresh-faced and youthful; come out looking like your grandfather.
    
    I’m going with “scrambling” on this one.
    
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  - TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m sure this was well planned given that Biden’s donors were threatening to withhold funds
    
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