USA Politics

I did get the early sense of 'in over his head' with Walz at the very start, but Vance too I felt was caught off guard with the opening of the debate. "Gentlemen, good evening... If it were up to you, should Israel go blow up Iran? 120 seconds aaaaaaaaaaaand go."

EDIT: Do want to note that once the issues turned toward domestic issues at home, Walz found more comfort. Which'd make sense given he's running for VP as governor.
 
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Obviously I also think that the VP debate won't meaningfully affect anything. Trump supporters will be happy with Vance; the anti-Trump voters won't suddenly change their stance on Vance.

While I get that optics-wise Vance appeared to have done well, I think he floundered quite a bit when talking about anything of substance. He dodged multiple questions, contradicted himself in the timespan of 2 minutes and brazenly lied a bunch of times. Walz' Tiananmen Square answer was weirdly weak, but I think getting the month wrong by two months for something that happened 35 years ago isn't this huge gotcha, especially when the majority of things that were fact checked were claims by Vance, some of which were lies that he's told repeatedly. I also don't think the "Harris was VP for 4 years, why didn't she do stuff?" is a good line of attack, because you can easily flip it over. Trump was president for 4 years, yet didn't deliver on his promises. Not sure how wise it is for the GOP to pursue this line, but it wouldn't be the first time that they'd chase something, only for it to blow up in their faces.

I also think we shouldn't underestimate Walz' capabilities. His record as governor is quite impressive, while the same cannot be said about Vance's record as senator. Obviously not a 1:1 comparison and we can argue how much of an impact the VP has at the end of the day, but talking purely about optics Walz can point to things he got done, things that are popular with the general public, and promise the electorate "we can do this for all of America".
 
I wasn't expecting it to be unsealed this early, but DC Judge Chutkan just released Special Counsel Jack Smith's filing on Trump's election subversion from 2020/2021. Partnered with the Harris campaign hammering away at Vance's non-answer on if Trump lost the 2020 election, timing's not great for the Trump campaign.

Not sure if it's October Surprise territory, because we knew it was coming eventually.
 
I think it's an October surprise in the sense that the general public probably wasn't thinking about it and this is a reminder to voters about it with weeks to go in the election. Frankly, considering what happened with the Comey letter, if this was dropping two weeks later I would say that this gives the election to Harris. I tend to think that it remains true that a lot of swing/undecided voters are reluctant to vote for someone who engages in criminal behavior and a reminder of that is still pretty damning. With a month to go and a lot of other big news events going on, I'm not sure. But if abortion/January 6th are on the minds of voters on election day I genuinely don't think Trump can win. But that's the frustrating thing about this cycle, it seems really likely that it will come down to which way the wind is blowing that day.

To that end, most of the debate coverage I'm seeing is about Vance's J6 response. It seems like that has done enough damage to negate both his positive moments in the debate and Walz's deficiencies. The combination of a J6 based news cycle and Vance opening up a fresh wound on it could be more impactful than we think.
 
I think the difference between the Comey letter and the Smith filing is this:

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When Comey dropped his bombshell - and ultimately bullshit - her emails letter, all the news organizations covered it extensively. Smith is getting coverage on MSNBC, CNN, and from the nation's major newspapers - but right wing media is simply ignoring it. While most Fox viewers (and certainly almost all OANN and Newsmax viewers) are in the tank for Trump, even a few thousand deciding "wow this guy is a crook" could make the difference.

I don't think the news-reality gap fully explains why Trump maintains his support, but I am sure that it elevates his support into the competitive.
 
The timeline isn't the same as the Comey letter, you're correct. CNN's already buried it a bit on their homepage and sort of lumped it into "both campaigns having their struggles right now (with pinning the port strike/Helene recovery/Israel-Iran conflict on Harris)." CNN's change of ownership's led to them trying to appeal to right-wing viewers more, so, it's no surprise to see it drop a bit.

I think at this point the election's more about getting each side off of the couch rather than convincing the other side to come over to yours as I believe the number of undecided voters out there is definitely more diminished than in 2016 when both candidates were unlikeable. Voter enthusiasm in polls has consistently maintained that Harris as the advantage there. Headlines like these have been depressing enthusiasm from the Republican side.
 
In an interesting (and not unprecedented by a president/candidate's spouse) twist, Melania Trump's come out fully in favor of abortion rights. Trump's been cutting down his number of 'non-partisan' events and just trying to appeal to the bubble his base lives in, so he probably won't be asked of it, but that's an interesting contrast in an election where there's more attention than ever on the subject.
 
Flaming Blimp Crash said:
In an interesting (and not unprecedented by a president/candidate's spouse) twist, Melania Trump's come out fully in favor of abortion rights. Trump's been cutting down his number of 'non-partisan' events and just trying to appeal to the bubble his base lives in, so he probably won't be asked of it, but that's an interesting contrast in an election where there's more attention than ever on the subject.
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That is 100% the face of Janus at work. They want pro-choice voters to have something to cling to, to muddy the waters of his intentions. It is a coordinated campaign stunt.
 
I don't know how that's even a serious question. Of course Harris would be the lesser evil. All it takes is to listen to a minute of Trump's rhetoric and what he wished to accomplish to solidify this assessment. And that's before we delve into his shady connections to various dictators around the world.
 

Everyone concerned about Biden's age is equally concerned about Trump's age too right? If he is too tired just to do interviews, does he have the energy/stamina to negotiate with other world leaders?
____no5 said:
The choice is between Trump Harris and whoever faceless combination of people that tell Joe Donald what to do and decide the content of the cues he struggles to read on camera.
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:D
 
Mosh said:

Everyone concerned about Biden's age is equally concerned about Trump's age too right? If he is too tired just to do interviews, does he have the energy/stamina to negotiate with other world leaders?


:D
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I am not a Joe Rogan, but I do like Trump a lot more now than I did a couple months ago. In a long car ride, my brother wanted to listen to that Joe Rogan episode he just did. I was tuning in and out, but by the end it felt like he still had a good bit on energy left. My ideal Presidential candidate doesn’t exist, but hell I’ll vote the big man again.

If I were President, I’d come out day one cut all foreign funding, pull out of every foreign alliance we’re in and tell ‘em all, “you guys are on your own, no more America World Super Police, if you get dragged into a war, that’s on you chief”. And then work to rebuild America from the ground up more or less. Walking around these big cities in America like Birmingham and Atlanta, the homelessness problem is just absurd. I really feel for them. There’s got to be some sort of drug addiction relief plan or something put in place.
 
DJ James said:
If I were President, I’d come out day one cut all foreign funding, pull out of every foreign alliance we’re in and tell ‘em all, “you guys are on your own, no more America World Super Police, if you get dragged into a war, that’s on you chief”. And then work to rebuild America from the ground up more or less.
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You should ask yourself who is going to fill the gap the U.S. leaves after exiting these alliances, how that will affect both the U.S. and the rest of the world going forward, and whether that will leave us in a stronger or weaker position overall. The answers to those questions might change your point of view.
 
DJ James said:
I am not a Joe Rogan fan, but I do like Trump a lot more now than I did a couple months ago. In a long car ride, my brother wanted to listen to that Joe Rogan episode he just did. I was tuning in and out, but by the end it felt like he still had a good bit on energy left. My ideal Presidential candidate doesn’t exist, but hell I’ll vote the big man again.

If I were President, I’d come out day one cut all foreign funding, pull out of every foreign alliance we’re in and tell ‘em all, “you guys are on your own, no more America World Super Police, if you get dragged into a war, that’s on you chief”. And then work to rebuild America from the ground up more or less. Walking around these big cities in America like Birmingham and Atlanta, the homelessness problem is just absurd. I really feel for them. There’s got to be some sort of drug addiction relief plan or something put in place.
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That would essentially crash the US power and economy. It is contingent on a stable world. The US hasn't acted "world police" purely out of the goodness of its heart, but because it has been in its interests one way or another. The US economy isn't an isolated domestic market, byt hyper-connected to the European contintent (and China) in particular and the rest of the world in general. Your foreign policy ideas would, quite literally, devastate the US.

Why do you think the US adversaries like Trump so much? Because his isolationist ideas will transfer power to the US adversaries at the expense of the US.
 
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Hate to break it to you, but Trump will not address the homelessness problem in any meaningful way. Hell, everything he's put out so far as far as the economy is concerned is catastrophic and will destroy the US economy. He's great at populism, but anything revolving actual policies he's a disaster.

Also, America explicitly chooses to play "world super police" and has been inserting itself in foreign conflicts for literal decades.
 
DJ James said:
I am not a Joe Rogan fan, but I do like Trump a lot more now than I did a couple months ago. In a long car ride, my brother wanted to listen to that Joe Rogan episode he just did. I was tuning in and out, but by the end it felt like he still had a good bit on energy left. My ideal Presidential candidate doesn’t exist, but hell I’ll vote the big man again.
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It was a fantastic episode. I thought it was absolutely brilliant to have a politician for 3 hours talking freely about anything, no pre-cooked BS questions no pre-prepared same ol'politicians' BS answers.
I never watched a full episode of Rogan before but I will surely do in the future.
 
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