Vice President Kamala Harris gave the public its first real look into her nascent presidential campaign with a stop at her organization’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday night.
Harris’ first applause line came when she discussed her background as California attorney general and as a courtroom prosecutor.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, earning cackles while she beamed, clearly enjoying the joke. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Finally, someone who is actually willing to treat Trump’s many flaws as weakpoints.
Opens Fire On Trump
Glad to see they didn’t shy away from using this terminology, considering recent events.
Gives Trump An Ear Full
Some double entendre there. Love it.
Draws Blood By Calling Out Trump’s Criminal History
Shoots Trump with a M1911
sounds deliberate honestly
I want that debate between her and poor Donnie. This woman ia going to roast the shit out of him with her professional experience.
I remember people saying the same thing about Clinton leading up to their debates. At least Harris has a few more years of criming to draw on.
HRC was a genuinely awful debater and she still arguably won all debates against 2016 Trump. Harris is a great debater and she is up against 2024-Trump. He’s no match.
I hope you’re right but I have my doubts.
She was a career prosecutor. Her bread and butter was tearing people open for others to see. No idea where your doubt is coming from.
I guess we’ll find out but I don’t think she’s going to publicly humiliate Trump like some people here seem to.
We’ve seen already he doesn’t have the software to feel humiliation. I think we’ll see him get so angry he becomes kind of incoherent, but even that’s barely a stretch.
Has he ever done that in public before?
That’s what’s needed. The older boomer republicans (not die hard MAGA’s, there’s a lot more of the at least rational ones out there) need to see her wipe the floor with him with facts and tough questions he outright lies to, to have a chance of changing their vote.
With respect, anyone who would vote for Trump probably isn’t worth spending time convincing. Some of them might come around, but if she has one, Kamala’s value will be in getting undecided and first time voters to the polls. One of the most popular choices every election is “not going to vote”
I am frustrated that we didn’t get to pick our candidate in the primaries, I don’t know if Harris is my style. She might be.
But God damn I am looking forward to her going head to head with Trump. She is sharp as hell on her feet.
I was not a harris booster previously but the biggest complaint I have about her, “Copmala” is actually a significant strenght in this election. Then I started reading into her voting record. Combine that with her being a woman in the post roe v wade world, and a woman of color agains the most xenophobic party that any of us have experienced and I think she’s EXACTLY what we need.
I am really really liking her. A lot. She is giving me rockstar vibes like Obama.
Watch Trump go into Bobby Newport mode:
“Hey… that hurt my feelings!”
Good. He’s hurt enough feelings by just existing.
Oh yeah… That’s the stuff!
And a waist and a wobber.
“Maiwage is wat bwings us togevuh today. Wove, twue wove…”
Who? Him? He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.
“How shall we fuck off, O Lord?”
She said building up the middle class would be a defining goal of her presidency,
Go on Kamala, you are making me hope you might be better than just “not trump.” Let’s hear some details that will be resistant to the 1% and their greed and get prices under control.
Yeah. This is getting me slightly excited again. I’m an independent voter and have never voted Democrat but I may just well do that this time. Couldn’t stomach Biden but she seems to actually know what the hell she is talking about. Please go after Congressional term limits, tax the crap out of the rich, and reform lobbying with solid game plans. Talk is cheap.
I have a lot of concern about how progressive she will actually be - her pre-VP track record doesn’t seem great to me, but she’s not Trump and I really hope I can feel OK about voting for her second term. She gets my vote this time because Trump, but if she’s going to sprint right back to 2016-era corporatist Democrat behavior then all we’ve done is delay the inevitable rightward creep and continue to enable rampant corporate greed.
Her voting record in the Senate is actually super progressive. I don’t think there’s much to worry about there.
I don’t think there’s much to worry about there.
Despite that I’ve spent most of my Lemmy time today defending my criticisms of Harris or Dems in general, I truly want you to be right, and I hope that’s what we’ll see when she starts influencing policy as President. (Assuming she wins, and I have a good feeling she will unless something truly batshit happens between now and then.)
What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.
When it comes to economic reform (rather than compression, according to that show with the hand job calculations), from the bottom up is many times more effective than the middle out shit the Dems keep trying.
I would argue that building up the middle class involves uplifting the working poor class, you gotta get those middle class people from somewhere.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the working poor in America consider themselves “middle class”. So that’s how you have to direct your message if you want it to reach the most people.
What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.
Um, OK. I’m on board. Are we supposed to argue now?
Not OP, but good on you two.
Id argue middle class are now also the working poor
Id argue middle class are now also the working poor
I had the same thought but (in complete sincerity) then I thought that might be my privilege telling me that. We (my family personally) have it rough on what is legitimately a decent salary and are very much paycheck to paycheck, but there sure are a lot of folks worse off than we are, either in creature comforts, living situation, income, or all three.
On the other hand, I think measures that help the true working poor seem unlikely not to also help the struggling middle class, who seem to be slowly getting absorbed into the working poor in any case. So I think a rising tide will float all boats anyhow.
I have thought the same thing before - used to live in a house where the windows didn’t even close, calculate food budget to the cent, could feed myself dinner for 35c and would spend two hours driving for an extra hour of pay. Not there any more fortunately.
I think saying “we shouldn’t complain as others are worse” is putting thinking in the wrong direction. If you can’t enjoy your life with enough to get by then that also needs to be fixed - don’t short your own efforts and struggle.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t at all feel “we shouldn’t complain as others are worse”.
My situation is not nearly as bad as your former situation, nor that of many others. If I use the same terms to describe my situation as theirs, I feel I’m minimizing their difficulties by doing so. Yes, it would only take a couple of substantial setbacks to put us in that situation now, but that’s a very different thing than already being there.
In any case, I do think prioritizing the “working poor” is fine, and also that the “struggling middle class” are likely to be co-beneficiaries of many improvements that help the working poor if steps are taken there.
Nah, I’m good
Getting low income people to the polls is a big part of this. If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.
https://nlihc.org/resource/new-census-data-reveal-voter-turnout-disparities-2022-midterm-elections
If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.
Other way around: if a politician doesn’t care about you and people like you, you have little incentive to care about them beyond avoiding a greater evil.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes, not the job of voters to enable complacency and corruption.
While it’s of course best when everyone votes and I’ve never missed a chance myself, I can kinda understand why a lot of people don’t feel up for waiting in line for hours just to cast a vote for “not the complete monster”
While I understand the complaints, I completely disagree with your argument. We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up. They can vote third party if they choose, but if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise. The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged, and it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged. It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up, an already safe bet is more likely to win than a risky one.
We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up
Bullshit. 90%+ of all federal level politicians are much more likely to pass a bill or support an initiative if the richest and most powerful 10% but nobody else supports it than if it has majority support in the broader population. That’s the DEFINITION of top-down
if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise
That kind of attitude is exactly what caused the current situation where there’s a right wing to far right party, a literal fascist party, and at most a dozen or two center left politicians in all of Washington.
The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged
Nor do the people have any guarantee that the politician is worth waiting in November weather for several hours.
If you hired a plumber who did nothing about your clogged toilet, would you celebrate not hiring the other plumber who would have broken your pipes and kicked your dog?
Politics is work and voters are customers, NOT employees.
it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged
In other words, the miserable status quo that benefits the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up
If you completely ignore any possibility of a politician enticing voters by promising and doing good things, sure. That’s a pathetically meek mentality that enables corruption and bad performances, though.
Except the only reason those donors have that power is due to our campaign finance laws, which only exist because republicans in the SC allowed infinite money into politics with Citizens United. If we had far greater voter turnout, this would have been impossible, as that puts dems in power and they do not believe in unlimited money in politics. Will play by those rules once those rules are made, though.
The idea that the US should never become fascist is a value, likely one that you and I share. It is not some high law though. If voting voters want fascism, then fascism is what we should get. It is our responsibility as voters to prevent this.
No, voters are absolutely not customers. We are 100% employees of the greater political sphere. From regular every day voters, to volunteers running polling places and campaigns, to people standing up to run for office. It’s all, 100% on us. We cannot simply shirk our duty, otherwise our democracy will change, as was intended by the framers.
It’s the people that do not vote that enable all the corruption. Not the people that go out and make themselves heard.
I’m digging this!! 🍿
Honestly, this is the kind of down-in-the-dirt campaigning I had hoped to see from Hillary back in 2016 before she tied an apron on and tried to convince everyone she was a sweet little motherly person. You can’t be sweet and kind with someone like Trump. You need to gather up the shit he’s piling up around the place and drown his ass in it.
So if Kamala is gonna bring the pain, I’m here for it. Trump needs to be beaten bloody on the pulpit. Because bullies can never handle being bullied themselves. Especially ones as thin skinned and stupid as Trump is.
To be fair to Clinton, she did do some pain. Remember when she called many of the people who supported Trump, “deplorables”. This riled up America as if she was going too far with describing them this way. Here we are almost a decade later, and we are starting to realize that she was right.
The political landscape is far different now than it was when it was Hilary vs. Trump. Trump has done his four years, and we have now seen the damage he and his constituents have done. We see now that the republican party watched Handmaid’s Tale and agreed with the fictional government in that story. There is no hiding how deplorable some of these folks are especially with the publishing of Project 2025.
Yeah this is another example of how fucking stupid she was during that campaign. She attacked his supporters instead of him directly. The person who should have been the brunt of every single attack she could muster should have been Trump and only Trump. Instead she riled up his base and convinced a bunch of independents that she was an asshole, which she actually is but she kept unleashing her assholiness on the wrong people.
I remember watching one of the more freeform debates with her and Trump and I kept waiting for her to wreck his ass and she kept acting like some kind of stupid nicey nice person (that she most definitely isn’t). I was like, “What the fuck? Where’s the dragon lady I bought tickets to see eat Trump for lunch???”
And then as if that wasn’t all stupid as fuck, after the campaign failed and Trump got elected as president, she fucking goes out and starts blaming all the fucking left wing voters and Berniecrats for “not voting enough” even though it was her dumbass fault she lost the election. I’m a fucking Bernie voter and I pointlessly cast a ballot for her dumb ass.
So yeah fuck Hillary eternally. I hope she spits in her fucking corn flakes when Kamala wins and becomes the first woman president.
Keep it punchy, don’t waste too much time bashing Trump or else the whole campaign is about him.
Bold phrasing from The Daily Beast.
He’ll just put a big wad of gauze on his feelings until the election.
Convicted felon, rapist and racist.
Harris opted for liable of scamming, sexual abuse, and guilty of fraud on thirty-four counts instead of fraud, rape, and convicted of thirty-four felonies. Great start, but she should not shy from harsh rhetoric.
I hope they don’t pick her. She was repugnant when she had some power.
I don’t care for some of her positions, but would you care to elaborate how, or is this just some bullshit feeling stuff?
Look through their comment history… before you block them haha
Your own source disagrees with your black and white oversimplification
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official. Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.
She’s not two faced, she’s trying to make positive changes in a political climate that is biased against her. That’s far more nuanced than you claim. And far less two faced than her opponent.
I’m not arguing for Trump. I’m arguing that you could find someone better. American politics is exhausting. You have better people, like Andrew Yang, instead you give the world the better of two bad choices.
you don’t understand what it’s like to be a citizen here, you don’t live here, so maybe just shut up and listen to the ones over here in the trenches.
Your actions reverberate across the world. But not for long
Lol no, just no on yang.
She should point out, repeatedly, that the man has no financial skills at all. Keep hammering how bad he was for workers and the economy in general but still turned a tidy profit for himself. He would actually have more wealth now if he had just invested his inheritance in the S&P (according to Forbes) instead of starting all his cockamamie businesses. The man ran how many casinos into the ground? He went bankrupt in businesses where people say “the house always wins” because the odds are literally stacked in the house’s favor.
All she has to do is keep calling him weak publicly and he will fucking lose it
I don’t know. He seems to have more restraint than we think he does. I expected his head to explode during the debate when his mike was cut off.
She needs to go, repeatedly like, “I mean… He bankrupted a casino… A casino” and, “Speaking of predator, this many lied about his associations with Epstein while also flying on his private plane at least 7 times. Would you let him watch your daughter? HELL NO.”
I wouldn’t even let him watch his own daughter
