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Why is Kamala Harris being held at such a higher standard than Trump this election?

It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.

Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.

Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.

Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, that is true. Unfortunately, as I see it, this tragedy once again reinforces my belief that many humans can be so stupid and ideologically blinded that they forego any rationality and connection to reality. No rational person could ever want Trump to be their candidate unless they had something to gain from it. Almost no one has anything to gain from a potential second term except some schemers and ultra rich.

This seems to be an inherent flaw in present-day democracies. I am from Germany, and we are experiencing the same thing with an alt-right party that is set to win the most votes in the 2025 election, with an ultra conservative party likely being second (or maybe their positions will be flipped, it does not matter effectively). Germany, just like the U.S., is on the cusp of losing freedom and democracy. And once it’s gone, it will be a hard fight to get it back.

Anyway, for future attempts at democracies, I think we need even stronger constitutions that make such stances and policies like the ones from the Republican party illegal, and we need institutions that are willing to enforce such constitutions. Furthermore, rigorous civic education should be implemented so that the populace becomes less susceptible to populism. Finally, in order to qualify for the privilege to vote, would-be voters should pass some kind of (equity-compatible) test every election year that assesses whether they still possess critical and rational thinking capabilities.

But I imagine that the most effective measure would be to treat conservatism and related ideologies the way that fascism / national socialism is treated in Germany. Exclude radical conservative and nazi opinions from the right to freedom of expression and make advocation for them punishable. Furthermore, outlaw all political parties along those ideological lines.

These measures are not pretty, but as it stands today, much of the votership in Western democracies is just not qualified for partaking in national elections.

mlg , (edited )
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

It’s because she wasn’t a major contestant in the 2016 primary because people voted for better candidates. Also, she seems to be a 1:1 copy paste of Biden, which isn’t good because people didn’t like Biden half assing his promises in office and giving republicans an easy time making a counter campaign.

On top of that she basically told the uncommitted group to get bent, so that gives Trump more voter leverage similar to how he beat Hillary.

Biden was met with the same voter response because he was voted in explicitly to remove Trump. Otherwise he’s known as being Obama’s VP, of which even Obama said that he should retire afterwards because he was a centrist.

It’s the same deal as 2016, where the DNC thinks campaigning on “lesser evil” is a viable strategy in order to retain their lobby money. If the RNC actually had more than two brain cells, they could easily win this election by having their candidates not act like insane asylum criminals.

Rhaedas ,

I do agree that if Republicans ran different candidates, ones that had any semblance of ideas (even bad ones) instead of the tired personal attacks, they'd be formidable. They've dug themselves into a hole with the MAGA movement, even worse than they did with the Tea Party, and they seem committed to ride this one all the way off the cliff. This really is Harris' election to lose, and that seems to be a repeated pattern, which says a lot about the DNC. If they'd try to appeal more to the progressive side and stop trying to keep the centralists, I wonder if it would be a more of a sweep from people seeing something different finally.

TokenBoomer ,

The media has to maintain the charade of democracy.

Guy_Fieris_Hair ,

You must be young. Because Republicans will vote for a criminal before they vote for “communism”. Because the Republicans attempt to destroy the educational system to keep people dumb enough to vote for them has worked. Because dispite the corporate media pandering and acting like they want Harris Because that’s what their viewers want, their billionaire owners don’t. They want the republican led centrist enabled tax breaks on their money. Harris has also brought in the progressives which have zero tolerance for the centrist mindset. She is in a situation where she has to dance a dance of trying to reel in the progressives even though they are going to throw a fit when she panders to the centrists and the corporate overlords.

The system is made and controlled by the billionaires. No hard progressive that doesn’t play the game a little is going to get elected… right now. They will destroy anyone that threatens their billions. Everytime she goes a little too hard left they throw a fit.

Welcome to end stage capitalism.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

No hard progressive that doesn’t play the game a little is going to get elected…

Poor Bernie…

Angry_Autist ,

I still Bern myself, though at least Harris’s votes have aligned with Bernie’s more than any other congressman.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

I still wonder where we would be if he won in 2016

Angry_Autist ,

That’s a suffering trap because we all know 1) how good it would have been, and 2) A true progressive will never be allowed the nomination as long as the DNC exists in its current form.

Better to use that time to figure out what up and coming politicians have Bernie’s heart for when the future sentiment shifts.

carl_dungeon ,

What standard is trump being held to again?

Janoose ,

Exactly, the NYT claimed that mass deportations and Trump taxes will help solve the housing crisis.

There absolutely no standards for Trump; the MSM have lost their damned minds.

BaldManGoomba ,

Firstly Republicans have their guy so they are just going to pick at any weakness.

Second, all news media has consolidated and is owned by right wing rich fuckers. There is a wealth tax proposal and the ftc is super strong right now. So rich people are being cry babies

Third, there is a genocide happening right now with bullets paid for and made with USAs stamp on it. People are super critical against it

Fourth, left wing people always want better so you got to do something to succeed and if you do something we want you to do better since politician rarely go far enough. All the right wing people need to do to succeed is to obstruct and do nothing.

Fifth, Democrats are courting the middle. With the military policy, fracking, border wall, immigration and the tough on crime rhetoric Kamala sounds like a moderate Republican from 8-10 years ago. Leftists have no choice but to vote Harris or we run the chance of having Trump. While some of may vote third party because Harris doesn’t go far enough if we do that in battle ground states we will be blamed again and we are strongly discouraging that. So the only voter base Kamala can pick up is republican never Trumpers and people in the middle and independents. Kamala’s rhetoric reflects that.

Lastly Kamala is really untested. She has flip flopped and people hate that and hypocrisy. They can’t push Trump nor give him more attention so they push Kamala. She lost her last presidential run really badly dropping out before the primaries. She only had one term as senator in a very safe district to get elected in as a democrat. As an Attorney General she ran 2 elections and only served 1.5 terms. Her district attorney stuff has been her best and most notable thing followed by her AG stint. But DA and AG stuff isn’t the same policy stuff as a politician. As senator she only passed one law having lots of words about other stuff though

WoahWoah , (edited )

Because Harris’s supporters have standards.

One thing particular to Trump is the percentage of his supporters in polling that support him no matter what. Trump has maintained some of the most sustained, consistent support of any modern political candidate. His base polling numbers basically haven’t moved in like 10 years.

Trying to have his VP executed, injecting bleach, porn stars, felonies, treason, domestic use of military, anti-veteran sentiment, belittling the disabled, racist comments, sexist comments, sexual assault, etc., etc., etc. None of that meaningfully moved the needle.

You are not going to “get” Trump on anything like that. If you want him to lose support, he needs to be seen as weak, ineffective, and laughable in the eyes of his supporters. None of the above does that, because that isn’t what Trump supporters care about. They care about hurting people they don’t like or see as lesser-than. If Trump stops doing that effectively, he will lose support. But, frankly, he’s really good at it.

jonne ,

Yep, do we want to have 2 parties where the candidate isn’t accountable to viewers, or just the 1?

RememberTheApollo_ ,

I don’t think it’s that Harris is being held to a higher standard, it’s that trump is being held to virtually no standard.

The people supporting trump have no standard either except for “beat the other team, even if for no other reason than to piss them off.” They don’t care if the world goes up in flames as long as it fucks over a lib.

Maggoty ,

Because Trump’s base does not care and Harris’ base does. It’s really that simple.

ChonkyOwlbear ,

Can you imagine a woman or a black man (let alone a black woman) running for president while being three-times divorced with kids from multiple partners and having cheated multiple times on top of that? Even if they were rich like Trump, it would never fly.

transientpunk ,
@transientpunk@sh.itjust.works avatar

You forgot to add convicted felon

BadmanDan OP ,

Obama’s political career would’ve ended the second “grab em by the p****” got leaked.

Feathercrown ,

People really really want to root for their side. If a comparison can be made in the slightest that your side is also doing something right, or that the other side is also doing something wrong, they can twist their viewpoint to see both sides as equals. You have to be flawless to prevent this. Your worst has to be better than their best.

HobbitFoot ,

I feel like a lot of people on Trump’s side don’t care and all of his issues have been documented in the press. If people cared, he wouldn’t be this close.

You also have enough people left of Harris who don’t want to hold their collective noses and vote for her. They’ll complain about the Overton window shifting right, but won’t be a bulwark for keeping it from shifting right. Hell, there are people on Lemmy complaining about political utilitarianism as a reason for voting for Harris and will even complain about Bernie if he says something being done by the Biden administration is good.

acosmichippo ,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

it’s so frustrating. I admit I used to vote green, but the entry of Trump opened my eyes. Things like judge appointments, incremental advances in fighting climate change, and NOT having a seditionist as president are all issues we can’t afford to lose on in the next 4 years just for some rhetorical vote for the Green Party.

in a perfect world we’d have ranked choice voting, but we aren’t in that world.

distantsounds ,

Demand ranked choice voting and make sure you are doing so locally

snausagesinablanket ,
@snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world avatar

Because 95% of GOP members have the IQ of a starfish.

swordgeek ,

She is female.
She is black.
She is strong.
She is not a puppet.

She is EVERYTHING that the power structure fears, because she will be hard to control, and likely cost them a lot of money and power.

distantsounds ,

You really should have stopped before

She is not a puppet

breetai ,

The president isn’t in charge of COVID. States are in charge of COVID. Pandemics are handled by the states with help from the federal government. BLM protest are once again state issues. I’m not sure why so many Americans don’t understand how the government is run. Presidents are not dictators. They are limited by the constitution and laws.

No why is the split so close? Harris isn’t a good candidate. She’s wildly unpopular and has been for years. He policies are horrible and the average American doesn’t want them. They are the opposite of what Americans want.

Biden has always been fairly unpopular. I’ve always thought the guy was an idiot but he isn’t far left. He fairly moderate to Leaning a little right.

We also have a large red/blue divide in this country and presidents are picked by the EC.

Trump is a horrible candidate but things ran well when he was in office. People will remember that.

The short version is we are running two awful candidates and that’s why the elections are close.

BadmanDan OP ,

Idk about that, several polls are showing Dem enthusiasm around 75-85%. That’s way more than Biden earlier this year. Harris’ base seems to like her.

breetai ,

They’re just excited the person isn’t half dead.

She wasn’t able to get a nomination through the standard channels. They had to put her in the back because they felt she was damaging Biden approval ratings.

He approval rate is low.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/…/kamala-harris/

More people disprove than approve.

I proudly voted for Obama Kamala is not Obama. She’s not Clinton. Hell she’s not even a Joe Biden.

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