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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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I've been asking blue teamers to name the most impressive achievement attributable to Harris.

Things I've heard:

  • she's charismatic (??)

  • she's young

  • she's not trump

  • her prosecutorial record as AG is actually very progressive (this claim seems to be p-hacked to looking at drug convictions only I think)

Her prosecutorial record is astonishingly weak and it blows my mind that the Trump campaign hasn't started running huge numbers of ads showing what she did and said during that time. She was just beyond ghoulish in her decisions and I think that the sheen on her image will evaporate once that stuff gets more widely known - at the very least enthusiasm on the left will take a nosedive when they realise they're voting for the cop who wanted to keep innocent black men in jail for prison labour.

Her prosecutorial record is astonishingly weak and it blows my mind that the Trump campaign hasn't started running huge numbers of ads showing what she did and said during that time. She was just beyond ghoulish in her decisions and I think that the sheen on her image will evaporate once that stuff gets more widely known - at the very least enthusiasm on the left will take a nosedive when they realise they're voting for the cop who wanted to keep innocent black men in jail for prison labour.

Law and order appeals to the median voter, I think. Not sure that would help.

Except you don’t say “Kamala was tough on criminals.”

You say things like “Kamala fought to keep exculpatory evidence under wraps for an innocent man on death row.” That isn’t law and order; that is attempted murder!

Just "Kamala deliberately put an innocent man on death row" would be simpler. Don't complicate it with talk about evidence, the media is just going to say the claim is "without evidence" anyway.

Yep. And none of those really qualify as 'achievements' in my book.

Although in modern politics it probably makes strategic sense to avoid having your name tied to any major event or policy lest those end up going sour in retrospect.

I don't so much mind people trying to hype their candidate (although its spooky how they all pivoted on command when doing so) but c'mon at least realize what you're trying to shove down our throat.

I guess I'm just remembering that previously it was expected that the candidates for president had DONE SOMETHING demonstrably leaderlike in order to show they were up for the task of managing an entire administration. Acting as VP is usually an argument for this, but for some reason we've not been allowed to analyze her time as VP too closely.