Summary
Kamala Harris’s political skills have transformed a potentially disastrous 2024 presidential election into a competitive race.
Despite initial skepticism and a challenging campaign, Harris has improved her public image and closed the gap with Trump on key issues. Since Biden stepped aside in July and endorsed her, she has shifted from an unpopular vice president to a viable candidate, even matching Trump in polls on economic issues.
Her leadership has given Democrats a chance to prevent a Trump landslide and halt the rise of American authoritarianism.
It’s also a depressing statement about the state of the Democratic Party, as it is more interested in being just a hair to the left of Reagan rather than offer up major truly progressive policies that would cost the Wall-Street class anything significant… and it thinks that’s sufficient to boost enthusiasm for the candidate.
This is fucking insane and is literally how we get the ratchet effect that further emboldens autocrats, fascists, demagogues, etc.
People can’t fucking afford rent or housing, their jobs aren’t paying enough to cover the basics. Healthcare is completely broken save for the absolute baseline of “covering pre-existing conditions.” College is essentially a dice roll for whether or not you’ll land a job that doesn’t pay enough to pay back your loans, or just be added to the pile of qualified candidates who will never make it past the “A.I.” resume-scanning bot.
Billionaires are literally announcing their federal law-breaking plans to pay people to vote for the fascist who OPENLY talks of using the military on his political enemies… and the big policy proposals making headlines are “$50K loans for 1st time small business owners wanting to start a company?!” Are we fucking serious right now?
Harris is NOT a good candidate. She’s better than Clinton (partially due to the unfair “demonization” of Hill-dawg for decades… but also because the Clintons are narcissistic neoliberal idiots) AND better than the incoherent jello-brained 150-year old pile of sentient bones who insists we keep green-lighting shipping weapons to the guy who wants to glass countless innocents in the name of “killing terrorists”… but someone like Sanders or AOC or Warren or even just Walz himself would be wiping the floor with Trump… because they would be addressing the concerns that gave the demagogues something to scapegoat for to begin with.
And herein is your problem. The Wall-Street class is the most influential voting bloc in America. If you don’t bow to them, you don’t even make it onto the ballot, let alone into the oval office. The only way it is possible to get around this, in modern America, would be if you acted like you were going to play ball with Wall Street up until you’re sworn into office, and then pull the most epic bait and switch of all time on them.
To be clear, I don’t expect this from Harris. But if she were going to do it, exactly what she’s doing now would be the way you accomplish that. Let the megadonors believe that you’re on their side until you reach a point where they can’t stop you.
I am all but praying that Harris is pulling a bait and switch on Wall Street. It’s the only way I see fascism being actually stopped, instead of merely delayed or slowed by 4-8 years.