The former US vice-president made her strongest suggestion to date she will make another bid for the White House

cheer

    • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      34·
      5 days ago

      I don’t how even DNC ghouls don’t realize she’s a charisma void. She always looks uncomfortable on camera, laughs at weird times, everything she says comes off super scripted (probably because it was scripted by a commit of DNC ghouls).

      You think the DNC could find a normie neoliberal who at least had some personality, I mean fuck you guys managed to find Obama, there has to be another Obama out there.

      • JohnBrownsBawdy [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        22·
        5 days ago

        At this point the only way to understand how the DNC weirdos work is to imagine that the Habsburg family had maintained power while enthusiastically inbreeding over the last 300 years and continue to stridently believe that they are attractive and likable.

        • huf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          9·
          5 days ago

          i dont think all of them know. i think a lot of them are anticommunists so hard that they’re structurally incapable of seeing what’s happening. like, i dont think most of them are cackling behind closed doors, saying “haha, now is the time of fascism, unleash the beast, make the working class pay! class solidarity above even the needs of the empire!”

          they’re still effective at countering any actual leftward shift, so they’re still a capable organization. but i think the rank and file really dont see that they look like they’re trying to lose elections. the behavior is just built into the party.

  • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    78·
    5 days ago

    My turn on the lathe

    Trump loopholes the 22nd amendment to run for a third term. Barfsack OCrumbo runs for a third term under the same loophole.

    Trump beats Obama

    Thank you for coming to my ted talk

    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      64·
      5 days ago

      Obama would trounce Trump. Kamala was uniquely uncharismatic and the VP of an extremely unpopular, dementia-riddled, enthusiastically genocidal president while loudly proclaiming that she was not going to do anything different if she were elected. Obama is a charismatic guy and he’s smart enough to lie about doing things differently. He’s also a man, which helps. I feel like people overestimate Trump’s popularity because he narrowly beat two of the worst candidates of all time. Hillary Clinton is uniquely reviled and Kamala Harris is completely incompetent. Trump would’ve lost against 2020 Biden and he would get absolutely stomped by Obama, an actually popular Democrat.

      Even Harris would’ve probably won, despite her awful policies and political instincts, had any of the following things been true:

      1. No ongoing genocide in Gaza

      2. Biden drops out earlier and lets her run a full campaign without sabotaging her

      3. Kamala is either male and/or white

      4. The Harris campaign doesn’t muzzle Tim Walz

      This is not to excuse Harris in any way, the point is just that Trump is unpopular and any milquetoast neoliberal centrist could probably beat him. It’s just that his opponents so far have been a man with his brain leaking out of his ears, an unelected emergency backup on Xanax and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

      • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        24·
        5 days ago

        There really was a lot of positive energy when she picked Walz. He did kinda shit himself in the debate with Vance but Vance was pretty bad too. I actually think if they let Walz be Walz and also promised to end the genocide in Gaza, Kamala would have won. But I think she was really threatened by Walz taking over the spotlight more than anything, so they shut him up quick.

        I cannot fathom though, why she clung so closely to Biden. Reading those clips from her book, she sounded like she basically let him bully her around. My best guess is that she’s really that spineless, but also her and most high level dems genuinely refused to believe that Biden was as unpopular as he was. Crossing him would have made her more popular, even with Dem voters.

        • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          5 days ago

          There was a lot of positive energy during the few days that they were letting Waltz actually speak his mind. Then the Democrat consultant vampires got to him, and they focus tested all his opinions into oblivion. His debate performance was a reflection of that–they had gotten him to shift to the “they go low, we go high (and also everything is going great in America)” conciliatory language they love, and he looked like a fucking idiot being nice to Vance. It’s astounding that they keep listening to the exact same “strategists” who repeatedly lose elections for them.

      • redchert@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        20·
        5 days ago

        Kamala would have won if she lied and said she would give Americans a bigger stimulus check than trump did.

        Besides Hillary lost not due to the popular vote but due to the electoral system.

          • redchert@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            11·
            5 days ago

            Hillary got a boost from the browbeating of more leftists Americans by libs, which is like the common tactic now. But still Trump was never that popular, especially not with the working class which continues to be disenfranchised, subaltern in case of the reservations and newer colonial territories or entirely “checked out”.

        • LangleyDominos [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          5 days ago

          If I may borrow a lesson from a particular thought-leader: we exist within the context of all that came before us. Obama was the charismatic guy after 8 years of Bush. He was the guy who gave capital everything it could have wanted during a historical financial crisis while also doing the PR for the bailouts. He also handed the medical insurance industry a huge win while pushing the US to produce record amounts of oil during the inflection of climate change.

          The world is now different. I am not so sure his tricks could work again. Mainly because his tricks have led to resentment and political reorganization that would oppose him at every turn. He’s simply not smart enough to reinvent himself to fit this moment. People shit on Bush and gave Obama a lot of credit for being clever but he’s not really any better. His best role in the current era is reality TV and being a guy who makes phone calls. He’s a reverse Trump.

          • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            5 days ago

            That’s precisely what I mean. We live in the aftermath of Obama’s broken promises, Occupy Wall Street crackdowns, and saying things like “If I was a republican, I’d be a reaganite”. Folks don’t want that. He would also face very tough questions about being absent during these turbulent times.

    • CthulhusIntern [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      20·
      5 days ago

      Obama beats Trump.

      Supreme Court rules in 6-3 decision that it’s illegal for Obama to have a third term, but it is legal for Trump, because “Fuck you, that’s why”. Trump is president.

  • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.mlEnglish
    31·
    5 days ago

    Please don’t Kamala. You contributed in no small part to the genocide in Gaza, had no plan for sweeping change to Campaign Finance Laws, caved to Anti-Immigration sentiments on the right, played footsie with Cheney, not to mention all that shit with catering to cops while you were a lawyer, and…

    Look, we have short attention spans sure, but we also can look up your track record and it’s not looking too good. Go fucking home Kamala, it’s better than you deserve.

    EDIT: wording.

    • SmithrunHills [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      41·
      5 days ago

      Now that they’ve realized the Trump administration isn’t doing anything to actually target them personally and instead focusing on people with actual moral convictions and a backbone, like Pro-Palestine protestors or, god forbid, actual fucking leftists, and also other targeted minorities like Hispanics and trans people(whom they also don’t care for), they can feign collective amnesia over their “Trump is going to remove elections!” fearmongering and continue batting for the blue fascist like they usually do.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
      15·
      5 days ago

      The redistricting vote rigging they’re doing implies there will be some kind of farcical election where we all pretend our votes count.

  • Sasuke [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    5 days ago

    She’s a great candidate and I loved what she said about the coconut trees, but I’m voting for the cancer in Biden’s prostate this time

  • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    26·
    6 days ago

    Former US Vice-President Kamala Harris has told the BBC she may run again for the White House.

    In her first UK interview, Harris said she would “possibly” be president one day and was confident there will be a woman in the White House in future.

    Making her strongest suggestion to date that she will make another presidential bid in 2028 after losing to Donald Trump last year, Harris dismissed polls that put her as an outsider to become the Democrats’ pick for the next election.

    Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Harris also turned her fire on her former rival, branding Trump a “tyrant”, and said warnings she made about him on the campaign trail had been proved right.

    As the Democratic party searches for answers about Republican Donald Trump’s decisive victory one year ago, much of the blame has been directed at former President Joe Biden for not standing down sooner.

    But there have also been questions raised about whether Harris could have run a better campaign and set out a clearer message on the number one issue, the economy.

    In the BBC interview Harris entertained the prospect of another run at the White House, saying her grandnieces would, “in their lifetime, for sure”, see a female president.

    Asked if it would be her, she said, “possibly”, confirming she is considering another run at the top job.

    Harris said she had not yet made a decision, but underlined that she still sees herself as having a future in politics.

    “I am not done,” the former vice-president said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.”

    Responding to odds that place her as an outsider to win a place on the Democratic ticket - even behind Hollywood actor Dwayne the Rock Johnson - she said she never listened to polls.

    “If I listened to polls I would have not run for my first office, or my second office - and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.”

    Harris also said she believed predictions she made about Donald Trump behaving as a fascist and running an authoritarian government had come true.

    “He said he would weaponise the Department of Justice - and he has done exactly that.”

    She pointed to the suspension of late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel by ABC after he made a joke about Republican reaction to the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

    His removal from the airwaves, celebrated by Trump, came after the Trump-appointed regulator threatened Kimmel’s broadcasters.

    “You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponised, for example, federal agencies going around after political satirists… His skin is so thin he couldn’t endure criticism from a joke, and attempted to shut down an entire media organisation in the process.”

    Harris also slammed business leaders and institutions in America who have, in her view, too easily bowed to the president’s demands.

    “There are many… that have capitulated since day one, who are bending the knee at the foot of a tyrant, I believe for many reasons, including they want to be next to power, because they want to perhaps have a merger approved or avoid an investigation.”

    The White House was dismissive when asked for a response to Harris’s comments about the president.

    “When Kamala Harris lost the election in a landslide, she should’ve taken the hint - the American people don’t care about her absurd lies,” said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.

    “Or maybe she did take the hint and that’s why she’s continuing to air her grievances to foreign publications.”

    Harris has just published her account of her rollercoaster campaign, 107 Days, the time that was left to her to run for the presidency after Biden withdrew from the race following months of speculation about his mental acuity.

    In our full interview with the former vice-president, to be broadcast in the UK on Sunday at 09:00 GMT (05:00 EST), I pressed Harris several times on whether she ought to have urged Biden to make way for her sooner.

    How much did she really know about his health? And a question that may haunt her - whether she would be president now, not Donald Trump, if Biden had withdrawn earlier?

    The answer is plainly, unknowable - the great “if” that could have changed the fate of America.

    Among the Democratic soul-searching, Harris’ candidacy is often disparaged, her weaknesses as a leader pinpointed as the reasons for her defeat, not just the last-minute nature of Biden’s decision.

    When questioned about what went wrong, rather than plunge into deep analysis, her contention is because she started so late, it was almost impossible to win.

    very-smart

    But having sat down with the Californian former prosecutor in the gilded surroundings of a luxury London hotel - rather than the increasingly golden surroundings of the Oval Office as Donald Trump glitzes up the decor - the possibility of power is something she is not willing to leave behind.

    Previous hints of her future presidential ambition seemed coy, non-committal - “maybe, maybe not”, or “I’m not focusing on that right now”.

    Her candour in our conversation was more striking. She was quick, eager even, to put herself in the frame for another tilt at power. But she stopped short of making any concrete commitment.

    That may be surprising given the thoroughly bruising nature of a defeat she has described as traumatising. She and her team were devastated by the defeat, which came as a surprise to them.

    “My god, my god, what will happen to our country?” Harris says she repeated when the result came through.

    speed-dont-laugh

    Her attempt to explain it focuses on how narrow the gap in actual votes was between her and Trump.

    The popular vote was, indeed, very tight, with less than 2% in it. However, Harris was trounced by Trump in the all-important electoral college, where each state has a certain number of votes that tally up.

    Harris was willing to drop heavy hints about her own future. But there’s less willingness from her, or frankly any other senior Democrats, grappling with their party’s long-term dilemmas.

    How does a centre-left party with mainstream leaders take on a right-wing populist leader? Is the answer to focus on Trump? Or is it to argue more forcefully for Main Street?

    When I challenged the former vice-president on why her campaign did not better connect with working people, she said she needed more time to do that, and pointed to a longstanding drift away from her party among that group.

    pooh-wtf

    She regrets she didn’t have long enough in 2024 to make her own pitch on bread- and-butter issues like housing, or childcare.

    But if she had longer next time round, it’s far from guaranteed her arguments would be more compelling, or more gladly received.

    Kamala Harris still travels with the trappings of an entourage. Aides anxiously watch the clock as her every minute is planned with military precision. Non-stop travel, choreographed events in different capitals, a tiny number of carefully planned TV interviews.

    This time, Harris is on the move for a book tour, not a presidential race. But maybe, if she has her way, this is the start of another campaign after all.