On Monday, Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee began running new attack ads in Pennsylvania. That in itself is not noteworthy. Early voting has already begun, and the Keystone State has emerged as the election’s most hotly contested battleground. Both sides are throwing a lot of attack ads.
But surprisingly, this ad is not directed at Republican candidate Donald Trump. It currently targets Jill Stein of the Green Party, who has about 1% of the vote. The ad shows Stein transforming into Trump, while a voiceover warns, “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”
Neither Barack Obama nor the Hillary Clinton campaign ran attack ads against Stein, even though the 2012 and 2016 campaigns drew comparable support. Joe Biden also did not attack Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins in 2020.
Harris seems to be adopting new strategies of gimmicks every day, from embracing cryptocurrencies to announcing that she will implement all of her policies as president through a bipartisan advisory council. She throws everything against the wall and wants something, anything, to put her on the edge.
But Harris doesn’t seem to want to try. She won’t embrace the kind of anti-war sentiment and economic populism that may appeal to many current unenthusiastic voters but infuriate the democratic establishment and donor class.
It’s true that in a sufficiently tight election, Pennsylvania’s Stein vote could exceed Trump’s margin of victory. But those voting for Stein in swing states are almost certainly aware of this possibility. Perhaps they have already been repeatedly scolded about it by liberal acquaintances. The average Stein voter is very aware of the “spoiler effect” and chooses to vote for a third party anyway. Like it or not, they took that into account in their decision.
If Democrats want to reduce this problem going forward, they can choose to put their energies into promoting reforms like ranked voting and building on existing choice alternatives. Evil for doing both and allowing voters to prevent greater victories from winning. This is probably a more effective solution than shaming the most difficult core of anti-establishment voters for being the only people planning to vote for Stein.
Failing that, if the Harris campaign wants to appeal to those voters, and even better, if it can appeal to so many disillusioned Democrats to increase their enthusiasm and turnout, they will have to make a real may engage in political persuasion.
For example, Harris could vow to end the flow of US arms going to Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza. This is an issue that incites many voters who may understandably pull the lever for Democrats. It’s not hard for Harris to justify this change in position. She watched as the IDF literally burned patients in hospitals last weekend, or when Netanyahu shut off all humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and “starved” Hamas fighters. You could say she realized when she saw that her conscience no longer allowed her to support the war.
To be even more convincing, she was able to fold this into a broader agenda for domestic reform. Currently, the United States devotes an obscene share of its resources to maintaining an imperial military force that spans the globe. . At the same time, we maintain a small and miserable welfare state. Diabetics don’t grow their gofundmes high enough to cover insulin and people die because they stay in bad jobs or bad marriages to keep health insurance. Low-wage workers in industries like fast food are told that if they want to make a living, they need to go back to school and get a college degree, but college is astronomically expensive, so this advice Receivables can lead to unavoidable debt.
A truly populist policy agenda would unite the two halves of this picture, the military-industrial complex, and the military-industrial complex in order to free up funding for a variety of initiatives that would significantly improve the lives of working-class Americans. pledge to reduce the size of
When Biden ended his candidacy in July, grassroots Democrats called ec. I thought they were confident they would defeat Trump because Biden’s cognitive decline was no longer an issue. However, this was too soon. Trump and J.D. Vance were leaning into ugly, shallow pseudo-popularity. Being able to draw sentences together wasn’t enough to keep the GOP in check. The content of these sentences is also important. Harris’ words may be consistent, but they lack political vision. It’s the missed opportunities that are likely to hurt her in the polls.
There was a time when Sen. Harris was a cosponsor of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill. But instead of dusting off the position and fighting for it this year, she quietly walked away from it and distanced herself from various past stances. “Guaranteed jobs at family-supporting wages” for all Americans wanted.
Now it seems Harris was only wearing progressive outfits to see what she did for her political career. No matter how disingenuous, she could have donned it again for this election, perhaps to great effect. Instead, she’s staying away from politics to seem low-key and untouchable enough to absorb the glittering anti-Trump sentiment that will be present in November.
Harris’ choice to tap Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate seemed to point in a promising direction. Waltz has a solid record of social democratic policy accomplishments in his homeland, and he is an effective speaker. But judging by the amount of attention Harris’ campaign is giving both figures, voters who are only paying half as much attention as they were paying last month are likely to find that Harris’ running mate never paid Trump Republican Liz Cheney. We might be forgiven for assuming that.
In a moment of political clarity in August, Harris pledged to go after corporate pricing. Unfortunately, her campaign hasn’t emphasized the idea since. Much of her energy will instead appear in “Party Over the Country,” a partisan that may be convinced to oppose President Trump in the fall of 2024, nine years after launching his first campaign. Appealed to the elusive category of Republicans.
Now that it’s clear that Dick Cheney will be voting for Harris, Harris Surrogates continue to cheerfully call out “Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney,” showing what the broad coalition supports them with. But those of us who cherish Bernie’s legacy can’t help but drop our mouths a little every time we hear his name paired with one of the most notorious war criminals of the 21st century. . Fight against unified facilities.
The election was close enough that Harris could stumble across the finish line in November and become president in January. Something strange happened. But for now, the picture is dark. For example, a collection of polls shows Trump defeating Trump by about one-sixth of a percentage point in Pennsylvania, and enjoys similarly razor-thin margins in other swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Other sources take Trump a little further. This certainly wasn’t where Harris wanted to be in October, considering the former president had topped the polls in both previous eras he ran.
Her campaign, on the other hand, is a menagerie of niche and apolitical ideas that evoke novelty without threatening those in power, such as expressing support for cryptocurrencies and the weed industry. It’s strange and empty politics that is hardly politics at all, so trying to stake out political territory that might make her enemies in high places is profound.
Maybe dumb luck will carry Harris to a narrow victory this November. But don’t be surprised if the “party country” falls flat. In that case, we will all have a chance to see what will happen to the country in less than four years of Donald Trump.
