Trump's latest idea has renewed Democratic criticism of pro-Palestinian activists who encouraged voters not to back Biden or Harris in the presidential election.
attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters.
this is inadvertently a perfect summation of the problem.
you’re framing “what position should Harris have taken on genocide in Gaza” entirely in terms of would it have gained or lost her voters.
a 1938 poll asked people in the US if they supported allowing more European Jews to move to the US. 71% said no. advance that page by two slides, a 1942 poll found 93% of Americans supported internment of Japanese immigrants, and 59% supported internment of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
opposition to genocide…is sometimes politically unpopular.
have you seen the first episode of Black Mirror, the one where the British PM gets blackmailed into fucking a pig? there’s a somewhat-minor plot point in it, that I think got overshadowed by the rest of it. the PM is getting the results of real-time polls on Twitter, and based on the poll results he’s constantly flip-flopping about whether or not he’ll fuck the pig.
Republicans have principles. they’re all bad principles, to be sure, but there are things they consistently believe in. Democrats have no principles. they’ll campaign on anything they think will get them votes.
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over, and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long. Neither of them were even close to being enough to fully reverse 50 years of fuckery, or even make much more than a sizeable dent in the problem, but they were big swings at pretty much the two biggest problems in America today, which came with quite a bit of success starting from a near-apocalyptic position. Because the media and the Democratic campaign apparatus are equally total shit, no one knows that either of those things happened. Biden focused a lot more on getting them done than on publicizing them, or working on much more visible problems like the price of eggs.
If you ask certain people, they will tell you something along the lines of “well, I didn’t hear about that, and it’s the Democrats’ job to earn my vote.”
this is inadvertently a perfect summation of the problem.
you’re framing “what position should Harris have taken on genocide in Gaza” entirely in terms of would it have gained or lost her voters.
a 1938 poll asked people in the US if they supported allowing more European Jews to move to the US. 71% said no. advance that page by two slides, a 1942 poll found 93% of Americans supported internment of Japanese immigrants, and 59% supported internment of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
opposition to genocide…is sometimes politically unpopular.
have you seen the first episode of Black Mirror, the one where the British PM gets blackmailed into fucking a pig? there’s a somewhat-minor plot point in it, that I think got overshadowed by the rest of it. the PM is getting the results of real-time polls on Twitter, and based on the poll results he’s constantly flip-flopping about whether or not he’ll fuck the pig.
Republicans have principles. they’re all bad principles, to be sure, but there are things they consistently believe in. Democrats have no principles. they’ll campaign on anything they think will get them votes.
Republicans are anti-abortion. Democrats are pro-choice…except when they campaign for anti-abortion Democrats
Republicans are anti-immigrant. Democrats are pro-immigrant…except when they try to campaign on “border security” out of a misplaced belief that they’ll win over “moderate” xenophobes"
Republicans are in favor of big business fucking over regular people. Democrats defend regular people…except when someone like FTC Chair Lina Khan goes after businesses connected with Democratic party donors
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over, and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long. Neither of them were even close to being enough to fully reverse 50 years of fuckery, or even make much more than a sizeable dent in the problem, but they were big swings at pretty much the two biggest problems in America today, which came with quite a bit of success starting from a near-apocalyptic position. Because the media and the Democratic campaign apparatus are equally total shit, no one knows that either of those things happened. Biden focused a lot more on getting them done than on publicizing them, or working on much more visible problems like the price of eggs.
If you ask certain people, they will tell you something along the lines of “well, I didn’t hear about that, and it’s the Democrats’ job to earn my vote.”