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Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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They’re trying to reach conservatives that don’t support Trump.
They're alienating people who hate Reagan.
Are they? The campaign is not speaking in support of the Reagan administration. Harris is supported by the former administration over a corrupt and narcissistic megalomaniac.
Personally, I don’t see this as anything other than validation that Trump is that bad.
If you get endorsed by Hitler it reflects pretty badly on you.
Putin endorsed Biden, and now Harris. Do you honestly think that he wants Democrats in charge during his invasion of Ukraine? Politics is a game.
Right, his endorsement doesn't help. That's my point? Liberals shouldn't be cheering because Reaganites endorsed Harris.
Who said Liberals were cheering? This is aimed at disenfranchised conservatives.
"disenfranchised conservatives" he says
I live in NY. It’s a blue state with ~3M Republicans. Most of the ones I know are only in it for financial reasons (large portfolios, business owners, etc.). They voted for Trump in his first term, and are very reluctant to vote for him again. There are more of them than you think.
that is not what "disenfranchised" means at all. These people are business owners with large portfolios?? They are objectively some of the most enfranchised people in the country. They're literally sitting on their thumbs in their bathtubs of money deciding which genocidaire would be better for their wallets? How is this a disenfranchised population? This is objectively the opposite. Fuck them.
Anyone catering to these very enfranchised sociopaths for votes, rather than to (and while actively repressing and brow-beating) those who are demanding an end to the bipartisan US-financed and US-armed genocide in Palestine, and rather than to the huge portion of actual left-wing voters and poor working class voters who are moving to 3rd parties or among the 35-50% who have stopped voting because of how actually disenfranchised and abandoned by this imperialist-corporate-conglomerate pretending to be two different parties they are
anyone catering to the former group instead of the latter two groups is my enemy
Do you think conservatives read The Guardian? This is for internal consumption, to make liberals think "wow even Reaganites are on our side, we must be doing something right!"
So you’re critical of The Guardian then? Do you believe they should have left that story out based on their reader demographic?
No one said that. maybe they should have been crtitical of her not disavoying it
The liberals cheering is what told me the liberals where cheering. I mean ... Haris even gloated that Ronald Reagon himself would vote for her.
as for disenfranchised conservitives, this is a group that does not exist, like both halvs of the uniparty pander to the conservitive.
I read it as the neoliberal warhawks are enthusiastic about a more level-headed maintainer of Empire who has promised the most lethal military in the world and to always support Israel.
Believe it or not, the President does more than determine support for Israel.
Yep, but the part that specifically draws the Reaganite fascists to Kamala is her promise to maintain the most lethal military in the world. Forever wars and endless profits for the MIC, endless support for Imperialism.
Having read about Hitler's meeting with the military heads that line was bonechilling when she said it
What are they going to do about it?
Please say campaign for electoral reform in their respective states.
why though? there is a large untapped market to the left of the Democrats, that they constantly ignore instead focusing on trying to just BE the republicans and take the fictional moderate.
In reality here everyone in that space has decided, and is not going to be swayed a large majority of them are with trump, They should move back to ATLEAST new deal politics but expand it to all not just white americans, that will both re-expand there voting window and allow for a diferentiated base
Taking one vote from another candidate is worth two votes from someone who is not voting, or who is voting for a non-viable third party.
I know plenty of people who wanted to vote for Kennedy but will probably vote for Trump now that he’s out. This group is likely to listen to former Reagan staffers and republican presidents that they liked.
except the slice of the pie being argued over is so small now, you have to get the group of people who vote republican, but are willing to conseve of voting for the democrat, and then pull them off ...
the math does not add up when to the left of democrats there is a large untapped market, you can see some of this by the lesser evilism argumentation, that there are people once agian near the drop off point of being able to approve of the democratic canidate. Even one step to the left would open up a large amount of voters back up, aswell as father sure up and engage the base, allowing for a more energetic and larger voter turnout.
also agian... the staffers and cheney should be enough given no denouncement or rejection of the endorsement to get anyone who was alive during those times who was opposed to them to keep from supporting harris, or atleast question the suport
The issue with appealing to the left is how fractured it is. Various factions will say whatever policies are presented are not left enough, and still refuse to vote. It’s hard to predict from the campaign’s perspective. Whereas they are unlikely to lose votes from obtaining the support of conservatives while possibly pulling votes from the other side.
I mean thats bullshit, because they are being told move left, and they are saying "well we dont know how left so we are going to move right vote for us your your terrible" that is not the way to handle this. You start to move left and you will gain more voters, and if you keep moving you will find the point that satifies most of them.
You are very likely to lose votes by doing this, see the decreased voter turn out, and the varuable voter turn out, you are losing people as they stop approving of you, and the likelyhood of you gaining new voters shrinks as you chace a narrower and narrower market
You are talking about long term consequences. Like capitalists who only look to the current quarter’s profits, politicians only look to the current election.
A smaller voter base is easier to appeal to. Both parties have relatively small voter bases and no competition because of the first past the post system and the electoral college.
because their interests don't allow it. Their donors and the people they work for, recruit from, and get hired by after leaving office, are all the billionaire imperialists that benefit from exactly what the democrats are doing and have been. It's in the base structure of the democrat party. A lot of times these capitalists donate to the democrats, then vote republican. Both parties work for the same class of capitalist imperialists in whose interest they are so entrenched, they literally can't do anything else but fly to the right and become more and more indistinguishable from each other as they both compete for who can be better at committing genocide and who can be more fascist on immigration and the border concentration camps and also militarily and operationally abroad
The only way to break the duopoly is to throw weight behind a 3rd party (the further left the better, PSL or greens if you're a liberal or your state is strong for it and you like that idea), which would starve the democrats of the margin they need to ever get power, and force a reorientation where the ruling class would have to float a reformist "labor" party to keep people from further radicalizing and flooding to the socialists away from the open-fanged republicans, who would remain as the only real political force when the mouth-closed-smiling but just-as-fanged democrats, entrenched in their position, can no longer cruise-control on "not being the republicans." Which they already are in most ways, and in the ways they wear a mask of not being they're totally feckless and actively capitulate in order to drum up more fear about the republicans to scare people into voting for them without doing anything to earn those votes (Obama had both houses of congress. He could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights protections into law then and there. He didn't. He also gave away a supreme court seat. And Biden has not only not forcefully pushed to expand and pack the courts, but has actively denounced the idea as "politicizing the courts" as if that ship isn't already past the horizon. And has done fuck-all to stop the book-burnings, anti-LGBTQ laws, criminalizations of abortion, etc that are currently happening under a democrat president. They don't care about any of us and never will, and it will continue to get worse under the duopoly).
The ruling class floating this "labor" party would itself cause the democrat party to split in half, with half hedging their bets and pouring into the 'labor' party and the farthest-right establishment remnants stopping pretending they're anything else and joining the republicans. Which would then "democrat-ize" the "labor" party and alienate their left wing who were trying to escape those same people and interests into joining with the socialists. This is why I say throw weight behind a socialist 3rd party. Because then you actually have a growing counterweight pushing forward against this rupturing contradiction and highlighting how badly these people play politics, as the establishment and their bourgeois politicians are scrambling in retreat to reorient and reconstitute politically, having obviously grown so entrenched and corrupt and complacent they've forgotten how to play politics.
I would like to add that the Democrat party stance on gun control only hurts minorities and LGBT from defending themselves, as rich white liberals are sheltered from any problems the actual working class face.
they love to fear-monger about Project 2025 (Which is a real threat) while disarming the people who need firearms the most. "Trust the police, you do not need weapons of war" while they give speeches with armed security details nearby at all times. Both parties do not want an armed working class
It’s a numbers game. There are more active voters in the middle that would consider voting for Harris than on the far left.
the reason there are more active voters in the middle is the ones to the left see no gain in voting for either mainstreem, once you loose appeal you cannot draw people to vote, this is a fundimentaly flawed stratagy that disposesses the left