Kamala Harris has a problem with men. Will misogyny cost her the election?

Harris was assistant district attorney in Alameda County when they met. Brown then appointed Harris to two political posts while he was speaker of the California Assembly, but that was in 1994 — years before Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. She would remain in that post until 2011, when she won the office of California district attorney. In 2016, she ran for U.S. Senate and was elected.

She destroyed Trump so badly in their only debate that he's run away from any further debates and can now be found ranting at various staged town hall events about any old crap apart from policy.

Oh what a load of conspiracy nonsense. There's no evidence of all these illegal voters in California. The state is largely one party because the GOP goes according to what the national party wants and not what the locals want. Look at Massachusetts and Maryland, they've elected Republican governors. Even CA elected Schwarzenegger from 2003-2011. the CA GOP still wins in rural parts of the state. They don't want to figure out a way to win in the liberal areas. They lost Orange County only quite recently and it's still knife-edge.

CA adopted the jungle primary, so now sometimes there isn't even a Republican in the general election. They have nonpartisan districting and have still elected influential House members like McCarthy.

@LifeExperience

Anybody can walk off the street, register to vote using any name they wish, and vote the same day in any election.

What is the process for vote registration?

American here. Re the electoral college: the Constitution allows each state to decide how it will elect the President. All well and good, until you get to California, which has been a one-party state for decades. Its legislature, with a Democratic supermajority, has enacted a series of utterly batshit insane voting laws designed to make very sure that they never lose their power. California lets everyone and anyone vote without showing ID. In fact, it is ILLEGAL to ask someone who shows up to vote to identify themselves in California. Anybody can walk off the street, register to vote using any name they wish, and vote the same day in any election. They can vote multiple times in multiple places, because there is no one to stop them. California also has more non-citizen residents than any other state. These people are allowed, even encouraged to vote, multiple times if they feel like it. No questions can be asked, BY LAW. It sounds crazy to have a system with no safeguards, but it serves the Dems in California very well.

Not coincidentally, California is also where the popular vote totals are run up for the Democrats. There are many counties in California where the popular vote totals greatly exceed the number of citizens over 18. The result of this is that people in other states do not trust the numbers that come out of California. When a state counts more votes than they have citizens, there is a huge problem, and because the states can't force other states to secure their elections, the only defense they have is to keep the electoral college in place so California doesn't turn the entire US into a one-party state. The other states will absolutely never allow that.

That's globalisation, not globalism. See Joseph Stiglitz for example. Globalism specifically is linked to conspiracy theories of control.

No, it really isn't. It's a reference to globalism which is the economic reality we live in, where discrete economies don't really exist to the degree they used to, money, investment, etc, are international, and much of it is mediated through banks. This reduces the ability of nation states to control their own economy, and it gives a lot of power to people who aren''t really part of any nations government. It has very real consequences for workers in every country.

I would love to know what language you'd use to talk about this, or is the idea we just don't?

There are idiots who claim really stupid shit like banking is Jewish conspiracy - those people are antisemites. And more to the point, they are wrong. Globalism is not a Jewish conspiracy.

The vast majority of people who talk about globalism know that, and are actually talking about economics.

Here is a good thing to remember - if you find some other words to substitute for globalism, or even bankers, you will find the same antisemitic conspiracy theorists will use those words too, because they mean the same thing.

You do hear people wanting to abolish or reform the Senate, but it gets less air time.

It's a generalization, you are probably right.

But I think there is a real contradiction in, on the one hand, claiming a political view that says it looks out for those with less power, but not even understanding that materially, right now, a purely population based voting system for president would always work mainly in favour of those who already control the most wealth and political power.

I'd be more sympathetic if there was some understanding that is seems a little concerning. And a lot of it seems to be driven by the fact that the rural people are seen to be making the wrong choices.

The other issues of course is that the states entered into the union with the understanding that they were protecting the political power and influence of their citizens. Had that meant a purely population based vote the union wouldn't have happened and if it changed they'd absolutely be justified to leave.

I always wonder why you hear of people wanting to abolish the electoral college, but not the Senate, which in many ways exist for the same reason.

I am Jewish and "globalists and bankers" is a dog whistle. It's a direct reference to Jewish economic control. If you don't mean to be antisemitic, don't use that phrasing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-origins-of-the-globalist-slur/555479/
https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/globalist

No, actually, it means globalists.

I can't think of another good word for globalism or globalist - internationalism might come closest but it does have a somewhat different meaning, less focused on economics.

If you want to imagine people using it mean "Jews" you are going to have some very strange ways of understanding normal discussions.

You are making a similar mistake that pmc Labour members make about the working classes hating the wealthy.

They don't particularly. They didn't resent Obama even though his background was far outside their experience. Or Bernie Sanders. And Trump, or at least his wealth, has an aspirational quality for a lot of people. (As is Vance's Ivy League education, because he absolutely did not start out as privileged, he was really from the bottom of the pile some of the most neglected people in the nation. Plenty of WC people would love to see their kids do something like that.)

What they resent is people who make it clear they despise them. Which unfortunately is a pretty evident in a lot of the progressive left press.

Even Obama's little gaffe last week fell flat largely because it sounded like he was talking down.

Tarrifs do not protect jobs. The opposite. If American manufacturers have to pay huge amounts to import goods they need to make their products, many will just move their factories to Mexico. American consumers are going to foot the bill for Trump's ridiculous tarrifs. He's such a moron that he thinks the exporter pays them rather than the importer. American companies import a ton of stuff from China. If they can't pass the cost of tarrifs onto consumers their profit margins shrink.
So either the jobs go off to Mexico or the consumer pays higher prices. It's inevitable.
Trump is a incredibly stupid man who understands nothing about economics or anything else. Anyone who votes for him has to be stupid as well, or at least very ignorant. His supporters are not the best and the brightest, to say the least.

The Democrats currently do have a majority of college educated voters, but the issue is not simple "elitism". That's the republican narrative. Urban voters, regardless of income level, lean Democratic. THAT's what they mean, more than income. The GOP simultaneously complains about people voting Democratic to get welfare. Meanwhile, most of their politicians are actual elitists. Ted Cruz trying to play the common man makes me want to spit.

As I said previously, he's the USA's Boris Johnson. And like Johnson he will not deliver on his promises.

It won't matter to him. He'll have what he wanted.

Trump is a repeat sex offender!

It's not hard to feel morally superior to him for that alone.

1. Tariffs will be paid for by American consumers and probably increase inflation.
2. Lower taxes - invariably for the rich - must lead to worse public services for everyone else.

All you have to ask yourself is -

Given everything that Trump quite plainly, provably is, how bad does the "other guy" have to be for 50% of the country to want to vote for him. Twice?

Trump offers two things: lower taxes, and protection of American jobs through reduced immigration and increased tariffs on foreign goods.

For many of those who intend to vote for him that is good enough. They may not agree with him on anything else, they may think he’s a liar, a hypocrite, a misogynist, a racist, and a loon. But none of that matters as long as he delivers on tax cuts and protectionism.

I don't think I agree entirely with that last post, but let's agree to disagree. I've digressed from the point of this thread.

Unfortunately it has got to the point where one side sees itself as morally superior and the other side therefore digs in even deeper and refuses to be patronised. Trump is anti establishment in his rhetoric. The Democrats have become the progressive, elite establishment that pushes its own values through much of the media and through Hollywood, the Ivy League universities, etc, and which also has some very big money backers with their own radical 'progressive' agendas.

Oh I agree. One definitely needs to listen to the underlying message that obviously resonates. But what I can't wrap my head around is that the man himself doesn't believe what he says, In all the years he was a businessman, he never once invested in a flyover state, nor cared about them in the least. But yet to listen to people saying how much he cares about their welfare is what I find confounding. As for immigration, open borders, Harris is addressing them. And also one must remember that a bipartisan border control bill was ready to pass, until Trump stopped it because he did not want the issue to be addressed. He wanted to remain a sore spot he can capitalize on. It's one thing to be academic about the issues, and I agree with you on those, but I look at what is actually happening and have to shake my head at the quantity of lies that are believed, and the evidence of their own eyes being ignored.

Trump is not a natural politician, he is a populist who manages to voice what it is the masses are thinking and saying to each other. Yes, its crude and vulgar and uncompromising - but there is a need to pay attention to the values that are being expressed beneath the performance. It is about values and about lifestyles. A corrective to too much 'progressive' identity politics and open borders in which the core values that hold a society together begin to break down.

I'm sure the time will come, but it will need to a woman that is capable of inspiring confidence and let's face it - who also has balls. Neither Badenoch nor Thatcher are/were shrinking 'be kind' violets. I guess Britain has also had three very enduring female monarchs, too...who have symbolised female power.

The U.S.A has its own nature, its own DNA and I guess it is always going to be the case that some of that wild frontier spirit and independence is always going to be one of the defining and motivating factors.

I don't believe that women must necessarily be soft, 'feminine' 'open', caring and 'kind' at every turn - though that is what is now being peddled via Identity politics and 'open borders', for example........ a kind of societal feminisation.......but within a larger culture which also encapsualtes the primacy of the individual and other core values of the constitution which could be said to be represented by direct, plain talking, non nonsense traditional values of home, family and nation first.

The USA is so vast in scale and various in community - and is now entrenched in a deep seated polarisation between different identity groups - it is difficult to know how it could move forward with more unity of value and purpose.

Trump is a full blooded New Yorker. He was a registered Democrat before he realized that he could sell the idea that he was just one of them to the MAGA crowd and they would buy it. Between Trump and Vance are more Ivy League than Harris and Walz. The Republican party is filled with millionaires. Trump has the richest man in the world, Elon Musk stumping for him. Musk, who won't even allow his workers to join unions. So I'm not sure how this idea that the Republican party is all about the common people is being believed to be honest. Trump looked at supermarket groceries as if he truly was seeing them for the first time.

His lies and stunts display that he thinks his voters to lack the critical thought required to work out what he really is: a carnival barker.

He's not wrong about that, @Westea. A stopped clock and all that.