The Masked Poster

And for her loss, it wasn't a landslide, but she lost every single swing state. All of them. She was also the first Dem since 2004 to lose the popular vote. To find the next instance of a Dem losing the popular vote, you have to go all the way to 1988. It was an abysmal performance

You can disagree about her charisma - I have plenty of politicians that I find charming even though they are not broadly seen that way, like Elizabeth Warren. It's definitely harder for women.

But the end result is that Harris' history is proof to the contrary.

She had poor charisma & couldn't harness the excitement and good will toward her when Biden stepped down. She had no appealing or ambitious political vision. Her political instincts led her down the wrong paths at every turn. She was an awful candidate and we'll likely be reminded in the '28 primary

She didn't distance herself from the at the time unpopular Biden, nor did her policy vary from his. She directly stated that her presidency would not differ from Biden's beyond having more Republicans in her cabinet. Whenever going off script, she fumbled or fell back on empty platitudes

Even though the ACA passed, American healthcare is in an unacceptable position that is embarrassing compared to the rest of the world. Obama made healthcare his pet project and still the underlying fundamental issues with American healthcare were unaddressed

Then that's another four (to eight) years of problems not being solved, calcifying, and compounding each other, then we're back where we started with another strongman trying to break into the Oval Office

It would have been a major issue because Obama had a supermajority in Congress and still was hobbled very quickly after passing the ACA, which itself was pared down from its original vision

Harris would have won with a tiny majority in Congress and the Senate would have blocked EVERYTHING

this is what happened with JD Vance and his mom

I subscribe to Infinite Hitler Theory but I'm struggling to think of who the infinite Trumps would be. His campaign was self-funded by a brand of strongman narcissism that reads to 46% of the nation as a delightful showman. Who else would have that specific charisma plus that funding independence?

I think at this point you may as well roll the dice and play by the new rules or you're dead in the water anyway

Seems like a very big fundamental, perhaps Constitutional, problem if one party is allowed to act with impunity that the other can't. Sounds like that other party is permanently impotent at best, in a slow death spiral at worst!

Yeah I think this entire debate about Harris will become a non-issue after the first debate. I feel like she's going to represent a naive and uninspiring era of Democrats that are exemplified in Schumer, Jefferies and Booker

People want a fighter. She's not a fighter

The lost share of Dem votes in 2024 was bigger than the share of additional votes Trump got to his side when compared to 2020, though. She couldn't get her base off the couch and was the first popular vote loss to a GOP candidate in decades. That suggests a major enthusiasm dip

I think it's possible to do, but Clinton, Harris, and especially Biden don't have the juice

"She's verbally eviscerated everyone she's debated."

She had to drop out of the primaries before they even started?

I agree she performed better than Trump in the debate, assuming I was her audience. Trump is actually very hard to debate in that format because you have to break his spell

photograph from the 80's of the wrestler Sting wearing a Gold's Gym shirt and sunglasses, leaning against a shelf in a bookstore and positively cheesing at an open copy of The Far Side Gallery 2, a collection of Far Side Cartoons.

what if i told you, through the power of forensic analysis, we are closer than ever to knowing the exact Far Side cartoon that is making Sting smile in this iconic photo. 🧵 👇

There used to be severe punishment for dangerous and antisocial beliefs and behaviors encoded into the social structures humans universally create and have held for millennia and that's just gone now

One of the best and worst things about the Internet is that you simply can't ostracize people into complete isolation anymore. It's true for queer people, which is great, but also for Nazis, which is l not. Now there is no belief that you can hold and not find some chatbot to stave away loneliness

Vote blue no matter who. Newsom. AOC. Hasan Piker. Whatever. All I want to know is who do I cyberbully in order to do the most civic good

Add a million more people to that and kill them all.

That is what Elon Musk has done.

Each one of these people contains a world of their own, utterly unique. They have never been seen before and they will never be seen again. They have a favorite food, trouble with their parents, a doting aunt, a 9-5 getting them through while they think of maybe going back to school.

Think of NYC. Not just Manhatten, but the Burroughs. People of all ages and cultures moving underground in the crammed subways, cars in constant motion through the city's arteries. The mom and pop shops, the food stands, the family homes where out of towners see their parents for home-cooked meals.

Now the projected deaths from USAID is over 9 million. We're getting to a point where it's hard to conceive of a number that large. Already, we're at seven of the largest stadium in the US. We are now going to multiply those seven stadiums by twelve to reach the projected death toll.

762,000, the initial deaths, would fill the biggest sports arena in the US seven times over, with change. Imagine being in a stadium and looking out over a sea of humans so big it melds into meaningless color and movement. Multiply that seven times. They are now all dead.

It drives me insane that Elon Musk basically did a Holodomor on the third world and it's not treated like a bigger deal. This should be the number one thing that people know him for. This should be in the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry. This is a history book scale atrocity.

The piss tank on the ISS is now 40% full.

anyway lots of people would rather yell at voters than at politicians. I think the former impulse is a sign of low character.

Almost always white and coastal, too

So I feel like we should make pushing mid candidates hurt more. But it never does, they're rich and insulated from consequence and make millions on book deals if they lose. The Democratic party doesn't have motivation to stop. So what do we do

I feel caught between a rock and a hard place because I vote for harm reduction in the general. But if a mid candidate hits the general then we're already set up to get a Nazi that election or in 4-8 years. If we go mid -> Nazi -> mid -> Nazi then we're just slowly creeping towards Nazism anyway