It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.

Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.

Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.

Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?

  • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Can’t believe you are asking this now. In the 70s, I don’t believe any of these yokels would have been elected. Lauren Beaubert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, they’ve all done things and said things that are so far over the line, it isn’t even funny. Nixon? Please, he would be small potatoes today.

    Why? Gerrymandering. Social Media. Lack of critical thinking skills. A sense of hopelessness. Apathy. Billionaire brainwashing. The list goes on. The strange thing is, conservatives want to go back to the way things were. For them that means when women had to go to back alleys to get abortions, when gays were stoned, when blacks weren’t allowed to vote. For me it means when people didn’t justify these ridiculous notions, but instead just said, “No!”

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      conservatives aren’t conservative any more. they are radically backwards. the things they want are so far back, they don’t even want democracy any more. i don’t really have a say in that, but maybe the time has come to stop calling them conservative.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m conservative vs. most of lemmy and damned if I’ll vote anything but straight D right down to dogcatcher. I wouldn’t vote for an R even if I liked them! The message must be sent. Even if it’s a loss, your vote ends up as a percentage on a spreadsheet. It is still seen.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          i really wish more conservatives would accept this, or at the very least not back trump even a little bit, the dude who literally tried to overthrow the election, they throw so much bullshit at dems and dem controlled cities, but have literally no evidence other than “BUT BUT BLM” and “well, they’re taxes are higher” which is literally meaningless.

        • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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          2 months ago

          I know, as a conservative I get everything I asked for in the 1990’s by voting mainstream Democrat now. The parties can change all they want, I vote my views.

        • Naz@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          That’s a hell of a vacuous argument. Would you rather get seen outside of a window or let into the store?

          Nobody gives a shit about the non-voting numbers or third party ballots, if anything, their response is negative, not positive: They claim people aren’t exercising their right to vote, or that someone has “spoiled the election”.

          Meanwhile, those aligned to parties are forming orderly queues and voting consistently.

          Which strategy do you think is more effective, from a political science and historical perspective?

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah there was a long time ago when conservatives voted to protect national parks. These aren’t those times

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Conservatives are exactly the same as they have always been. It’s just that conservatives define their priorities and their values and priorities around their identity, and that means their values and priorities shift with whatever is best for the conservative at the time. There are no universally conservative values, just the generic resistance to change things conservatives like. When a conservative benefits from a strong federal government, they support it. When a conservative benefits from abortion, they support it. When a conservative is a minority, or gay, or a woman, they support equalish rights for themselves. It’s narcissism wearing the cloak of stoic preservation of their “heritage,” and it’s always paper-thin.

        This also means anyone opposing the conservative is not a member of the self, but a member of the other. The other is evil, because they are outside of the self. Anything the other does in opposition to the self is evil. An other could save a busload of nuns and kittens, and the conservative would complain about the traffic caused by the other. Anything the self does in support of the self is good. Lying, cheating, stealing, killing, raping, everything is on the table if it can be justified in support or defense of the self. From the outside of the self, it looks like hypocrisy, but it’s really not, because the conservative never truly holds an opinion. They just say what they need to say to win.

    • BadmanDan@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      It’s wild that Trump has done things far worse than watergate, and still got the nomination.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It is. The world is stranger than I could possibly ever have imagined. Sometimes I play a thought game. What if I had to explain this to, an alien.

        “Yes, this is how it works. Are you going to destroy us now? Yeah, we probably deserve this.”

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          My game is explaining this to my dad who died in the mid-80s. Cannot even summon words.

    • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      The right wing has been actively working to undermine our educational system since the early 80’s. A poorly educated populace, particularly one without critical thinking skills, is much easier to manipulate. After four decades of underfunding, restrictive policies, and anti-intellectual propaganda, those efforts are really paying off.

      Newt Gingrich and his co-conspirators have been waging war against the people of this country since Reagan was elected. And they are now dangerously close to winning that war.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I don’t think the attack on education was a long-term manipulation thing. Rather, it evolved from the question, “Why are all these educated people turning into liberals?!”

        That question demands an answer. They can hardly let the appearance that they’re dumb stand! So guys like Limbaugh started attacking “ivory tower liberals”. That resonated, they rolled with it. Then the Christians saw the opportunity, got their filthy fingers into the cracks, started undermining public education in favor of their own.