Vice President Kamala Harris gave the public its first real look into her nascent presidential campaign with a stop at her organization’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday night.

Harris’ first applause line came when she discussed her background as California attorney general and as a courtroom prosecutor.

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, earning cackles while she beamed, clearly enjoying the joke. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done, starting from trump “university” all the way up to the catastrophic covid response, the ukraine phone calls, the stolen documents, and on and on.

    she needs to dial it up to 11 and keep it there. it’s time to throw out this “let’s take the high road” attitude that’s accomplished exactly jack fucking shit over the last too many decades

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done

      There isn’t enough hours left until election day to list all of it.

      Also, maybe she should try another tactic than the one that BARELY worked for her predecessor the last time around playing on the much easier “people are experiencing how awful Trump is as president RIGHT NOW” difficulty level.

      If she wants to win and win big (which is the only outcome that isn’t humiliating and dangerous for democracy), she needs more than “Trump bad”. She’s going to need some “Kamala good” to energize the base.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote. similarly, it wasn’t “biden good” messaging that made him win.

        when more people vote, dems win. that’s why republicans are desperately trying to disenfranchise, gerrymander, and otherwise suppress all the votes they can.

        “kamala good” campaigning will accomplish nothing. she needs to make the people who are sitting on their ass angry enough to get up and vote. not FOR her, but AGAINST trump

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote

          Either your knowledge of history is bogus, or you’re too young to have experienced the 08 election between Obama and McCain. Obama didn’t win ‘because people hated bush’, he won because he ran on the (now obviously bogus and intentionally vague) message of hope and change.

          Obama literally won based on his messaging, so I hope no one listens to you on this matter.

          • Triasha@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Change from what?

            What did people want to change?

            What was wrong that we all wanted to change… Away… From?

            Yeah it was deliberately vague bullshit, but I was there. We wanted to change away from Bush and war and bigotry and callous disregard for our fellow citizens.

            Obama’s genius was retorical, not substantial. This country doesn’t know what it wants because we have vastly different ideas about what would be best even inside the Democratic party, let alone independents and Republicans. Laying out specific policy goals is mostly a trap. Because whoever you piss off cares a lot more about that than whoever you please.

            Trump does the same thing by vomiting so much bullshit that voters can imagine he will give them whatever their hearts desire is because he said he would at some point. He won’t, but his voters are mostly already praying to a sky angel so they have a lot of experience projecting love and benevolence for them onto a distant figure that doesn’t care about them at all.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          People voted for Obama because they believed in change. Democrats can’t just win by making people hate their opponents. Democrats would have no agenda if all it took was making people hate their opponents.

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            3 months ago

            Democrats can’t just win by making people hate their opponents. Democrats would have no agenda if all it took was making people hate their opponents.

            You just described the Republican party.

          • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            you’re talking like this is a normal election. republicans are trying to turn this country into a theocratic dictatorship, and if you think there won’t be violence (again) if/when they lose, then honestly you’re either not paying attention, or are deluding yourself.

            everyone’s absolute top priority from now on should be keeping trump out of the white house. that means getting everyone out to vote. “agenda” or no

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          Obama is maybe the best example of making a campaign about you and giving people a reason to believe in you.

          Not everyone cannot pull it off like he can though and Kamala is no Obama.

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      Every fucking time he opens his mouth, she should interrupt him with “prove it”. Like, he says the sky is blue? Fucking prove it.

    • Red_October@lemmy.world
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      she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done

      The problem there is that there are so bloody many valid things to call him out on that it just turns into white noise if you just hit on every single one of them, and the message just becomes “Trump is a shitty person and a shitty president,” which has been said a million times already. Focusing in on high-profile offenses is a good way to fix specific examples in the public consciousness.

      I’d also suggest something like “The Daily Trump ScumLog.” A video series where every day a new example of Trump being shitty gets called out in however much detail the medium allows. Every week, the spiciest gets edited for time and made into a commercial for wider broadcast. This would make it easier to focus in on specific examples, while still emphasizing that the list is Vast.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        “The Daily Trump ScumLog.” A video series where every day a new example of Trump being shitty gets called out

        i dont’ listen to podcasts or watch vid series or any of that, but i would subscribe and donate to that one in a heartbeat

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      3 months ago

      It’s just impossible. It would take a small army of staff to compile his catalogue of lies, and Harris doesn’t have the time to recite it. What she needs to do is grab him by the pussy. Drive home that he is a felon, a rapist, and that he himself is willingly raped by Putin, that he is owned by bitches and he is a bitch. She needs to leverage her biography as a black woman to utterly humiliate him. To deeply wound him. To haunt him with the eventuality of his incarceration and inevitable end as a failure.

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      3 months ago

      And let’s jump to the debate. I want to watch her turn him upside down and use his head as a mop.

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    3 months ago

    She said building up the middle class would be a defining goal of her presidency,

    Go on Kamala, you are making me hope you might be better than just “not trump.” Let’s hear some details that will be resistant to the 1% and their greed and get prices under control.

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      What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.

      When it comes to economic reform (rather than compression, according to that show with the hand job calculations), from the bottom up is many times more effective than the middle out shit the Dems keep trying.

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        What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.

        Um, OK. I’m on board. Are we supposed to argue now?

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          If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.

          Other way around: if a politician doesn’t care about you and people like you, you have little incentive to care about them beyond avoiding a greater evil.

          It’s the job of a politician to earn votes, not the job of voters to enable complacency and corruption.

          While it’s of course best when everyone votes and I’ve never missed a chance myself, I can kinda understand why a lot of people don’t feel up for waiting in line for hours just to cast a vote for “not the complete monster”

          • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            While I understand the complaints, I completely disagree with your argument. We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up. They can vote third party if they choose, but if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise. The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged, and it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged. It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up, an already safe bet is more likely to win than a risky one.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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              We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up

              Bullshit. 90%+ of all federal level politicians are much more likely to pass a bill or support an initiative if the richest and most powerful 10% but nobody else supports it than if it has majority support in the broader population. That’s the DEFINITION of top-down

              if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise

              That kind of attitude is exactly what caused the current situation where there’s a right wing to far right party, a literal fascist party, and at most a dozen or two center left politicians in all of Washington.

              The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged

              Nor do the people have any guarantee that the politician is worth waiting in November weather for several hours.

              If you hired a plumber who did nothing about your clogged toilet, would you celebrate not hiring the other plumber who would have broken your pipes and kicked your dog?

              Politics is work and voters are customers, NOT employees.

              it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged

              In other words, the miserable status quo that benefits the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.

              It’s just how the incentive structure is logically set up

              If you completely ignore any possibility of a politician enticing voters by promising and doing good things, sure. That’s a pathetically meek mentality that enables corruption and bad performances, though.

              • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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                Except the only reason those donors have that power is due to our campaign finance laws, which only exist because republicans in the SC allowed infinite money into politics with Citizens United. If we had far greater voter turnout, this would have been impossible, as that puts dems in power and they do not believe in unlimited money in politics. Will play by those rules once those rules are made, though.

                The idea that the US should never become fascist is a value, likely one that you and I share. It is not some high law though. If voting voters want fascism, then fascism is what we should get. It is our responsibility as voters to prevent this.

                No, voters are absolutely not customers. We are 100% employees of the greater political sphere. From regular every day voters, to volunteers running polling places and campaigns, to people standing up to run for office. It’s all, 100% on us. We cannot simply shirk our duty, otherwise our democracy will change, as was intended by the framers.

                It’s the people that do not vote that enable all the corruption. Not the people that go out and make themselves heard.

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      Yeah. This is getting me slightly excited again. I’m an independent voter and have never voted Democrat but I may just well do that this time. Couldn’t stomach Biden but she seems to actually know what the hell she is talking about. Please go after Congressional term limits, tax the crap out of the rich, and reform lobbying with solid game plans. Talk is cheap.

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        I have a lot of concern about how progressive she will actually be - her pre-VP track record doesn’t seem great to me, but she’s not Trump and I really hope I can feel OK about voting for her second term. She gets my vote this time because Trump, but if she’s going to sprint right back to 2016-era corporatist Democrat behavior then all we’ve done is delay the inevitable rightward creep and continue to enable rampant corporate greed.

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    3 months ago

    I want that debate between her and poor Donnie. This woman ia going to roast the shit out of him with her professional experience.

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      That’s what’s needed. The older boomer republicans (not die hard MAGA’s, there’s a lot more of the at least rational ones out there) need to see her wipe the floor with him with facts and tough questions he outright lies to, to have a chance of changing their vote.

    • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I remember people saying the same thing about Clinton leading up to their debates. At least Harris has a few more years of criming to draw on.

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    She should point out, repeatedly, that the man has no financial skills at all. Keep hammering how bad he was for workers and the economy in general but still turned a tidy profit for himself. He would actually have more wealth now if he had just invested his inheritance in the S&P (according to Forbes) instead of starting all his cockamamie businesses. The man ran how many casinos into the ground? He went bankrupt in businesses where people say “the house always wins” because the odds are literally stacked in the house’s favor.

    • lennybird@lemmy.world
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      She needs to go, repeatedly like, “I mean… He bankrupted a casino… A casino” and, “Speaking of predator, this many lied about his associations with Epstein while also flying on his private plane at least 7 times. Would you let him watch your daughter? HELL NO.”

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    Trump has the impulse control of a squirrel on meth, and an assertive brown woman is pretty much his nightmare (and the sum of all reactionary fears). Trump being made sport of by a minority woman is going to drive him off the rails. The racism and misogyny will be fully unleashed and I suspect he will die by the ugly sword he himself forged.

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    Keep it punchy, don’t waste too much time bashing Trump or else the whole campaign is about him.

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    Sounds like the sequel to “Six”. Maybe we can make a pop musical from Trump’s ex-wives and call it “Three”. (Melania counts, because she will be an ex-wife eventually.)

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      I don’t care for some of her positions, but would you care to elaborate how, or is this just some bullshit feeling stuff?

        • GeneralVincent@lemmy.world
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          Your own source disagrees with your black and white oversimplification

          But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official. Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.

          She’s not two faced, she’s trying to make positive changes in a political climate that is biased against her. That’s far more nuanced than you claim. And far less two faced than her opponent.

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            I’m not arguing for Trump. I’m arguing that you could find someone better. American politics is exhausting. You have better people, like Andrew Yang, instead you give the world the better of two bad choices.

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              you don’t understand what it’s like to be a citizen here, you don’t live here, so maybe just shut up and listen to the ones over here in the trenches.