No Stupid Questions

From the outside... I hope that the US is not as bad as it looks.

We voted for Obama twice, and Hillary won the popular vote.

I'm afraid I have some bad news....

That may work in Harris's favor. She is a woman and she isnt white...

Now I know theres minorities and women who do vote red but if you look at the population based on percentages white men are only 31% of the population, White women 30%, 12% black, 18% Hispanic. If she pulls white women, and the POC (not to mention the LGBT+ vote) she could absolutely walk it in. She just needs to convince those people to get up off their asses and vote in record numbers.

This is the one area where I'm optimistic. Of all her failings, she seems to present well.

I think she has more charisma than Hillary. I went to a Hillary speech once - smaller audience at a university, Obama-era - and while she's a good and compelling speaker when speaking to her base, I think she's prone to phrasing that's too easily taken out of context out simply easily misinterpreted even in context. The famous example being, of course, when she told middle-America that she wanted to destroy their way of life and put them out of jobs. What she said was that she was going to shut down the coal industry, but that means different things to different people. Kamala is less prone to that, I think. And Hillary was hard to warm to, and I'm kind of a fan of hers.

But we haven't really seen a lot from Kamala yet.

What I think she has in her favor:

1. 4 years in the White House. That's tremendously valuable experience, even if she was only a proxy and exigency case.
2. She might draw support from law enforcement, who've been solidly in Camp Trump. She's going to have to play that carefully, because she could also easily alienate another entire sector. If all she accomplishes is to drive a little wedge in there, that'd be a big win. If you look at polling, Trump leads in "tough on crime." Kamala could shorten that lead.
3. She's a woman. Yeah, this is one of those big questions of whether it'll hurt more than help, but there's an ocean of women (and men) who are still furious about Hilary's loss, and the fact that the USA is one of (maybe the only?) developed country which has never elected a woman leader. And she's pro-women's rights. If she can rally the feminist community, carefully, without alarming the misogynists (is that possible?) such that it becomes a club the One-Eared use against her... I think it's a potential positive.
4. She's a woman of color. Hell, she has not only a black heritage, but Asian as well. I don't really know how the mixed race thing plays; I've heard that it can hurt more than help. Again, it's a card that, if she plays it carefully, could bring in a lot of votes. Shit, 5% of New Jersey residents are of south Asian heritage.
5. So far, she's a Middle-East wild card. You publicly support your boss, and her boss was Israel Über Alles. But we don't know what position she'll take when she's making decisions. This gives her wiggle room. Frankly, I think openly supporting Palestine is political suicide - Israel has invested far too much in lobbying, and Palestine hasn't; she'd lose more votes than she'd gain, despite the outrage on Lemmy about the genocide. But she at least has an opportunity to pick her own position that could offer hope to the victims in the West Bank, without giving Israel the finger and sending their vast financial resources in the US to Trump.
6. The debate will be huge. She'll need to learn from the mistakes in the format, and try to arrange something more debate-ish. But she's hella sharper than Trump, and that'll show if she gets good coaching. Look, everyone knows how Trump is going to present; it should be easy for some smart people to use that to maximize making him look more like an idiot. Maybe a little baiting, to get his ego talking more than his incoherent ranting full of dog-whistles. I don't know, I'm not an expert. But Kamala can hire experts.
7. Biden's staff are incompetent boobs. They've mishandled this entire election cycle, giving him bad advice, and bad support. They've been so bad, it's hard to believe they don't have saboteurs in his cabinet. His performance at the debate? It's like someone gave him Nyquil, when they should have given him amphetamines. Fuck, if there's any time to risk a stimulant and pay the price tomorrow, it was at that fucking debate. Anyway, Kamala has an opportunity to hire her own West Wing team, and frankly, that alone can make or break her campaign. She needs a smart, savvy, experienced, and maybe a little devious and ruthless team, and she has a chance to hire them without it looking like she's chaotically shuffling the deck like Trump's term.

Look people shouldn't vote based on heritage, or skin color, or gender - but they do, and you work with what you've got when the stakes are this high, and you've only got a few months to capture votes.

I think she has a lot going for her. We don't even know if she'll be the nominee; maybe someone stronger will win. I think Booker wouldn't be a bad choice; he's white, male, and young - that's removes a lot of variables and is safer. But it it's Kamala, I think she's got a lot to work with. If she, or her team, can play her cards well.

Yep there are a lot of Republican single issue voters, guns rights and abortion bans are two of the biggest of those issues.

But damned if the Democrats don't do it to themselves nearly every time, I'm surprised Biden didn't.

As someone who's extremely left leaning, it's so goddamn infuriating, because there are so many pro-gun Dem leaning voters that wind up voting (R) down the ticket, almost solely because the Democratic candidate went on an idiotic speech about AK-15s and their 30 caliber per second clipazines. It's not like the anti-gun Dems they're pandering to are going to vote Republican because the Democratic candidate said nothing about guns during their campaign.

It's literally one single issue that the Dems could just not say a word about. Literally, no work involved. No campaigning, canvassing, or fundraising. Just don't bring it up, and it would massively improve their odds in some of the most critical swing states. But no, they just have to virtue signal to the areas that are basically ultramarine blue, and it fucks them over every goddamn time.

If the whole point of dumping Biden is that he couldn't win,

That was certainly a part of it, but think about why everyone was saying that. He really is old and it is abundantly clear he is struggling every day to remember and carry out basic tasks. Additionally, think about this: What would happen if Biden had gotten sick from the flu or something a few weeks before the election and died (which isn't that far-fetched)? We'd have no time to mount another candidate and get them the national coverage needed to sway those swing voters. Biden stepping down is a good thing, both for his own health and to significantly reduce the risk of a freak incident occurring the closer we get to election day.

I get it, Kamala isn't an excellent choice, but she already has national name recognition and is already experienced at that level. Most polls conducted in June and early July had her on almost even footing with Biden's numbers, with a couple giving her an edge and some showing her slightly behind. However, those polls were conducted before a media blitz and country touring kicks off. I can easily see those numbers only increasing as her campaign's momentum builds. Biden was already predicted to win the electoral college, and I suspect the same will occur with Kamala. I hope I'm right.

And lastly, I agree, we desperately need to get rid of First-past-the-post voting and move to Ranked Choice Voting. The current status quo of the two-party system has crippled our government for far, far too long. Luckily, more and more states have looked to switching to that system (with some already adopting it). Hopefully, that trend continues into the future.

if a president and vice president on the same winning ticket hailed from the same state, and it was a close election--things would get messy. really messy. like, even worse than they are now.

an elector's votes (at that stage of the process, there are two: one for president, one for vice president) in the electoral college cannot both be for a candidate from their own (the elector's) home state.