A standard liberal plaint goes like this:
How is it possible that Donald Trump still has a chance of winning November's election? He lies constantly! He says crazy stuff! He wants revenge on everybody! He seemingly has no knowledge of anything.
This is totally fair. But it doesn't matter. All of it has been priced in for a long time and something like 45+% of the electorate plans to vote for the guy anyway. Pointing this out over and over isn't going to change things.
The better question is why, given Trump's obvious faults, many non-insane people are still reluctant to just go ahead and vote for Kamala Harris. I understand the general problem: if you're a conservative, you don't like Democratic policies. And it doesn't help that Democrats have moved left over the past decade. I don't think Bill Clinton or Barack Obama (or Al Gore or John Kerry, for that matter) would have had much trouble besting Trump.
So this is the question: which deal breakers are still bothering center-right voters? Bret Stephens is a good bellwether for this crowd, and here's what he says he'd like to know about Harris:
What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war?
....A few more questions for Harris: If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they? Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it? Are there any regulations she’d like to get rid of in her initiative to build three million new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, does she see for nuclear power in her energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to Covid-19, what might her administration do differently?... How about interest-rate policy, federal spending and the resilience of our supply chains?
There's nothing unfair here, except for the fact that virtually no presidential candidate is ever quizzed about stuff this detailed. More to the point, what's the alternative? Does Stephens have any idea what Trump's views are on any of this? Of course not. He's never said, and the odds are vanishingly small that he knows anything about any of it.
Here's how Stephens put it yesterday:
A Harris victory puts an untested leader in the White House at a moment of real menace from ambitious autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran. A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high. A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel. A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a presidential primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.
I get this even less. Untested? Sure, but that's better than Trump, who's been tested and found sorely wanting. Misbegotten economic policies? I don't know what those might be, and the price gouging thing is trivial. Israel? Harris has supported Israel her entire career. Jail for Trump? Sure, a lot of us would like to see Trump in an orange jumpsuit, but Jack Smith is prosecuting him because he broke the law, not out of any political retribution.
So I'm still a little puzzled. If you're a single-issue abortion voter, fine. If you want to deport every illegal immigrant in the country, fine. If you like the idea of putting a 20% tariff on everything that comes into the country, fine. But if this doesn't describe you—and you're moderately right of center and already loathe Trump—what precisely is it about Harris that still gives you pause? Roughly speaking, we know that she's a fairly ordinary Democrat. Beyond that, surely a bit of uncertainty is of little account against the sure certainty that Trump would be terrible?
Bretbug is gaslighting you: there's nothing harris could do that would convince him to vote for her. Nothing.
Among other things Stephens is part of the "Israel, may she always be right, but Israel right or wrong" crowd, so Trump has his vote locked up right there. And, btw, the correct answer to Iran being about to get a nuclear weapon is to try to somehow get them back into the agreement that Trump broke (with Stephens' blessing) and failing that, do nothing. Iran will find out like everybody else that the problem with nuclear weapons is that you can't use them and escape destruction in return.
I think that's a good read on Bret Stephens. I wouldn't call him a bellwether for the center-right, as Kevin does. He's way too much of an Israel hawk and fundamentally a Republican partisan.
The correct answer for Stephens is always "Bomb the Iranians!" Doesn't matter what the question is.
Yeah, ridiculous. Does he really want to know her position on the Houti's? It's laughable.
You only need one word to explain what Kevin is pointing out here: misogyny.
You really think no racism?
I think misogyny is more powerful than racism, as demonstrated in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
This is a major problem with the "moderate" GOP today. Many of them will acknowledge the danger of Trump, but at the end of the day they'll always convince themselves to pull the lever for him, no matter how ridiculous the chain of logic is that gets them there. This is why the Democratic strategy no longer includes worrying about their opinions (i.e., "the Dems are moving left"), and now concentrates on mobilizing new voters and the Democratic base.
At the end of the day, if there really was an honest anti-Trump moderate GOP you'd see alternative conservative candidates and people staying home. Even a 5% candidate would effectively end MAGA. You'd also probably have a much more centrist Democratic party in response, as they fought to persuade those winnable voters. But we see none of this. These people claim they care about the country and even explain what that means, but don't ever practice it.
Agreed. It is tiresome to hear about how the Dems are moving “left”. I think Thomm Hartmann once interviewed an actual communist just to show how different their policies are.
Democratic policies seem pretty normal to me. We want to keep people healthy, keep our environment safe, try to do something to stop global warming.
Tim Walz pointed this out. Republicans want to ban books but in MN he wanted to feed children. Quelle horreur!
G W Bush said he was surprised to win in 2000. He was up against peace and prosperity and peace and prosperity lost. Not the first to say this but people vote for all sorts of emotional reasons that have nothing to do with rational policy.
The handful of honestly moderate Republicans are signing on to the Harris-Walz ticket (that handful now numbering hundreds of former officeholders and other GOP leadership). The fake ‘moderates’ are chickenshits who just hope to keep their sorry asses in office whatever November’s result.
Because she's black? Because she's a woman? Stephens has had this serious bug up his ass for the past couple of months, and you can just sense Gail Collins's frustration growing each time they have one of their conversations. She's being remarkably patient with his incredible obtuseness. I would have gone non-linear with him by this point.
Given that he's an opinion writer, and ostensibly he wants to convince people to follow his view, it's really kind of nuts that his opinion is, "Trump is a menace, so if you're in a swing state vote for Harris. But she's so horrible, and I'm in a blue state so my vote doesn't matter, and I couldn't possibly vote for her. But you, swing state voter, vote for her."
Or maybe Stephens is just a blithering idiot. Or a racist, sexist, blithering idiot.
Is Lilith, Adam's first wife, mentioned in the Bible? It seems many RINOs consciously or unconsciously are prejudiced against any woman who might be equal, or god forbid, better than themselves. That seems the basis of the Muslim religion as well as many christians.
Lilith was made the same way as Adam, out of clay. Adam complained to his god about Lilith. His god arranged that she leave and fashioned a replacement out of Adam's rib, Eve.
Some RINO men seem afraid of women being equal to themselves.
He’s walking a fine line on which his regular paycheck depends.
Or he needs to cling to his NY Times role as the nonTrumper conservative guy. A good gig is hard to give up.
that ain't it. you might want to read david french. he is conservative, a nontrumper, who has come out and said he'll vote for harris. so no, anti-trump conservative isn't a solo act.
it's more as if stephens wants Ike to come back from the dead and be president again.
There's a simpler explanation (Occam's razor applies). Stephens and people like him are so conditioned to vote for anyone with an (R) after their name that objective reality no longer matters. All this blathering about "untested leader", etc. ad nauseum is just trying to conjure up a justification to vote for Trump (R).
Right! Because Trump was the untested candidate in 2016 and yet R's voted for him then. Your guy who is untested. My guy is bringing fresh perspective.
I have a hard time believing that these are the issues that animate Bret Stephens. Maybe a few, but certainly not all.
Trump made Ukraine an issue, but does Bret really care? That we're giving some aid to a country fighting off one of our rivals? There's a zero percent chance that any administration could get a Palestinian state established. I don't know her energy strategy, but it's not the 70s anymore and a lot of liberals see a place for nuclear power. I'm not sure what housing regulations the President has influence over -- the biggest problems are usually from local zoning issues.
It's a weird list of issues where Harris probably won't be that different than your average Republican, and a hell of a lot better than Trump.
Really seems like the questions were invented to justify his reluctance to support her.
Stevens reads here like a Twilight Zone character who's in a blind panic, grabbing everything he can get his hands on and piling it up in front of the door because somebody told him the Russians are coming.
The kind of guy Jack Klugman used to play often. Maybe Stevens has even seen a few of those episodes. They weren't meant to be training videos.
There is absolutely no reason to think that Clinton or Obama would have fared any better. Pretending that the reason the 2020 election was a nailbiter was because Biden was far left exposes this silly line of thinking. Could say the same thing for the 2016 election.
Blaming the liberals for the actions of Trump voters is not an honest take on this matter. While it is definitely counterproductive, it is perhaps easier than actual realization as to where the minds of 45-48% of voters are.
Small lies we tell ourselves....
so the one candidate who has experience in the job is unacceptable to stephens for all the obvious reasons. he hesitates with harris because of her lack of experience. is she tough enough to deal with the like of putin, bibi et al in these times of crisis? so what the ef does stephens want? if harris was male, would stephens have the same qualms? you just want to slap the guy ...
TL;DR: Stephens is a prick tease.
Little children are being murdered at their school desks. They woke up, got dressed and expected to live through the school day and you think any of this other crap matters ??
Hard no on the premise that Bret Stephens is representative of the conservative voters who are currently undecided. NOBODY but Bret Stephens in the electorate cares about, or knows about, the Houthis. Nobody, possibly including Stephens, even knows what he means by phrases like "interest rate policy." This has absolutely nothing to do with how swing voters are thinking.
Imagine the lowest-information voters you know, then subtract some of their information until they're really flying blind. That's one group of remaining swing voters.
Then there are those who are trying to decide if they're comfortable voting for a Democrat for the first time or whatever. For those people, Harris mostly needs to "look presidential" for the next few weeks.
You're misreading the complaint. These are people who aren't going to vote for either candidate.
His mind is made up that he won't be voting for Trump, but he needs an excuse to leave the presidential part of the ballot blank. See, when the executions come, Stephens wants to explain his decision not to vote for Harris.
I'm being facetious of course. But the broader point is, there's a group of voters who claim to be undecided but actually, they're cowards because they don't want to commit. No other reason to prevaricate on your choice, except to acknowledge that you're a coward, amirite, Bret?
Stephens is just running a schtick to get page views. It worked!
Pity the poor undecided voter. Can you imagine the mental anguish they are enduring? To be so stupid and yet feel a responsibility to vote. It must be awful.
Not original, but it's like being offered the choice between a piece of chicken and a rotting maggot-infested rat, and asking "How's the chicken cooked?" Stephens and his ilk are so anti-Harris (for whatever reason -- Democrat, woman, minority...) that they are looking for any excuse to give themselves psychological cover for not voting for either Harris or Trump.
"What does Kamala Harris need to do to seal the deal?"
Become a white man.
...which deal breakers are still bothering center-right voters? Bret Stephens is a good bellwether for this crowd
I really doubt Bret Stephens is a good proxy for "center-right voters who dislike Trump but need to be reassured on deal-breakers to vote for Harris"—at least as that political species is commonly found in 2024. He's far more of a Middle East-obsessed interventionist than most Americans on the right (or left, or center) these days. Also, he's a disingenuous hack: more or less the foreign policy hawk version of Megan McArdle's glibertarianism.
It's just social dynamics. The hesitant centrist voters are like penguins on the edge of the ice floe waiting for some other penguin to jump in and test for sea lions.
The sea lions in this metaphor are their right-wing neighbors, or rather, the reactions of their neighbors. This is the utility of the violence the right always threatens. This is why they love guns, huge menacing black trucks with tinted windows, enormous flags.
They win not because people like their positions but because they're afraid to show evidence of opposing them. Everything is about projecting menace. Poll watchers aren't there to prevent fraud. They're there to take names.
This is why "weird" is so threatening. Weird people are already on the outside. They can't banish you from society.
This is why the initial wave of Harris love was so threatening and crowd size is so important: if there are many penguins already swimming in the pool, the odds of any individual penguin surviving the sea lions are much better.
Stephens speaks for a few dozen people.
If somebody is undecided at this point, it is because they want to be undecided at this point. It's their thing. It's not because of the Houthis.
Exactly what issues have the Democrats moved left on over the past decade that the country hasn't moved left on? There aren't any.
The country supports addressing climate change.
The country supports LGBTQ+ civil rights
The country supports increasing the minimum wage
The country supports Ukraine and Israel
The country supports corporations paying their fair share
The country supports abortion access
The country supports -- overwhelmingly -- Obamacare and government supported medical care
The country supports blocking book bans
What exactly is is that the Democrats have "moved left" away from the country on? I ask "conservatives" this question all the time, and there's nothing they can say.
The fact is the Democrats are in line with the vast majority of Americans. They are simply NOT radical leftists or moving in a radical direction.
People believe that, and good centrists like Kevin repeat it, because Trump and MAGA and the GOP keep screaming it and talking about stupid issues like transgendered women in bathrooms and sports that affect maybe a hundred people in the entire country and could be worked out by talking to each other rather than demonizing Americans.
Unless you can actually find issues that Democrats have moved left on that the country doesn't support, please consider that you're being played by the GOP.
Well argued! Thank you!
"And it doesn't help that Democrats have moved left over the past decade. "
Can someone explain this to me? What dd Biden do that was "left wing"? Is it the infrastructure bill, which in previous years would have been a simple and obvious bi-partisan solution? Was it a few minor tweaks to Obamacare? Was it student loan forgiveness, which is a pretty small initiative in reality?
It's certainly not immigratiin, where Biden is pretty draconian. Or foreign policy, where he has been super-tolerant of Israel's excesses? Abortion rights? I think any Democratic president would have defended a woman's right to choose. On DEI and LGBTQ issues, it's largely crickets from the Democratic Party.
Where's the leftward shift?
"Can someone explain this to me? "
No.
It just right-wing propaganda.
The interesting question is why Kevin is repeating right-wing propanda.
Kevin presents as data-driven. I assume therefore he has some facts on which he bases this assertion. I would like to know what I am missing.
Burying the lead/lede:
"A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies,"
Which probably works out to keeping the IRS in business.
Job opportunities for accountants. I wonder how many accountants had to find other jobs with donnie's "tax breaks".
People are looking for an excuse to not vote for Harris, any excuse will do.
I think it's guaranteed whatever excuse they come up with will be trivial. Trump isn't a proven leader. He's not even a proven successful business person. He's a trustfund failure.
"He's a trustfund failure."
Someone, in 2016, calculated that if he had taken his "inheritance" and invested it in the stock market and not messed with it, he would have been worth three times what he (supposedly) had.
The dead give away for Stephens is the very detail of his objection. It's like the bad lair who adds so much detail to their alibi that the very unnaturalness of it gives him away.
I'm not a big Trump fan, but I will vote for him over Harris because the Democrats have gone stark raving nutsy cuckoo.
1. Giveaway of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loan forgiveness to college graduates who either do not need it or who neglected to make sure they were getting a degree that would increase their earnings enough to make college worthwhile.
2. Huge tax increases on individuals and corporations. (Hate to break it to you, but pretty much everyone with financial assets owns the SP500 in some way.)
3. Politicisation of the CFIUS process. We all know that the only thing the Nippon Steel acquisition of US Steel threatens is Harris's chances of winning Pennsylvania.
4. Biological boys and men on women's sports teams, in women's locker rooms, in women's restrooms.
5. Enlisting trans soldiers and then providing them with sex change surgery. Other people who need costly medical treatment are not allowed to enlist.
6. Free sex change surgery for prisoners.
7. Fanatical insistence on abortion on demand up to moment of birth.
8. Pandering to the anti-Semitic left. No, Coach Tim, those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are NOT speaking out for all the right reasons. The vast majority of them are anti-Semitic anti-American scum who oppose the existence of both the US and Israel.
9. Repeated attempts to use the government to suppress speech they disagree with. Probably the most prominent example was jawboning Twitter into trying to force the NY Post to take down their Hunter Biden laptop article... which turned out to be 100% true and, most deliciously, which got far more attention because of Democrats' heavy handed attempts to censor it.
10. Refusal to deport immigrants who commit crimes, go on welfare, or just are not making a net contribution to the US.
11. Killing the filibuster for judicial nominations and planning to kill it for bills.
12. Attempts to eliminate or nullify the Electoral College.
I could go on a lot further, but I think 12 examples is enough.
Oh do go on. At the very least you'll prove just how ignorant and dishonest you are. Not that much more proof is needed. The good thing about the amount of right wing conspiracy theories and propaganda is that it seems to be limitless. You should start your own blog. Though another blog peddling disinformation would be lost in the storm at this point.
There's something pathetic about a guy who'll shit his pants in public just to get attention.
Does a telephoto photo of donnie's backside while playing golf constituted "in public" or is that considered private?
All his points could be copied right from the transcripts of a Newsmax, OAN or Fox News broadcast. Or worse... info wars. I love how he began his whole rant by saying "I'm not a big Trump fan". lol.
Surely he is being ironic, right? See Poe's Law
“Politicisation”
Are you a British troll? Cellphones and computers set for American English (like mine) automatically autocorrect this word to politicization.
As a non-American you shouldn’t be voting at all in an American election. Please reveal more about yourself so you can be reported for election fraud, which is now a jailable felony in many states.
Well, to be fair, some of this can be laid down to exposure at an early age. I still spell 'behavior' as 'behaviour', for example. And if I don't watch myself, I'm as likely as not to put two spaces after a full stop instead of one.
Lists like this are always interesting, because they really do get to the idiosyncrasies of people.
1. Student loan forgiveness is mostly an after-the-fact reversion to the support that used to be standard for American colleges. We used to support state institutions at much higher levels, leading to far less individual debt. The Biden's forgiveness plan gives more support to people who attend private colleges (mostly religious or for-profit), and focuses the support on those with big debts/lower incomes. You'd think American conservatives would be happy about moving from supporting everyone at purely secular schools to a means-tested system that now gives more help to religious and for-profit students.
2. The tax increases don't even come close to what tax rates used to be back in the halcyon days of mid-20th century America.
3. This hardly seems like an issue worth determining an election. Plus, this kind of pandering to a local constituency is the bread and butter of many GOP politicians.
4-6. Talk about a made-up hysteria. The number if people involved and the dollar amounts are miniscule. Plus, I've seen transwomen in the women's bathroom and dressing room for decades.
7. Totally made up issue. No doctor is aboring viable babies in healthy pregnancies at 36 weeks. Reality is that some babies will never live long - they just have birth defects that are incompatible with life beyond a very short period. And some women have such serious health problems that they can't carry a pregnancy to term.
8. A lot of people have issues with the deaths of civilians. Especially children. Even if they are Muslim.
9. What is true about the Hunter Biden laptop? That whole thing just seems like a fever dream. Meanwhile, all these conservatives are mad that someone is telling them not to drink bleach.
10. There are so many deportations of criminals and others. Drum himself likes to tally them all up.
11. This weird obsession with the filibuster, as if Jesus and George Washington thought it up, is bizarre. OK, I get it. It's the only way for conservatives to stop government from doing things that the majority of voters want. But it's just a political power tactic, not a religious rite.
12. This is also just an admission that conservatives can't actually convince the majority to vote for them. The majority doesn't like what they are selling, so they have to pretend that there is something wrong with actual democracy.
Thanks for your point by point rebuttal.
Yeah, I appreciate your effort. Not that MFer will read or understand it.
TLDR
assume more of this screeching came from a Breitbart article
and guessing your are white, in at least your late 60s, probably live in Europe, and are terminally online
... And drunk.
This list is all about protecting your house from minor alterations that one contractor wants to make, by hiring the one who will convert it into a prison.
Drinking Again. You should be so classy.
As per the questions requiring detailed answers: the Conservatives want to hear, so they can criticize her, but by not answering she allows them to paint her any way they like (Marxist, for example.
I think, and I've said long ago, she should give a speech about 30 minutes long on some topic of importance, and give a lot of detail.
By doing that, she stops them from saying she doesn't discuss her ideas & plans. And she clarifies if she's a Marxist or a maniac who wants the nuclear button. If she is seriously off, unlikely as that may be, everyone deserves to know how far. Is it Trump far or just one bit imperfect, but still a close friend of Jesus and the Buddha?
Trump is a pathological liar and a sociopath, who doesn't give a shit about this county or anyone but himself. In a crisis the only outcome he will care about is how it may impact him.
He has and continues to prove that he is absolutely unfit for any office. Trump is completely devoid of any trace of compassion, empathy, decency or human kindness. The hand wringing cited by Stephens is simply complete bull shit, and filler for the NYT Op Ed section.
What responsible President, let alone candidate, would give specific answers about what, exactly, her limits are on developments in Iran or the Ukraine? Would any responsible President or candidate say directly whether we would go to war to defend Taiwan? Why should Harris answer questions nobody else could, or should, answer?
A) You take Bret Stephens seriously, Kevin?
B) You take Bret Stephens seriously as a source of advice for Democrats, Kevin?
Is it age or your cancer treatments that's rotting your brain, Kevin?
delete this
Seconded. In spades.
He shares his health issues with his readers and you use it to insult him. That's fucked up. Can't you disagree with someone without being a total asshole about it?
1. "and it doesn't help that Democrats have moved left over the past decade. "
lol
reactionary centrists like Drum and Chait just can't help themselves with their hippie punching impulses. deeply ingrained in their DNA
2. Bret Stephens represents what now?
Stephens is just rationalizing his baked-in choices and finding a way to generate some clicks.
His identity is all wound up in not being a Democrat (as it is for many, many others...especially other white guys). Democrats are girly, nanny-state, fun-killers who hate religion! He and the other manly men have to stick together and pull up their bootstraps for Jesus! He can't bring himself to support Trump, but he sure can't leave his identity behind.
So he's made a list of pretty minor stuff to obsess about so he doesn't have to rethink his entire political life. And here we all are talking about it. It's a win-win for him.
Bret Stephens is a professional concern troll and Rich Lowry used the n-word, so you can stop reading both of them.
Stephens may be anti-Trump, but he belongs to the Republican tribe and what he says is based on loyalty to that tribe rather than real reasoning. He can always find flaws in the other side while being blind to the same or worse flaws in his own side.
I agree with you 100%, Kevin. I find Stephens' viewpoint relatable - I'm unenthused about Harris myself even though I'm a committed Democratic partisan, because she is untested and hasn't made a clear break with the nutcases on the far left, whom she was close to in 2020. But it defies credulity to think she wouldn't be much, much better than Trump, so I'm voting for her anyway.