154 thoughts on “Watch And React Live: The Harris Trump Debate”

  1. We’re in the basement. We’ve got the 86″ television tuned into CNN.

    Trump is deplaning.

    2 hours, 8 minutes until showtime.

    Biden has declared that Harris is “Calm, Cool, and Collected”.Report

    Reply

  3. Okay, the CNN talking heads are setting the bar like this:

    This is Trump’s debate to lose and he can lose it in the following 18 ways (distilled down to one: be too much like Trump).

    Kamala, by contrast, has to be an effective communicator and introduce herself to the American People and talk about her policies and set herself not only as an alternative to Trump but also as an alternative to the present Administration.

    Here’s the r/politics thread sorted by “Top”, for your convenience.Report

    Reply

  7. It is abundantly obvious that replacing Biden was the right thing to do. By this point in the first debate it was unwatchable. Harris proving major upgrade.Report

    Reply

  9. Let’s not talk about abortion anymore, let’s talk about immigration.

    Bringing up Trump scuttling the bill that didn’t pass.

    Trump talking about the rallies instead of the question.

    Sigh.

    As for scuttling the bill… he’s not talking about scuttling the bill. He’s back to talking about immigration.

    THEY’RE EATING THE CATS!!!Report

    Reply

  10. Harris brought up all of the former Trump people who left his administration… and Trump said, paraphrased, yeah, they screwed up and I fired them. Nobody got fired after Afghanistan.

    Which struck me as a solid hit.

    As for deportation, he’s not talking about how he’d do it, he’s talking about how bad the undocumented immigrant problem is.

    No logistics, no tactics, no strategery… just the importance of doing it.

    And Harris brings up the criminal sentencing.Report

    Reply

              3. No, I didn’t need that explained. It was a stupid line and you repeated it as a non sequitur for cheap points. That’s why I replied that while I was sure Trump said stupid things, I wasn’t going to repeat them in non sequiturs for cheap points. I was drawing a distinction.Report

                Reply

              7. …is this going to result in you talking about Trump?

                Because, after you’re done complaining about Trump, I’m going to try to wander back to whether anybody should have been fired for the withdrawal and/or the lying to management about the state of Afghanistan since March of the Penguins was in theaters.Report

                Reply

              8. The military leaders Biden had who orchestrated the pull out did the best job they could in a really f’d up situation. Firing them wouldn’t really solve a problem since the problems rested on the agreement that was in force. Within the intelligence community – there were certainly some people turning a blind eye to the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, but even had they not, I doubt a different outcome would have occurred.

                At best the firings would have been symbolic and probably created rifts between DoD and the intelligence community and the WH which would have hampered the next response in Ukraine.Report

                Reply

              12. I’m willing to go back to Bush. No one has clean hands here.

                Hell’s bells, Russia and Britain are great historical examples of what happens when great powers mess around in that country.Report

                Reply

              13. That is the challenge with such a massive error that spanned 4 administrations. It’s hard to really know who is responsible for what.

                That said I think Jaybird is right on principle, heads could have and should have rolled. But I am also so grateful and impressed that Biden actually extricated the US that I struggle to muster annoyance about it. There was every incentive and plenty of pressure to stay but he did the big picture right thing and got out. I will take the Ws where I can get them.Report

                Reply

              14. I’m with you. IIRC, the American soldiers will killed by a suicide bomber, and I don’t really know how you prepare for that. We’re probably lucky it was only 13.Report

                Reply

  13. I actually started laughing when Trump talked about firing all of the officials who wrote books about what a terrible executive Trump was.Report

    Reply

    1. All of the pinkos on twitter are saying that Harris is killing Trump.

      All of the fascists on twitter are saying that Trump is killing Harris.

      I have no idea how a normal person would read this debate.

      The only mindsets that I’m able to put on are the nutters.Report

      Reply

      2. I too am wondering how this comes off for the uncommitted. I wouldn’t say Harris is killing it, but I would say she is looking plausible, even as she mostly answers the question she wants instead of the question asked. Trump is.. well Trump. All over the place. Some better jokes this time than last, but also a lot angrier and more dour.

        But I’m voting for Harris so could just be my blinders.Report

        Reply

            1. This thing swings pretty wildly and ultimately its just a certain set of people’s opinions — though opinions they hold strongly enough to lay money on. But as a general sense of, “What are people thinking in the moment?” it may be as good of a gauge as we have.Report

              Reply

    2. Sincere question…

      Besides appealing to current Trump supporters, what can you say Trump did better than Harris tonight?

      I missed the start of the debate and attention waned towards the end, so I wasn’t sharply focused throughout. CNN peeps indicate he started strong, which I didn’t see.Report

      Reply

      1. I don’t think he did anything particularly better but he started out less rambling, answers a little more focused then deteriorated as it went on. It was similar to my recollection of his performance in June.Report

        Reply

        2. That was my perception, as well. I thought at the beginning if he keeps this up, Harris is in trouble. As we all saw, the first 5-10 minutes were his high point.Report

          Reply

      2. Eh, the big point that he made well, if you ask me, is that Harris is not running against the incumbent, she *IS* the incumbent. He also did fairly well on the questions about the economy and the whole foreign wars thing pointing out that things on those two issues were fine when he was president and everything fell apart as soon as he left.

        But he flailed about on abortion and health care and his answers on immigration lost him as many voters as he picked up.

        If Kamala can make the election about abortion and health care (and not about the economy or immigration), she’ll win.Report

        Reply

  21. Harris is talking about Israel… good points, I guess. College students everywhere screaming.

    Harris talked about a 2-state solution.

    Trump is pointing out that this wouldn’t have happened if he stayed president.

    Trump isn’t coming out well.

    Someone on Twitter said that Trump fans at home are probably feeling the way that Biden fans felt during the last debate.Report

    Reply

    2. Okay. Asked my buddy his take.

      Trump is being Trump, he says. Exactly what he expected.
      Harris is doing better than he thought Harris would do, but she’s treading water and not hitting Trump with good zingers (and Trump had some good zingers).

      From my perspective, Trump is offputting but makes a handful of good points. Harris is less offputting but makes fewer good points.

      But I don’t know how to read it as if I were a tabula rosa.Report

      Reply

  25. Afghanistan!

    She’s pivoted well away from the withdrawal to how glad she is that the war is over. Which is the right play.

    Trump is talking about how his withdrawal would have been better than Harris’s.Report

    Reply

    1. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about this post from Georgia Law professor Eric Segall since reading it. Specifically:

      [M]y student said to me that I just didn’t understand him and his friends. He said that he is 30 years old and believes the entire federal government is corrupt, that the system is not working, and that America is in a very dark place. He said that Trump is the only politician who is conveying that message and that it is possible that there has to be chaos and the tearing down of institutions before our country can get back on its feet again. He was clear it is the message, not the messenger, that attracted him to Trumpism.

      [Emphasis added.]

      The message that “We’re a failing nation. We’re a nation that’s in serious decline. We’re being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laugh….” seems to resonate with a certain group of people. And yeah, that’s where Trump chose to end it. The pitch, I guess, is “No matter what you think of me, she’s worse.”Report

      Reply

        1. It’s not so implausible. Law school attracts a lot of people with ideas they are dying to tell you about. I can’t ever decide if I think the dynamic is good for the profession or the institutions that produce it.Report

          Reply

            1. Yea. Granted I went to a law school that’s probably best known for being the butt of several jokes on the Wire, if it’s known for anything at all. Needless to say we were discouraged from thinking too highly of ourselves.Report

              Reply

      2. It’s as if conservatives are deeply aggrieved and resentful and uncomfortable with the modern world and their place in it.

        And like those MAGA HVAC contractors and farm owners and auto dealers,(all of whom eagerly employ immigrant labor) if you were to ask this student or any MAGA why they believe the world is in decline, they will spin you yarns about immigrants eating cats or students getting sex change operations in high school gym class or women murdering their babies three hours after giving birth.

        But the real grievance is that they are somehow forced to tolerate or show respect and decency to people they consider their inferior.Report

        Reply

    2. I remember Bill Bennett talking about why he didn’t want to run for president, that it’d be no fun travelling around the country for two years telling people that everything is terrible.Report

      Reply

  30. Closing statements:

    Harris: “We’re not going back”. Forward, having a plan, aspirations, dreams, hopes, ambitions, “opportunity economy”, protecting seniors, bringing down the cost of living, sustaining, respect for America and respect for the military, abortion, prosecutor. She cares and she’s not putting herself first.

    Trump: She’s going to do this, she’s going to do that… why hasn’t she done it over the last 3 1/2 years? She isn’t going to do it because she doesn’t believe in it. We’re a nation in decline and the leaders don’t understand what’s going on and Russia and Ukraine and we’re going to be in a 3rd World War. I built up the military, she gave it to the Taliban. Immigration, criminals, the worst president, the worst vice-president in the history of our country.

    She went positive.
    He went negative.

    And that’s that.

    I’m going home.

    Harris won… I’d probably give it 75-80/20-25.Report

    Reply

  34. In retrospect, how could this have gone any different?

    Was anyone expecting Trump to be anything other than bitter and aggrieved, riven with resentment?
    Was anyone expecting Harris, with a lifetime of standing up to bullies and criminals, to be rattled and intimidated?Report

    Reply

  35. This debate is how literally every debate with Donald Trump should have gone, because Donald Trump is a giant gift to the debating trick of ‘answer the question you want instead of the one you were asked’.

    Because with Trump, you not only can answer the question you want, you can make him answer the question that he now wants (aka, is psychologically incapable of refusing) to answer, instead of the one that he should be answering.

    For example, as someone who plans to vote for Harris (obviously), I do think it is a valid point that she is refusing to answer the question of why the administration that she is part of hasn’t done the things she said she will do.

    For the record, I think there are a couple of good answers for that, I’m not really attacking her on that point, but she has managed to not have to answer that question, which is good because those answers would bog down her campaign and not work for everyone.

    So she is just ignored it, and that’s, I guess, how politics and the media works now. Well, I’ve known that because that’s how Trump has always functioned, but I’m glad that the Democrats have finally realized they don’t really have to address anything ever… I mean, I guess I’m not glad about that, actually, but it’s better than Democrats trying to address it, thus losing, and someone who I think we all need to admit at this point is an outright fascist getting into office.

    It is not the Democrats fault that the media has been utterly destroyed and turned into gibberish, so much so that candidates can get away with not ever addressing things that they should be addressing.

    And it has been a really, really long time that I thought a Democrat has run a good campaign, one that actually understands things. Whoever is running hers is astonishing.Report

    Reply

  36. Against my will, I ended up watching the debate. I had two separate chat threads going on.

    It was a squash. He came across as mostly incoherent, irritable-to-angry, and scattered. She was focused and relaxed and sometimes witty (it helps to have a straight man feeding you openings). She displayed calm, other-centered leadership that he simply isn’t capable of.Report

    Reply

    1. I graded her a very solid B. She isn’t Obama, and she isn’t even Biden in 2012. However she looked completely plausible in the role and other than sounding a little nervous at the very beginning came off quite well. She also looked better and better as Trump went further off into space as the night went on. Overall a good performance that her supporters can feel happy about.

      If I really had to nitpick as a political junkie I’d have liked to see her weave less and directly address her pain points more but the show wasn’t for me, it was for the low info voters who somehow are still up for grabs. In terms of the victor she took it, no contest.Report

      Reply

      1. Funny I thought she was better than Obama, but I’ve never loved the man, and I’ve always felt like Obama approached politics with a kind of disdain for the work of it that really undercut him.
        My own hope is that with this win Harris’ campaign will relax a little and put her out for more coverage and exposure than they have.

        I’d be surprised if Trump agrees to another debate.Report

        Reply

          1. I am not surprised at all. As some people I’ve read have observed- Trump didn’t turn in a bad performance for Trump, he turned in a standard performance in fact. It’s just that Trumps performance is pretty lousy and it’s unlikely he can do much better than that. So, if he always throws paper, cannot be made to throw rock or scissors and Harris has demonstrated she can throw scissors then the only rational thing for Trumps crew to do is keep him out of the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.Report

            Reply

        2. It’s hard for me to compare because Obama is the last presidential candidate I really got excited about.

          Not in a sense that he betrayed us all or anything. More like:

          Here’s a guy who was a generational political talent and something of an inspirational figure, and he won, and he did an OK job all in all, but was neither amazing nor terrifying. Definitely not transformational.

          Anyway, that aside he was never a great debater. Not horrible either. It just wasn’t where he was really at his best and most comfortable.Report

          Reply

          1. I feel ya, I was on team HRC in ‘7-08*, so I always took a jaundiced view of Obama’s Hope and Change themes even as I appreciated the victory. He did a fine job overall, and I was entirely happy voting for him in 2012 but he just disdained the business of politics and party building in a way that just drove me batty. I always will wonder if HRC had not been so high on her own supply of inept hangers on* in ’08 and had won that year instead, on a more cynical and jaundiced theme towards the GOP, with Obama as her Veep how history would have gone differently. Obama vs Trump would have been a blowout for us I’d think .

            And, yes, Obama never loved debating and approached it with some palpable resignation. God(ess?), I still can remember the cold chill I got when he choked the first debate in ’12 when Romneybot was running on all cylinders.

            *May Mark Penn die painfully and slow roast in agnostic h3ll forever.Report

            Reply

            1. This is one where I will disagree with you and pillsy, and where I think the counter intuitive takes on Obama have gone too far. And I get why. He bequeathed a very rough ride.

              But the hope and change stuff delivered a trifecta and super majority. That capital was spent on the ACA, which is and remains, even in it’s somewhat trimmed, and never implemented to the full extent it should have been form, a very important achievement. I don’t think HRC could have delivered it.

              I’ll also say that while Biden, who was definitely a better operator with legislation, did some good stuff, much of which needed to be done, none of that compares to the actual positive impact of the wellbeing of the citizenry, which to me is the whole point of all of this.Report

              Reply

              1. Fair enough and a good point. In HRC-verse she probably gets the trifecta (W and his party were justifiably loathed) but I grant she probably wouldn’t have gotten a 60 vote filibuster proof majority in the Senate. And then the butterfly wings get going and history goes wingdings.

                And, yes, much as I like ol Uncle Joe, the ACA was historic, significant and is now popular which means it’s going to be really tough to get rid of. Nothing Joe did will compare to that though he has accomplished astonishingly much for one term.

                Also, in my defense, the “counter intuitive takes” on Obama were my first takes and I’m on record on this very site grumbling about them back when everyone else was over the moon about him. *shakes his cane irritably*Report

                Reply

              2. In 2008 I was still in a state of total outrage about the Iraq War and felt betrayed by a lot of the Clintonite establishment for giving Bush some bipartisan cover. My jets have long since cooled and over time my opinion of her has become a bit more nuanced.

                I also think Biden has been quite succesful especially under the constraints, and it’s a shame his career had to end the way it did. But hey, whatever happens next I think we can feel good today. And I think you’re right that Harris’ handlers should feel free to give her a longer leash and some additional exposure. The more people see her acting just like a normal, generally appealing person the better.Report

                Reply

              4. A large number of people who didn’t want Obamacare didn’t want it because it was going to make things worse.

                Well, we got it. It made some things worse, it made some things better, and now we’ve had it for a decade.

                Get rid of it? Holy cow no! Getting rid of it will make things worse!

                Ad infinitum.Report

                Reply

              5. I think the ACA is one of those weird situations where it wasn’t really what the winners wanted so the losers wrote the history. I also think Harris provided a pretty solid albeit brief articulation of why no one seriously wants to go back when the subject came up last night.Report

                Reply

              6. The problem with healthcare is that America’s is pretty darn good! It’s just too expensive and there isn’t enough of it.

                “We need more of a thing and we need to make it cheaper” is a problem that requires a scalpel rather than a sledge and the government has a *LOT* of John Henrys.

                But I digress.Report

                Reply

              7. Nope. Definitely sledge hammer territory. If, as Dark always intones – transparent pricing which induces competition is the solution, Congress will have to make laws.

                If, as I and others believe believe it will require a shift to single payer – Medicare for all – that will require Congress to pass laws.

                Both are sledge hammers. the ACA was the scalpel approach which is why it failed.Report

                Reply

              9. I don’t think you’re entirely correct about that. The big lesson is that the more people who have insurance the more market opportunities you create which are then filled by enterprising providers, which leads to an increase in service access and fewer people falling through the cracks. The ACA did not solve the core transparency problem which is still an issue. However it did do the following:

                -fixed the most glaring holes in the private insurance system that screw people over (no, not all, but the biggest are gone)

                -halted the ever increasing leak of people falling out of the insurance system altogether, which creates its own source of massive costs

                -provided for the technical investments and incentives that have spurred the increasing retailization of healthcare services

                Without the ACA you would not have the rapid expansion of urgent care and minute clinic type operations that are now providing basic care and coverage, and you can see how good it is by the fact that our infrastructure kicked the European infrastructure’s ass when it came to an actual crisis, i.e. vaccine distribution during covid. Our main problem is that for reasons I will never understand one of our two political parties has completely checked out of the issue in any constructive way.

                Anyway, what’s clear to me is that whether the government or the private sector pays is a lot less important than whether the system as a whole is coherent, which ours still isn’t in a whole bunch of ways (the employer sponsorship issue remains a significant complication). That’s the only actual advantage ‘single payor’ countries have, and of course ‘single payor’ means something completely different depending on which of those countries you’re in, plenty of which also involve private health insurance.

                All that aside though the ACA has been an unambiguously good thing and massive improvement on the situation that preceded it. We should be spurring ahead with improvements to it, but alas, the political right ranges from ‘what if we just kicked people off insurance so we can justify a tax cut’ to ‘Bill Gates is working with the government to put microchips in my brain.’Report

                Reply

              10. 1. I agree pretty much 100% with your take on the ACA.
                2. I’m very interested (not in a rhetorical sense) in how Dark Matter thinks we should address the cost transparency problem.Report

                Reply

              11. I can’t speak for him but from past conversations I believe he thinks there should be a mandate for price transparency and (I assume) a prohibition on the ability to charge differently for the same procedure based on payor, which happens as a result of opaque negotiations between payor and health system, practice, network, whatever. And he isn’t wrong that it’s a problem.

                What I will say is that there are a lot of state level transparency laws (Maryland has one) but they tend to be of limited utility given that healthcare doesn’t lend itself to shopping around the way many other services might. I support transparency but I think what you’re really trying to get to is economics of scale so that it all matters a lot less, and if the patient is (a) getting the service, and (b) not being put in an untenable financial situation for having gotten it, I dont really care what the payors and providers want to work out.Report

                Reply

              12. Got it. I think the area where I would probably break with you both is that I believe you actually really do need an authority setting reimbursement rates, no matter how the other arrangements shake out.

                This is nigh-universal in other First World healthcare systems, and the general “no shopping around” aspect and generally extremely regulated nature of the market you wind up mean you don’t have the same kind of drawbacks you usually get from that kind of set up.

                Most of my career has been supporting Pharma as a health economist, and I’ve seen more than a few of those systems up close. They are far from perfect, but also profoundly less fished than what we have here.Report

                Reply

              13. I’m open to investigating the issue. I started in house on the provider side and for the last oh 8ish years I’ve been in the provider-facing technology side. The thing I always get nervous about with it is that where we have reimbursement rates set with government programs there’s this constant threat of providers simply no longer taking government program patients. And while I understand there are also solutions to that I worry about the heavy handedness of them taking us in a counter productive direction.

                But I’m also not an economist, and always try to keep an open mind. So convince-able.Report

                Reply

              14. Yeah the trick only works if the vast majority of care is purchased as those prices.

                That said, I think it wouldn’t be too hard to make it so that private insurers are also paying those rates, or something close to them, since they’d almost surely be considerably lower than what they’re paying now. You could probably trade it for lower burden of paperwork for providers since there’s just a lot of crazy hoop-jumping there now.

                Also, these rates are set in a structured way, and one where providers and manufacturers generally have opportunities to make their case for higher rates.

                The other stuff I have very weak preferences on. Like, I think going to an NHS-style actually socialized system would be a low-key disaster, but other than that I think it’s really figuring out how to trade off between various priorities in ways that don’t easily break down between “right” and “wrong”.

                I also have no illusion that this wouldn’t have winners and losers, not just in terms of payers and providers, but also between different patient populations. On aggregate I think we would end up with both better outcomes and lower costs, but that’s just on aggregate.Report

                Reply

              15. My take on it from the sort of inside legal perspective is that it’s a Rube Goldberg machine that functions at the level it does by virtue of having lots and lots of money put into it.Report

                Reply

              16. “We need to make it cheaper!”
                “Quick! Pour more money into it!”

                It’s going to require pouring more money into it over there, there, and way over there instead of keeping doing it into where we’ve been pouring it.Report

                Reply

  38. Reuters reports: Some undecided voters not convinced by Harris after debate with Trump

    Sept 11 (Reuters) – Kamala Harris was widely seen as dominating Tuesday’s presidential debate against Republican former president Donald Trump, but a group of undecided voters remained unconvinced that the Democratic vice president was the better candidate.

    Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.

    Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters.

    Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds.

    The take on this that *STUNG*:
    “Only theatre kids thought Harris won.”Report

    Reply

    1. ah yes “we trust HIM more on the economy” then her, even though his signature economic accomplishment was a tax cut for corporations and rich people. Ugh. I strongly suspect such people aren’t really undecided.Report

      Reply

    3. Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds.

      lol sureReport

      Reply

      2. Voters don’t usually care about age, unless they suspect it’s an issue or are told to suspect it’s an issue. They usually don’t care about Benghazi, or the national debt, or whether a candidate can spell “potato”, unless they suspect it’s an issue or are told to suspect it’s an issue. Those responses that you’re laughing at, they’re information.Report

        Reply

        2. I’m laughing less at the article’s interpretation. As written, it’s way too good to be true.

          I read most of the actual responses as, “We don’t really feel we know enough about Harris,” and, “We don’t really like Biden and want to see more daylight between him and Harris.”

          There was one that I really just read as a guy looking for an excuse to vote for Trump but I have nothing to back that up but intuition.

          Nothing came across as racist or sexist, pace Philip H.Report

          Reply

  39. Here’s the stuff that makes people angry at the press.

    The former President repeated a baseless Internet rumor that migrant invaders were killing and eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, and claimed that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.”

    Correction, Sept. 11

    The original version of this story mischaracterized as false Donald Trump’s statement accusing Kamala Harris of supporting “transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison” As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment for detained immigrants.

    Do you notice that “and claimed that” implies a false claim? Like, if you were going to say that Harris falsely claimed something then changed it to Harris claimed something, you’re still casting it in terms of an opponent’s claim? Like, I get that this part of the article was talking about style and impressions, but this particular sentence was addressing facts, and it got one wrong and hardly corrected it.

    https://time.com/7019747/harris-trump-debate-cover/Report

    Reply

      1. I think that “wants to do” approximates “supports”. Wouldn’t you say that Trump wants to cut taxes, even if it’s not a priority for him?

        She was asked in 2019:

        “As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”

        She answered:

        “It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates. I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

        Wants? Sure.Report

        Reply

        1. So yes, you equate them.

          See, not all of us do. Its like abortion – you can support the right for any given women to have that option without trying to get any given women to have on. “She wants to do this to X” is coercive language. “She supports this being available to X” is permissive language. She supports people getting medically necessary treatments. She’s not going require or force it. Maybe not apples and ice cubes, but definitely apples and avocados.

          And lets be real – Trump supports tax cuts that benefit him. Which his 2017 tax cut most certainly did.Report

          Reply

          1. It’s interesting, I think a weakness of the left side is that they equate “wants to” with “requires” too much. We all want a world without racial slurs, where the wealthy to aid the poor, but only the left tries to put it into law. The only things that have to be done with law are international relations and, well, law.

            That aside, “wants to do” approximates “supports” a lot more closely than “falsely claims” approximates “truthfully cites”. Time messed up the latter.Report

            Reply

            1. We try to put it into law because history is littered with examples of humans actively opposing all those good things, and using the oppressive forces of the state to actively disrupt desirable outcomes.

              And even when we put it into law, conservatives seek to dismantle the legal construct when it doesn’t serve their purposes. Roe V. Wade is but one example – the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act are others. They did great things for our nation, corrected deeply immoral wrongs, and have been all but repealed by conservative law makers who find them an obstacle to implementing their political will.Report

              Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Stories

Houthi

American Foreign Policy Drive-by: Houthis and the Blowfish Edition

Andrew Donaldson May 13, 2025
The Deportation Cases

The Deportation Cases, in Verse Form

Michael Siegel April 28, 2025
Wisconsin and Florida

About Last Night: Voting Fun in Wisconsin and Florida

OT Editors April 2, 2025 2

You may have missed

Briggs

Movie of a Man Swatting a Fly

Jaybird May 20, 2025
Confessions of a Baseball Mom

Confessions of a Baseball Mom

Em Carpenter May 20, 2025 23
wingman

Does he include you in the evening fun – Or is he this sort?

Clare Briggs May 19, 2025 2
The war on immigration

The War on Immigration (Legal and Otherwise)

David Thornton May 19, 2025 6