More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.
Who thinks this helps?
It literally does though. Forget our personal politics for a moment. I don’t think there’s a single voter already planning to vote for Kamala Harris who would stay home because the staffers of a long-dead president support her. Keep in mind, Harris and her campaign have zero control over who officially endorses her. And even among the people who are not solidly behind her, many see her as the obvious only sane choice and are planning an anti-Trump vote no matter what.
But on the other side, I could definitely see centrists and Republicans swayed by what they view as the administration of “the greatest president ever” (fuck Reagan) denouncing Trump and supporting Harris. They may not even vote for her, but if they stay home this could literally tip the election for Kamala Harris.
I do.
I know people who voted for Trump because they’ve always voted Republican. Republican is their team, so they voted Republican. They assume Trump, as a Republican, will continue with standard Republican policies (which is generally true). They don’t like him as a person but just don’t pay too much attention to it.
If you mostly ignore Trump and just think of him as a generic Republican it makes sense. I was planning on voting for Biden before he dropped out because Democratic policy is generally what I’m voting for. Biden dropping out and Harris stepping in doesn’t really change my voting plan. I’m still voting Democrat, I’m still voting Harris. Is Harris my favorite choice? No. Is the Democratic platform my perfect platform? No. But is it the best choice given the options? Absolutely. (And I don’t say that as horribly negative thing, there are A LOT of positives from Harris/Democrats and I’m glad/excited to vote for her.)
BUT we know Trump isn’t a generic Republican and people can’t ignore EVERYTHING he’s done. Jan 6 being a big one. If you’re a Republican voter now you’re stuck. You can’t vote for Trump. But you want to vote Republican.
You’re a generic Republican voter. You see Bush admins, Regan admins, Cheney all say they’re voting for Harris. You voted for them previously. That gives you the opening to vote for Harris. That helps.
You’re contradicting yourself.
You’re voting for Harris because you’ll vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what.
Republicans are going to vote for Trump because he’s on the Republican ticket, because they vote for the Republican no matter what.
But consider that there are independents who suspect there’s no difference between the two parties, and so they’re thinking about staying home or voting third party. Moves like this only convince them that there’s no reason to vote for Harris because all politicians are the same.
It’s not a contradiction, it’s a focus on Republicans.
I’m saying that endorsements like these convince Republican voters to vote for Harris.
For those who think there is no difference between the parties it may be less helpful. However if you’re truly standing in the middle, watching one side cross over to the other and only ever one side crossing over to the other, that should give you an idea of at least which way to start looking.
Of course I understand the cynic who just says everyone is just flip flopping around. For those folks endorsements aren’t the argument to make. Republicans voting for Democrats means they must be the same. In these cases it’s better to focus on policy or the individual. If I were an undecided voters who endorsed who wouldn’t sway me. Show me the policies, that’s what I’m looking for.
I saw someone theorizing that this helps Republicans down ballot. They give the Dems the presidency, but having more Republicans showing up to vote helps house/senate/whatever local elections swing Republican.
why though? there is a large untapped market to the left of the Democrats, that they constantly ignore instead focusing on trying to just BE the republicans and take the fictional moderate.
In reality here everyone in that space has decided, and is not going to be swayed a large majority of them are with trump, They should move back to ATLEAST new deal politics but expand it to all not just white americans, that will both re-expand there voting window and allow for a diferentiated base
Taking one vote from another candidate is worth two votes from someone who is not voting, or who is voting for a non-viable third party.
I know plenty of people who wanted to vote for Kennedy but will probably vote for Trump now that he’s out. This group is likely to listen to former Reagan staffers and republican presidents that they liked.
because their interests don’t allow it. Their donors and the people they work for, recruit from, and get hired by after leaving office, are all the billionaire imperialists that benefit from exactly what the democrats are doing and have been. It’s in the base structure of the democrat party. A lot of times these capitalists donate to the democrats, then vote republican. Both parties work for the same class of capitalist imperialists in whose interest they are so entrenched, they literally can’t do anything else but fly to the right and become more and more indistinguishable from each other as they both compete for who can be better at committing genocide and who can be more fascist on immigration and the border concentration camps and also militarily and operationally abroad
The only way to break the duopoly is to throw weight behind a 3rd party (the further left the better, PSL or greens if you’re a liberal or your state is strong for it and you like that idea), which would starve the democrats of the margin they need to ever get power, and force a reorientation where the ruling class would have to float a reformist “labor” party to keep people from further radicalizing and flooding to the socialists away from the open-fanged republicans, who would remain as the only real political force when the mouth-closed-smiling but just-as-fanged democrats, entrenched in their position, can no longer cruise-control on “not being the republicans.” Which they already are in most ways, and in the ways they wear a mask of not being they’re totally feckless and actively capitulate in order to drum up more fear about the republicans to scare people into voting for them without doing anything to earn those votes (Obama had both houses of congress. He could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights protections into law then and there. He didn’t. He also gave away a supreme court seat. And Biden has not only not forcefully pushed to expand and pack the courts, but has actively denounced the idea as “politicizing the courts” as if that ship isn’t already past the horizon. And has done fuck-all to stop the book-burnings, anti-LGBTQ laws, criminalizations of abortion, etc that are currently happening under a democrat president. They don’t care about any of us and never will, and it will continue to get worse under the duopoly).
The ruling class floating this “labor” party would itself cause the democrat party to split in half, with half hedging their bets and pouring into the ‘labor’ party and the farthest-right establishment remnants stopping pretending they’re anything else and joining the republicans. Which would then “democrat-ize” the “labor” party and alienate their left wing who were trying to escape those same people and interests into joining with the socialists. This is why I say throw weight behind a socialist 3rd party. Because then you actually have a growing counterweight pushing forward against this rupturing contradiction and highlighting how badly these people play politics, as the establishment and their bourgeois politicians are scrambling in retreat to reorient and reconstitute politically, having obviously grown so entrenched and corrupt and complacent they’ve forgotten how to play politics.
It’s a numbers game. There are more active voters in the middle that would consider voting for Harris than on the far left.
Are they? The campaign is not speaking in support of the Reagan administration. Harris is supported by the former administration over a corrupt and narcissistic megalomaniac.
Personally, I don’t see this as anything other than validation that Trump is that bad.
