Wednesday, September 11, 2024

i watched part of the debate and fell asleep half way through.

both of these candidates are peddling in conspiracy theories, half-truths and outright lies. the media will correctly tell you these things about trump, and not mention that they are also true about harris. the harris campaign has apparently picked up some kind of weird qanon type internet conspiracy called "project 2025". i believe trump when he says he hasn't read it, because trump doesn't read much. and these people are not trump people. frankly, most heritage foundation types would be more likely to vote for kamala harris, although they wouldn't have been likely to vote for joe biden.

there is one thing i'm picking up that is different about kamala harris and it should be substantive if it is your ballot issue. hillary clinton was not pro-choice; in fact, she supported a constitutional amendment to restrict roe v. wade. biden has clearly never been pro-choice, even as he has put on a facade as a pragmatic necessity, as a democrat. biden is old enough that he was elected before roe v. wade. i think a lot of young people don't even know that liberals and socialists that are today over the age of 80 are largely not pro-choice, but rather overwhelmingly consider abortion to be immoral. for example, have you ever heard chomsky talk about abortion? it's disorienting, to say the least, and this is chomsky - the captain of the self-ownership team. biden's positions on abortion are out of touch, and he knows it, so he kind of talks around it.

obama was also very wishy-washy on abortion rights:

kerry was personally opposed to abortion as a moral issue, but supported abortion rights, legally and politically. if you're pro-choice, do you find that convincing?

gore was outspokenly anti-abortion at one point:

harris is clearly pro-choice. no caveats. no subtleties. as far as i can tell, she is the first (major party) candidate for president that is clearly unambiguously pro choice, with no second-guessing it.

i have previously suggested to people to be careful about voting for democrats if your ballot issue is abortion as you might get something you're not expecting if you don't do your research. this is still true, at any level. but, harris is different than previous democrats on this issue, as she is believably pro-choice, and unambiguously so.

on every other issue, what i saw was a mess of lies and contradictions, and they both came off as unelectable.