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Could the economy win it for Kamala Harris? – politicalbetting.com
Could the economy win it for Kamala Harris? – politicalbetting.com
Kamala Harris' economic platform resonates across party lines.(@taylor_orth @YouGovAmerica)More, via Opinion Today:https://t.co/zLCBxNJaKf pic.twitter.com/gV3ShQGBZe
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(There's a reasonable argument for not putting too much weight on policy detail when deciding who to vote for -- a lot of a government's decisions will be about and in the context of unpredictable future events. So it's more important to pick someone you trust to be making decisions on a set of principles and values you agree with, than to pick someone who's currently saying they'd do XYZ -- though of course what they say they'll do is evidence for their principles and values.)
I’d vote character. Events and practicality will probably do for the policy agenda soon enough.
But who you have dealing with events matters. I think it is where Starmer shines in his dull way. Sure he will play it to his advantage, but he will engage.
Playing at politics like Johnson, that’s what we don’t want.
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/27/kamala-harris-flip-flops-border-wall
And she's only a third of the way through her campaign.
Trump's one tenths through his campaign, and has yet to outline anything coherent.
But sure, she's Starmer 2.0.
The closest their conference got to a policy was price controls, and the biggest cheers of the week were for abortions, while everyone does their best to ignore that she’s been VP for the past three years.
Well if you want serious politics polices matter. Otherwise you might as well have BGT elections.
It was a bipartisan deal - hence the commitment to spend the unspent funds for the 'wall'. Trump instructed his GOP followers to sink it, which they duly did.
Try harder.
Not least since the ability of a President to enact policy is far more constrained than that of a PM.
Has she insulted the military? Has she insulted those with disabilities?
Has she started waving to empty airfields and cheating at golf?
I refer you to Bondegezou's recent post to save on pixels.
So, why so many think otherwise? I think that they have been fed a diet of relentless gloom by the lies of Fox and, increasingly, CNN who have been very critical of Biden. They have not liked the fact that taxes on the better paid have increased as the Trump tax cuts faded out. They are also (rightly) somewhat concerned with the deficit, although curiously that didn't worry them so much under Trump.
As people look more at the figures some are coming to the view that the gloom has been overdone. Biden has pushed investment in both infrastructure (driven by Buttigieg) and encouraging domestic production, principally in chip manufacturing. Despite all the anxiety about ecological matters the US has become the largest oil producer in the world. None of the sort of nonsense we are seeing in the North Sea here. Their economy is in a better state than most looking forward.
Trump still tends to lead on the economy but his lead has fallen sharply. He prefers to focus on immigration, crime and a smorgasbord of cultural issues. He is probably right to do so.
Stodge's Seventh Law of Politics states the truth may sometimes hurt, losing an election through being truthful always hurts.
What did people expect? It may be Starmer has the answers - at least he's prepared to have a go unlike Sunak whose last 12 months in office were an exercise in inertia. Starmer has had to deal with the poor old battered can which has been kicked down the road so many times as to be almost inrecognisable.
The painful truth for those of a Conservative inclination is we couldn't go on as we were - adrift. The Starmer Government will make mistakes - all Governments do - but at least they are trying to do something.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-supports-tax-unrealized-193900073.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF6p4SKlIw4H6Nk7J401cnsWCVC7Yy4JcR49J4_ON-KLGtUKrOgV9h8iydgyX6b6AilOcZVPnca1ish0022Mb3zPyvPVuKU6ZaqzqleZ9gR4OrKXd9Qfu3ZS-TYeNYFuqVRXd3EW36849S__gTE92gufFTbI-w-A-ms-hH-epCT_
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/daily-deduction/harris-backs-5-trillion-tax-increases-wealthy-corporations
So when, like most Presidents, she delivers maybe 5% of what she promises, she'll have plenty of other people to blame.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/briefing/21-questions-for-harris.html (paywall)
New York Times has 21 questions for Kamala Harris.
https://thepostmillennial.com/new-york-times-says-kamala-has-avoided-press-demands-answers-on-policy-issues?utm_campaign=64466
Effective tax rates before and after the Trump tax law:
Verizon
Before: 21%
After: 8%
Walmart
Before: 31%
After: 17%
AT&T
Before: 13%
After: 3%
Walt Disney
Before: 26%
After: 8%
FedEx
Before: 18%
After: 1%
https://x.com/RBReich/status/1828152959563149683
1) The Republicans have always had a reputation for being economic managers and despite Trump's best efforts he is probably still benefiting from that subconscious bias among voters, regardless of the evidence. Bit like the Tories over here.
2) Trump's reputation as a "very brilliant" businessman bolstered by his reality career on The Apprentice. It's obviously all smoke and mirrors but the impression persists particularly among "low information" voters who are impressed by golden escalators and glamour models.
3) The self-interested support of the likes of Musk do give him some credibility to be good for business.
I'm not sure she needs to have much beyond that to win my support.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/pennsylvania/trump-vs-harris
But we, the electorate, have shown time and again that's the way we prefer it. We prefer politicians to lie like cheap NAAFI watches before elections and then we love to hate them after the election when they need to tell the truth. Because they always need to tell the truth at some point.
And do you know who we can thank for all of this? Lockdown and the various measures we implemented during Covid (at the risk of being boring - perish the thought - all foretold by @contrarian). And we the public applauded every single restrictive, expensive measure which has contributed so much to our present state. So we can hardly complain now when the bills have to be paid.
Not that any politician will make any mention of that.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/pennsylvania/trump-vs-harris-vs-kennedy-vs-west-vs-stein
I mean, they don't mean it to be, but whenever Jeanine Pirro comes on the screen, I feel an almost animalistic desire to vote for for Kamala Harris.
It doesn't invalidate or reduce Starmer's mandate one iota - if we're looking at actual votes, why not call the 1951 Conservative Government illegitimate? After all, Labour got more votes.
No, July 4th illustrated the bankruptcy and absurdity of FPTP for those who hadn't realised it in the past. That's not the question, however, or the fact. The fact is Starmer won a majority in the Commons and has a mandate to govern. Whether he does so well or badly time will tell and we can pass judgement both on that and on the credibility of any of the alternative offerings at the next General Election.
He won a landslide majority only because the shambles of a Conservative party in government fell to their worst ever election result by a very wide margin. But it leaves Starmer as an exceptionally unpopular new PM with a majority built on sand.
Maybe he can win the public round with effective action rather than rhetoric, but I tend to think that a leader who wants the country to follow them needs to be able to convince the country it's worth their while.
Huge, if true.
The President and Congress can also act on housing and abortion. The current situation on abortion is a direct result of Trump being elected President and appointing anti-abortion Supreme Court justices.
In fact ginormous.
Is there any evidence, beyond a few tax havens, that reducing corporation tax below (say) 20% actually benefits jobs and growth?
That might be alright if the US government were saving to compensate, but it is running a deficit of more than 6% of GDP, leading to debt/GDP ratios more than France and closing in on Italy. Lots of the investment has been wasted - many of the projects were never cost-effective, and others are well behind schedule, as repeatedly chronicled in e.g. the Economist, the WSJ and the FT
And then there's the Biden-era inflation ...
Overall, Biden's record on the economy is pretty poor if not disastrous.
I still worry that Harris might regret not choosing Shapiro. Pennsylvania is the keystone state for this election. If Harris wins it, she wins. If she loses it it is going to be incredibly close.
@oasis
The guns have fallen silent.
The stars have aligned.
The great wait is over.
Come see.
It will not be televised.
https://x.com/oasis/status/1828341740572479734
No
It will be livestreamed on TikTok and Instagram for hundreds of thousands of people to watch instead...
When he was elected three and a half years ago, he was clearly able to manage the rigors of a campaign. He wasn't - I think you'll agree - demented.
Times change, and people with cognitive decline have good days and bad days. He has rightly taken the decision to stand down.
But what you seem to be suggesting is that the best thing for America (not the Democrats, but America), was for the VP to cause a constitutional crisis by publicly claiming the President was unable to fulfil his duties, and demanding the invocation of the 25th Amendment.
Yeah, like that was going to happen, irrespective of which party was in power, and absent an "event".
He may have a landslide majority in the Commons ..... Starmer is clearly not a colossus of electoral politics.
If Trump won Arizona and Georgia and Pennsylvania as well as the states he won in 2020 though Harris wins by just 273 to 265 votes, the closest EC margin since 2000 when Bush beat Gore by 271 to 266
https://www.270towin.com/
Hard disagree. You can absolutely go on 'as you were'. It's what most governments do most of the time. And is true of most projects and programmes within most organisations.
If you sort everything out, you can no longer work on sorting everything out. The finishing line by necessity has to be moveable. Plans needs to be overtaken by events so reality can continue indefinitely.
As a species we are hugely dishonest about this reality, because the illusion is necessary to keep everything moving. But it's moving towards an 'end goal' that is always out of sight, and when it ever comes within range is bound to move again, because it has to.
Maintaining a sense of purpose is more vital than comprehensively achieving goals. Things will always muddle on. Can-kicking is necessary, and criticising the can-kicking is a part of the can-kicking in the slighly bigger scheme.
This is the real hurty truth.
On the other hand since Trumpty Dumpty has similar features we can all rejoice he has more good days and be as safe as we were with Joe.
I really did not spend my time well before I met my wife.
The voters selected Joe Biden, knowing his age. The VP doesn't get to precipitate constitutional crises just on the basis that @Alanbrooke wants one.
I suspect if it were the other way around we could call it a tie. MoE and all that?
And no real evidence that Biden isn't fit to hold the office for the shorter period.
Better than Cameron? Remains to be seen.
Redfield 15 Aug Harris +2
Bullfinch 11 Aug Harris +4
Franklin 11 Aug Harris +3
but do report Bloomberg 28 July Trump +4
538 has Harris ahead by 1.6% in Pennsylvania
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
BetfaIr has Harris as favourite (just) at 1.94 in Pennsylvania
To hear some of his supporters talk, you'd think he had a miraculous survival after a Nelson-style severing of the spinal column.
It was the person behind him got shot.
The hurdle for evicting our democratically elected representatives is rightly very high.
One thing that's certain is that the advertising markets in state will make a LOT of money this autumn.
Probably a wise move.
SNP ministers are being forced to consider axing some of Scotland’s “freebies” such as prescriptions and university tuition to plug a huge black hole in the public finances caused by their spending choices.
A leaked briefing by the head of Scotland’s NHS disclosed that civil servants were drawing up options for ministers to cut, including “some of the universal benefits.”
Caroline Lamb, chief executive of NHS Scotland and the director-general for health and social care, said her department alone had a £1.1 billion spending “gap”.
SNP ministers attempted to blame impending spending cuts by the new Labour Government for the shortfall but their claims were demolished by the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC), their official economic forecasters.
The SFC said “much of the pressure comes from the Scottish Government’s own decisions”, particularly public sector pay offers that have greatly exceeded ministers’ budgets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/27/snp-axe-scottish-freebies-black-hole-spending/