Vice President Kamala Harris gave the public its first real look into her nascent presidential campaign with a stop at her organization’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday night.

Harris’ first applause line came when she discussed her background as California attorney general and as a courtroom prosecutor.

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, earning cackles while she beamed, clearly enjoying the joke. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Opens Fire On Trump

    Glad to see they didn’t shy away from using this terminology, considering recent events.

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done, starting from trump “university” all the way up to the catastrophic covid response, the ukraine phone calls, the stolen documents, and on and on.

    she needs to dial it up to 11 and keep it there. it’s time to throw out this “let’s take the high road” attitude that’s accomplished exactly jack fucking shit over the last too many decades

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      she needs to specifically call out every single bullshit thing he’s ever done

      There isn’t enough hours left until election day to list all of it.

      Also, maybe she should try another tactic than the one that BARELY worked for her predecessor the last time around playing on the much easier “people are experiencing how awful Trump is as president RIGHT NOW” difficulty level.

      If she wants to win and win big (which is the only outcome that isn’t humiliating and dangerous for democracy), she needs more than “Trump bad”. She’s going to need some “Kamala good” to energize the base.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote. similarly, it wasn’t “biden good” messaging that made him win.

        when more people vote, dems win. that’s why republicans are desperately trying to disenfranchise, gerrymander, and otherwise suppress all the votes they can.

        “kamala good” campaigning will accomplish nothing. she needs to make the people who are sitting on their ass angry enough to get up and vote. not FOR her, but AGAINST trump

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          People voted for Obama because they believed in change. Democrats can’t just win by making people hate their opponents. Democrats would have no agenda if all it took was making people hate their opponents.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          obama didn’t win because of “obama good” messaging, he won because people hated bush enough that the got off their ass to vote

          Either your knowledge of history is bogus, or you’re too young to have experienced the 08 election between Obama and McCain. Obama didn’t win ‘because people hated bush’, he won because he ran on the (now obviously bogus and intentionally vague) message of hope and change.

          Obama literally won based on his messaging, so I hope no one listens to you on this matter.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Well that and he’s an incredibly charismatic person, exceptionally well spoken and handled himself well in almost all public engagements.

          • Triasha@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Change from what?

            What did people want to change?

            What was wrong that we all wanted to change… Away… From?

            Yeah it was deliberately vague bullshit, but I was there. We wanted to change away from Bush and war and bigotry and callous disregard for our fellow citizens.

            Obama’s genius was retorical, not substantial. This country doesn’t know what it wants because we have vastly different ideas about what would be best even inside the Democratic party, let alone independents and Republicans. Laying out specific policy goals is mostly a trap. Because whoever you piss off cares a lot more about that than whoever you please.

            Trump does the same thing by vomiting so much bullshit that voters can imagine he will give them whatever their hearts desire is because he said he would at some point. He won’t, but his voters are mostly already praying to a sky angel so they have a lot of experience projecting love and benevolence for them onto a distant figure that doesn’t care about them at all.

            • boydster@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Obama had a huge advantage on McCain because McCain seemed comparatively old, feeble, and not nearly as well-spoken. Then McCain picked Sarah Palin as a running mate and America heard her try to form sentences in real time.

              GW was on his way out. The choice was McCain’s version of conservatism plus whatever the crazy cat lady was going to say along the way, or Obama’s promise of hope and change, with a very well-understood Biden at his side.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      “Biden may have accidentally called Zelenskyy Putin. At an open meeting, but Trump likely calls Putin ‘boss’ in hidden ones”

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    2 months ago

    Honestly, this is the kind of down-in-the-dirt campaigning I had hoped to see from Hillary back in 2016 before she tied an apron on and tried to convince everyone she was a sweet little motherly person. You can’t be sweet and kind with someone like Trump. You need to gather up the shit he’s piling up around the place and drown his ass in it.

    So if Kamala is gonna bring the pain, I’m here for it. Trump needs to be beaten bloody on the pulpit. Because bullies can never handle being bullied themselves. Especially ones as thin skinned and stupid as Trump is.

  • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    She said building up the middle class would be a defining goal of her presidency,

    Go on Kamala, you are making me hope you might be better than just “not trump.” Let’s hear some details that will be resistant to the 1% and their greed and get prices under control.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      What about the working poor? That’s a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.

      When it comes to economic reform (rather than compression, according to that show with the hand job calculations), from the bottom up is many times more effective than the middle out shit the Dems keep trying.

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the working poor in America consider themselves “middle class”. So that’s how you have to direct your message if you want it to reach the most people.

    • Harris opted for liable of scamming, sexual abuse, and guilty of fraud on thirty-four counts instead of fraud, rape, and convicted of thirty-four felonies. Great start, but she should not shy from harsh rhetoric.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    First woman president is a hail mary in the last months of election year? Sounds like humanity to me.

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        We do love dangling victory into the jaws of defeat for a few moments. I haven’t been alive to see a lot of my favorite moments in this timeline, so I’m glad I’ll be here for this legendary one.

  • recapitated@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I am frustrated that we didn’t get to pick our candidate in the primaries, I don’t know if Harris is my style. She might be.

    But God damn I am looking forward to her going head to head with Trump. She is sharp as hell on her feet.

    • gradyp@awful.systems
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      I was not a harris booster previously but the biggest complaint I have about her, “Copmala” is actually a significant strength in this election. Then I started reading into her voting record. Combine that with her being a woman in the post roe v wade world, and a woman of color against the most xenophobic party that any of us have experienced and I think she’s EXACTLY what we need.

  • Rayspekt@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I want that debate between her and poor Donnie. This woman ia going to roast the shit out of him with her professional experience.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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      That’s what’s needed. The older boomer republicans (not die hard MAGA’s, there’s a lot more of the at least rational ones out there) need to see her wipe the floor with him with facts and tough questions he outright lies to, to have a chance of changing their vote.

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    She should point out, repeatedly, that the man has no financial skills at all. Keep hammering how bad he was for workers and the economy in general but still turned a tidy profit for himself. He would actually have more wealth now if he had just invested his inheritance in the S&P (according to Forbes) instead of starting all his cockamamie businesses. The man ran how many casinos into the ground? He went bankrupt in businesses where people say “the house always wins” because the odds are literally stacked in the house’s favor.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      I don’t care for some of her positions, but would you care to elaborate how, or is this just some bullshit feeling stuff?

        • GeneralVincent@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Your own source disagrees with your black and white oversimplification

          But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official. Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.

          She’s not two faced, she’s trying to make positive changes in a political climate that is biased against her. That’s far more nuanced than you claim. And far less two faced than her opponent.

          • Hotmailer@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m not arguing for Trump. I’m arguing that you could find someone better. American politics is exhausting. You have better people, like Andrew Yang, instead you give the world the better of two bad choices.

            • cheers_queers@lemm.ee
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              2 months ago

              you don’t understand what it’s like to be a citizen here, you don’t live here, so maybe just shut up and listen to the ones over here in the trenches.