The double standard for Harris and Trump has reached a breaking point | One candidate can rant about gibberish while the other has to be perfect.

because most major media supports trump.

I'll take the downvotes, but a large part of this is because she's a woman. "One candidate (a man) can rant about gibberish while the other (a woman) has to be perfect." doesn't just apply to politics, this sounds like every office I've ever worked in.

It’s obvious that there is a double standard but it’s too late to point it out.

Time is up.

If people are “undecided” they aren’t going to even consider media fairness or maybe even logic at this point.

It’s Donald Fuckin Trump. Rapist. Fascist. Liar. Cheat. Insert hundreds of other negatives and reasons why he should not have power and be in jail.

It’s voting time. That’s all that’s left. He won the media and the narrative enough to make it a race at all. Pointing it out now is fruitless - he got away with that shit for his purposes.

Weird that this has to be explained this late into the game but…

Trump is running on the promise of enacting fascism and using state power to mete out retribution to the ‘undesirables’ that his voters blame for their lack of power. To this end there is nothing he can say or do that will make them not vote for him. He is promising power and as long as he wins his promise is kept.

Kamala is running on a platform of ‘not fascism’ and to that end she does need to provide a coherent alternate worldview to mindless retribution. It’s not enough for her to walk the middle of the road and say as little as possible. She needs to give people a diametrically opposed worldview. She needs to be capable of explaining why fascist retribution isn’t good or helpful. She can not just be a diet Republican. She needs to have coherent answers to their obvious bullshit.

Hope this helps. Horrifying that the people who are a decade into Trumpism and ostensibly responsible for stopping it don’t seem to have the slightest clue what motivates it or how to counter it.

Can we stop putting up articles stuck behind paywalls please?

Yes, that's the advantage of leading a cult.

She passed the bar exam and operated as a lawyer for years independently defending special assault victims and others victims. She never went bankrupt and has been successful

Trump boasted you need to be "quite" smart to win golf club championships during the debate with Biden, he went bankrupt multiple times and raped women. He can't even hang onto lawyers

Yet Republicans are now calling kamala incompetent

One side's supporters partook in the education system while the other went to church?

They're accustomed to gibberish...

Centrists look on Trump's base and wonder why they can't have a mindless cult too.

One side must bring peace to the middle east, the other side is allowed to tell Israel to kill Palestinians faster.

And before someone comes defending their stance not to vote for either genocidal enabler, why aren't you trying to save as many people as possible? Are you ok with more people dying because of your ideals? Enjoy living with that choice if he wins.

One side expects their candidates to hold some standards, the other side doesn't care. It's like watching a sporting event with a homer who only sees the world based on how it effects their team winning or losing. Fairness doesn't come into play, the other side is always cheating and getting favored media exposure.

This is a feature not a bug in a slaver's system.

Is it too much to ask her to go on a 10 minute rant about someone she showered with had the best vagina and every single lady that showered with her spoke highly of how great her vagina is?

I hate to be a downer, but "it's not fair" doesn't really matter at this point. Trump continues to gain, and he's babbling incoherently most days and being quite clear that he plans to be a fascist from day one. Whether it's fair or not, there's is a huge double standard. If Harris does anything wrong she loses support. Trump daily explains gleefully how he's going to take away civil rights, begin mass deportations, purge the federal government and fill it with loyalists, and on, and on, and on, and on, and he's been slowly but steadily gaining support for a month.

Is there a huge, glaring double standard? Yes, absolutely. Does it matter for the blunt reality of the upcoming election? No, not at all.

I'd love nothing more than to see her just spend an hour straight laying into Trump and Vance with f-bomb strewn attacks and continuous heavy-handed insults. I think she'd probably convert some Republicans if she did that.

And yet you spineless fucking cowards didn't endorse, so your words mean nothing

Kamala isn't really standing for anything, is trying to be too safe, and I don't think it's going too work to well

The misogyny is thick.

Anyone who equates "not perfect" with supporting a genocide is not worth being read and taken seriously.

It's not about being perfect. It's about not regressing to a 2004 republican. That doesn't appealt to Republicans who have moved further right and not to the left who refuse to budge.

It's willful ignorance to complain that she needs to be perfect when the people complaining are often specific about the things they care about that are being ignored.

And if those are being ignored you can be shocked they won't vote for her and you must admit she's clearly not courting those voters either.

This is either a non-issue cause she is going for exactly the voters she wants or she's willingly creating a flaw by deciding to court votes that won't be enough to win.
I don't get how this is still an argument. It's happening exactly as participants are making it happen.

I had a thought about this; fascism exists because there are evil but effective ways of swaying people. By scapegoating immigrants and providing propaganda, he's doing exactly what other fascists have done (including Hitler) to great success.

It's like any other good vs evil things, the good guys always have extra hurdles to deal with, like a super hero who has to save civilians and can't just sucker punch the baddies. Too bad this is reality, and the good guys aren't guaranteed to win...

Trump is targeting mostly far-right evangelicals who have a common vision on what they want the country to look like. He has a lot of energy when doing so, and because of how similar their interests are he could get away with all sorts of stuff and they would still vote for him.

Harris (and Democrats in general) is the only alternative mainstream candidate that everyone else has, and that "everyone else" consists of all sorts of people with conflicting interests: liberals, neoliberals, centrists, progressives, leftists, different religious groups or cultures, varying economic demographics, racial minorities, LGBTQ, and immigrants for instance. They're trying to appeal to all of them at once, but because they don't have a shared vision, nobody is happy and they get more scrutinized. To make at least some of them happy, they need to focus on certain groups and deprioritize the interests of other groups. However, once they do that then the groups they deprioritize get angry since they no longer have representation, and the groups that are still there remain skeptical because of the history of not working for their interests in the past.

The advantage that third parties like PSL have is that from the start, they're trying to appeal to a specific group of people with a common vision like Trump is instead of trying to play both sides with conflicting groups and making nobody happy. The problem (aside from the election duopoly bought out by corporations) is that they are a very small political minority so they have no real chance of winning the election without winning over people from other groups which is a challenge, especially when there are many more unknowns when it comes to progressing than there are when it comes to reverting to a previous state so there is more fragmentation due to those sort of disagreements.

"liberal media" outlets are either actually run by conservatives or so obsessed with trying to appear balanced, they end up downplaying Trump and highlighting Harris issues. Combine that with the pure propoganda from conservative media, and the whole industry has a strong conservative slant...

• Real news: Trump praises Hitler
• "liberal media": Trump praises WW2 leader, Harris eats pizza with a fork
• Conservative media: FORK GATE 2024!!! Harris campaign in shambles!

To me it seems like less of a double standard and more of a representation of the divide between Americans.

Trump gets plenty of criticism from all around. Including from the same people that are also criticizing Harris. But his voter base is in full support of the stuff he's spewing, and will believe anything he says wholesale. Even if it's crazy, or unsubstantiated, or demonstrable lies.

The people who make legitimate criticisms of Harris are not supportive of trump. But them criticizing Trump will not change Trump. He already has unwavering support from a large number of people. Why would he do anything to gain the support of someone who is willing to call him out on his bullshit and hold him to an actual standard? And it's not going to change the minds of any of his cult-like voters. However they do have hope that by criticizing Harris they might see her actually make changes towards becoming a candidate they wholesale fully support. Not a candidate that they are forced to choose because of the alternative. But a candidate that they actively want to be elected. These criticisms might also be persuasive to other Harris supporters and call them to be vocal and advocate for her to change as well.

So it's less of individuals having double standards and treating the candidates differently, but the two polar opposite standards that the voter bases have.

"You criticized her for not being good at X so she did X a bunch!"

Yeah but she's bad at it and it went really poorly for her and hurt her numbers.

These people are fucking idiots.

Democrats credentials for presidency - they are not Trump.

Edit - In any other election cycle this is a legitimate question.

What are you bringing to the table? What is your policy position?

For both the parties.

Just because this election only party is eligible to represent doesnt mean that the questions shouldn't be asked. Browbeating undecided voters for the questions is wrong and might give the result no one wants.

It's not that she needs to be perfect, but - unfair or not - she DOES have to make a case for a bunch of disconnected dipshit "undecided" voters and clearly show how she will tangibly improve their lives.

She already has my vote, but pretending people rolling their eyes at "I am going to add a Republican to my cabinet" is somehow a "purity test" isn't compelling. The day she replaced Biden on the ticket she should have had been shouting "we're going to bring our healthcare system up to modern standards and stop the barbaric practice of being the only major country on Earth with no universal healthcare solution" or "we're going to remove medical debt" or "we're going to tax all those billionaires like Elon Musk who are literally getting away with naked political corruption."

Yeah... I agree it's not fair... but whining about "fairness" instead of doing EVERYTHING you can with the hand you've been dealt in order to stop the lying McDonald's cosplaying fascist from slipping BACK into the office he almost toppled last time is absolutely insane.

Doesn't anyone feel like this has been the case for a long time with anyone versus Trump?

Actually, let me back that up, this seems to be a major Republican thing actually.

Democrats will follow the rules and try out an exemplary candidate up for President (most of the time).

Republicans will skirt the legality of everything possible to win with a candidate who embodies the worst human instincts and activity.

Maybe I'm the only one who feels that?

I can only speak for myself, as a Leftist I dont expect perfection but I have a few quite simple things that I would want from a presidency that I dont think are unreasonable. I want an end to the funding of genocide, an end to US imperalism, an end to the military (at least offensive military), an end to fossil fuels, an improved immigration system, decreased taxes for the workers, less inflation, ranked choice voting, enforced civil rights for women and trans people, a better healthcare system, no corporate bailouts or funding. Kamala might support some or none of those things and I wouldn't know because she doesn't make her policy positions clear. I think that if she was just transparent and honest then more people would vote for her, as of now her campaign website contains only a few very vague positions.

Ended wars with France? Like when we deserted Afghanistan and left them in the mess we created?

First rule of resisting tyranny:

Don’t obey in advance!!

Are we still reading Washington Post?

This is the piece Robinson's fuming about, and he's absolutely fucking right. It was the most insane example of journalist circlejerking I've ever seen. Bunch of navel-gazing morons.

nearly perfect anyway

The problem isn't having a high standards for Harris. She is running for the most powerful position in probably the world, so she has to be able to do this. The problem is there is no standard for Trump at all. His supporters are fine with his low quality for lots of reasons, none that are helpful to the nation. The GOP is fine because of the votes he brings by being himself and saying things they think but couldn't say out loud. And the rest, like the media and the left and other country leaders are soft on calling a spade a spade because somehow pointing out the Emperor has no clothes and is shitting all over the furniture is not playing fair or isn't respectful or something.

Affirmative action for morons

Oh then what if we had more than two parties ?

Oh, they all get called traitors.

"I dont vote for right wingers on the right or the left" is the closest I can get to a single standard to apply to all candidates.

But its more nuanced than that, isnt it-- as much as you'd like to pretend otherwise. You're either pretending not to understand, in which case you're just a troll, or you're too limited in your cognitive empathy to understand, in which case, you arent worth anyones time to talk to.

She lacks momentum and a charisma that gets people to follow you. So random critics can shout from the bleachers and say how they think she's doing it wrong. So they tell her to jump and she jumps. They tell her to move this way and she does. It's always wrong. Because they don't know what she needs to do either.

They know yelling at Trump is useless. They don't have any power over him. He'll do what he wants and says what he wants and we can try to call him out and he doesn't care and his followers don't either. In all his ignorance, he has confidence. Arguably because of his ignorance.

In all her intelligence, she's not sure what to do. But neither do the spectators. I'm not sure what she needs to do, but it probably has to come from somewhere inside herself and proclaim it without apology.

There's a lot of smart people in that room. I'm not sure there's much wisdom.

You go high, we go low

It's been like this for nearly as long as I can remember.

I hope nobody tells Trump about Pol Pot,..

Its the same with actual actions to. I just got done pasting a part of an article someone linked where the comment was about how under biden there is more drilling on federal land than trump but the salient part is he fought this but was blocked by a lawsuit from republican states. I have seen the same with his work with student loans. Its not enough. Its like dudes. Is half a loaf what we want. no. but its better than no loaf while wheat fields are ordered burned and salted. Maybe we should not vote for the guys trying to put the fire out because they are not putting them out fast enough vs how quickly they spread and should instead let the guys starting fires win and these other guys who have never put out a fire say if we vote for them they will put them out sooooo much better.

Can any of you honestly say you have chosen which of the two is better based on how they speak? I think most are voting based on what they expect them to do.

What else should the media do about it? It's not like Trump can be shamed into changing his behavior. It's not like Republicans won't completely dismiss anything he says. Even if they did wall to wall coverage about how he's a fascist, the third of the country that elects the president won't change their minds.

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support