this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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And that's as clear as she got the whole time. As least she was answering the question asked in that case.
(As to single-issue Gaza voters, I get it in the "had a close friend who was Palestinian in my 20s" sense, but Trump doesn't give a shit about the Palestinians. Somehow suggesting she's the worse choice in this race on that issue alone isn't even true, regardless of the larger picture. That's not politics or conjecture.)
Politicians are notoriously evasive, and this particular interview sounded more straight forward than most. Okay, most the honest ones, anyway. I mean: it's easy to say "Read my lips. No new taxes" or "Free IVF" if you've no legitimate plan to fund the government, but if you're not going to make stuff up for the sound bite, you almost have to be evasive. Robust and well considered plans are made by experts and a politician trying to promote a good plan has to boil it down to a couple nebulous basics. Doing anything else means you either bore the audience OR skip a contingency or other minutia such that your critics call you a liar.
Remember when Obama said you'd get to keep your doctor? He was trying to summarize explaining that Affordable Care would not mandate what doctor you could use, but what he didn't say was that Insurance Companies would continue to be able choose what doctors they covered, so Obama's critics said he LIED about keeping your doctor. It was NOT a lie. It was just Insurance companies doing what they always did.
Harris said she would support Israel but the war had to end. If Israeli/Palestinian strife has gone unsolved for 50 years through all sorts of Presidents, I don't expect any U.S. election to change what goes on over there. The U.S. could theoretically stop aiding Israel as it commits genocide, but the realistic outcome of that would be neighboring countries committing genocide on Israelis, and since that's the basic reason the country was invented... maybe that's not the best outcome either. It has been a mess for decades, and I'm not blaming Regan, Carter, Trump, Putin, or Tony Blair for any of the mess with Gaza.
Harris said she would not ban fracking but her values have not changed. I suspect this is because she's come to see no one banned horses when car came along, and no one need ban fracking if there's a better alternative. What she did not specify was the carrots and sticks she might employ to get us to which alternatives. That's fine with me because the tech is changing and the outcome is more important than the method.
Harris said she would enforce laws regarding immigration AND she wanted the tabled border bill on her desk so she can sign it. There's a bunch she could have said there, too, but my point is that again, she wasn't particularly evasive.
Israel is so armed to the teeth at this point, i'm not sure how you think they would just be sitting ducks without the US's support. And honestly at this point I kind of feel like they deserve whatever happens to them in the absence of US aid. 17,000 dead children is a lot of blood to wash off.
Given that Israel has nuclear weapons, they wouldn't be 'sitting ducks', but I don't want to see a nuclear war starting in the Middle East. I doubt it would stay contained to the area. I fear that Russia would back Iran and counter -- or at least threaten to -- with Russian nuclear weapons, which would get the U.S. or our allies back into the mess but escalated to the whole world at risk instead of just a small contested sliver.
I would love to see a workable path to a two-state solution. Experts have spent their lives working towards that goal and it still hasn't happened. I totally blame the government of Israel for not figuring out a peace with Palestinian residents back in the 1970s, but here we are. Bibbi makes everything worse and his public falls for his 'strong man' shtick just like Americans fall for Trump's version. Sitting in the U.S., the best election choice I can make for the sake of Palestinians is to vote Harris. Beyond the election, there is room for letters, protests, and boycotts, but the problem is mostly with Israel's government rather than with anyone in the United States.