I was shocked in the presidential debate that Harris gave staunch support for fracking. I was under the impression that democrats are against fracking, and remember people being critical of Fetterman for supporting it.
I also grew up in an area that was heavily impacted by the pollution from fracking. People who worked in the field were seen as failures of moral character who chose profits over the health of their children. How is it that both major parties are now in support of it? I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle.
Democrats have the backwards idea that trying to be conservative enough to siphon off republican voters is how they’ll win, while they’ve got this mass of chronically ignored, disconnected progressives who they never serve “because they don’t vote”. And they don’t vote because no one represents them.
Just eternally chasing that cracked out meth head of a party over to the right.
To play devils advocate on their behalf: why chase the people who are on the extreme end of your side of the spectrum? Most of those people probably live in safe blue states, and they’re never going to flip and vote R in any case. There aren’t enough far left liberals to truly worry about as most people are somewhere in the middle. For every far left radical the Democrats please, they disaffect three moderate Democrats, who then maybe don’t vote.
Yes it looks weird when they try to cater to the odd and very narrow slice of undecided / persuadable voters, but that’s exactly what they should be doing. And there is more to lose than gain by chasing extreme left voters.
Signed, an extreme left voter.
US presidential elections aren’t about swaying your base. They’re about swaying very specific swing states.
The electoral college means pushing to the center is the only way for progressives to win an election. Conservatives can generally do what they want, they have an inherent advantage in the electoral college.
Giving up the chance to make small change because you refuse to compromise only means that, within the system we have here, we end up backsliding. Every small improvement is hard won, and giving up means dramatic losses.
It’s a shit system, but it’s the system we currently have to work with.
They are trying to cater to the independent voters, not republicans. This is smart because independent voters have decided elections in several states before
Without evidence I will say it’s more likely that she has significant funding from the fracking industry and is under the thumb of rich executives. The difference is that they likely understand that supporting fracking could cost them the election, but they know that by not supporting it they lose a huge source of funding. They have weighed the costs, benefits and risks, and decided it’s a risk worth taking.
A good solution is to get corporate money out of politics. There are narrow ways to achieve that, but a broad solution that fixes a lot of problems is to end corporate personhood. This organization has made steady progress toward that and I think is worth supporting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_to_Amend. Considered signing up for their email list.
Another solution is more wisely voting. People don’t vote in primary elections, but they’re more important than the general elections. They determine what the field of candidates looks like. Vote in primary elections. You don’t necessarily want to vote in primary of the party you most align with though. An obvious example where you’d vote in a different party is if you live in a gerrymandered district. There’s a near 100% chance the gerrymandered party candidate will win. It doesn’t matter who the other candidates are. Vote for the least bad candidate in the other party. You won’t get everything you want, but you’ll get more than you would otherwise. It will also force the party to change.
That’s not the only time you’d vote in a party you don’t align best with. Maybe you’re relatively happy with all of the candidates in a party, so why split hairs if you’d be ok with any of them? There are so many considerations that the only advice is to keep an open mind about party membership, evaluate where you make the most impact (not what looks the most like you) and vote in every damn election, primaries included.
The fact of the matter is that the parties are arguing over a small slice of swayable or “undecided” voters in a small slice of states that are in play ie: “swing states” and each party is honestly focusing on a subset of swing states they think they can win.
The result is that their messages look really odd at times and don’t always line up with what the majority of their party want. Because the majority of their party are safe votes. They’re going after the wingnuts in the middle and on the margins, few as they are, dumb as they are.
This is a far more obvious explanation than “she’s in the pocket of Big Oil.” A lot of Pennsylvanians work for Big Oil. So there is more going on right in the light of day than the clandestine bribery which by your own admission you have no evidence for. Occam’s razor, here.
I have no evidence of her motives. Campaign donations are public record, and she receives funding from oil companies. The idea that politicians are not swayed by finance is absurdly naive. They don’t need to accept that money. And, regardless whether convincing swing voters is a part of the campaign’s consideration, it should be clear that influence from corporations is not an influence. Then we could sit here an take them at their word. As it is, it’s impossible to think that millions of dollars from oil companies is not affecting the decision to make a complete u turn on supporting fracking.
Show me the millions of dollars from oil companies to the Harris Walz campaign which are public record. Actually provide your evidence, don’t just conjure it with words.
EDIT
Here, I’ll do your work for you since you dont seem ready to substantiate your comments.
The Harris campaign has taken 661 thousand dollars from oil interests. There’s actually a house candidate who took more, even though she’s running a presidential campaign!
And 9 of the other top 10 recipients and honestly almost the whole list of recipients are her Republican enemies. It’s clear they are funding her opponents.
So how much loyalty did they buy for their $600k? (Not “millions” of dollars as you mis-called it). I doubt very much at all.
Harris took in $47 million in donations in the 24 hours after the debate. If anything this is chump change from the oil industry to just maybe say hey don’t obliterate us. She doesn’t work for them.
No, you are wrong, her position is about swing state voters.
LOL. She needs Pennsylvania. That’s it.
That does sound better doesn’t it? If I were a presidential candidate, I would definitely say “We support fracking because we need Pennsylvania” instead of “We support fracking because our campaign has accepted millions of dollars from the oil industry”.
Any commentary I’ve heard is talking about Pennsylvania. It’s critically important to a win, and fracking is critically important to voters there.
That said, can’t it be both?
I’m sure both campaigns have accepted donations from loads of shady industries. Crypto is a salient example.
Money wins elections, and the race being as close as it is I don’t care where the dems are getting their money from.
I find myself saying this a lot, but if the left was going to win a convincing victory, they would have some scope for more progressive policy. There isn’t any room, and they don’t have that mandate.
It corporations weren’t given the same rights as people, then we’d need to wonder less about what politicians’ real motives were.
Corporations are legal entities, but they do not have the same rights as people.
They do according to the US supreme court. The court ruled in Citizens United that restricting donations from corporations was a violation of corporations’ first amendment rights.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
That’s an interesting possibility - is there any data to support it?
Here in Georgia the fight is in the center, for sure.