Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.
Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:
Is a convicted felon.
Liable Sexual Predator.
Gets sentenced in November.
Has several more pending cases.
Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).
Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.
Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.
Wants war with Mexico (his words).
Tried to coup Venezuela.
Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.
Is the main driving force for America’s current division.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).
Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.
Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.
Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).
And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.
Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?
I'm actually curious.
Are there countries (ones that have a voting system) where it isn't all one big popularity contest?
In Norway it is common to find quizzes in newspaper websites that question you on different topics and score how well you align with the various parties. They're great at both introducing you to current political hot topics while also orienting you about the various parties that exist, of which there are far more that two that are viable to choose from.
Germany has one that they call a wahlomat.
I'd say here in Germany it is mostly a unpopularity contest.
I think there's a saying about this, "Elections are always lost, never won" or some such.
Parliamentary systems at least choose parties, not people. This means that the most popular party, not person, will have a greater share of power. It's harder, but not impossible (looking at you, Geert Wilders), to get a Trump.
Ireland uses a variant of ranked choice voting. In essence, voters get a list of candidates for their voting district, and rank as many of them as they want in order of preference. When votes are counted, the candidate with the lowest votes is eliminated, and votes of those who ranked the candidate first are distributed to their second choice. Rinse and repeat until only as many candidates remain as there are open seats in the constituency.
There is still some inertia, especially in rural areas ("my dad always voted for this candidate, so I'll vote for his son"), but the system still lends itself to more informed voting. From what I've seen in other countries, on average Ireland does a better job at electing more reasonable candidates than the US or EU countries.
Australia's electoral system is far from perfect, but it seems to be less focus on the prime minister then there is on the US president.
Of course the PM still needs to be popular and electable, and we're sliding to the right like most democracies, but I can't imagine we could have an election like the current US cycle where no one is really talking about policy.
As I understand it only the US, UK and countries like Russia use first past the post these days.
No