Ask A Genius 1031: And the winner? To be decided.
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/27
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Rick Rosner: There probably isn’t enough time to hold another Democratic primary. Almost everybody who’s not an asshole is throwing their support to Harris. However, somebody has to figure out how that works within some rules without making voters who voted for Biden feel betrayed. But that being said, most Democrats are pretty happy.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: My wife said she feels optimistic for the first time in weeks. The Harris campaign, or the Dems, had one of their biggest fundraising days, raising more than $50,000,000 today. And the Republicans seem like they’re a little bit in an uproar, throwing out all sorts of nonsense that Kamala isn’t even a US citizen and can’t run for president because her parents weren’t US citizens, which is contrary to the Constitution.
The Constitution, the 14th Amendment, says that anybody born here gets citizenship as a natural-born citizen. Now, somebody could get a lawsuit against Harris up to the Supreme Court, and given the people on the Supreme Court, they might lose 7 to 2 because Alito and Thomas are out of control. But there’s a ton of precedent and the Constitution’s plain language that says she’s entitled to run.
Also, it applies to vice presidents, and she’s already been VP for three and a half years. So it seems like nonsense, but a ton of nonsense will be thrown at her. Somebody says she has an annoying laugh and puts together a set of clips of her laughing too boisterously. But so far, it seems like all nonsense. There will be some legit criticisms they can throw at her like she was the border czar, and they can make the case that a ton of people came over the border.
But I have yet to see that argument being made. It’s all been these dumb arguments. It’ll take us a week or ten days to see what the polls look like. Of course, the polls aren’t trustworthy, but I bet they inch up, and she’ll narrow the gap with Trump. Do you hear anything different from Canada?
Jacobsen: Not much, but I’m sure it’s there. What are Harris’ positions that are different from Biden’s?
Rosner: There were probably differences four years ago when they ran against each other in the Democratic primaries, but she dropped out after only a couple of primaries. So, I need to remember. One thing she had—oh, there’s another thing she can be criticized for. She prosecuted 1900 people for marijuana charges before marijuana was legal in California.
And people can accuse her of being anti-Black because more of those people were Black than the average in the overall population. But that’s an argument that’s not going to get very far with most people because the Republicans are running a racist campaign, and accusations of pursuing racist policies should persuade them not to vote for her. So, any of that is just noise. She was the attorney general of the state and the district attorney for San Francisco.
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And she was doing her job to prosecute people who broke the law. It’s ironic since if she gets the nomination; she’ll be running against the most lawless person who’s ever been, president. People are already pointing that out. The prosecutor against the prosecuted. It’ll be tough for Republicans to go after her on that because they’re supposed to be the law and order party, which lately they are not.
Overall, the early signs look good. Of course, there are still 107 days to the election. There’s the national convention. Other people, like Joe Manchin, are saying they might want to run against her for the nomination, which is ridiculous. They can try to dig up some dirt on her, but she doesn’t have as long a political record as Biden, who’s been in national politics for 51 years.
She’s been in electoral politics for about 20 years. The dirt that I’ve seen is nothing significant. She dated Willie Brown, an old-school California Democratic politician, for a few years. He was about 30 years older than her. But so what? Trump married a woman who’s 30 years younger than he is.
I’m not sure there’s much dirt to be found on her. She’s not a sexual harasser or a rapist. So, they’ll have to resort to nonsense about her not being qualified, an argument being made. She compared to Trump, who is very unqualified. So there you go.
Jacobsen: Vance is the first vice presidential candidate to be a marine veteran.
Rosner: Yes. Though he was a marine, he was in the journalism platoon. So yes, he made it into the Marines, and yes, that’s a good thing. But he wasn’t a combat marine; he was writing articles. So, yes, that’s to his credit, and it will get him some votes. But there’s more dirt on him, or maybe a comparable amount than there is on Harris.
Jacobsen: Didn’t he say he’d be okay with an absolute national ban on abortion, no exceptions?
Rosner: He also called Trump a piece of shit. He didn’t say “piece of shit,” but close enough. He said something else, but oh, “America’s Hitler,” before he became a Trump supporter. That won’t persuade many Trump voters because a) he’s Trump’s pick, and b) it’s said that Trump likes people who bend the knee, who once didn’t support him and now have to kiss his ass. But there’s a lot of his support for conservative policies, Project 2025. So Trump will still have his base. It’sjust that America right now has 50% independent voters and 25% Republicans and Democrats.
So the fight is for the independents, and there might be more for independents to dislike about Harris than Trump. Still, Harris has to become the nominee in a way that doesn’t make the Democrats look like stumble-fucks and weak. Do you prefer Kamala more than Biden? I lost $200 with Biden leaving. I kept placing bets because I was getting good odds that Biden would win.
And so far, I’ve only bet $160 that Kamala Harris becomes president. But I’d rather lose $200 and have a better president. From everybody’s reaction and from characteristics Ha, Chris, at this point, is a better candidate than Biden would have been. With Biden, you have to watch every sentence and hope he makes it to the end of the sentence without making a verbal mistake. His ideas are still there.
He’s not messing up on the facts. He’s messing up on the rhetoric. She’s 59 years old. She looks younger. She looks pretty. She’s got nice teeth, a nice smile, and nice hair. Hair is hugely important for a candidate. Kennedy had great hair. Clinton has pretty good hair. Reagan has awesome hair. People can get behind good hair, as dumb as it is. And if you’re going off superficial stuff, somebody might point out that she, at 5’2″, would be our shortest-ever president.
They haven’t made it an issue yet. Somebody on the Republican side said she can’t be president because she’s never had kids. How does she know what her parents are going through? And everybody told him to fuck off, but that’s an argument that will be made. People came back with, “Fuck you, George Washington didn’t have kids.” By the way, she has stepkids, as did George Washington. Yes, many stupid arguments will be made, but she might be a more charismatic candidate than Trump. She might have actual charisma. It’ll depend on whether she can talk fluidly.
She’s been attacked for talking in a roundabout style. If she can talk punchily, that’ll go a long way to making her a good candidate. We have yet to have a charismatic candidate. Every candidate is creepy. RFK Junior is creepy. Trump is super creepy. Biden is creepy by virtue of looking decrepit. Slightly less creepy on Biden’s part in 2020 because he was four years younger, maybe on Trump’s part in 2020 because he hadn’t yet fomented an insurrection.
But we haven’t had a presidential candidate with any kind of charisma who is decent to look at since Obama. Harris, Trump looks like hammered shit. Biden looks like hammered shit. Robert Kennedy looks like he hammered shit on steroids because he is. He takes a ton of testosterone. People might want to look at somebody who’s not Robert Kennedy’s 70, with a weird, strangled voice, a lot of sun damage, and a big, bloated face, partly from the steroids. The way somebody looks can go a long way in American politics.
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