Why is Kamala Harris being held at such a higher standard than Trump this election?

Because too many people treat politics like a sporting event. You root for your team no matter what, and against the other team. You have to do it this way, because if the other side wins that means your side loses.

So there are too many people who view Trump as "Their Guy", and are "rooting" for him. Anything they hear that might portray Trump in a negative light (like a criminal trial, for instance) must be the Other Side trying to cheat to win unfairly.

I remind people that Roger Ailes was Nixon's media consultant, and the lesson he learned from Watergate was that Nixon could have gotten away with it if the media was more sympathetic. He then went on to be the CEO of Fox News. That's no accident. There is a direct line from Nixon to Trump, and Roger Ailes drew it.

The problem isn't that Harris is being held to a higher standard. The problem is that Americans think of elections the same way they think of a sporting match. It's "my team is going to win!" not "I'm going to vote for the candidate that is best aligned with my beliefs." A huge number of the people who are voting Republican are doing so because the Republican party is their "team," and damn it, their team is going to win even if it kills them.

Many years ago, I was discussing politics with a coworker (always a bad idea, but whatever). It went something like this:

"So, you don't think the less-fortunate should be able to afford medical care?" "No, of course not, everyone should be able to see a doctor."

"You don't think gay people should be allowed to marry?" "I'm not gay, but they can do whatever makes them happy."

"You support the war in Iraq, then?" "I support our troops, but the war is kind of a waste."

"We definitely should legalize weed, right?" "Um, I'd smoke it if I didn't get drug tested."

"So why are you voting Republican, then?" "My family is Republican; we always do."

Because a cult leader is automatically the purest one can be and needs no scrutiny.

Can't believe you are asking this now. In the 70s, I don't believe any of these yokels would have been elected. Lauren Beaubert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, they've all done things and said things that are so far over the line, it isn't even funny. Nixon? Please, he would be small potatoes today.

Why? Gerrymandering. Social Media. Lack of critical thinking skills. A sense of hopelessness. Apathy. Billionaire brainwashing. The list goes on. The strange thing is, conservatives want to go back to the way things were. For them that means when women had to go to back alleys to get abortions, when gays were stoned, when blacks weren't allowed to vote. For me it means when people didn't justify these ridiculous notions, but instead just said, "No!"

All those things you said against Trump are actually working in his favor. His base sees it as persecution of their chosen one.

Because the media are largely in the hands of the oligarchy that will stop at nothing to get another tax cut.

You must be young. Because Republicans will vote for a criminal before they vote for "communism". Because the Republicans attempt to destroy the educational system to keep people dumb enough to vote for them has worked. Because dispite the corporate media pandering and acting like they want Harris Because that's what their viewers want, their billionaire owners don't. They want the republican led centrist enabled tax breaks on their money. Harris has also brought in the progressives which have zero tolerance for the centrist mindset. She is in a situation where she has to dance a dance of trying to reel in the progressives even though they are going to throw a fit when she panders to the centrists and the corporate overlords.

The system is made and controlled by the billionaires. No hard progressive that doesn't play the game a little is going to get elected... right now. They will destroy anyone that threatens their billions. Everytime she goes a little too hard left they throw a fit.

Welcome to end stage capitalism.

Can you imagine a woman or a black man (let alone a black woman) running for president while being three-times divorced with kids from multiple partners and having cheated multiple times on top of that? Even if they were rich like Trump, it would never fly.

Trump is an outrage machine, and we have a media that deals in an economy of outrage.

Trump gets outrage. Outrage gets clicks. Clicks get money. It's a pretty simple chain to follow.

We need to wake up and realize that a profit-driven instantaneous news system that leverages strong emotions is not good for anybody. Truth is subjective nowadays, (always has been, really, but it's especially evident in the current media climate) and all that matters is getting information and narratives (not necessarily facts) out and people consuming it (and all the ads embedded with it) there, first, and right now.

I feel like a lot of people on Trump's side don't care and all of his issues have been documented in the press. If people cared, he wouldn't be this close.

You also have enough people left of Harris who don't want to hold their collective noses and vote for her. They'll complain about the Overton window shifting right, but won't be a bulwark for keeping it from shifting right. Hell, there are people on Lemmy complaining about political utilitarianism as a reason for voting for Harris and will even complain about Bernie if he says something being done by the Biden administration is good.

Because some Democrats have standards, and Republicans don't.

I don't believe it's possible for anybody to be held to lower standards than Trump.

It's a good thing she's held to higher standards. I don't want anybody held to his standards running anything.

Because MAGA is the largest cult in the world and they won't believe their great father could do anything wrong...

Because Harris's supporters have standards.

One thing particular to Trump is the percentage of his supporters in polling that support him no matter what. Trump has maintained some of the most sustained, consistent support of any modern political candidate. His base polling numbers basically haven't moved in like 10 years.

Trying to have his VP executed, injecting bleach, porn stars, felonies, treason, domestic use of military, anti-veteran sentiment, belittling the disabled, racist comments, sexist comments, sexual assault, etc., etc., etc. None of that meaningfully moved the needle.

You are not going to "get" Trump on anything like that. If you want him to lose support, he needs to be seen as weak, ineffective, and laughable in the eyes of his supporters. None of the above does that, because that isn't what Trump supporters care about. They care about hurting people they don't like or see as lesser-than. If Trump stops doing that effectively, he will lose support. But, frankly, he's really good at it.

Because so many trump voters are low-information, rabid and impervious to fact and/or reason. They will vote orange even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue to death, or if there are 32-or-whatever felony indictments/verdicts.

Meanwhile, many potential Democrat voters are also low-information in their own way - impressionable, fickle and with little memory retention, they seem unable to act upon a clear and present danger until it punches them in the goddamned face (and by then of course it's too late), somehow have normalized the orange threat and are easy prey to an algorithm pushing a "both parties are the same" divide-and-conquer propaganda.

The difference between a parasite-laden excrement chip cookie and a raisin oatmeal cookie, "But I wanted chocolate chip! bOtH cOoKiEs ArE tHe SaMe!"

People who would ever consider voting for the Toupee have no standards. No bar, no logic or even thought goes in to who they vote for.

The people who are planning to vote against the Toupee have standards. And the Democratic party has continually failed to meet those standards. And the only time the people have any power to pressure a politician is when they're running for office. Anyone claiming "just vote in the D, then we can focus on getting progress made" is a centrist who is ok being perpetually part of the oppressed class.

Yes, we need to vote against the Toupee, and the GOP in general. We also need a presidential administration who will get progress done. And since the human species has, at best, 30 years left before the majority of the world is uninhabitable, little baby steps won't cut it.

So Harris and the Dems have a high bar. Because the alternative is fascism, or death by climate change.

USA as a society is mentally ill, where sociopathy is often seen as a virtue. For instance denying poor people health care and food, denying pregnant women with potentially lethal complications the right to abortion. Allowing (white) people to kill (black) people without reason based on stand your ground rules. Refusing stricter gun rules despite countless school shootings. Denying workers a living wage. The list of sociopathy permeating US society goes on and on.

Now I know that despite this, about half the population see the problems. There are also Americans that fight this, and are world class people. But the other half, somehow confuse Trump's sociopathy with strength, and admire him for it. Yes this is how it is in USA, sociopathy is widely not only accepted but admired, people want Trump to hurt people, the poor, emigrants, people of color, LGBT. Many Americans want all these people to suffer, for no other reason than their mere existence. Somehow this is OK to even extend to women in general too! As Trump is clearly a major misogynist.

If you are a normal well functioning person, it's near impossible to grasp that such hate can be this widespread, and Trump is fueling it, and before him Republicans have been fueling it for decades.

This makes all the hateful illegal stuff Trump does nearly irrelevant, people simply don't care, his followers just want to see the people they hate burn. It's not that Trump isn't called out at times, it's just that it doesn't really make a difference.

You ever see one of those families where the drug addicted high school dropout gets everything handed to them by the parents but the successful honor student gets beaten because they passed the entrance exam to harvard but didn't pass it good enough?

It's like that.

Theres several reasons

Part of it is good old fashioned bigotry

A big part of it is the systemic advantage the Electoral College gives Republicans

And of course there's the matter that Traitor Trump voters don't have standards while the rest of us do

Because the kind of people who run CNN and other staples of traditional media are the same people who covered for people like Jimmy Savile.

Mark Thompson is Chairman and CEO of CNN. Here's some blurbs from his Wikipedia, the Savile one being the most salacious.

In September 2010, Thompson acknowledged some of the BBC's previous political bias, which he said he had witnessed early in his career. He stated: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left". He added: "the organisation did struggle then with impartiality".

Fucking news to me, mate.

Although Thompson departed the BBC before public exposure of the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and is not noted in the BBC chronology of the unfolding coverage, Thompson faced questions about his role in the events around Savile's actions and BBC coverage of them. According to a New York Times review, Thompson denied knowing of a BBC Newsnight programme on accusations against Savile before it was dropped soon after Savile's death in October 2011.

Literally everyone around Savile is fucking trash.

In a 4 February 2024 investigation by The Guardian, some CNN staff blamed their channel's newly appointed director Mark Thompson for what they described as biased reporting of the Israel–Hamas war. The staff criticized their network's coverage of the war, charging that it had promoted Israeli propaganda, and gave more attention to Israeli suffering, and the Israeli narrative of the war. One staffer claimed that this bias was systematic and institutionalized, as many journalists' stories were forced to be cleared by channel's Jerusalem bureau before publication. Staffers claimed that statements by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were rarely reported on, while Israeli statements were taken at face value. A CNN spokesperson denied the charges of bias.

That's to say nothing about the pro-Trump head of Discovery (which owns CNN) David Zaslav slobbing this guys knob.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav shared, "I am confident he is exactly the leader we need to take the helm of CNN at this pivotal time."

Thompson was also formerly at the New York Times, another publication that has been swinging to the right. However, if you check out the Lifestyle section of the NYT, you quickly realize why, because it's aimed at rich fucks with a second house in the Hamptons.

It's literally in their short-term-financial-interest to get Trump. They don't give a damn about long-term-interests at all.

First election?

Because what passes for journalism these days subsists on engagement metrics, and Harris doesn't say crazy off-the-wall shit every 10 seconds.

Kamala proposed a corporate tax hike. They will be pulling out literally All. The. Stops.

It's the same when it comes to any other countries. The right always gets away with corruption because it's expected. Whereas the left has a higher moral standpoint so it is being accused of hypocrisy and things get blown out proportion even if small scale corruption occurs. For example in UK the previous government were giving jobs and contracts to friends and family all the time and nobody cried about it. It became accepted. The new left of centre government comes in and gives a temporary pass to a donor and suddenly it's a huge scandal...

It's the same if you care for the environment and ever took a taxi somewhere, or a vegetarian or vegan and have shoes made out of leather. Sure you are doing better than everyone else to help but you are still the devil and worse than everyone else somehow...

Trump is more than a candidate. He validates and supports a state of mind. To many, he is a champion of a lifestyle and a way of thinking. That isn't something that is easy to overcome.

I'll take racism, sexism, propaganda and capitalism for 500 Alex.

They've got pretty firm control of the business sectors through tax cut agenda. They've got pretty firm control of the farmers for the same. Through fear and propaganda they've got pretty strong control of the poor and some of the educated middle class in the rural areas. A lot of the red states are doing everything they can to impede their education systems. If you keep people from becoming educated there's less competition at the top and a lot more red voters.

All you've got to fight them are the poor and the middle class in the cities and suburbs and the occasional upper class that isn't so self-serving that they're willing to stand on everyone else.

Our electoral system is just shit.

She's way more popular and so are her policies, but having the support of the majority of voters doesn't guarantee victory like it would if we lived in a democracy.

Every politician in U.S. history has been held to a higher standards than Trump. And thank God.

Because the Billionaire owners of the media— FOX NBC ABC CNN are all conservatives who support project 2025.

They are predominantly white and they want their tax cuts while passing the bill to the plebeians.

you're asking why fascists and leftists have different standards and morals?

Because apparently half of the active voters in this country are either greedy corporate cunts, wealthy sociopaths, MAGA morons, authoritarian Christian ideologue crazies, psuedo-intellectual "centrists"/independents that somehow conflate basic human respect for minorities and outright fascism as "both sides are the same", or some combination thereof. Those type of people are the type that think the ends always justify the means and that the ends they want is a US that looks like a cross between A Handmaid's Tale, Atlas Shrugged, and modern day Russia. It is one of the most disheartening realizations of my adult life to learn that so many of my fellow Americans are fucking vile people.

Do keep in mind, that roughly half of voters is not the same as roughly half of Americans. The highest turnout of voting eligible people in the last century was only 66.6% in 2020. Basically every Trump nut votes. It is there entire reason for being these days, to support and vote for Trump. And in 2020, Trump only got 46.9% of the popular vote, i.e. only 33.03% of the US voting eligible actually cast a vote for Trump. The rest of us are either actively trying to stop Trump or are at least not actively supporting him. The absolute BEST thing we can do as a country is to bump those numbers up. There is no excuse for 1 in 3 people to not vote, leaving another 1 in 3 people to have disproportionate power over everyone else's lives. Complacency and apathy or counting on enough others to do their civic duty so you don't have to is how Trump wins again. Vote and make every single person you know go vote too. Tell them to register. Tell them to vote early if that is more convenient for them. Whatever. Just go vote.

Update: The second best thing you can do is vote for state and federal epresentatives and leaders that will advocate for election reforms like joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) and/or abolishing the electoral college, fighting Gerrymandering, establishing new, more fair and representative voting systems (Ranked Choice, Approval, Proportional, etc.), term limits, etc. The goal is for representative government is to actually represent the popular will of their voters. It absolutely does NOT do that right now. That should be our first and greatest goal for our government.

because Trump has spent the last 9 years going so low, his cult no longer has standards. anyone would look like a saint compared to him.

Black. Female.

Because Democrats want someone who will run the country and Republicans just want someone who will maintain their minority control. We are concerned for the country, they are scared for their very existence and self reflection itself is dangerous for their existence. Basically self reflection is necessary for what Democrats want to do, and it fatal for what Republicans want. So we do it, and Republicans avoid it at all costs. We get a Kamala who we hold to a high standard, they get a Trump who can punch them in the face and they'll still support him because of the party.

I keep seeing the same bozos say they're the same

One is literally a criminal rapist who has made tens of thousands of public lies, doesn't pay contractors, and said obvious non sensensical stuff during covid leading to mass deaths and whose own ex staff warns he is an asshole.

The other is a normal person you could probably eat lunch with. She's absolutely normal.

A nice illustration is Republican media operatives are trying to attack Harris with "we checked with McDonald's corporate and they have no record of her working there!". For one, McD's is franchisees and I doubt corporate tracks every burger flipper. Next, of course they're trying to claim she's dishonest, but what about the greater question: Did fuckin Trump ever come anywhere near McDonald's? No, he inherited about $400 million, has misconstrued it it repeatedly ('a small loan of a million dollars', as if that is relatable either) and has never had any sort of normal job that required discipline or labor, ever.

Okay so here's dinner context you may be unaware of. I believe it was Newt Gingrich who either came up with or standardized the core modern republican propaganda pillar: Attack attack attack, always attack, never compromise, concede only if you have literally no choice, then attack harder. That's why the left has slid so far center; they keep trying to compromise and the right will not budge. Now the Democrats look like the Republicans back in the 80s, which is why I call them Republicrats.

Meanwhile Dems are trying to hold themselves to at least some level of standard. Add to that that Trump and his kind are authoritarian; their psychology allows for no criticism of any kind, seeing them exclusively as attacks against them. So now you have not only GOP and Trump cultists jumping on every single thing they can as hard as they can, and the self-aware Democrats calling out what they perceive as bad. The Republicans won't do that; they never attack their own side without orders from the top, which indicates to them that the target is out of favor with the leadership.

Tldr; because the Democrats refuse to accept that the Republicans can't be beaten by playing nice.

Because the media is heavily conservative and advertising driven.

Giving republicans new things to throw at Kamala is the #1 priority of the news right now because they need a close race to sell ads.

Years of ownership by conservative billionaires and pundits has also saturated the media environment with a broad conservative tilt. This is why you don't see a lot of articles about why like immigration went up under trump etc.

Over a million deaths from covid...