Vance began to speak about Springfield in early July, bringing up the immigrants at a Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell.

There, Vance mentioned Springfield as part of a line of questioning that sought to tie immigration to inflated housing costs across the country. He cited a letter that Springfield's city manager had sent to him and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) the day before, attributing a housing crisis in the city to an influx of over 15,000 Haitian immigrants.

Vance ratcheted up his rhetoric the following day at the National Conservatism conference. On stage at that event, Vance let loose a stream of inflammatory statements, accusing "illegals" of having "overwhelmed" the city.

Other Republicans, including Bernie Moreno, who is running for Ohio's other Senate seat, also framed the situation in Springfield as an "an insane demographic change" that was straining resources. But Carl Ruby, an immigrant advocate and senior pastor at Central Christian Church in Springfield, said it was Vance who did the most to drag the town into the spotlight.

"The sad thing is none of this was stirred up until JD Vance started publicizing it," Ruby told TPM. "It was an internal thing that we were handling and handling well." According to Ruby, even after the death of a young boy named Aiden Clark last year in a crash for which a Haitian immigrant was found liable, tensions in the city remained manageable. However, the political attacks set off a summer of increasing misery.

The outpouring of anger that has overwhelmed Clark's father and his city has included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. On Aug. 10, about a dozen members of one such group, Blood Tribe, showed up in Springfield for one of their trademark events, which involve masked marches where participants wave swastika flags. At least two of the marchers who descended on Springfield's downtown carried rifles.

Blood Tribe, which is led by a former Marine and tattoo artist named Christopher "Hammer" Pohlhaus, has staged similar marches around the country. The neo-Nazi group's march in Springfield was led by a top associate of Pohlhaus', Drake Berentz. During the Springfield march, Berentz made remarks where he referenced the child killed in the car crash and suggested the city had been taken over by "degenerate third worlders." Berentz, who uttered racial slurs and suggested Jews were behind the migrant influx, issued a call to action for people who "are tired of having to share space."

"No longer do outsiders have to take your resources," Berentz said. "No longer do you have to suffer the abuse of subhumans."

Ruby, the pastor and immigrant advocate in Springfield, said the neo-Nazi march took the negative attention on the city to the next level. "It changed what was a local conversation pretty quickly into a national conversation," Ruby said.

Her weird facial gyrations during the debate are a sign she is hormonally unbalanced and not Presidential.

You stick with that, okay? See how far it gets you. Kamala got $47 million from 600,000 donors after what you claim proved her to be unbalanced. Obviously they didn't see what you thought you did.

I watched a panel of political analysts all saying that Harris' splitscreen when Trump spoke was powerful as she changed expressions based on what he was saying. And more importantly they emphasized that she DIDN'T provide any of the expressions you claim she made or if she had it would have been on the front page of the New York Post.

Can you provide a link to a still-capture showing her in a state like you claimed? We'll wait patiently for you to back up your delusional gaslighting.

#51

No jackleg, it's you who have no connection to reality. I've never implied that she's anything but what she is. If you don't like her policies, that's your prerogative. It you don't like her issue stances or her poise, even dislike her voice, that's your prerogative.

You continually implied that she isn't qualified to be where she is, and again you display a tremendous amount of ignorance of today's political realities. Do you know who the largest and most loyal faction in the Democratic Party is? Black women. The Kamala Harris you're seeing today - with 4 years of invaluable experience in being the VP - is, was and always would be the Democratic frontrunner. Note, I said the Kamala you're seeing today, not the one you saw briefly and superficially in 2019 when she didn't have the unified base of support to run from that she does today - and would have in 2028 should Biden and her been re-elected.

Did you ever stop to think that if all of the other potential Democratic possibles for President thought that they could have beaten her in a convention vote, they could have raised their hands and run against her? Winning elections takes the backing of donors - and no one had donors and influential groups lined up to support them like Kamala did.

Again, this isn't about what you think of her as a politician. This is about her resume and experience - the very things you continue to ignore that she has that no other Democrat does. Any of the popular Democrats could have taken her on, but none of them did.

And frankly, they would have face an even more impossible task than the one she's on the cusp of pulling off against all conventional odds. But be clear, as objectively remarkable her career has been, no one need to bend any knees. If you don't like her, vote for somebody else. Just don't dismiss how she rose to where she is based on her accomplishments and lifelong work to get there.

We're settling for garbage to avoid settling for ----.

Her record is garbage?

Other than Dick Cheney and the aforementioned pair, every single Vice President since the Eisenhower Administration has run for or served as President.

Excuse me, that's in error. Mike Pence did run for President but had to drop out because he couldn't build a constituency to compete with Trump. In actuality, every President back to Herbert Hoover had a VP(s) to run for the Presidency*.

*FDR had two, not including Truman since ascended to the Presidency due to FDR's death, not through election, although he did win as President in 1948.

19 serving Vice Presidents in total went on to run for the Presidency, with 6 winning, 7 losing, and none of the others winning their party's nomination.

And what Harris has accomplished in regards to starting her presidential campaign with less than 100 days before the election is unprecedented. She didn't have the luxury of putting together a presidential campaign staff years before the election as is the norm.

It's simply daft to ignore how Kamala Harris has orchestrated a masterpiece of a transition from Biden to herself, and moved polling from 5-7 points behind to almost that same amount in front.

You don't back door what she's already achieved in her record-breaking run simply by being there.

Lol yet she's only close because she's back dooring a nomination.

And you're ignorantly oblivious of American history not to realize that the Vice President is ALWAYS first in line for the party's next presidential nomination since like forever - unless they're unpopular, unable to build a constituency, and not worthy of being the Party's best chance to win, ala Mike Pence and Dan Quayle. Other than Dick Cheney and the aforementioned pair, every single Vice President since the Eisenhower Administration has run for or served as President.

God damn, you can't stop being a complete imbecile for not realizing how your opinion isn't based on historical reality.

You just can't help yourself in trying to imply that Harris is "less than" and quite simply it's disgusting.

If any man alive had her resume, NO ONE would question that person had earned the right to be where she currently is. Nothing was given to Harris but for every opportunity she excelled in in order to rise and succeed even further.

Trump never served a day of public service in his life until he won the presidency. JD Vance had never served a day of public service under his rich benefactors bought him his Senate seat in ruby red Ohio. Neither of them earned the right to be where they are in any way, shape or form.

You simply cannot discern the difference between being in position due to accomplishment compared to unearned privilege only provided due to wealth.

Before Tuesday's debate, Donald Trump and his supporters insisted that Kamala Harris was a lightweight who was barely able to speak coherently. Trump has called Harris "dumb as a rock," "low-IQ," "unable to put two sentences together," and "unable to put two sentences together without a teleprompter."

Conservatives have fixated on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in recent years as, in their view, a kind of reverse discrimination against white people, white men in particular, that elevates people to jobs they are unqualified to do. Inadvertently, their reactions to Harris, and her subsequent thrashing of Trump, illustrate why diversity outreach is important and necessary in a world where people still face discriminatory assumptions because of their race and gender.

Now, it would be simpler for conservatives who claimed Harris was an imbecile to admit that maybe the current vice president and former senator, attorney general, and district attorney is just smarter than they were giving her credit for. But that would require abandoning the assumptions about Black people and women that drove them to make their initial assessment. They cannot do that, because doing so would illustrate why diversity efforts are necessary in the first place: that plainly competent people are often wrongly assumed to be stupid because they are not white men, and denied opportunities as a result.

Nothing is inherently racist about arguing that a Black person is incompetent; what is racist is assuming that because he or she is Black. Conservatives have taken to referring to DEI as "didn't earn it."

Trump was born a multimillionaire who drove one business after another into the ground, and his reputation as a brilliant businessman is largely due to him playing one on television. His term as president was mired by incompetence and corruption despite being relatively uneventful, and when faced with a real crisis - the coronavirus pandemic - he proceeded to bungle it in a catastrophic fashion that led to needless deaths and economic calamity. Vance has spent very little time in elected office, an office he won mostly on the success of his memoir and a Trump primary endorsement in a red state. He appears to have been selected as the vice-presidential nominee on the basis of his willingness to debase himself on Trump's behalf. Neither of them has a compelling record of public service.

That's the irony - the actual "didn't earn it" candidates are the two white guys running on the Republican ticket.

After Tuesday night's debate, as former president Donald Trump worked the reporters in the spin room in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris's TikTok team was busy appealing to a different crowd.

In the digital "war room" at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., they hit the button on their pice de rsistance shortly after midnight: A six-second video that mocked Trump's performance by showing his lectern inhabited by a laughably dramatic "Dance Moms" star. "I thought I was ready to be back. I thought I was stronger than this but obviously I'm not," she lamented. "I wanna go home."

Viewed more than 7 million times, the video was produced by a small TikTok team - all 25 and under, some working their first jobs - given unfettered freedom to chase whatever they think will go viral. Over the past eight weeks, Harris's social media team has helped supercharge her campaign, harnessing the rhythms and absurdities of internet culture to create one of the most inventive and irreverent get-out-the-vote strategies in modern politics.

They have trolled Trump inside his own social network, Truth Social. They have made viral memes out of bags of Doritos and camouflage hats. In 2016, a single Hillary Clinton tweet might have required 12 staffers and 10 drafts; today, many of Harris's TikTok videos are conceived, created and posted in about half an hour.

"This campaign empowers young people to speak to young people," said Parker Butler, the 24-year-old director of Harris's digital rapid response content, a team that watches all of Trump's speeches and can blast a clip onto social media at a moment's notice. "And we're here to put in the work."

Almost as a defensive measure to convince yourself she isn't the weak, poor candidate she was in 2020 who barely got a candidacy off the ground.

Kamala Harris is the same candidate today that she was in 2020 and the same candidate she was in 2016 when she won her US Senate campaign.

I've never been defensive on this entire thread, I've been informed in ways that you aren't. I watched Kamala from 2010 giving a speech as she ran for California Attorney General. Her presence, speaking manner, cadence and command of her facts is exactly like it is today. She radiates confidence, competence and strength. But if you didn't know this and listened to the Republican framing of her as "less than" then what you saw Tuesday night likely was surprising.

Maybe you missed the thread about Karl Rove seeing her in 2010 and getting the national Republican Committee to commit millions of dollars to defeat her in that race because he saw "the female Obama" and he feared she'd one day beat a Republican presidential candidate. Karl knows his politics and he was right. She won that race by a fraction of a percent. Had she lost, it's unlikely she'd be where she is today.

In regards to 2020, again, she didn't fail, nor was she not ready. She simply had no constituency to build from in order to win the nomination. Compared to the other candidates, Kamala was then viewed as center right mainly because she's a former prosecutor and many on the left felt that she was too hard on minorities. Politically, even in California, a prosecutor has to be a person of law and order, often with no space to work in the greys. She had Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker, Castro, Klobuchar and others in that race. She had no lane to win the nomination and knew it. That's why she halted her campaign in 2019, because she understands politics and knew 2020 wasn't her time. It's that simple.

But her early withdrawal ended up smoothing a glidepath to the Vice Presidency, and now she stands on the cusp of winning the ultimate prize.

So no, I'm not defensive about anything. You talk about how you feel about her and mention things unrelated to who she is, was, and has been all of her political life - having never lost an election. What she did Tuesday night was very hard and took a tremendous amount of hard work, study, patience, and most of all stamina. Trump wears people out because he has no off button when he's in steamroller mode. She showed him immediately who the alpha was on the stage when she walked into his space, shook his hand, and enunciated her name phonetically so Trump would have no excuse should he say it during the debate. Trump never uttered her first name one single time during the entire debate.

Yesterday, doing his stump routine, Trump couldn't wait to mispronounce her first name and added "comrade" in front of it. Everything you saw Kamala do on that stage was the result of a lifetime of prosecutorial experience combined with skills honed under earlier debate lights. Harris landed her biggest haymaker when she first hit the stage. Yes, like any person realizing the enormity of the moment, she was nervous at the beginning. But once she hit her groove, her dominance of that stage and debate wasn't arguable.

Lastly, I had no idea of the criminal psychology aspect of her performance until I read the article I quoted from yesterday. I read the information and found it not only credible, but completely in line with what I'd witnessed. Her performance was not one of simple debate politics. She approached Trump like she would a defendant in a courtroom, not only anticipating what he'd say, but telling her audience in advance what he would say. It only happened because of hard work and the innate ability to project both strength, warmth, and fierce determination all at the same time.

many of the Haitians aren't citizens.

All of them are indeed citizens. I didn't call them American citizens, just citizens on purpose. They're legal immigrants escaping a failed government rife with corruption and violence and now Trump and his reprobates are targeting them again as though it's their fault the local community hasn't had the time and resources to better accommodate them as yet.

So let's ask Americans along with our corporate community to jump in and provide the help this community needs, with the point being to help ALL Springfieldians, not just one part or another. They live together, work together, and use services together, so let's help them all together.

That is the traditional American spirit, something as antithetical and toxic to Trump as kryptonite is to Superman.

This is the perfect time for a twofer that will absolutely be the end of Trump. The Harris campaign should make immediately helping the entire Springfield community the living example of how her government cares about all of America especially when it attacked by an enemy.

Call volunteers and resources to the community to meet its pressing needs. Get corporations to donate needed goods and supplies, ask law enforcement officers to volunteer to take security shifts to keep all the citizens safe from Trump's deranged followers. Make improving Springfield the unmistakable example of all her words of unity and shared destiny. Trump words have laid a veritable siege on the people of Springfield, not just the Haitian immigrants.

Lift up Springfield as Americans have lifted up other nations in their moments of crisis. We can take care of our own with and outside of government, that what America has always excelled at. We help our struggling neighbors, we don't try to make them targets through lies and smears.

In Harris' America, We are Springfield and Springfield is US. Let's get to work. Trump's trying to tear Springfield down. Let's lift them up instead and show Trump what REAL America truly is. It's brother helping brother without caveat, simply because we can, and he's hurting. And it's truly that which makes America Great.

Springfield, where he was born in 1978, has been "shrinking for decades," he says, but during the Biden administration more jobs opened up in manufacturing that needed employees to fill them. At the same time, he explains, Haiti erupted in turmoil and the U.S. federal government expanded a legal immigration program for Haitians fleeing the violence.

In the last few years, some 15,000 immigrants have settled in the city, which had a population of about 60,000.

"You might imagine there are some challenges with integrating a new population," Legend continues. "...But the bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them and they were willing to work. And they wanted to live the American dream."

"Nobody's eating cats. Nobody's eating dogs," he says. "We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment. How about we love one another?"

Legend ends the video with a nod to his roots and the name he grew up with: "John R. Stephens from Springfield, signing off."

And I can also see an all-star concert heading John Legend with all the proceeds going to the community. This is an opportunity to really turn the page from the vile misogynistic, bigoted, fear-based politics that culminated when Trump came down his golden escalator in 2015.

I'm tired of letting these ------ have control over our lives and their politics pitting citizen against citizen. It would also be extraordinary symbolic should the Harris campaign take the lead in helping Springfield as it deals with the chaos and fear that Trump needs like oxygen. Let's choke him out for the last time and be rid of his toxic, demeaning, and simply anti-American politics once and for all.

Another trash thread from the DR's resident trash person.

Exactly. And when spoon fed the truth, he can't wait to accuse others of being duplicitous when it's his own ignorance's fault he can't and won't understand history nor facts.

SCOTUS has been 9 justices since 1869, gaslitgtroma.

You just can't help but continue to prove what an ignorant gaslighter you are. Did you bother to see why the Court expanded to 9 seats in 1869?

It's for the very freaking reason I stated! ...[B]efore expansion, the number of courts used to equal the number of SCOTUS justices, with each having responsibility of a single circuit.

I am still of the opinion that it is just the real Trump taking over, and the base craves that real Trump, not the campaign-brainwashed Trump.

We're saying the same thing using different words. Trump would always rather be "real" when his professional campaign advisors want him to sometimes focus on policy.

Stephen Miller is supporting the "real conspiracy-spewing, stream of consciousness Trump" while La Civita wants more of the "campaigning Trump."

That's an average of $78.33 per donor folks. I pondered this last night:

Hell yes she wants to do another debate. Frankly, it was more entertaining than most pay-per-views, and the average donation is likely less than a UFC Mega Fight and Trump Chump Dana White isn't getting a cut.

Several candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, including Ms. Harris, said they were open to the idea of packing the court by expanding the number of seats.

The number of SCOTUS seats has changed multiple times in our history, and doing so is not anti-constitutional, it's wholly the call of the Constitution.

Again, anti-constitutional forces like Strawlighter try to hide their fears and manipulations behind supposed respect for the Constitution. All you care about is the power now skewing to the side you prefer. There are 13 US Circuit Courts and before expansion, the number of courts used to equal the number of SCOTUS justices, with each having responsibility of a single circuit. The only proposals of expansion that I've ever seen entail increasing the number of judges to 13 to again achieve equilibrium.

And further, no one has said that we let one President alone add 4 additional seats at once. I'd love to see an independent collection of perhaps retired federal judges do the vetting and nominating in conjunction with both parties and relevant legal organizations, with the goal being to find the fairest arbiters of justice with exceptional proven experience on the bench and a history of ruling from the Constitution, not against it.

If RCade decides to promote this thread, I have an idea for a more on-point headline:

Kamala Harris Used Criminal Psychology to Dominate Trump

#3

Putin couldn't have said it better himself. Blame both ideological sides in American politics with the intent of destroying people's faith in democracy instead of realizing one party is ready and willing to compromise while the other party openly stokes fear and loathing of any and all that don't view the world as they do, calling fellow citizens enemies while lusting for civil war.

Your answer is to tear it all down, the very thing Putin wants to happen.

but after that the real Trump takes over.

In his mind, that's the plan. The people he's talking to know exactly what he's saying in code-speak while the rest of us dismiss it as simply crazy talk.

It's all about stoking fear of the "others" trying to replace the "real Americans" comprising Trump's extended base.

I guess neo-Nazi groups on social media are reacting to Tuesday like the Proud Boys did in 2020. They're giddy about the shout outs.

All they care about is repeating the lie because Trump's ego won't allow him to admit he said something incredibly incorrect and foolish during the debate.

That isn't the only reason Trump's doing it. He's doing it mainly to attract usual non-voters (read, nominally more non-college educated who lack critical thinking skills) that consume the same conspiracies and social media memes his right wing supporters churn out like Pez shooting out of a dispenser.

He trying to reach people who'd never vote for Harris if their lives depended on it, but generally think all politicians are FOS. He's using their innate xenophobia and sometime bigotry to drive them to the polls in the swing states.

The target is people who already tune out traditional media and non-right wing oriented content. So even though most think he's spewing crazy, to those he's seeking he's spinning pure gold to fuel their already existent paranoia and belief in Replacement Theory.

I watched it. Y'all are drinking the kool aid.

This isn't about what you watched, it's about your ignorance and dismissal of the psychological science underpinning what you saw.

Criminal psychology is a long established field of study into the minds of people just like Trump. That's precisely why I asked you to quantify your opinion with something other than dismissal of the question.

I admire your expertise in the field you so obviously are quite educated and experienced in. In this case, there is an equally valid scientifically-based field of study dedicated to defining and overcoming the steamrolling psychological and verbal dominance exhibited in those like Trump.

So emphatically no, there has not been any other president nor presidential candidate capable of using a lifetime's learned technique of successfully dominating any and all who dare come before him in the way Trump has personally humiliated and mocked Fiorina, Rubio, Cruz, McCain, Jeb Bush, Clinton, Biden and all the other opponents he's faced on debate stages.

There simply is no analog to Trump in modern presidential politics no matter what the opinion - you're completely entitled to give - is.