Honestly, Harris shouldn't make the same mistakes Biden did and allow her own hubris to get away from her, thinking a debate with Trump would be a cakewalk.
There's a reason why Trump's former opponents have advocated for muted mics. Without them, Trump just starts with his stream of consciousness and just never stops. He doesn't let his opponents get a word in edgewise, shouts down anyone who tries to talk, and completely ignores or outright attacks the moderators themselves. He turns on the firehose of lies in real time and leaves his opponents on the defensive trying to fact-check him.
And while Harris is a seasoned prosecutor, she has always had the benefit of making her arguments in front of judges under very structured conditions where she doesn't have an opponent filling the court record with bullshit and constantly interrupting. She's used to arguing in a courtroom where a judge can and will shut that shit right down the minute an opponent tries to start up, and can bring unruly lawyers to heel under the very real hreat of contempt charges, sanctions, or worse.
There are no such tools available to Harris in a debate. Any moderators are just going to be mocked, ridiculed, and ignored. He can't be threatened into silence under threat of contempt of court. Without muted mics, there's literally nothing stopping him from turning the debate into nothing more than one of his rallies, and I have not seen anything to make me believe she can handle the Trump Hate Machine when it's in her face live and in real time. Harris has done better than I've expected her to so far, but she still seems nervous when making speeches, and I'm not sure she can simply keep up with him.
I understand her point of wanting to open up the mics and actually let Trump dig his own grave for 90 minutes, but that backfired spectacularly on Biden. It's not like he's going to debate her on policy. I will blow a skunk live on Twitter if the man spends more than two minutes actually answering a policy question at all. But even if his entire performance is 90 minutes of an incomprehensible word salad, he's still going to come out as the perceived "winner" if he's able to successfully shout her down whenever she tries to talk, because it'll make Harris look like she can't hang. And I don't believe that if it comes down to an unregulated shouting match (which it will with unmuted mics) that Harris has what it takes to go toe to toe with Trump.
I actually wish it were Walz. Walz would absolutely wipe the floor with Trump if he tried that shit. I'm not 100% confident Harris can do the same, and I'm afraid it could be a major if not fatal setback to the campaign if she can't. It's one thing wanting to let your opponent dig his own grave. But I'm afraid Harris is standing a bit too close to the edge here and may end up leaning too far over and falling in anyway.
Keep the mics muted. Keep Trump off his game when he gets frustrated because he can't speak, isn't getting his way, or is just getting owned. But anyone who's been paying attention should know that giving Trump a live, unregulated mic is a very, very bad idea.
The only emotional defense mechanism the guy has is "no u".
He has the emotional stability of a three year old.
The community has four years to put pressure on Harris right from day one.
AIPAC, for example, could issue a statement that they are looking forward to supporting "any candidate we feel most meets the needs of the Jewish Community in 2028". Especially after seeing them almost singlehandedly dismantle the squad, their threat of backing another candidate in the Democrat primaries becomes very, very real. And they have four years to hang that around her neck.
And then when 2026 comes along, they can reinforce it by again putting their money into primarying any candidates in the mid-term races not meeting their goals. Harris is no stupid woman. She'd get the message. Especially if the size of the Jewish voting population would be enough to cost her the primaries, or re-election in the general two years later.
(Now, for the record, I am no fan of this kind of bullshit money being allowed in politics at all. But I'm also aware of the reality of the world we live in, and in that reality, AIPAC absolutely can and will do this if given the opportunity. I do not agree with this, but am merely showing an example of how Harris can be put under very real pressure right from day one, from a lobbying group who very well could cost her her political future in a way that doesn't also hand the White House right back to Trump.)
I think we might be talking about two different types of "arcades" here.
The arcades where you go and play pinball and pac man and street fighter are the ones we're talking about. That was the 80s. Those of us who remember those days fondly would probably be between 40 and 60. I don't know about the rest of my middle-aged community members, but I ain't planning on dying any time soon.
If you're living in a place where 40-60 year olds are dying on the regular, you're probably living around methheads.
He lost the first time. Then he inserted another quarter to continue and (essentially) beat him the 2nd time.
And after the brief intermission cutscene, he played level 3. He doesn't like level 3. He even tried to call the attendant over so he could play level 2 again. And when the attendant said "Um...you're on level 3 now, what's the problem?", he stopped playing. Because level 3 is fucking hard.
Although it’s hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games.
Have you played those old games? Usually, the first level is easy. Easy enough where you actively have to try to lose. I mean, you get 3 lives. That means you have to make not just bad decisions, but the worst possible decisions, over and over and.......oh.
Never mind. You're right.
Once games started developing storylines, plots, etc. it was like that. It was an intentional strategy developed to keep you playing. But early developers weren't thinking that far ahead. The idea was to give you a couple of easy levels so you feel you got your 5 minutes worth of entertainment worth, then start punishing you at level 3 or 4 so you'd lose and the next person would play.
And some were made by simple oversight. Space invaders' increasing difficulty was solely the result of hardware limitations of the time that just happened to result in the exact difficulty spikes they were looking for. As a programmer, I could, for example, set level 1 vs. an opponent that was slow as festering dog shit, but be lazy and just double his speed with every level. As long as the player's speed stays the same, it would become nearly impossible to win in a couple of levels.
Either way, the results were the same: 25 cents for about 5 minutes worth of entertainment. That was the goal of the day. As you mentioned, they fine tuned it by the mid 80s with games like Mario and the like. but those early games were meant to get you off the cabinet as quickly as possible so soneone else could pop in their quarter.
Excuse me, but Trump would never play Pac Man. He can't handle Kamala Harris alone. He'd be complaining about having to go up against 4 non-white opponents at once.
And he'd certainly never play Ms. Pac Man. Sure, it's one thing playing an unidentifiable yellow mass that runs around popping pills and doing the same thing over and over while trying to avoid all the non-white people in town, but there's no chance in hell he'd play as a female.
Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I'm talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.
Here's the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from "Hey, this game ain't so bad" to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.
That's where we're at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn't want to make it to level 3 because he knows he'll never beat level 3. He's looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.
But he can't. So he's essentially stopped playing the game. He's telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick's broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he's getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren't listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn't even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.
(though to be fair, I think most of them live in solid blue states where they can do what they want without actually hurting the election, and I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t do so).
I mildly disagree with this only in the sense that there is a time and place for everything. I completely agree that they should make their voices heard if the administration is doing things they don't agree with. But for those who want to ensure that their protests don't do more harm than good, wait until after the election. Heck, start putting the pressure on the day after she's elected, while she's still making front page news on the daily. Make sure Harris understands "Hey, we got you here, and now this is what we expect of you, or we're going to support a primary challenger for you in 2028, and we're going to make your life difficult the entire time in between."
And I agree with your point about dems in solid blue states protesting without really hurting Harris' chances. It's when they're encouraging those in swing states that actually do matter that it starts getting problematic. Sitting home in protest is one thing if you're in CA, MA, or NY. But doing so in Pennsylvania or Georgia is essentially a vote for Trump.
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