United States Presidential & Congressional Election 2024

small change

This is great press for Harris.

I gotta think the only people that wouldn’t side with Harris on the slavery issue would never vote for Harris anyway. I wonder if DeSantis can end up so bad he flips Florida blue.

I’m not sure. It seems to me that the criticisms have latched onto this one statement in the entire curriculum that while contextually objectionable is not factually incorrect. If that is the only thing in the entire curriculum that is objectionable (I tried to find out the entirety of the curriculum for about an hour yesterday and didn’t find much just a bunch of articles about the one statement we have all read) then I think spending an hour or more talking about the entirety of this curriculum could make Desantis look reasonable and Harris look silly. That’s not the look Dems want. One thing of particular note I learned is that Harris is featured in part of the curriculum about great achievements by Black Americans for being the first black and female VP. There is also a whole section about Barack Obama and being the first black President.

What is interesting about that?

1 Like

In politics you want to control the narrative. Right now by focusing on that one statement in the entire curriculum and Desantis other foibles it’s easy to paint this as a racist doing racist things. If however you go onto their turf and spend an hour debating and it’s shown that basically this is 99% good fact based curriculum and hey we even complimented your accomplishments it legitimizes Desantis. It would be stupid to engage in the debate because it has great potential to unravel this narrative that everyone has bought into. The majority of the public is already convinced he sucks, don’t give him a chance to change that narrative. My intuition is that digging deeper into the curriculum in a debate isn’t going to find anything else because it would have already been found.

Also Florida is about to economically unravel IMO and that is going to cause a lot of narrative problems for Desantis and even the GOP as a whole. A little patience and the national narrative is going to change all by itself.

The statement about slavery is not the only thing people object to in the curriculum. It also both sides things like the Atlanta and DC Race Riots, both started by white men, the Tulsa Massacre, etc. And arguably bars teaching that homosexuals were a targeted group in the Holocaust.

3 Likes

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/02/1191450116/harris-desantis-florida-black-history-curriculum-schools-slavery

3 Likes

Good move by her.

You cannot hold a debate with someone that rejects basic facts and truths.

There is nothing to debate.

4 Likes

Folks will avoid debates with RFK Jr. for the same reason.

1 Like

And Republicans will continue to shit fund his campaign efforts.

1 Like

It’s not just offensive, it is really wrong. True in the most trivial sense that someone somewhere must have gained a useful skill somehow. But the textbook reads as a non-trivial claim, which is wrong.
(Most slaves died before they could use any ‘skills’. And the skills they gained-- either picking cotton or getting raped, were probably not as valuable as the ones they would have learned if they had been free. And the DOE went on to support the non-trivial claim, by awkwardly listing a bunch of examples of non-slaves with useful skills???)

Agree with you otherwise, that it’s not like some win for Harris or loss for DeSantis. It’s closer to a classic Trump-move of saying something small and shitty that pisses of the left, in order to win the right, who are proud of being less sensitive.

Fixed for accuracy, as they are extremely sensitive snowflakes about shit that bothers themselves.

2 Likes

Agree wholeheartedly. There is nothing to gain in the debate was basically my point. The perception is already that he is a goon. Don’t give him a chance to show he’s not a goon. Just based on Harris past debate performances it is quite possible she could change the narrative the other direction.

2 Likes

They’re also sensitive about what other people’s children are reading.

Somewhat flying under the radar with the shitty Florida education stuff is that they have approved PragerU materials for use in schools.

PragerU is not an accredited university, and it publicly says the group is a “force of good” against the left. It’s a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that produces videos that touch on a range of themes, including climate policies (specifically how “energy poverty, not climate change” is the real crisis), the flaws of Canada’s government-run health care system (and how the American privatized system is better), and broad support for law enforcement (and rejection of Black Lives Matter). In some cases, the videos tell kids that their teachers are “misinformed” or “lying.”

Some videos talk about the history of race relations and slavery. In one video, two kids travel back in time to meet Christopher Columbus, who tells them that he should not be judged for enslaving people because the practice was “no big deal” in his time. Columbus argued to the kids that he did not see a problem with it because “being taken as a slave is better than being killed.”

Side note: Columbus was brought to trial in 1500 for being too brutal as a governor. His behavior was a big deal in his time.

In another video titled “A Short History of Slavery” and narrated by Owens, she says that the first thing kids need to know is that “slavery was not invented by white people” and that it also took place in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She also says “white people were the first to put an end to slavery” when it was abolished by Britain in 1834.

I think the first thing to know about slavery is that it was wrong, not who invented it.

2 Likes

From John green on crash course history:

In many ways Atlantic slavery drew from previous models of slavery, and took everything that sucked about each of them and combined them into a big ball so that it would be the biggest possible ball of suck.

2 Likes

Oh?

:popcorn:

Yeah. I’m not sure what I see as problematic with the Florida economy. Other than I believe they are leading the Nation in inflation right now I think.

Obviously they also have a huge insurance problem brewing with skyrocketing rates and insurers leaving the market. That’s the kind of thing votes see in their monthly bills.

Desantis has nuked Disney for 25% of the population and turned off another 25% from coming to its beaches. He turned away migrant workers from the fields and chased away insurers from the most catastrophe prone state in the nation.

I’m not sure how he could actually be worse for the state. But he leads the war on the woke.

Some Conservatives have started planning for the transition to a GOP administration in 2025.

Their suggested plan:
https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf