R. Bell

Why don't Republican negative points vs Harris-Walz - some of them even approximately true! - do more damage? The problem Republicans have is that every election is a compare and contrast. And they overwhelmingly renominated a candidate who ... entered politics by propagandizing a defamatory "birther" conspiracy theory that was not only steeped in racism but also obviously crazy and stupid nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/po… .... accepted the help of Russian spy agencies to win the presidency in 2016 ... theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv… directed tens of millions of taxpayer and foreign government $ to his own businesses ... axios.com/2024/01/04/report-… ordered a religious test on immigrants and visitors to the United States - rewrote it three times until a friendly Supreme Court disgraced the country by inscribing the rewritten ban into law ... npr.org/2018/06/26/606481548…. tried (and failed) to overturn healthcare coverage for Americans with no alternative to offer - but succeeded in overturning abortion rights for Americans ... funded his tax cuts with tax increases targeted to punish voters in Democratic-led states ... cnbc.com/2019/04/22/trump-ta… started trade wars not only with China, but against friends like the European Union, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. He encouraged close ally Britain to exit the EU - then refused Britain the US-UK trade treaty he'd promised ... washingtonpost.com/world/us-… as his anti-China trade war rapidly proved a costly fiasco forbes.com/sites/stuartander…, then connived in the Chinese cover-up of the deadly COVID outbreak through the pandemic's crucial early weeks ... washingtonpost.com/politics/… then to compensate for his own prior negligence, promoted quack remedies that harmed gullible people - and that later enabled cranks and charlatans to spread panic about the anti-COVID vaccines that actually could and did save lives .... ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article… made deals with Putin that he concealed from his own national security team ... washingtonpost.com/world/201… and blackmailed Ukraine, denying that democracy weapons unless it fabricated political dirt against his expected election opponent ... and was only barely dissuaded from quitting NATO altogether according to his own highest aides ... nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/po… mocked and defamed America's most honored war dead theatlantic.com/politics/arc… and their grieving families ... npr.org/2016/08/01/488213964… abused his office to harass perceived corporate enemies like TimeWarner theatlantic.com/politics/arc… and Amazon nytimes.com/2019/12/09/techn… broke the law to incite harm against whistleblowers who revealed his corrupt actions ... thehill.com/homenews/news/52… tried to win the 2020 election by an elaborate scheme to deny ballots to Democratic voters .... politico.com/news/2020/09/30… encouraged supporters to intimidate election workers who wouldn't comply with his schemes ... nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/el… then organized a conspiracy to overturn the lawful result ... npr.org/2023/08/01/119045995… and when that failed, turned to outright violence on January 6, 2021 ... stole ultra-classified government documents on his way out the door, including nuclear secrets - which he later showed to paying customers at Mar a Lago, including foreign nationals. nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/po… Politics aside, the nominee is also a draft-dodger nytimes.com/2018/12/26/us/po…, and lifelong deadbeat eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p…, tax cheat nytimes.com/interactive/2018…, fraudster abcnews.go.com/US/live-updat…, and confessed serial sex abuser bbc.com/news/election-us-201…. In that environment, its tough to get a hearing for negatives about a nominee's opponents.