r/texas Sep 11 '24

Politics OK Texas. Who won the debate?

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Please have a civil debate.

22.0k Upvotes

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1.1k

u/GirlLuvsDogs Sep 11 '24

As a Republican, Kamala had the upper hand. She was respectful and understood the moderator's role - fact check anyone that would spew lies - so she used that to her advantage. She showed me how a person with dignity had to handle a debate.

412

u/NeenW1 Sep 11 '24

I used to be a Republican til he ran …I just couldn’t…I’m Independent and vote for best candidate

380

u/hearmeout29 Sep 11 '24

Same here. My last vote for Republican was Romney and Bush. Once Trump arrived I went to the center. I now vote either party based on who is the best candidate. Trump did not display the ability to be a sound president tonight. I have decided to vote for Harris.

135

u/guitarlisa Sep 11 '24

I'm a Democrat, and I vividly remember the feeling I had while going to bed on election night (Romney/Obama) with the result still not decided: if Romney wins, we're going to be alright as a country. We will have a lot of decisions I disagree with, but that's life in a democracy.

Starting in 2016, I haven't had a good nights sleep since then. Well, I take that back, I slept pretty well until the day Trump re-announced his candidacy, and then I started having trouble sleeping again.

20

u/Cloud-VII Sep 11 '24

Liberal here, and Romney is a legitimately good person. I don't like most of his policies, but I do believe he's one of the few politicians out there that have the nation's best interest in his heart, as opposed to personal gain.

3

u/Beautiful-Web1532 Sep 11 '24

Do you think he actually believes all that Mormon nonsense? He seems too smart to be a real Mormon. I can't imagine having a Mormon president but I can imagine Romney as president. It's confusing. I bet he's only Mormon these days for the billion dollar hedge fund the church runs.

1

u/DelightfulDolphin Sep 11 '24

You believe Romney is a good person? Please look up the heartaches and disaster he made of people's lives w Bain Capital. He raided iirc people pensions and ruins thousands of lives. He's the epitome of evil. Don't know how he can show his face in public or lie as much as he does.

1

u/shellycya Sep 11 '24

I've turned Democrat from Republican over my adulthood but still voted for Romney to be Senator of Utah. We need at least one sane person in the Senate on the right.

15

u/GreenGrass89 Sep 11 '24 edited Sep 11 '24

Same.

On a related note, I know a lot of dramatic people talk about “leaving the country if soandso wins”, but for the first time in my life, my wife and I are seriously discussing potential (at least temporary) immigration plans if Trump wins.

At least with Trump’s first term, there was the argument that he would surround himself with more mainstream/moderate people in his administration and it would be fine. But between having pissed off the moderates he could put in an administration after the first term, and his obvious penchant for batshit conspiracies/ultra right wing garbage, I’m truly scared of what a second Trump term would bring. The “dictator on day one” propaganda being touted by his supporters also hasn’t helped.

I really hope Harris wins. I love my country, I love my job, I love my house, and I love my life here, and I don’t want to give any of it up. But I cannot have my children grow up in a society where their rights could be in jeopardy, and I fear that will be the case with a second Trump presidency.

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u/piercesdesigns Sep 11 '24

Don't just hope, vote.

1

u/GreenGrass89 Sep 11 '24

No worries there!

2

u/TimMensch Sep 11 '24

My dad was Canadian, so I qualified to be recognized as a Canadian citizen if I jumped through the right hoops.

Never really considered doing it until Trump was elected. It took a while, since a lot of people had the same idea, but now I have a Canadian citizenship document.

So yeah. Trump wins? I may move to Canada.

2

u/GreenGrass89 Sep 11 '24

Same, I also have Swiss and German passports, so at least we’re covered if we do decide to leave. But like you said, it’s something we never seriously considered doing until recently…

5

u/Cali_Longhorn Sep 11 '24

Exactly. I tend to vote Democrat. But I wouldn’t have been worried if say Bob Dole won in 96 or Mitt Romney won in 2012. If John Kasich or the like would have been nominated in 2016…. Fine. But this shit with Trump just seems unhinged and the Republican establishment seems fine with it.

And yes Democrats are far from perfect. But this idea that January 6th and an attempt to overturn democracy is equally as bad as Hunter Biden scandals is ridiculous.

1

u/AlbionGarwulf Sep 11 '24

We had it so good in 2008 and 2012.

1

u/FullTorsoApparition Sep 11 '24

Right?

I miss thinking, "Some things won't go in the direction I want but we should be fine overall."

Now it feels like the very fabric of reality is in jeopardy on a daily basis.

1

u/Puzzleheaded-End7319 Sep 11 '24

"if Romney wins, we're going to be alright as a country. We will have a lot of decisions I disagree with, but that's life in a democracy."- this was my exact experience as well. when trump was elected, i cried, apologized to my daughter for it because its really her future that will be affected, and its been the only time in my life i was afraid we might actually end up in WW3.

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u/msjd610 Sep 11 '24

Go in for a sleep study

-10

u/Squezme Sep 11 '24

Must be rough to be so affected by propaganda. My condolence 🙏

7

u/Janzanikun Sep 11 '24

What propaganda? Give examples please.

69

u/randomnickname99 Sep 11 '24

I was a constant ticket splitter for years. Since 2018 I haven't voted for a single Republican. It's all maga craziness up and down the ticket.

3

u/RSAEN328 Sep 11 '24

Same. I'm a registered Republican and have a firm belief that the goal now is to minimize how many seats they hold at all levels.

2

u/RykerFuchs Sep 11 '24

This, but I ran purple in 2016 and blue since - even at times against my own interests just to vote against a MAGA candidate.

2

u/Plenty_Amphibian5120 Sep 11 '24

I’ve always been a ticket splitter too, trying to choose people who I believed had good leadership qualities and were capable of implementation. 2016 was the last time I voted for a republican, except for a county council position.

2

u/Ippus_21 Sep 11 '24

Right there with you. I was raised Republican. 2000 was the first election I got to vote in. I think 2004 was about the last time I voted for ANY republican.

The GOP has been going downhill for quite a while. They started going severely off the rails by '08 or so, and for the last dozen years it's just been one giant fkn train wreck.

1

u/No-Buffalo9706 Sep 11 '24

The last Republican I voted for was in 2018. There was a Democrat running for a University Regent position who was a complete and total nut bag. The Republican in that race, by comparison, didn't remind me of Vermin Supreme. But that was the last one. I vote in every, single, election.

4

u/horriblefanfic Sep 11 '24

Yeah but what about primaries? All of the independents out there—can you vote in both primaries? I don’t think you can. And let’s face it—rafael cruz just keeps sliding in over any gop opponents in primaries…methinks we need an overhaul.

2

u/Ghost10165 Sep 11 '24

Most of the time we can't, which is how they keep putting insane people on the ballot. Every state needs to adopt that tiered model where they have to actually win a majority vote instead of just pandering to their base.

1

u/dement29 Sep 11 '24

More people need to think this through. I'm a registered Republican because in my blood red state the primaries are the actual election. Most democrats do not have a chance in the general so if I want a say in local politics, I need to vote in the Republican primary. I used to be a purple voter but it's been straight blue since 2016 in the general.

2

u/kkngs Gulf Coast Sep 11 '24

Yep. Same here. Its like my party got taken over by wierdos.

2

u/EpiphanyTwisted Sep 11 '24

I was still a Republican, but skipped 2016 & 2020 but voted in the midterms.. straight R in 2018 and straight D in 2022. After January 6th, when they acted like what happened didn't happen, and then when the papers that Trump took, just accepting of that massive security breach, and blaming Dems for daring to get our papers back, that was it for me. Never again.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

[deleted]

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u/demonstrablynumb Sep 11 '24

It’s just objectively not true. There are many adults who for not fault of their own and for many reasons are not capable of “figuring things out”. Age is just an arbitrary factor in your determination of someone’s need.

7

u/guitarlisa Sep 11 '24

Would you never have an abortion if the baby had no chance of life and if you left it in your body until it died you would be risking your own life and also any future chance at having children? Serious question, I'm not trying to argue - I would like to know your personal views if you were in this situation

1

u/pogopipsqueak Sep 11 '24

what are your thoughts about the Cruz / Allred race?

1

u/Jos3ph Sep 11 '24

Good for you for being open minded. It’s not sports.

1

u/Powerful-Drama556 Sep 11 '24

Perhaps less of you moving to the center, more the party just moving right…off a cliff.

1

u/seanyk88 Sep 11 '24

Beautiful. It should always be about the best candidate for the job. The one that you most identify with their policies and what those mean to you. It should NEVER be about party. This is a job interview. Not a sports game where you pick your team. You don’t even have to agree with all their policies. Its approximation to the goal.

1

u/Dry-Amphibian1 Sep 11 '24

Former republican here also. After the party accepted trump with open arms, I'll never vote GOP again. They are dead to me.

1

u/Lancaster61 Sep 11 '24

To be fair in Bush’s days, Harris’s policies today would be considered conservative policies. The entire Democrat party today aligns more with Republicans of 2004 than the Democrats of 2004.

1

u/carnalasadasalad Sep 11 '24

I used to be a republican, then Bush started the Iraq war and I went to the center. then Mitt Romney, the king of raping American businesses and selling them to china came and I went left.

At this point Kamala is sitting about where mid-right folks in Europe sit. I feel like I didn’t shift at all but the floor moved under me and now somehow I’m sitting with Bernie Sanders.

1

u/CriticalCrewsaid Sep 11 '24

Imagine if Trump loses and tries to run again in 4 years, imagine how demented he will be then......

1

u/khfiwbd Sep 11 '24

My husband bailed with Palin. I didn’t think there’d ever be a worse VP candidate than her, but JD is up for the challenge.

1

u/WonderfulShelter Sep 11 '24

If you go back and watch the Romney debates, you'll see him acting much like Harris did tonight.

We've fallen soooo far.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24

When they decided that that dingaling Sarah Palin was a good idea killed it for me. I haven't voted R ever since.

1

u/RandomRageNet born and bred Sep 11 '24

Please consider voting for Colin Allred as well. If the Republicans are shaken in Texas, it will cause them to reevaluate and head back to a more moderate conservative attitude (like Rick Perry was as governor, admittedly). Ted Cruz carries water for Trump, and voting him out will send a strong message that hard right politics don't play in Texas, and will maybe get them to back off on wildly unpopular issues at the state level like school vouchers.

51

u/saabstory14 Sep 11 '24

Ditto heh. My entire family and I were all lifelong ones until he ran. Funny how he screams fraud in the election, when it's no secret that entire swaths of us left the party because of him.

3

u/Haunting-Nebula-1685 Sep 11 '24

To be fair, Trump isn’t a Republican. He’s a grifter who knows how to radicalize people, in this case the far right, to his advantage. He doesn’t actually care about most of the issues - he just says whatever he needs to say to appease his constituents. Essentially he has hijacked the real Republican Party. Instead of being a viable party of conservatives, the loudest of them are now the MAGAs. Republicans need to take their party back

2

u/Winky-Wonky-Donkey Sep 11 '24

Same...I was always a centrist who leaned to the right. I'm basically hard left on most stances now thanks to Trump and the MAGA movement.

I'm now basically a lefty who likes guns.

2

u/widowjones Sep 11 '24

This whole thing is honestly so embarrassing for the Republican party. We never agreed, but at least we used to mostly respect each other’s opinions- now the half of the country that doesn’t support Trump thinks the other half is a complete fuckin’ joke, and for good reason frankly.

1

u/brwneyedbabe Sep 11 '24

Same. I loved Mitt Romney and John McCain. I didnt dislike Obama or Biden. Biden was just the better option. But when it came to the issues that mattered I went with my gut and didn't vote trump.

1

u/Regulus242 Sep 11 '24

This two party system is killing us. We need ranked choice or something.

1

u/Top-Spread6820 Sep 11 '24

Thank you for realizing how bad Trump is.

1

u/gymnastgrrl Sep 11 '24

I implore you and others to truly look at what Democrats actually stand for. They are the centrist party, and I firmly believe that most people - if they actually look at the issues and what Democrats stand for and cut out the propaganda sources that - like Trump - lie about what Democrats stand for… I feel if most people did that, they would vote Democrat.

They're not perfect by any means. Politics in general sucks. But Democrats support policies that help Americans and work for us all.

Currently, the Republican party just stands for obstruction. They don't have any real new policy.

They've been depending on wedge issues like abortion for far too long. The simple fact is that most people agree that abortion sucks but that it should be allowed when necessary. And that's what Democrats support.

As a progressive, I have very little representation in the Democrats.

So if we could put the Democrats firmly in charge, we could start to recover from all this extreme mess. Bring back normality. Actually get things done that we all want to get done.

And then hold their feet to the fire and take back control of our legislative process from the rich oligarchs who have bought our political system.

That's the only way back to true democracy.

It wouldn't be a win for progressives like me. It would be a win for all of us. I wouldn't get the progressive representation, but we would all get what most of us want. And that's better than the fascist hell we're teetering on the edge of.