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Comment by tyleo | Hacker News Reader

I agree that she had a moderate response. I think it appeared that she was dying on the this hill because she didn’t address it in her 2024 campaign yet it received so much air time in Republican ads.

I also agree that it feels like Democrats don’t stand for anything. But I think by leaving that space open they let ads like this paint what they stand for.

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Do you believe that if she had gone on camera and said "I was wrong, trans people shouldn't receive this care in prison" that it would have stopped the GOP ad campaign? No chance.

To die on a hill means that you stand on the hill and get killed rather than leave it. It means having a conviction so strong that you will never walk it back. That's the polar opposite of the establishment dems right now.

Idk where you’re getting that quote from. No one would say that.

There are many things Harris could have done to improve the situation like publicly stating a balanced position. Doing nothing was dying on the hill.

What do you think she should have done?

Right, that’s what I’m saying. This is the opposite of a democrat dying on a hill. They cede everything and are killed for it on the spin.

My issue with what you said is the claim <some issue> is not a hill to die on. They are not dying on any hills at all.

Fair enough. It’s the appearance of dying on hills.

The people making up that appearance are actually republicans, though, and I think it is utterly bizarre to feed into that appearance as the fault of democrats. It’s the republican strategy to say and do extreme histrionic shit as red meat for their base and then blame the democrats for doing it.

I’m not sure what your point is. This still seems like a purity test. Whether democrats wanted it to be a purity test or not republicans were able to successfully paint it as one.

My point is that it is bizarre to blame democrats for making purity tests when republicans are making up purity tests. It’s like I deleted db in prod and then said how dare my co worker be pro prod db manipulation, when the co worker in question had stfu the whole time.

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