2 things:

• Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.

• People know who Trump is at this point. He’s awful in a way that’s really easy to see and either you’re someone that’s a problem for or you’re someone who loves the awful.

Whoever is the current corporate lackey being put forward by the DNC is the one that needs to claim to be the good one, co-opting the language of progressives while taking corporate money and maintaining the brutal status quo.

So for people who come looking for someone who’s gonna do good, the bad stuff represents inconsistencies with that narrative and despair at a lack of representation in a supposedly democratic system.

Okay so here’s dinner context you may be unaware of. I believe it was Newt Gingrich who either came up with or standardized the core modern republican propaganda pillar: Attack attack attack, always attack, never compromise, concede only if you have literally no choice, then attack harder. That’s why the left has slid so far center; they keep trying to compromise and the right will not budge. Now the Democrats look like the Republicans back in the 80s, which is why I call them Republicrats.

Meanwhile Dems are trying to hold themselves to at least some level of standard. Add to that that Trump and his kind are authoritarian; their psychology allows for no criticism of any kind, seeing them exclusively as attacks against them. So now you have not only GOP and Trump cultists jumping on every single thing they can as hard as they can, and the self-aware Democrats calling out what they perceive as bad. The Republicans won’t do that; they never attack their own side without orders from the top, which indicates to them that the target is out of favor with the leadership.

Tldr; because the Democrats refuse to accept that the Republicans can’t be beaten by playing nice.

Shes a woman, shes not white, and shes a democrat. Take your pick.

Over a million deaths from covid…

Because Trump has better policy and she doesn’t. So it becomes a battle of policies vs personality.

Bigotry and idiocy

It only depends on which network you watch.

Neither of these two candidates is suitable to lead, but depending on your network of choice, one is a messiah or a crazy person.

I don’t think it’s that Harris is being held to a higher standard, it’s that trump is being held to virtually no standard.

The people supporting trump have no standard either except for “beat the other team, even if for no other reason than to piss them off.” They don’t care if the world goes up in flames as long as it fucks over a lib.

I’m going to offer an answer because the top responses are either bad or just totally miss the mark. The later responses are just thoughtless kneejerk drivel. It’s worth asking and addressing this question because it’s impact on electoralism are very material, and it’s not for no reason that you made your observation; it’s also not necessarily a bad thing that some politicians might be held to a higher standard than others.

The question is:

Why is Kamala being held to a higher standard is the question.

But “higher” than what?

Was Joe Biden being held to a “higher” standard? Do Democrats in general get held to “higher” standards? Rotate the question and it’s “Why do we hold politicians to standards?” Are Republicans held to any kind of standards?

First, I think we need to focus on on if politicians are being held to standards by their voters. I won’t be addressing any kind of cross party criticism in that I want to focus in on the issue of “potential voters” and if those voters hold a candidate that there is some chance they might vote for to some standards ( or litmus, whatever. The first step will be to address if voters hold politicians to standards (not yours or mine necessarily, but the voters own standards).

Second, I’ll address the “higher-ness” of these standards. Are they relative or absolute? Are the candidate or party specific? Do they change?

Finally, I’ll address the impacts of this and what it has done over the previous several election cycles.

I think we can look at the recent case of Joe Bidens candidacy to address if Harris is unique in being held to a standard. Joe Biden started campaigning in earnest in around October/ November 2023. This came at the same time as the horrible October 7th massacre that galvanized world support for Israel in the face of a terrorist threat. Joe Biden had historically been the most oro-isralli politician of any party, long before his bid for even vice president.

Relatively quickly after the massacre it was clear that Israel was in no way operating in good faith for their purported goal of recovering hostages. It was obvious that they were targeting journalists and iad workers, that there bombing was indiscriminate and focused on population centers and infrastructure for maximum destruction, and that this was in support of the broader colonial mission that Israel has been in since it’s inception.

Because of this, during the primary process, a movement of voters set a standard: that they could not vote for Joe Biden in good conscience based on the manner in which the US was relating to and supporting Israels now obvious extermination policy regarding Gaza. Biden failed that standard with regards to the Undecided movement, and it had cost him the election long before his disasterous debate performance. Joe Biden had been floundering in the polls well before that debate. Because of this, Biden lost his position as candidate, explicitly because the voters had a standard to which the candidate did not meet.

Democratic voters are not the only ones who hold standards for their politicians. Consider the case of a post DJT electoral landscape for Republicans. A Republican candidate basically could not get through a primary not towing the MAGA line (even if this hurt their chances later in the election. So even if they are not your or mine standards, Republicans too are held to standards by their voters (if even we find those standards abhorrent). It’s important to understand that in fact these voters do have standards, they just aren’t your standards, and they do hold their politicians to them.

To conclude section one: all politicians get held to standards. One of the most important politicians of the modern era just had his career ended by not meeting some of them. Both bases of voters have standards which are different and unique to that bae, and both bases hold their candidates to them accordingly.

Now we come to the question of “higher-ness”. Do bases hold these officials to standards equally? Or is there some sliding scale or uniqueness into the way things are applied. I plan on withholding discussion if the consequences of this to the final section, but I am not disregarding it’s importance.

In 2008, Barack Obama led one of the most historic campaigns of all time, under the twin banners of “Hope” and “Change”. The iconography of Obama’s 2008 campaign has and will continue to represent a high water mark for political symbolism and its use in electoralism. Barrack ran as a left-wing populist and won his presidency accordingly. However, once in office, Obama struck a decidedly more rightwing/ centrist stance, effectively governing from the center right. His principal legislation was a Heritage Foundation piece of legislation, a lift and shift of what Romney had implemented in Massachusetts, the ACA, effectively ensconcing private control of health care in the US. While voters did give Obama his second term, there was a distinct feeling of a bait and switch from the populist times of 2008 Obama to the 2012 technocratic, neoliberal approach with which he governed.

This set the stage for 2016, where the demand for “hope and change” was now stronger than ever. Obama has failed to deliver in his messaging and this created opportunities for both right wing and lefty wing populist candidates: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The voter recognized that they had not held Obama to a sufficiently high standard, and because of this, they raised the bar (each group according to their own principles). On the left we saw purity tests around no corporate pac money and a wide suite of progressive litmus. On the right we saw “america first” and isolationism. Both the left and the right bases established a higher standard. However, due to reasons behind the scope of this discussion, only the right were able to effectively hold their candidate to that now higher standard (their standards, internally defined). Leaving the era of technocracy and neoliberalism, it was the candidate held to a higher standard that won that election.

Now examine 2020. Now firmly in the populist era, it was a race on both the left and the right to meet the associated higher standards now established by voters. The Democratic candidates had maybe the most progressive across the board suite of policies ever. And likewise in the right, excepting that they be regressive polocies. Both suites representative of the now higher standards required by their associated blocs. This time however, the more established political players had caught the buzz and responded accordingly. While the DnC was ratfucky as ever, Biden did adopt almost all of those higher standard policy positions to gather those voters into his coalition. His campaign identified the higher standard, held themselves to it, and they won.

Now we have the opportunity to draw some conclusions. There is a “higherness” to standards but they are not necessarily specific to politicians so much as the demographics and voting blocs those politicians draw from. Standards have changed and increased in scrutiny. Standards are also bloc specific, so it doesn’t make sense to compare standards across blocs: why a progressive chooses to vote or not vote and why a conservative chooses to vote or not vote are wildly different motivating concerns.

Do standards matter? Objectively yes. Holding candidates to a “higher standard” has represented a winning strategy for voters for the previous 20 years. While those standards are relative depending on which voting block you are courting, the general rule has been that the candidate coming closest to a higher standard wins. This is largely due to a shift away from the kind of technocratic allure of neoliberalism and the general shift towards populism we’ve seen in the past 20 years: it is distinctly the case that we reside in a new political hedgemony.

Because of the, the prior generation politics of “we know better. just elect the “best” and that should do” has died, and been replaced by stronger willed voters who have specific demands of their politicians. Those politicians who can read and come closest to those demands are the most likely to win: this is an age of populism. Both the MAGA and progressive movement didn’t their roots in the technocratic neoliberal approaches emphasizing credentials and expertise over the will of the voter. This was effectively the political hedgemony of the US from about 1967-1978 until 2000-2012. That was the era of technocratic neoliberalism, which has been fully replaced with populism of two distinct variants (which is typical in populist eras).

The idea that voters shouldn’t hold their politicians to standards and should just vote for “the one who knows best” is a residual trapping of a previous hedgemony, and extends to almost all aspects of political life and policy.

Holding politicians to higher has also been a demonstrably effective strategy for getting them into office. In the current political hedgemony, the politician held to and able to meet a higher standard typically wins. In this way a “higher standard” benefits both the politician and the electorate. By extending a higher standard for Harris, we’re making her a more electable candidate. It doesn’t hurt her to be held to a higher standard so long as she strives to meet that standard. It’s good for her as a candidate and good for her electorate in that they get closer to accomplishing their political goals.

I don’t believe it’s possible for anybody to be held to lower standards than Trump.

It’s a good thing she’s held to higher standards. I don’t want anybody held to his standards running anything.

Trump is more than a candidate. He validates and supports a state of mind. To many, he is a champion of a lifestyle and a way of thinking. That isn’t something that is easy to overcome.

You must be young. Because Republicans will vote for a criminal before they vote for “communism”. Because the Republicans attempt to destroy the educational system to keep people dumb enough to vote for them has worked. Because dispite the corporate media pandering and acting like they want Harris Because that’s what their viewers want, their billionaire owners don’t. They want the republican led centrist enabled tax breaks on their money. Harris has also brought in the progressives which have zero tolerance for the centrist mindset. She is in a situation where she has to dance a dance of trying to reel in the progressives even though they are going to throw a fit when she panders to the centrists and the corporate overlords.

The system is made and controlled by the billionaires. No hard progressive that doesn’t play the game a little is going to get elected… right now. They will destroy anyone that threatens their billions. Everytime she goes a little too hard left they throw a fit.

Welcome to end stage capitalism.

Because Harris’s supporters have standards.

One thing particular to Trump is the percentage of his supporters in polling that support him no matter what. Trump has maintained some of the most sustained, consistent support of any modern political candidate. His base polling numbers basically haven’t moved in like 10 years.

Trying to have his VP executed, injecting bleach, porn stars, felonies, treason, domestic use of military, anti-veteran sentiment, belittling the disabled, racist comments, sexist comments, sexual assault, etc., etc., etc. None of that meaningfully moved the needle.

You are not going to “get” Trump on anything like that. If you want him to lose support, he needs to be seen as weak, ineffective, and laughable in the eyes of his supporters. None of the above does that, because that isn’t what Trump supporters care about. They care about hurting people they don’t like or see as lesser-than. If Trump stops doing that effectively, he will lose support. But, frankly, he’s really good at it.

What standard is trump being held to again?

What I didn’t see in the reactions yet is that a lot of Americans do not want any government involvement at all. Save for things that are supposedly written down in the Bible. The Republican party is providing just that, anti-establishment, anti-intellectual and don’t forget: anti-minority. Just people being tough and dare to support the party who will turn the clock back to when times were perceived to be better. Same sentiment is present in Europe by the way, like it was a century ago.