It’s literally 2016 but worse somehow.
One source close to the Harris campaign tells Rolling Stone they reached out to several staffers in and around the campaign to voice concerns about the candidate embracing Dick and Liz Cheney.
“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” says the source, speaking about Dick Cheney. They say a Harris staffer responded that it was not the staff’s role to challenge the campaign’s decisions.
A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney — and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris — was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign.
Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.
I agree, it was a colossal mistake for Harris to try and win over GOPers. But Harris’s policies remained those I listed.
I’m really curious as to whose colossally dumb idea it was to campaign with Liz fucking Cheney?
The capital class. Kamala was up 10% with Tim Walz and their progressive platform, but then lobbyists and donors demanded that she adopt a more moderate platform. No one knows for sure what they said to her, but she immediately did a 180 and ran as a moderate Republican.
The idea that democrats would abandon their base and try to flip republicans was idiotic beyond belief. The exit polls show that practically no republicans were swayed by this, as anybody with a functioning brain could’ve told the democrats. What they ended up doing was to alienate and demoralize the people who might’ve showed up to vote for them while having no impact on the republican vote.
The idea that democrats would abandon their base and try to flip republicans was idiotic beyond belief.
It is what the capital class ordered her to do. We will never get politicians who fight for us until we ban Super pacs, paid lobbying, and all the other ways that the 1% bribe and manipulate our politicians
Only way any of that could ever happen is if there was a fundamental change in a political system.
You know you’re cooked when Bill Kristol is going around like, “Hey, shouldn’t you be running a more progressive campaign to turn out more voters?”
I recall reading early on that DNC campaign advisers were recommending against continuing with the “weird” rhetoric, and the article mentioned some specific people who had worked on the 2016 campaign. It floored me that those people still had jobs. I guess they got their way eventually. I now have no expectation that they won’t be doing the same shit in 2028.
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
That’s because they’re paid by big money donors to prevent any movement to the left while big money donors pay the GOP to move further right. This shifts the center (Overton Window) further and further right over time, causing the Democrats to ultimately move towards the right over time.
Obama said that if he was a politician in the 1980s, he would be considered a Republican, and he wasn’t wrong.
Has been the case since 1992. Blame Clinton and his triangation DLC Reagan-lite bullshit
Blame capitalism. Capitalism creates massive wealth disparity and since you can’t detangle wealth from political power, it creates massive power disparities. Those power disparities are used by the rich to slowly ratchet the government and society further and further to the right.
Oh, I do, but also we need major campaign finance reform as a constitutional amendment banning private money in politics so even the Republicans won’t be able to take big money.
Not enough. As long as massive wealth disparities exist, as long as billionaires exist, they will always find a way to use their wealth to ratchet the country further and further to the right
I think in addition to that, we should force all corporations to be worker-owned cooperatives in order to bring demcracy to the workplace.
“DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.”
I think I had this exact revelation during or right after the 2020 primaries and it has deeply impacted my approach to voting ever since.
I had that same revelation back in 2016
Bernie could have won.
in 2016, WOULD have
It was all Hillary people. Why the DNC keeps hiring hillary and her people? Well Hillary owns the DNC. It’s a private corporation that has private share-holders and their product is ballot access for the Democratic party.
If you want to run as a democrat for almost any office in the entire country you have to go through the DNC.
The same progressives that didn’t show up to vote?
They didn’t vote because Harris ran as a republican. Run as a progressive if you want those votes.
Harris did not lose because she didn’t pull left enough. Lefties had nowhere else to go. She lost because Trump lied better
Lefties had nowhere else to go
See, you’re working under the idea that everyone votes for the candidate that’s ideologically closest to them.
By that understanding, running against the furthest-right candidate possible, and triangulating yourself to be 1 inch to the left of them should get you the entire electorate, except for the tiny percent of people who are more rightwing than Donald Trump.
This is observably false, hence why democrats eat shit when they move to the right of their base as they did in 2016 and 2024 (and in most midterms).
In reality, every time you compromise a position or means-test a policy, you lose votes. “New parents will get $5,000” will always perform better than “new parents who fill out a this form and are making less than $50K and whose SSN is a prime number may be eligible for a tax break up to $5,000”
Anybody who likes the idea of parents getting money will support the first, and anybody who opposes it will oppose both. But there’s a big chunk of people who will like the first, and won’t care about the second.
Same reason “Free healthcare” will always perform better than “subsidies for health insurance for pell grant recipients who open a business in an minority neighborhood that operates for at least 2 years”
Trump got the same votes as last time. He convinced no more people. Meanwhile Harris got 10M less votes than Biden. She lost because she couldn’t convince those 10M to vote her. When she courted Dick Cheney, it becomes obvious why. The people who would have voted for the Ds saw them correctly as now right of Reagan.
So account for the people who didn’t show up. Harris lost because no one was enthusiastic about her enough to show up. Biden had millions more votes than Harris.
She lost because Trump lied better
Harris lied?
Hahahaha…oh wait you’re serious…BAHAHAHA. Harris didn’t run as a Republican and you know it. And no permutation close to it either. And either you know it or you didn’t actually pay any attention beyond “I saw her on the same stage as Liz Cheney so they must be pulling right”. If you had paid any attention you would see that those last minute inclusions of Republicans was around the threat Trump posed to the country. They got up on stage and literally said that they didn’t agree on most positions, but that the need to keep trump out of office overshadowed party alliance.
And given all that if you were actually progressive (and you know wanting to make progress) and being realistic you would look at the actual options and have seen which was as close as you could get to your preference and votes to move the needle in the right direction. Enough people didn’t do that (or didn’t agree with what I assume are our positions and preferences…very to the left of Trump for myself and presumably many others here) that we ended up with this mess.
There is plenty to learn but “HaRiS RaN As A RePuBlIcAn” is not one of them.
The Harris campaign was further to the right than Ronald Reagan was. She brought the Neoconservative movement into her campaign. She literally said the only difference between her and Biden would be that she would have a Republican in her cabinet. She’s a prosecutor focused on “law and order” and huge supporter of cops. She said there were no conditions she would ever put on Israel. Her campaign mocked Trump for not building enough of a wall, and that she would be tough on immigration, without saying anything about child separation, solitary confinement for toddlers at the border, and violence against the most downtrodden at the hands of border patrol.
She absolutely ran a campaign that was nearly indistinguishable from a Republican campaign from 20 years ago.
Maybe you were born yesterday, but I’ve been politically aware since the beginning of the neoliberal era. I remember Reagan & Thatcher, and I remember Bill Clinton’s triangulation and every rightward lurch the Democratic party has made since.
Scooby Doo style:
The boogeyman is a centrist who is neither left, nor right!Pull mask off
oh it was a right-winger all along.
She fucked up. I thought oh shit she might be listening to Bernie when she picked Walz. Then she never looked left for another moment. She played center right and tried to, in the words of another comment, “scrape shit off a fascist’s boot”. I voted for her, harm reduction etc.
They fucking blew it. If we ever have a real presidential election again they better run progressive hard.
Can you believe her dad is a Marxist economist? I can’t imagine what Thanksgiving dinner would be like.
I imagine it would go like:
“Honey if you would have just…”
“I was vice president of the fucking country!”
“And even with that you fucked it up”.
I voted for her. I’m just dxing the problem, which is enthusiasm. Stop apologizing for their shitty campaign. They should have continued to attack Trump and co a weird. Keep Walz at the front of the campaign. And run on ending the Genocide and improving people’s lives.
I felt my enthusiasm drop for Harris every time she made it clear that she didn’t give a damn about progressives. I still voted, but it is obvious that the electorate didn’t buy her bipartisan and it in fact depresses the electorate. The results speak for themselves.
Harris didn’t run as a Republican and you know it.
She touted an endorsement from Dick Cheney, said she’d put a Republican in her cabinet, and said she’d pass Trump’s immigration bill.
That’s the latest talking point fresh from lemmy.ml
How does it feel knowing Lemmy.ml was right and .world was wrong?
Voters chose the right most option. Was lemmy.ml saying we needed to go further right?
Yes we said democrats need to unconditionally support a genocide. And yet somehow despite .world and the democrats being literal Nazis they still lost. We are astouded.
Never mind us, she won, despite us warning that she might lose.
Republicans won. But now I know the lemmy.ml talking point
Republicans would have won regardless of which faction won. That’s the point. Harris was further Reich than w bush.
Her campaign was further right than Reagan!
Yes. The lesson here is you can’t win without progressives, and if you try they will punish you.
You seem to be trying to imply that progressives aren’t important, but the reality is exactly the fucking opposite.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration. Everyone I know voted. No one I know irl felt democrats didn’t go far enough left.
That is a talking point being repeated a lot on lemmy.ml though. Which is telling considering its reputation.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration.
Well no shit, when those are only things in the multiple-choice response anywhere close to what voters are really feeling, of course that’s what they’re gonna measure!
But you have to read between the lines, interpret and understand what the data is telling you. Why are they worried about immigration? Why are they worried about inflation? The answer is because they’re economically insecure, falling behind while the rich get richer, and seeing the inequity do nothing but expand day by day. They fucking want leftist economic reforms because those are the things that would actually help fix their problems, but they’re never gonna be allowed to express it on a goddamed survey made by neoliberals who are more interested in huffing their own confirmation bias to pimp themselves to their corporate donors than actually helping the citizenry!
Who said there was multiple choice questions? Read between the lines? What are you rambling about?
You said:
Polls made it clear
If you don’t know that polls are almost always multiple-choice, you have no business trying to cite them.
almost always
So you acknowledge that they aren’t alway multiple choice but in the same comment you pretend that I have no business citing polls that aren’t multiple choice because it makes you wrong. Got it.
I mean I didn’t think they went far enough left. I still voted for them, but certainly I wasn’t enthused. I don’t know who would be.
I haven’t met anyone with that sentiment irl. Everyone I know either wanted Kamala to win or felt Biden and Kamala was radical left extremist and his progressive policies were the cause of inflation.
The polls reflect that.
This narrative that democrats didn’t go far enough left is something I’ve only seen on lemmy.
Get out your rich ass bubble white man!
Lemmy.ml is the bubble. lol @ your attempt at race bait
Everyone I know voted. No one I know irl felt democrats didn’t go far enough left.
Yeah, if they thought Democrats were too far right they probably were among the 11 million who voted for Biden but stayed home this time.
Fuck your HOA suburb.
lol wut
It’s not about”progressives” it’s about the average Joe voter who (in some ways rightly) couldn’t see a difference enough to make voting (an unnecessarily difficult chore) worthwhile.
The second problem, is that there is no collective class consciousness. At best there is maybe a collective unconscious feeling. Progressives often ascribe a much greater awareness than is warranted to the proletariat. Ironically after likely doing no organizing other than debating each other in closed left wing YouTube and Reddit threads.
No one knows the political lean of who didn’t vote.
They think saying the dnc went too far right is Russian propaganda…
No that’s pretty easy to know, more centrist or leftwing than the available options.
Tell that to OP for their comment:
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
It only makes sense if you assume the Harris campaign was trying to lose, like in The Producers.
Ironically (?), If they went Springtime for Hitler they might have gained votes.
The very point we are trying to make here is that that is what the Dems tried to do, and it did not in fact work.
We said as much, but of course they didn’t listen, as is our Cassandra curse.
God I am so tired of the post-mortems already. everyone is so obsessed to find the one little things that they did wrong. What was the one weird trick that could have shown america the correct path.
This time it was beyond obvious. This country simply wanted a rapist, a criminal, they wanted a man who praises dictators and has proclaimed that he is going to be one (good luck with that 1 day thing). Enough Americans looked at the two choices and the majority of this country decided to give fascism a try.
Or, an awful lot of Americans are angry, they see the world passing them by and they see a line of politicians that have all promised to do something and done nothing. So they are angry. They are pissed off at the establishment, at the status quo.
Donald Trump may be a liar and an asshole but he is definitely not establishment and definitely not status quo.
So they vote for him, hoping that maybe he will actually do a little bit of what he promises if only because when he speaks it doesn’t sound like a PR department is talking.If Democrats want to win, they need a real message. Obama had a real message. Hope, change, yes we can. That was a real message. And he was, by and large, an excellent president. I don’t regret my vote for him. But he made one big mistake. He ran on a platform of radical reform, and then delivered only moderate reform. Still a very successful president.
And who does the DNC put forward after him? Hillary. About as radical as soggy toast. And they shunt Bernie to the side, the one who actually could have won. Let’s not forget that before this election started and Biden dropped out, Harris was polling in the single digits among Democrats.
If you want to win elections, you need a stronger message than ‘I’m not Trump’. THAT is why Kamala lost. She did not have that strong message. To say otherwise is to deny reality and ensure that history repeats itself.
Glad you still have faith in the system. I don’t, doesn’t matter what the dems put forward, people are lazy and stupid and will not do any research. I mean, take a look at all the morons who are googling “what’s a tariff” now that he’s been elected.
Pissed is one thing, but we just did the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the head instead of taking a Tylenol for a headache.
People are stupid, lazy and selfish, they want the easy solutions, they want the one weird trick, they want the fix now instead of realizing that change is long and gradual. Well, we’re about to get drastic change, best of luck everyone. I’m not fan of dems, but we had the ability to pressure them, got Biden to drop out. Do you think for a second that trump will be able to be pressured into anything that isn’t his own self interest?
I was with you for the first election, but every last person who voted for him, or who felt like it wasn’t worth getting off the couch to prevent trump is responsible for this, full stop. I’m so goddamned tired of people acting like not a single person had any agency in this, like we had two equal but opposite choices. No, this one was easy and obvious and we just showed the world our true colors.
God I am so tired of the post-mortems already
lol it was literally not even a week ago
This country simply wanted a rapist
lmao yup. That’s the issue that motivated voters
Enough were fine with it.
This country simply wanted a rapist, a criminal, they wanted a man who praises dictators
Voter participation was around 50% and some 12 million fewer people came out to vote this election. Both parties lost millions of voters, but Democrats lost more because they sold out to the donor class.
Americans don’t like Trump, they have just lost faith in our broken two party system.
Right, so enough wanted the rapist, the rest were just ok with it. Lovely country, beautiful people.
When did this become rapist or not? The choice was between neloiberalism and populist reactionary conservativism.
I understand not making a choice let populist reactionary conservativism win. The established electoral system makes that the accepted narrative. I propose an equally valid choice is rejection of both political groups and the electoral system creating the duopoly of power.
I’m using it as shorthand for all the obvious criminality of the man. To elaborate, he’s a rapist, a 34 time convicted felon who steals from charity, cheats students, stiffs everyone he owes, a man who stole our national secrets, salutes and uplifts dictators, has expressed his desire to be one multiple times on the campaign trail, cages children and ran campaign focused solely on retribution and outright lies about immigrants, women and minorities.
This was an argument that could have been made during his first run; but this time, we all knew exactly what we were voting for.
Agreed. He is deplorable as an individual.
the real answer shines through when you step outside of US politics. The global recession had people in every country questioning the incumbent party. It doesn’t matter if it was left or right, conservative or liberal, whoever was in office was being blamed - because the public in general has no idea how the world works and has the collective memory of a goldfish. The US is performing better than most countries [1][2][3][4][5] in regards to the impact covid-19 had on the world, but Americans are too uneducated to realize they had it good, as the road to recovery is never easy.
With the public angry at the incumbent government (globally, not just in the US), the Trump/Putin hate machine decided to to stoke fear, uncertainty and doubt in Americans. This clearly worked as people’s views on the nations economy have been trending down [6], so now we’re left to deal with the Magagenda, which all seem to align with everything Putin ever hoped for.
You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.
Anyways, Trump took advantage of these economic hard times by stoking fear and hatred with claims that the incumbent party is to blame, that it’s all corrupt, and somehow immigrants and trans people are to blame.
In summary, we’ve got a known rapist/conman/cheater with a history of rape, conning, and cheating and we’re supposed to believe he won fair and square? I don’t buy it.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820
[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covid-19-in-international-comparison/
[4] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economy-in-global-context
[6] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the-nations-economy-may-2024/
friend, you and I are saying the same thing.
You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.
I totally understand why it happened, and yeah, I agree it was economic issues, and inflation and so forth. And I even agree it’s not an America thing. This is just a human thing, and humans by and large are kinda awful.
this is because people want easy, quick answers that make them feel good. An old comment of mine from this site sums it up:
as I have climbed higher in the corporate world, this is becoming clearer and clearer. people respond far better to a confident idiot than they do a pensive expert.
I don’t know, y’all can point fingers in every direction, but the fact is - those voters who didn’t show up to vote, voted 3rd party, or voted Republican knew who Trump is and what the outcome would be. Project 2025 was laid out in full right in front of us. We all saw his previous 4 years in office. We saw the repeal of Roe with a majority court. These (potential) voters just don’t care about progress or people and want to speed up the burning of Rome. US Presidential elections have been binary in everyone’s lifetime here.
There’s no excuse other than simply “I don’t care” regardless of which excuse you want to pick from the box. The House, Senate, and Supreme Court are all lost - they have absolute free reign to do whatever they want in the next 4 years. The best case scenario is that it’s not as bad as last time. The worst case scenario is the US becomes reclusive, regressive, and more corrupt akin to other dictator run countries. Just like those other dictator run countries, in the worst case scenario, there will be no revolution if/when things go “too far” because they hold the power and have the support to stomp down any opposition to dust.
It’s certainly a sad state of affairs, and in no sane world should DJT have won a 2nd term, but here we are, watching the circus erect their tents while we whisper in the stands.
You’re right. Next election let’s nominate better voters. /s
This is the difference between progressives and shitlibs. Progressives want to identify the failures in order to fix them. Shitlibs want to find someone else to blame so they don’t have to change.
Sure is going to be more difficult to make progressive change in a fascist state. I’ve no doubt conservatives are going to be more open to change than their counterparts, but something tells me that those changes aren’t going to be anywhere near progressive.
Yeah, I do blame the voters who sat this election out or voted 3rd party. Absolute ignorance in the face of factual, tangible datapoints.
“Oh, the democrats should have campaigned harder! Oh, they should have been more progressive!” while conservatives just consistently lie through their teeth, skirt the law, and prey on the weak and ill-informed. While conservatives are open-faced about their regressive policies.
Change takes time, but yeah, let’s sit this one out. Real progressive. Nothing like watching the trolly going toward the wrong side of the track and saying “Oh, not my problem, I didn’t touch the lever! Whatever happens, it’s not my fault because I did nothing to help or hurt the situation! My hands are clean!”
That’s now how democracy works child. It’s the job of the party to present a platform that inspires people to vote.
I had no issue with Harris campaigning with Cheney. Cheney and I disagree on 99% of things, but we agreed that Trump is a corrupt piece of shit. Cheney and Kinzinger sacrificed the easy Republican win to go against Trump. As did Romney to a slightly lesser extent.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists. That your could vote for Harris and still be a capital R Republican.
I’ve met (e.g. was raised by) these people. I thought it was a large part of the voting population.
Clearly I was fucking wrong. Clearly this was a niche. But I understood the strategy. I see people complaining that Harris moved too far to the right but I can’t think of a single right wing policy she picked up. Sure she picked up/was always following neoliberal policy, which aligns with neocon policy, but that was a given. We already had Biden, Harris was an extra step towards progressive, but not a leap. In either case I was happy enough.
Suffice to say I don’t buy the argument that Cheney cost Harris any voters.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists.
You can facilitate the more moderate alternative by passing electoral reform in blue states.
This has already happened in Alaska, which has already implemented Ranked Choice voting. The voters picked a more moderate conservative over Sarah Palin.
Republicans are trying to repeal Ranked Choice voting in Alaska by the way. More proof that electoral reform is the way forward for our country.
Now all we have to do is convince democrats to support democracy in states they control. I guess step one would be beating into their heads that they are no longer allowed to fight the republicans alone.
Democrats must allow more political parties to participate in the electoral process. Given their flailing looking for something or someone to blame for their failures (again), I think they still are not willing to do so. I hope I’m wrong.
wouldn’t implementing ranked choice voting in blue states just further fracture them and weaken them against red states? I would think it would make sense to initiate ranked choice in red states first.
Sure, if you have years and election cycles worth of time, that’s a much better solution. If you have 90 days then “big tent” sounds reasonable to me.
Except they made the tent big enough for Liz Cheney, but not big enough to let a Palestinian-American speak at the Convention.
I had no issue with Harris campaigning with Cheney. Cheney and I disagree on 99% of things, but we agreed that Trump is a corrupt piece of shit.
We’re really doing the 99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler joke without a hint of sarcasm huh?
The DNC thought appealing to republicans and moderates instead of motivating the base to turn out would work. It didn’t. It never has, it didn’t work in 2016 or 2020 either. The entire DNC should be fired
Oh I agree the DNC fucked up, and have fucked up for so many years in a row. My assumption, which was wrong, is that the base was already covered. If we’re reaching out for Republicans it’s because the base is a given.
After seeing what looks like 10 million or so Democrats sit this election out (pending the full results and an investigation of those results) it’s clear Democrats didn’t have the base locked down.
It turns out that courting a war criminal like Cheney didn’t have any impact on Republicans and demotivated over 10M Democrat voters who didn’t want to support a party that would support Cheney. Who could have predicted that?
Locked down like a prisoner?
Nah I have republican family, they didn’t see cheyney voting for kamala and say “oh wow I should do that too,” they said “that fucking turncoat, rot in hell!”
I mean, what would you think if you saw idk fucking AOC or Ilhan going “man I’m going trump over this gaza situation?” Bet you still wouldn’t have voted trump lol, it’s a “nice try” but it is also the dumbest most out of touch move tbh.
I saw AOC voting to protect the rail corporation from a union strike.
I mean if AOC/Ilhan said they were voting Trump I would pause and listen to the why. If someone does something that unexpected, I would pay attention.
It wouldn’t have got me to change my vote because from a policy standpoint, it just wouldn’t make sense.
However if we look at Bernie Sanders, look at his last minute plea to Democrats. I was already planning to vote for Harris, but if I was on the edge due to Gaza I would have taken his words to heart. He said yes, this sucks, but a vote for Harris is the best option. If he had come out and said the opposite (which wouldn’t have made sense), I would have again paused and taken a moment.
By “right-wing” you mean “American right-wing”, right? Because from outside the US most of what she said was center-right being generous.
I don’t think Cheney cost Harris any voters because the vast majority of people who didn’t vote for Harris probably don’t know and don’t care who Cheney is. But celebrating the Cheney endorsement is a symptom of a campaign that is thoroughly unexciting and establishment. People who don’t follow politics aren’t word-of-mouth’d into being excited for something new and hopeful. Instead of democrats’ excitement about the promises of a new candidate, the only word on their lips was Trump, which won’t work a second time if the apolitical person’s world didn’t change negatively the last time trump was president.
Instead of democrats’ excitement about the promises of a new candidate, the only word on their lips was Trump
I agree. I think the early complaints about Harris not having a solid platform on her website were fair. On the one hand I think giving her a little bit of a break given the speed she had to put things together would be reasonable. On the other hand we only had a few months until the election and she needed to get on it and get on it FAST. Once it was up I was surprised how little focus it got.
For example take legalizing marijuana. She put out a proposal in mid October with little fanfare and has an Instagram post the day before the election. However in reading the article about a NH woman named Kamala Harris being unsure who to vote for she said, “Kamala supports abortion which I really like. Trump says that he supports weed which I really like.” This may be an anecdotal story but you CANT have people not know your message. Sure she got half the message, but Trump, who hasn’t said shit about marijuana, somehow got to be the marijuana guy?
Now part of this is a result of such a short campaign, but honestly our campaigns are long enough as it is. It’s clear Harris had issues getting her message out there. (And yes, we could blame the uneducated voter, but if you’re the candidate, that’s on you.)
Let’s see, so we’re blaming Biden for stepping aside too late, his advisors for not encouraging him to step aside, the DNC for not holding a second primary, and Harris for trying to get voters by reaching across the aisle.
Let’s for once try Occam’s Razor.
Can we just accept that more than half the
nation isvoters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.Occam’s razor isn’t “the simplest, most reductive answer is usually right” it’s “entities must not be created beyond nessecity”. It argues that when you have two hypotheses which have equal explanatory power, you should usually choose the one that has fewer elements (assumptions, new rules). The classic example is a heliocentric solar system vs a geocentric one. Geocentric needs very complex laws of motion to get the sidereal motion correct, heliocentric doesn’t.
“everyone is racist” doesn’t have the same explanatory power as the detailed analysis you’re seeing journalists and your fellow lemmy users construct of Biden, Harris, and the Democratic establishments failure to recognize the need for loud populist messaging and unforced errors depressing voter enthusiasm, therefore we cannot apply Occam’s razor to the situation.
Thank you for stating Occam’s Razor correctly. I am so sick of these “performative rationalists”
That’s the explanation that requires zero introspection and change on behalf of the Democratic party. Democrats need to learn something here. Democrats need to finally implement that change obama promised all those years ago.
Unless their purpose is to lose.
I feel like Occam’s razor points to a DNC that hates voters, as exemplified by your comment and there not being a fair DNC primary to actually select the most popular candidate for 8 years, and voters responding in kind.
If there had been a primary, it’s possible that Sanders would’ve gotten nominated. The DNC can’t risk that.
There was a primary for the 2024 election. Biden won.
There was literally only one serious opponent, and his name was Dean Phillips. He couldn’t get ballot access in all 50 states, and the Democrats drove him out of politics afterward.
No one ran because they knew they’d get excommunicated from the party if they ran against st Biden.
Yeah, that’s exactly what they did to Phillips. I don’t even like his politics, he’s a neoliberal centrist, but he was worried about Biden’s electability and his entire platform was, “I think there should be a real primary, will other people please run too?” They forced him to step down from his leadership positions and suddenly he had a primary challenger for his seat. He decided he’s going to retire from politics when his term is finished.
“You had a primary and Biden won so he appointed Harris!”
- Only Phillips had any shot above 0.1%
- Forbidden from running on most ballots
- Primary called before all 50 states had a shot
- Phillips who ran was effectively blacklisted from working with them ever again
- Biden wins
- Phillips got so much flack for “I don’t want Trump to win” he is forced to leave office
- Biden still is a fight of “Who can be the oldest white dude in office?”
- Biden fucks up
- Biden gives up
- “Uhhh Harris is it now, the Silent Generation Dems said so”
It’s an AR-16 to the foot and every time we try to attempt triage, they load a new magazine saying we’re the idiots for trying to stop the bleeding.
Harris vs An Empty Chair
LoL the empty chair got some delegates?
There was not a primary.
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It isn’t hard to win when you’re the only one running.
Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin, and Jacky Rosen are all women who won senate races in states Kamala lost (WI, MI, NV). There’s also Ruben Gallego, a Hispanic man who’s winning in Arizona. So your “simplest explanation” is that these sexist, racist bigots were fine with voting for women (one of them a queer woman at that) and minorities for senate but not for president (for some reason) as opposed to the idea that Kamala Harris was just an unpopular candidate. That’s not the simplest explanation, it’s just the laziest.
It certainly played a part, but no; half the nation isn’t racist/sexist. A little over half the country voted. Of that, some portion of the people wanted Trump for non-sexist/racist reasons. They still might not be good reasons, just not that always. It’s way less than half of the nation who voted for Trump, and significantly fewer who did it for racist/sexist reasons.
We have to deal with that issue in the US, and many others, but boiling it down to just that is wrong. It also pushes a narrative that we must not run people of color or women in the future, which I believe to be wrong.
We need to inspire people. That’s where this campaign failed. It was almost entirely based on fear. This works much better for Republicans than Democrats. The Democrats thought they could win playing the Republican’s game. They should have played their own.
They should have played their own.
I really don’t think “it’s her turn” 2.0 would have been a good idea.
We need to inspire people.
This. Exactly this. Non-conservatives haven’t had anyone to vote for for years, only people to vote against. Biden was anyone other than Trump. They thought that would work for Kamala, but here we are.
Related, when I tried to volunteer for the dems, all they wanted to do was have me make phone calls. I think in got an invite to knock doors like 2 days before the election. I tried to contact people several times to see how I could help energize the base or make sure people were registered and ready to vote. They kept asking me to make calls and send money. Now people like me are going to be directly hurt by these policies, the only question is how much.
Of that, some portion of the people wanted Trump for non-sexist/racist reasons.
They knew Trump’s sexist and racist policies and still voted for him. That means they support those racist and sexist policies.
I won’t excuse people for voting for a tyrant who explicitly told everyone he’d be a tyrant.
Funnily enough the very same argument also can be used for Harris and genocide, immgirant oppression, warmongering and everything else here.
No, it can’t. This isn’t an issue of policy disagreement. This is an issue on ideology. Harris isn’t a fascist tyrant who promised to destroy our democracy.
So your argument, while probably not very constructive as generalisation, fits perfectly for you, as you support those genocidal policies by voting for her. And so i won’t excuse you for voting for a genocider who explicitly told everyone she would continue.
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No it doesn’t. I voted for Harris despite wanting her to say she’d do more for Palestinians. Voting isn’t an endorsement, and people need to stop pretending it is. There’s perfectly valid reasons (that I don’t agree with) that aren’t racist/sexist that led to people voting for Trump.
I’m not asking you to excuse anyone. They did what they did. It doesn’t deserve an excuse. I’m asking for people to recognize real issues that can be worked on, instead of just throwing our hands up and saying it wasn’t because of real mistakes. Blaming sexism and racism is a cop-out. It doesn’t fix anything and only blames the failure as a failure of others, not yourself.
I think the real answer is all of the above. Biden waited too long to drop out, which didn’t give enough time to properly hold a primary. This resulted in Harris being nominated with no way to gauge how popular she would be. She then ran a terrible campaign spending too much time courting moderate Republicans. This resulted in progressives being disillusioned and not voting. Her stance on Israel and Gaza turned away Arab voters who also didn’t vote. All of this combined together to pave the way for a second Trump presidency.
No primary also means they can’t test what ideas are popular.
Why would they want to do that when they don’t give a shit if it’s popular
no way to gauge how popular she would be
Her approval ratings have always been trash. We were well versed in who she would be.
She actually went to the primary on a decently progressive platform (for a Democrat). Then she ran for president as center right standard Democrat.
That interview where they asked her what would be different if she won versus Biden, and she said she couldn’t think of a thing. That fucking ruined her.
Not a thing will change. Not a single change. Nobody thought to coach her on the most obvious question to ask or they told her the winning line was to stick with the guy who had to drop out?
I’m so fucking sad and sick. Arm yourselves before it’s too late.
I wouldn’t put it past day one dictator and project 2025 that he’s never heard of to immediately put a stop to weapons sold to anyone that doesn’t qualify.
Nothing will fundamentally change… again.
Agent Orange appointed three Supreme Court justices who rolled back women’s rights and made the President completely above the law. This is just one of the things that fundamentally changed. This time around I expect Thomas and Alito to retire so he can replace them with younger Christian fascists. If you have children, their children will be affected negatively by this court.
This is just one thing! So many things fundamentally changed. If you think nothing fundamentally changed for you then that’s your privilege showing.
I’ve been armed and fully trained for a number of years, they won’t put a restriction on sale of weapons, That might be viewed as a constitutional violation. What they will do is put a restriction on the sale of ammunition. Or there will be extreme ‘shortages’
Damn, literally the chris rock antigun strategy.
In character for the USA though. Freedom! (if you are rich).
I like (hate) the way you think.
It wasn’t more than half the country, in total 65% of the country voted for any candidate. Trump got about 55% of that, or a bit over 36% of the country. That’s still way higher than it should be, but well below half. There’s a bunch of possible explanations for why the remaining 35% of the country didn’t vote, and only some of those explanations would be tacit support of Trump.
Good point. More than half of voters would have been accurate.
That reduces the sting of disappointment in my fellow man a tiny bit.
Yes, but there was unlikely to be 100% turnout of horrible people. Some good people voted for Trump, in what we see as misguided but tolerant of racism. However many more racist people stayed home and didn’t vote and many more didn’t care about racism enough to vote.
Trump in the USA and people’s response to covid (worldwide) really highlighted selfishness of humanity to me. I’m a less hopeful person because of it but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight for what’s right.
Good point. More than half of voters would have been accurate.
Only barely though. Its like 50.2%. But like another 48% voted for Kamala, so like that’s 98% of voters…
The 35% of the country did vote. If you choose not to vote for any candidate, you are voting, “both these options are indistinguishable to me, I’m good with either.” Not voting is still voting. You’re just endorsing whatever the people who do vote decide. You’re basically saying, “I consider this race irrelevant and don’t care about the outcome.” That is what you are voting for if you don’t vote.
You’re so consistently wrong that I’m starting to think you might be Will Stancil’s alt account.
Because that’s the simplest explanation
No, it’s even simpler than that. The majority don’t pay attention to anything past headlines. There are numerous reasons for this, time, effort, working 3 jobs to make ends meet, etc. And that’s something the Republicans excel at, they have spent the past 60 years developing an entire network of media to spread their propaganda masking it as factual “news”.
Because people aren’t looking past the headlines… if you break that down and simplify why that is , you get to the base of the average person having a hard time in the current economy. One party telling them that it is hard and they’ll change things, and the other party telling them it’s not actually that bad. If you’re having a hard time and one group keeps insisting that you’re really not, you’re probably going to pick the other side if those are the only options. It’s not rocket science, fuck, it’s not even political science, it’s just ignoring the issue and trying to convince someone being beaten to death by the system that they’re not actually getting beaten.
But actually committing to do something substantially FDRish for the working man isn’t an easy sell within high level Democrat party leadership. I don’t know why this is true exactly but I expect it has to do with money and power.
I expect it has to do with money and power.
Are we completely ignoring the right wing echo chamber on social media and cable news? I’ve encountered no shortage of people who have been completely sucked into that world and buy into the bullshit. Not all of them are innately evil, but their candidate of choice certainly is
So you’ve got 4 issues all resolving to personal issues from the Democratic Party, a very simple explanation that they lost due to their own inner problems, and you occams razor to “it’s just *ism”?
Why is self reflection so hard for Dems.
“It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It”
Insert Principle Skinner meme about how it is the voters who are wrong
Democrats certainly like the “America is racist” narrative because it gives them justification for chasing the racist vote next time.
Donald Trump got approximately the same number of votes as he did in 2020. Harris, however, got about 11 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020.
The democrats eagerness to support genocide is obvious. Though unfortunately for them, support for genocide isn’t a key differentiator when it comes to winning elections.
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She ran as a republican, against a republican. She wasn’t liked 4 years ago and was liked even less this time around. It’s easy to blame racism and there is certainly a lot of it going around, but this is 100% on the DNC, just like in 2016 when they prevented the most popular candidate in recent history Bernie from running and instead thrust an unpopular nealib candidate Hillary on the voters. It’s a series of idiotic decisions
I’m pretty sure Biden being in the race, and him stepping aside, were all determined by the DNC, not Biden himself.
The donor class decided that Biden need to step down, not leadership, not voters. He and the party were animate that he was staying in the race until the donor class said the money stops here.
And the other half is just as racist, sexist and bigoted. But they’re covert at it.
“Just as” is absurd, but I agree there is some. I was guilty of plenty of microaggressions before I knew of them. Change starts with the youth. The older you get, the longer it takes to get to you.
Democrats don’t have to say any slurs to uphold a racist/sexist system. Send out a memo condemning racism while increasing police funding and surveillance. Tokenize people in their cabinet with a smile and a hashtag while bombing, destabilizing, and plundering the global south. Our hierarchical and white supremacist systems are so embedded in our society, it’s assumed to be the natural order of things.
