Kamala Harris truly is Hillary Clinton 2.0.
Many of Harris’s mistakes were similar to those Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Like Clinton, Harris cozied up to billionaire donors. Mark Cuban, for instance, said he was delighted that Harris was abandoning Democrats’ commitments to progressive principles and letting the business community propose the policies it wanted. Like Clinton, Harris and Tim Walz made hubristic campaign stops in solidly red states like Texas and Kentucky rather than spending the final days laser-focused on crucial battlegrounds. Like Clinton, Harris emphasized celebrity endorsements while failing to successfully court unions. (Most notably, the Teamsters declined to endorse her after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike.) Like Clinton, Harris focused too much on the danger of Donald Trump (which is very real) and not enough on the reasons why she would be good at being president herself.
I’ll just say that all the policies she proposed seemed entirely uninteresting to me. Credits for first time home buyers and something about building new homes seemed like her main talking point. This is great for all the people that don’t currently own a home and want to but does nothing for most people that also need help.
It benefits you by reducing homelessness and poverty in general which has a much higher cost for society in the long run. Holy fuck you guys are so self centered.
That was not her message. So get off your high horse. It was “I’m going to build houses and it’ll save money for some people that probably aren’t you”. Periodt
But the exit polls showed that most people felt they were worse ofd today than 4 years ago. You expect all those people to read between the lines to figure out this will help make things better for them eventually? That’s not how politics works.
Which saves you money in the long run, that’s what you can’t get into your head, helping others get out of the shit they’re in helps everyone and saves money for everyone in the long run.
It’s the job of the campaign to explicitly make this argument. They did not. They failed. It is not our fault for their failure. You making this argument is the first I’m even hearing this.
I get so frustrated at the poor messaging. Glen younkin stood on stage against mcauffee and straight up lied about crt in school, and no body called him out in it.
Blaming the campaign for your ignorance 👍 You have the right to continue educating yourself once you’re out of school.
Lol, this has to be the most naive and hilarious bs I’ve seen in a while. Harris did nothing wrong. No notes. It’s 100% the people that are wrong. Keep living that fantasy while the rest of us try to autopsy this corpse of a campaign and see what the cause of death is.
Holy fuck you guys are so self centered.
You’re awfully preachy defending a campaign message that was such an abject failure.
Do you really expect everyone to vote in the name of altruism? How naive can you be?
Is it altruism to help others if the end goal is to help yourself in the long run?
after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike
JUST LIE my god youll already be in office and can make up some nonsense why you had to break the strike (Im not antiunion, Im just saying)
JUST FUCKING LIE or were all the existential threats you wouldnt shut the fuck up about (instead of actually having a platform) not worth doing whatever you needed to get into power!?
… sigh
But that would be gud politik.
You’re right that she was Hilary 2.0, but for the wrong reason.
It has very little to do with policy.
The difference between winning and losing was almost certainly just people who preferred a man over a woman as president. Whether they will say it or not, America is still not ready for a female president.
“In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points.”
This election, Trump won men by 10 points again.
Democrats have got the largest share of women’s votes in every election since 1988.
Losing 10 points of the male vote isn’t caused by support for Israel, or a lack of progressive policies.
This is the sad truth.
It’s the economy. They can scream the economy numbers are great but the people are feeling it differently at the grocery store, gas station, paying rent, etc.
Right, economy. Both candidates ran on fixing it. But one wasn’t a black woman…
“It’s broken because of Biden and she should have fixed it during the last four years.” It’s stupid logic but that’s what it came down to for some.
Women didn’t buy that logic, but men did?
Harris won essentially the same percentage of women as Biden did, but lost entirely on the fact that fewer men voted for her (by a wide margin)
I’m pretty sure the simple explanation is right here, and it had nothing to do with the economy.
but lost entirely on the fact that fewer men voted for her (by a wide margin)
it had nothing to do with the economy.
Thats not true at all-- its just what you wish was true.
She lost in every single demographic besides white college educated women. She especially lost amongst the poor voters. She lost amongst nonwhite women and not college educated women.Gender and race certainly had a part in it, but the facts dont match your conclusions. Lies dont become anyone – even someone dealing with a hard loss.
We have enough lies to sort through already and your adding to the pile will not help matters. How about we make some effort to get to “the truth” not “your truth”.
I’m not talking about who lost vs won each demographic, I’m referring to changes to percentages which you don’t seem to understand.
Harris lost more male votes than female, far more. It simply doesn’t make sense that she would lose such a massive difference in men if the economy was the primary reason. Men don’t care about the economy significantly more than women do, it’s an issue that both genders put at the top of their priorities.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Harris being female cost her at least some votes, and she didn’t lose by very much. Only 3 people changed sides this election out of every 100 voters(net of course), that’s it. It’s not hard to think that may be due to her gender or race.
thereasonAnother reason
I’m not going deny that there were certainly sexist people that wouldn’t vote for a woman. But I don’t think I can agree it was the difference between winning and losing.
I think it’s much, much more likely that the progressive voting bloc that was able to start winning the primaries in 2020 and was railroaded by the party (twice) that’s been completely shunted off to the side in favor of some mythical swing Republican voter is very much the reason.
They think putting a woman of color up as the candidate would be enough to win that bloc. Which goes to show the root of the problem. It’s the rainbow capitalist issue. “If we slap a pride flag on the person of color we got as our new representative and change our single bathroom signs to say ‘all gender,’ we’ll be in the right! We’ll fool those hippies and socialist dirtbags yet!”
This has failed them. Over and over. The most thinking people of the entire country (biased opinion, I grant) aren’t easily appeased. Things were so bad in 2020 that bloc mostly held their noses to vote for Biden. And they figured running against trump was the only ammunition they needed to lock down that bloc and they could hold them no problem while also courting the neocons!
They are funding a genocide. Basically perpetrating it. They were going to have to bend over backwards to get anyone left of Biden to vote for them. And they unquestionably didn’t. They basically told us to go fuck ourselves. Again.
And they fucked themselves by doing so.
Your reasoning doesn’t explain the male vs female vote difference. Kamala won essentially the same percentage of the female vote as Biden, but lost because she didn’t capture male voters. Why would only male voters abandon her based on the policies you mentioned?
Kamala actually retained more male Biden voters than female.
No, the American People have failed us.
It’s both. Yeah, Americans continue to be unmasked as racist and all, but the DNC absolutely shat the bed here as well.
I’m not a US citizen, but considering the current global trend, isn’t it also possible that the West is slowly but surely turning to fascism again?
I couldn’t care less about the democratic party, so not trying to find excuses but everything I read about the US election reminds me of everything I read about… well… most European elections in the past 10 years.
Yep and the west is more militarily powerful than everywhere else so if there’s a war there won’t be any allies this time.
deleted by creator
Mexico recently elected a socialist woman. Europe and American political parties have collectively decided on the strategy of trying to win the neo nazi vote.
Mexico is not part of the west.
But yes, they elected a Jewish socialist woman.
Yeah, I’m from Germany and it’s happening here too.
The established parties (mainly die Grünen SPD, CDU/CSU and FDP) have been unable for decades to solve problems like decaying infrastructures, pensions, bureaucracy and taxes. They’re so disconnected from reality that they probably don’t even know what the normal citizen bothers and then with the big immigration waves starting in 2015 and the complete and utter failure in handling it gave rise to parties, mainly the AfD, who promised solutions for everything.
Also, we can not forget the influence Russia and China have on our politics. They want nothing more than Western powers in disarray and it gets widely ignored or dismissed.
Also, we can not forget the influence Russia and China have on our politics. They want nothing more than Western powers in disarray, and it gets widely ignored or dismissed.
This was a huge factor, and one our ruling party will ignore. Youtube and tiktok algorithms radicalized Americans into voting for a Nazi. They told them he wouldn’t do the ahit he says he’ll do and that the Democrats and brown people are the cause of all of their problems. It’s pure propaganda paid for by Russia, China, and probably many other of our enemies.
It is not the failure of a single parties’ leadership if a majority votes for fashism.
Fascism*
It is if that leadership consistently refuses to learn from their mistakes and fails to mount any meaningful opposition to fascism as it creeps into more and more control over decades.
This is what happens when anyone that warns someone is sick gets burnt at the stake as a witch.
When your own party is criticizing the candidate, you need to realize that 17 million more aren’t going to put the effort into complaining, they’re not going to hold their nose and vote.
They’re just gonna stay home.
So when the politically active tries to warn the party, it would behoove the party to listen to it’s base.
Trump vs Harris vs The Couch.
Yep, Dems win by increasing turnout, Republicans win by depressing it.
So Dems campaigning on how great they are wins elections
Dems campaigning on how bad Republicans are only wins sometimes and usually only if the incumbent is a Republican.
Unless we make changes we’re gonna switch to rotating every 4 instead of 8, and the moderate Dems allowed to make it to the general will never fix stuff as fast as Republicans can break it.
The current plan just isn’t working.
Unless we make changes we’re gonna switch to rotating every 4 instead of 8, and the moderate Dems allowed to make it to the general will never fix stuff as fast as Republicans can break it.
If the next election doesn’t have fuckery.
If the next election doesn’t have fuckery.
People said that about this election and Kamala still conceded in less than 24 hours…
If we keep running these half assed opponents to fascism, there’s more of a chance they try to steal it. Because they know moderates don’t have the fight in them.
They just aren’t worried about republican presidencies.
Sorry buddy, this is MERICA and in the land if MERICA we have a flawless two party system that fully represents every single citizen perfectly and if you feel otherwise then you must be a un-American communist nazi socialist Russian terrorist.
/$
Democrats are not leftists, they’re center right. I’m so sick of people thinking Democrats are going to fix this, protect that, and make things better. Democrats serve their corporate masters, and they’ll make vague promises that they know they won’t keep.
Instead of saying that Harris or the dnc dropped the ball, consider that over half the voting population in the US chose a senile, white, male, racist, felon who increased your taxes unless you were rich and stole classified documents, that is chums with Putin.
Maybe instead of “the dnc dropped the ball” it could be considered that the slight majority of Americans are just racist, sexist, uneducated, short sighted idiots?
No one needed to know much beyond seeing how bad trump has been. There shouldn’t have needed to be a “make Harris better” plan. America seen that trump shitbox and still chose him.
Fucking seriously though. I can see the frustration with the DNC, but some form of action is a hell of a lot better than the total dismantle of America as it is right now. These people could have easily looked into Kamala’s policies that show quite a few good ideas, and a few that I personally didn’t jive with (increase child tax credits, while the people like me and my partner are staunchly against having children that will grow into a world on fire, get absolutely nothing). Didn’t stop me from voting for her though, you know why? Trump has NO plan (GOOD plan, they’ve got PLENTY of bad plans lined up for us all!). AT ALL. So, America’s idiots STILL chose this orange buffoon, with no plans at all, just sparkly words, and now we are really sitting here and trying to blame Harris, who only had 107 days to get her message out there? Come on, Lemmy. I thought you were better than this…
The government allowed lies to be told on TV and on the internet under the guise of news. There were no real consequences to those who had listeners and repeated foreign government talking points for money. We have not seen any real investigation on how much interference was ran on social media.
Nearly every human being believes that they are a good person making rational decisions, so its important to examine the environment around these people to where they can believe they made the right choice when it comes to electing Trump and sadly, it seems our mostly unregulated free speech that let it happen, because the republican party is more organized and effective in communicating their platform and slandering their opponents than democrats are, and they motivated more people to vote than the democrats could as a result. Anger and hate are strong emotions and motivators, and unfortunately the republicans keep on using them and it keeps on working.
I have no idea what you’re blaming Lemmy on, if anything I’d expect the userbase here to be more active and left-leaning voters than average. People have a good reason to be frustrated, and I think pointing that frustration at the only alternative option we had for a political party failing election after election to learn how to communicate and how to deliver on what the people really want is a reasonable take.
The government allowed lies to be told on TV and on the internet under the guise of news. There were no real consequences to those who had listeners and repeated foreign government talking points for money. We have not seen any real investigation on how much interference was ran on social media.
I agree.
Nearly every human being believes that they are a good person making rational decisions, so its important to examine the environment around these people to where they can believe they made the right choice when it comes to electing Trump and sadly, it seems our mostly unregulated free speech that let it happen, because the republican party is more organized and effective in communicating their platform and slandering their opponents than democrats are, and they motivated more people to vote than the democrats could as a result. Anger and hate are strong emotions and motivators, and unfortunately the republicans keep on using them and it keeps on working.
I agree.
I have no idea what you’re blaming Lemmy on, if anything I’d expect the userbase here to be more active and left-leaning voters than average. People have a good reason to be frustrated, and I think pointing that frustration at the only alternative option we had for a political party failing election after election to learn how to communicate and how to deliver on what the people really want is a reasonable take.
I’m basically pointing out how senseless some of these comments have been, on almost every single post about either Harris, Walz, or the DNC. The biggest problem this election, that we know of as of yet, was the absence of votes, and white men and women, Latino men and women, voting against a women of color.
The people here may be left-leaning, or at least say they are, but they have nothing but shit takes trying to blame Harris for a shit campaign. They actively chose to allow a fucking criminal to determine the future of their country. It is really quite a take, considering that she actually had policies, told you where to find them, and was CONSTANTLY berated on interviews and shit. Trump got softball questions, and no matter fucking what, he always got away with every single stupid and evil thing he did or said.
Crazy.
But, surprise, everyone knew all of that 8 fucking years ago.
They knew Trump voters will vote Trump no matter what.
They knew he will spew lies in every direction at record speed.
They knew what has happened to Hillary.
They’ve seen the Biden victory.
And NOTHING was learned at any of this.
I’m not from the US, but I do blame the DNC ever since 2016. And, while I am distraught and sad that Trump will guarantee the death of us all through global catastrophy, he did nothing new this election, from the previous two. And neither did anyone else. Guess what happens when the people get fucked by high prices and no help?
DNC is actively stopping actual leftists, there is no hope for any meaningful progress, just small kisses of good gestures.
Imagine if the leftists had a manifesto like Project 2025. Imagine strong messages like ‘taxes only for the billionaires’, ‘free press from the oligarchy’, ‘no more oil subsidies’, ‘reign in the wall street and blackrock’.
Also completely fair, I’ll shake hands with you on that.
You realize that you need people to have children if you want to keep having a doctor or firemen or farmers and so on? Child credits benefit you even if they don’t go in your pockets directly.
You’re the exact type of person that prevents social programs from being implemented, if it doesn’t benefits you directly then no one should get the benefits.
Can you go over my comment one more time, and point to me where I said I was against the credit completely? As in, I said I didn’t think it deserved to be there at all?
You said your “don’t jive” with such measures because it doesn’t concern you as a childless person, I’m telling you it’s ridiculous to “not jive” with such measures because you still need people to have kids even if you don’t have them yourself. You don’t like a measure that benefits you because you are too self centered to realize it does.
Oof. Bad take, bad take.
Here’s the thing, I can still not personally like something, complain about not ever getting anything myself as a single non married person, while still voting for the person and that policy because I know it benefits the greater good.
You don’t seem to realize that people can dislike something, and feel left out of policies like these, but still support it for the greater good.
Next time before you call someone fucking self centered, how about getting more details.
Fucking asshole. Have a terrible terrible day today.
That’s the thing though, you are getting something from it! But because others are getting money and you’re getting something that isn’t money you can’t see it and therefore dislike the project!
Who’s got a bad take here? The person disliking social safety nets or the person disliking them when it isn’t a direct advantage to them?
You’re part of a community, when people suffer you feel the consequences, when people do better you do better. Get your head out of your ass.
Fucking stupid. Lol
It’s nice to blame voters for parties failing to win elections. That absolves the party of responsibility - “we were right, it was voters who are wrong”.
But that won’t win an election. And that attitude will gift the mid terms and even 2028 to the republicans.
The DNC fucked up - it backed Biden despite clear signs he was not a good candidate for this election, the primary process who a fig leaf of democracy rather than putting forward the party’s best and brightest, it then fought concerns of Biden health and hid the truth, then when he finally stepped down late in the day it arranged a coronation for Harris. And then after behaving undemocratically repeatedly it had the gall to make the election about “saving democracy”.
Voters didn’t do these things, the DNC did.
Instead of demonising voters and non voters, it’s better to ask what should the party have done differently to win them over and what does it need to do to win them over in the mid terms.
It doesn’t absolve. If people are acting like it does, then they’re wrong and it still is true without absolving. It just points out that people voting for trump is overwhelmingly the problem.
And also, the Democrats ran their failed diet republican strategy. But if they fucked up twice as bad as they did, there’s sill no reason to vote trump, and that remains the main issue.
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together until ranked choice, no electoral college, and no citizens united. That’s the front door to the future.
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together
Except not all non-magas want to. You can scream and cry and call names all you want. They just don’t show up to the booth. So what should we do instead, because living in the imaginary land of what voters ought to do has gotten us another Trump term.
It’s nice for you to ignore that over half the voters in this country voted for someone that they knew was a sexist, racist, felon. A slice of bread with no advertising should have gotten more votes than him.
@ColeSloth, ok, but what does it say about our candidate and campaign that they lost to such a clown? Thats what we should be focusing on, not name calling and finger pointing.
and as for:
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together
88% of the dems were against gaza and the dem leaders decided they didnt care and would lock the voices of people who do care out of the convention. Thats acting like an imperial, not a coalition partner. If the dems want a coalition with the left, then act like it, otherwise you should learn to be happy with losing, because centrists dont have the votes to win much of anything, and they didnt have them before the election either.
Progressives are tired of this republican bullshit within the democratic party. If you want to be republicans, great, then go ally with maga. Otherwise tack left. You pick, we’ll be standing right here for a short while, then we need to ditch you lame centrists milquetoasts for good and go it alone.
I really don’t care, do you?
If people didn’t vote for Harris it just means they are happy with fascists.
That’s one interpretation of what it could mean but one I expect is overly simplistic.
There is a difference between being happy with fascism and not feeling motivated enough to resist it. If the tide has any chance of turning towards what would be more healthy it will have to come by creating a platform that really excites and motivates a large number of people to invest in it. It has to feel authentic to those who are feeling unmotivated today eg the millions of former Biden voters who did not turn out. It should activate people who are not reliable voters to genuinely support the cause.
I’m no leftist but I do agree that Democrats and others whose main goals are to leave unchallenged the status quo of growing wealth inequality cannot win going forward. The promise of a truly experienced greater tangible quality of life, enough food, affordable housing, access to affordable medical care, debt relief, high minimum wages and/or UBI, etc would move the needle better towards excitement and engagement than abstractions like defence of democracy. “A chicken in every pot”. We need another FDR. We need a strong middle class and that has to mean powerful unions.
Edited for paragraphs.
Dems definitely lack a coherent, interesting economic message. Any new proposal - medicare for all, UBI - immediately gets sucked into a quagmire of details. Turning to Republicans for the votes they need to win in general elections has been such a consistently losing strategy that I have no idea why they keep doing it.
Meanwhile Republicans keep running on “You feel poor and it’s Their fault,” continues to resonate, for varying definitions of “Them,” as long as GOP is out-of-power. It’s simple. It feels good. It completely absolves them of needing any policy more complicated than “Get rid of Them.” It’s a winning strategy as much as the Dems have a losing strategy.
Dude those are promises completely devoid of validity or meaning.
“Vote for me and I’ll fix everything”.
Trump says it: “great!! Let’s vote him”
Any democrat says it: “but how? Have you considered the plight of the fruitfly??? I cannot vote for you unless you explain everything in every detail”
I forgot that trump just needs “concepts of a plan”
There is totally a double standard.
Yeah at this moment I am not ready for recriminations and finger pointing. A bunch of people voted FOR that idiot criminal fascist and I’m reserving all my rage for them right now.
great, lmk when that rage does literally anything productive
they already know youre mad at them. fun fact: it makes some of them even happier to vote the way they did. but, sure, be angry! oh those damn, foolish, selfish people! …
ok, yes, welcome to the last 40 years. hi!
now what?
Hey, I’m beyond doing anything productive at the moment and I recognize this. So how about you take a break from sniping at people who are probably on the same side as you are and let them take the time they need to process this so they can get to a place where they can chart a course of action?
No man, those guys will always vote R no matter what. The problem is the Dems not showing up because the candidate is a woman.
I care because I’m not happy with fascists, and yet, due to others’ apathy, ignorance, malice, or a mix thereof I have to live in a land ruled by fascists.
Welcome to the club. In my country we have fascist in the government since '94. Lately an openly fascist head of government.
And that’s because the majority of the people living in Italy simply don’t go to to vote.
Welcome to democracy. It’s not perfect.
That’s cute.
It won’t be around much longer for further testing, regardless.
88% of the dems didnt agree with assisting in the Israeli war crimes. And yet Biden/Harris (and trump) were going to do it anyway. But you want to preach about people who didnt vote for harris embracing fascism…
Biden was pushing Netanyahu to stop the genocide. Trump said he’ll let him finish the job.
Pretty much this, by now pretty much everyone knows Trump and knows what he wants and what he stands for, and we had a referendum of sorts. If that alone isn’t enough motivation for someone to go to the polls or request a ballot it’s pretty disingenious for people to point fingers at the DNC or Harris because they weren’t jazzed up enough.
Like, if someone isn’t willing to stand in line for a couple hours in an attempt to ensure that their great-great-grandchildren have a habitable world in which to exist we’re a pretty hopeless species, right?
Anyone who didn’t bother to choose Harris deserves Trump. Enjoy!
This cannot be the message.
The first, and foremost failure, is the Republican party. They are the ones who have chosen Donald Trump to lead. And secondly, they are the ones who built up an organization to turn him into the most powerful political force in America. I salute the Republicans who are still fighting the anti-Trump fight, but the cause is 100% lost. MAGA is now going to be a multi-decade ideology and there’s no way to pull Republicanism out of that trap in any short-term.
That means we need to truly, armor up and organize a fierce resistance. One that can overpower and overtake the MAGA movement. This means seeing MAGA for what it is: a cultural behemoth that commands over 75-million votes today, reliably. They have Elon Musk (Twitter/X). They likely have Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta/Instagram). They have Washington Post (Jeff Bezos, who has recently replaces the heads with former Murdoch editors). They have LA Times. They have Gannett (and their 200+ regional / local papers). I dare say they own Reddit and likely were running social media interference at the lowest levels (with false stories of hopium. If you were on /r/politics you know what I’m talking about, focusing on shitty stories that Kamala was ahead)
Do you seriously think that all the major newspapers refusing to endorse Kamala Harris was some kind of freak accident? It was a preplanned move to specifically fuck us over. And it worked.
That is the nature of our opposition. They aren’t idiots. They are savvy. They are resourceful. They own the collective media space. And they use their power to get Donald Trump (a shitty man who is easily puppetted with praise), because they want a shadow puppet as their king.
And now that their king is elected, you can see Cryptobros pumping their cryptocoins, Stocks in various media companies flying high, etc. etc. They know they won and they’ll take the W today. But take a good look at America right now. In your depression, as you’re thinking about why Kamala won, you’re missing the real message.
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala’s control.
You’re going to get downvoted because you’re making some big swings here. I’d say you’ll end up being 50% correct when the numbers come out and everything is drilled into.
The singular fact that nobody seems to want to say is that you apparently can now just win by lying to voters, cheating the law, propagandizing everything, and bragging non-stop about doing so. He will not do anything for people in this country or the world, nor will Vance. It’s a bait and switch, plain and simple, and people are dumb enough to vote for it. This happened in Italy twice almost 100 years ago, and it took them 15 years to finally get mad enough to just revolt, and hang those people for display.
The unfortunate truth right now is there seems to not be the pushback for this in the US. People are willing to vote against themselves and their neighbors because Trump/Vance say they’re going to get you money while they are pillaging you at the same time.
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala’s control.
Trump won because more people voted for him, plain and simple.
For 9 years now I’ve listened to fellow progressives wring their hands and breathlessly say “I just don’t understand how anyone could vote for him!” The problem, the real problem is that for like 95% of us, this statement is the end of the conversation. If the democrats want to win, they need to sit down and really, really consider the “why” of the Trump voter.
Yes, there’s racism and yes there’s sexism and yes there’s xenophobia and christian nationalism that all influence the far right, but there are also plenty of people voting R that don’t give a damn about that stuff. As the dust settles, it’s becoming increasingly clear that lots of voters voted split-ticket in this cycle, so blaming it all on dogma and party loyalty isn’t going to cut it — in fact, the data is suggesting that Americans are less loyal than ever to any particular political party, so what is it specifically about Trump that resonated with so many this time around?
I don’t have any exact answers to that question (which is honestly pretty embarrassing since we’ve all had 9 years to contemplate this), but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s something to do with the fact Trump actively acknowledges that things suck right now. “Make America Great Again” is a slogan that inherently implies we’re living in an empire in decline. Regardless of which side of the isle they sit on, I think most Americans can agree with the sentiment that things are getting worse, and have been for a while.
Of course, the two sides have wildly different ideas about why things suck — with the right largely blaming the decline on immigration or abortion or LGBT proliferation or some nebulous “eroding of traditional American values”, and with the left blaming things on regulatory capture, military adventurism, and the general corporate cannibalization of all our institutions and infrastructure. But both sides lately agree we’re heading in the wrong direction, so why is Trump’s message more resonant?
Maybe it’s because Trump presents them with more tangible “boogiemen” while the Democrats play ineffective defense by pointing at rising GDP or the surging stock market or low unemployment numbers — stats that do nothing to speak to the lived experiences of individual voters. Maybe Democrats need to focus their attention less on policy proposals and “hope and change” and more on “boogiemen” like the right. Stop campaigning against Trump, stop campaigning for incremental change, stop campaigning for culture wars, and start campaigning against people like Elon Musk. Start campaigning against union-busting Howard Shultz. Campaign against Amazon. Campaign against Mark fucking Cuban who hoards $6 billion for himself and then turns around and acts like he gives a damn about the working class while simultaneously padding the pockets of Democrats so that if they ever do actually win, he can be sure his tidy fortune won’t be at risk.
Is rent too high? Is the price of groceries becoming a burden? Have wages been stagnant for two decades? Fucking acknowledge it— no, don’t just acknowledge it, tell people they’re right to feel that way and that they should be fucking angry about it. Then spend every last campaign dollar and stump speech and political add attacking the people who made it that way. Rally people against an actual enemy, the real enemy, and maybe we’ll finally start voting for you without having to hold our noses. Of course, the DNC probably has too much vested interest in keeping their corporate donors happy to ever make this the message. After all, the Harris campaign raised nearly a billion dollars this cycle. Then again, what good is a billion bucks if it loses your the house, Senate and presidency?
Anyway, that’s just the two cents of a frustrated liberal who isn’t terribly surprised by the situation we’re now facing once again. Take it with a grain of salt — I’m just as dumb as everyone else.
The first, and foremost failure, is the Republican party.
They are not a failure. They are exactly what they want to be, they are exactly who they said they are, and they won the election. Sounds like the GOP is doing alright to me, from a GOP perspective.
Fair point.
Alas I do want a 2nd option aside from Trump. I do have morals after all.
The utter lack of RealPolitik in the Democrats mindset is a sickening level of nativity to me.
I think they meant the moral failure rather than the election failure fwiw
This MUST be the message.
AIPAC corruption and extremely right wing ideology in the Democrat party lead to more Trump.
Get your head out of your ass. Feel your failure. Change your mind. Rebuild the Democrat party to a Left wing platform that CAN WIN.
DNC as an organization is shit.
I’m talking to Democrats. I’m trying to tell you what your next move should be. The movement and overall organization of the Democrat Party goes above and beyond just its leadership.
I’m talking to you, specifically. First thing we must do is understand why we lost, and that means understanding how Trump won. And the first step there is to stop taking him as a buffoon (even if he is), because there’s a lot of people helping him succeed. We need to think about the whole enemy here, not just Trump but everyone who helped him this year.
And instead of complaining to DNC leadership (who obviously tried everything they could to stop Trump), start thinking about how to defeat MAGA Republicans. Donald Trump is absolutely a shittier candidate than Kamala in every way imaginable. Its not a policy loss here.
Donald Trump is absolutely a shittier candidate than Kamala in every way imaginable.
And this approach to campaigning does. not. win. elections.
Every one of those MAGA people WANT the shit storm he will bring. It’s not even about politics for a lot of them. They want to own the libs. The problem with this two party system is that it literally splits us in two on a social level. To be blue, you have to want abortion and trans rights and be all “soft” and “liberal,” which for some reason makes people uncomfortable. And to be red, you have to want to take rights away from women and round up the immigrants.
The MAGA hate the “libs” more than the libs hate the MAGA… and that’s why they showed up in such great numbers.
And to be red, you have to want to take rights away from women and round up the immigrants.
Bwaaahahahaha. No.
To be Red doesn’t mean that. Republicans are just better at logrolling than you Democrats are.
If your allies are stinky racists, you roll up your sleeves and try to be a good Republican and make new arguments for your side that can drown out the racists. Why? Because allies are needed for power, and working with people you disagree with is more important for the cause than tearing down your allies.
Democrats need to become more RealPolitik. They need to be less ideal and more self serving if they hope to win elections in the future.
And instead of complaining to DNC leadership (who obviously tried everything they could to stop Trump)
Emphasis mine! The last 48 hours have been wild to watch as a foreigner. American Liberals have got their heads stuck in a fantasy land, so far up their own asses, they might as well be MAGA-lite.
The DNC, and entire Democrat party, do not represent D voters. They represent the AmeriCorp plutocracy, who’ve bought and paid for 90+% of both parties the entire god damn time.
Let me put it this way. The greatest achievement the Dems have made in the last 15 years is the ACA — a republican plan — and what it achieved is still the worst health care system in the entire developed world (dollar for dollar). Democrats (probably you) touted this as a major success. Do you understand how much of a failed state that makes America look to the rest of the world?
Maybe one day you’ll understand that neoliberalism created the conditions for MAGA to exploit; that MAGA is just as much a failure of the Democrats, and neoliberalism, as it is of the Republicans, and conservatism. Doesn’t look like that’s gonna be anytime soon though, so get ready to spend the rest of your life under fascism because Liberals are making it abundantly clear that they’re never gonna get it.
Maybe it’s time you stop directing your anger at the left or right, and start directing it at the corporate whores who line your own parties ranks.
Good analysis. You also should understand that Americans are HEAVILY propagandized, since most of our major media outlets are also captured by the same corporate interests that bribe our politicians. Critiques of capitalism are de facto not allowed, because that would be bad for business. (Not to mention the previous decades of cold war era “red scare” nonsense the older generations grew up with) As a result, many democrats don’t know how to receive criticism from the left, and can’t even conceive that there might be a different path besides “status quo” and “conservative hellscape”.
We aren’t getting rid of that in the next 4 years. And I’m a former Republican so I’m not exactly against corporate interests (indeed, corporate interests is where the money and support is).
I’m an anti Trump and as of now, former Republican. This was it for me, it’s clear that Republicans can never defeat MAGA so I’m switching to the Democrats side and gonna see what I can do here.
I get that Democrats are more liberal than me so I’ll accept my place as a minority view. But I’m not against corporate interests. I’m just against the disaster that’s about to happen here in America and now willing to join Democrats to stop it in 2026 and 2028.
This is perfect. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are the perfect example of why America just voted for fascist dictatorship — you still believe MAGA’s are the problem, completely ignorant of the fact that you, your beliefs, and your support for money-is-speech corporate-owned politics places you in the upper percentiles of most-to-blame voters; the older and better educated you are, the more you are to blame. If you’ve voted R your whole life and are 50+, you’re like top 5-10% responsible.
Now you’ll consider yourself a Democrat, and support your conservative-indoctrinated idea of “moderate” politics, shifting the already center-right Democrats and Overton window even farther right, while supporting the fallacy that non-profit healthcare, education etc are “radical leftist” beliefs, instead of “what the rest of our allies have had for 50-100 years”… you’ll solidify the fascist dictatorship over the next 10-20 years, and you’ll do it all, while blaming “the left” — the very people who have been warning that “this would lead to fascism and extremism” for decades.
If I were born in America, I’d probably have ended up less educated and be some tankie communist or MAGA fascist myself because of fellow cotizens just like you. I’ve never felt better to be Australian, and born under the umbrella of a far more stable, compassionate, governance; despite conservatism/neoliberalisms best efforts to the contrary.
Or maybe, being a naive fool is how the left loses elections.
The Republican right explicitly builds media to serve them and tries to use media as a tool for control. And it works.
You can fight against the laws that empower this money system. But if you naively ignore the power structure and reality of today’s media landscape, you WILL BE DOOMED TO LOSE.
If you want to fight against it that’s… Fine. I get it. But you need power first and the current level of power Democrats wield is too low.
Emphasis mine! The last 48 hours have been wild to watch as a foreigner. American Liberals have got their heads stuck in a fantasy land, so far up their own asses, they might as well be MAGA-lite.
This is literally why people say Blue MAGA. These people are so scared of trump they would rather lie to cover democrats mistakes then criticize the democrats, because they’re terrified criticizing dems leads to trump. Thats Blue MAGA, and it’s quite real.
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala’s control.
What do you personally think the reason was?
Right wing taking over all of traditional media, newspaper media, social media and the left being utterly blind to the media blitz behind the scenes.
No Democrat or leftist was ready to counter message the loss of Washington Post’s endorsement, even though it happened after LA Times loss of endorsement.
The right wing pretty much always had control of the media. That’s why I put “liberal media” in scare quotes…what liberal media have we ever really had?
Air America? It was a lefty talk radio network about 20 years ago that was an attempt to build a parallel media infrastructure that could compete with the monsters on AM radio. Obviously the money ran out so it didn’t last.
Yeah, I remember it. Still, even if it still existed? The portion of the media that is legit “liberal” is vanishingly small and their influence is just about nil.
Yes, I can of course seek out podcasts and things like Democracy Now, etc…but if CNN and MSNBC and New York Times and the Washington Post are what the right thinks are liberal, I just give a good laugh at that. This type of thinking is ingrained in our culture, it just passes as something that is just the truth.
I honestly cannot help but wonder if the thing with Hollywood/gaming industry/corporate rainbow-washing is done by the same bunch to give something for the unhinged right to point at, and get even angrier about, even if none of those things uphold any rights…
I dare say they own Reddit and likely were running social media interference at the lowest levels (with false stories of hopium. If you were on /r/politics you know what I’m talking about, focusing on shitty stories that Kamala was ahead)
Finally someone else is saying it. Feels like I’ve been taking crazy pills.
Notice how the politics subreddit is basically operated like the_donald. It’s controlled opposition. During the 45th administration they made a huge deal out of every single thing Trump did. No matter how big or small there was megathreads. What happened during Bidens administration? Fuck all of attention to anything. It was like 50/50 chance on any given week the mods would bother to create big posts for anything significant the administration accomplished. Net effect of making Biden seem more ineffectual. It’s basic a strategy of skewing what people are seeing by subtly editorializing the feed.
Throughout the Harris campaign there was scarcely any good discussion about actual policies. There was no shortage of comments saying it looks like she has not much policy. Followed by rare replies that never get any upvotes pointing out yes there’s actually an easily digestible 80 page document.
They let the subreddit flood with newsweek articles about how well Harris is polling. Seems to be one of the main diversionary tactics.
A lot of reddit users don’t seem to understand that reddit is not a democratic content driven platform. What they see can and is editorialized by the moderators. Hell people can’t even figure out the difference between admin (reddit employee) and mod (anonymous users with indeterminate biases/agendas). Some even seem to think reddit employees run subeddits. What a fucking disaster of ignorance but I digress.
All in all it appears reddit never recovered from the 2015-2016 the_donald coup. There was never an answer to that lrlourpresident account which was obviously astroturfing Democrat named subreddits.
I think much of the older userbase of anyone remotely left of center has gradually left by attrition over the years. Coincidentally between 2016 and today they’ve basically relaunched the platform bringing in whole new waves of unsuspecting users with the desktop redesign, phone app, and the IPO.
Something that hadn’t dawned on me until relatively recently with all the Musk Twitter bullshit. After reddit the company became independent from Conde Nast their chief source of funding is Thiel and Andreessen. Both we now know are hardcore MAGA supporting billionaires.
Steve Huffman calling those white supremacists on their platform “valuable discussion” is his “very fine people” moment.
ETA: The DOJ released documents from Russia stating they are to target “community of American gamers, users of reddit and image boards such as 4chan (the backbone of right-wing trends in the US segment of the internet)”. Emphasis mine. Comments linking to these documents were being inexplicable removed from the politics subreddit. This whole story got swept off the reddit news cycle real quick.
Keep telling yourself institutions are going to save democracy.
The ultimate responsibility of keeping a functioning democracy lies with the people. Complaining about failing institutions or parties is no more productive than armchair political activity.
Confront people about their choices and how they let this happen. Hold people accountable for all the election promises and obvious outcomes the new administration implements.
But America really has remarkably weak and poorly designed institutions that only work as long people don’t abuse it… Which is to neglect human nature and not prepare for it. America’s flaunted “checks and balances” never worked
“Andrew Jackson entered the chat…”
they are also fascists with billionaire friends. they just aint loud and brazen about it.
always being content with the lesser evil just brings us back to evil anyway.
