Plain and simple… She was a woman, and a black person - There will be months of tap dancing and “deep” analysis, but we’re just an ugly, atrophied, broken, racist and patriarchal nation, like deep down in our DNA. We were able to elect Obama, yes - he is half white, and a man (those weren’t the loud messages as they attacked him, but Pennsylvania gramma knew those things quietly when she pulled the lever for him). It’s not satisfying, but it’s just the plain truth here. We’re closer to getting over race than we are over sex.
Plenty of deliberate work has been done, mostly by republicans, to keep America stupid, poor and in untreated pain, yes… But we’re also just trash on the whole. We raise trash and we vote for trash. We just aren’t smarter than social algorithms, TV soap opera narratives, costumes and makeup. “The pretend business man is white, old, wears a tie and has a gold watch. He feels like how daddy felt when I was little, and when things are bad, daddy fixed them the way I remember it.”
Video game trolls, people who failed the cop application physical and triple DUI wine moms are America. No further explanation or analysis needed.
Totally agree. After all the progress the US is still not ready to accept anyone else than white men at the top.
You people are about to overdose on copium. This is a lazy view. “she lost because of race and sex”. You need to really ask people why she couldn’t secure their vote.
I used to respond to people like you carefully and in some depth, with the hope that others who needed the words could read mine and feel indirectly supported.
I’m not doing that today. My original statement stands, your statement is the way you are personally trying to accept the guilt, shame or disappointment in this reality, I’ll leave it at that.
The “Run Up” podcast had an episode following the Working Families Party while they were out knocking on doors for Harris in a poor projects type neighborhood. The first lady they talk to is hesitant to vote for Harris because she’s a prosecutor who jailed black men for weed. While they are talking and the canvasser is trying to convince her, her neighbor jumps in and he says something to the effect of “Harris is a woman and world leaders won’t respect her and get us in a lot of trouble”.
Is sexism/racism the reason Harris lost? No, I personally at this point think it has more to do with the Democratic party’s inability to offer solutions for working families - Dems are the center right party representing corporate interests and the elite while paying lip service to actual regular people, MAGA is viewed as the party of the common man, as bullshit as that is it’s what voters feel. I personally think the only way forward is an actual progressive platform which addresses fundamental economic unfairness in the system, and candidates who can connect to and explain that platform to regular folk of all races and demographics.
But you can’t deny that sexism/racism didn’t play a significant role in the loss.
Setting aside whether she would’ve won had she been a white man, she could’ve made up for that handicap by appealing to the right people if she had actually been trying to win. Pinning it completely on her race and sex simply ignores her absolute failure of a campaign.
I voted for Harris walz, but I think a lot of this is the fault of Biden for trying to run for reelection and sticking it out until July. I live in the south and I think the lack of a primary reallly hurt the ticket because a sizable portion of the people I’ve talked to felt like she was appointed instead of being elected, which is a bad move when public trust in our institutions is already at an all time low.
The people you talked to are bigoted cowards that wouldn’t have been swayed by any of that shit - She has a vagina and she’s black - That’s all it was ever going to be.
You’re hearing the thing they hope their neighbor would think of them after the fact, " I was this close, Bill… I just wanted more policy detail… More time… If only they didn’t make me vote for trump".
Your neighbor fucking sucks, Bill - this is the time you pause, take a breath, and fully internalize that to inform your future interactions.
Shit dude, I’m far left, believed that the only way to protect democracy was to vote for Harris, and then did it, but even I felt like she was appointed. Nobody wanted her as a first choice but we were forced to accept her when she succeeded Biden. She got 14 million less votes than Biden did in 2020. That isn’t only because she’s a black woman. It certainly plays a part, but we can’t act like it wasn’t just general voter malaise that led to this outcome.
This is all excuses. The fact that Trump made it all the way as the primary candidate for the GOP means that Republicans were okay with what he said and what he did.
For a normal person, it shouldn’t even take a second to choose Harris. But this isn’t the case. Trump won the popular vote and the presidency despite all the crazy shit because a sizeable part of the citizens voted him in regardless of the reason.
And not only that, but Republicans won the senate and well on their way to win the house.
It is about to get real bad, and Americans have themselves to blame for that.
Institutional democrats who thought they knew what they were doing and could ignore the base of the party is to blame. Biden being top of the list. Stubborn self assured who when finally pushed to change was only willing to do it on his terms. And made a decision for everyone, again.
One of the big stories is a Democratic party Mayor of a super Blue city being corrupt and organizing police to defend him and yet not a single member of the party has spoken out against it. Endorsed by Hakeem Jeffries.
Status quo is far more important than listening to their base right now and hopefully it changes instead of them once again thinking they need to head further right.
And for the love all things holy I hope the Democrats learn to stop “gaming” the election with specific counties in “blue walls” because they did advanced math that told them it was all they needed. Bare minimum should never have been the goal.
While this is a large part of it, a significant thing I think is that you get a lot more enthusiasm voting for something than against something. If she was campaigning for things I didn’t hear it above the constant “orange shit is an orange shit”.
A number of terrorist bomb threats to predominantly democratic polling locations in swing states and other fuckery may have also played a role.
Maybe care about things. Voting against him should’ve been enough to elect a ham sandwhich
I don’t think it’s just the fact that she’s a black/Asian woman.
I saw this on BBC News which is probably correct:
“Imagined” is perhaps the right word considering he wanted to raise taxes for low income people, and lower taxes for rich people.
Oh yeah. But it’s people’s perceptions that everyone is hunting for anyways. It’s fake love for the working class in the way the rich love their butler but will replace him if he ever gets sick.
But that perception and the story of the party is super important and how to win elections. The Democrats haven’t been chasing that identity and let it slip while trying to figure out who should be the candidate that cost the least amount of money for its donors.
It’s not impossible to see how the perceptions got to where they are.
I remember hearing many democrats that joked how they voted for the white side of Obama. It wasn’t funny and isn’t funny now. They are not only voting against a woman but one of color.
We are going let christian fascism take control of America because a large portion of our population is sexiest, and racist. Not to mention all those protest votes or fucker who sat on their couch rather than do the right thing.
Now we are all fucked.
Dems had the house for 12 years the past 16. Nothing really changed.
People have claimed Harris wasn’t capable of leading. They got their undeserved confirmation when she turned out to be a no show for 14 hours yesterday.
You construct a Strawman. If the Dems pulled a capable and charismatic woman out of the top hat she would be able to win.
People handed the election on a silver platter to a guy who refused to concede in 2020, and shills are on here saying that Harris is incapable of leading because she took a while to concede?
And I bet those same people complain that Gore conceeded too soon in 2000.
What’s this about the Dems having control of the house? Another person that needs a civics lesson? It’s like the cultists saying that “Kamala had 4 years to fix these problems” because they don’t know how our government works.
The Dems have had control of the government for exactly 2 years since 1980. I don’t understand how anyone can blame the Dems for the state our country is in.
The silver lining in all this is that now that Republicans have complete control, it will be impossible for shills and cultists to blame the Dems.
“People have been saying…” - oh fuck you, dude.
First sentence is just beyond stupid. Ignores so many nuanced changes, recovery of the economy from COVID not the least of it and just oblivious to the overall balance of power along the way with an unreasonable, obstructionist gop opposing progress at every turn, even to spite themselves on things like the border bill and the infrastructure bill more recently.
“Enough” is never done, but that’s a problem with overall politics, mixed with subjective perception. But your ignorant oversimplification here just has no place in a conversation among adults. Maybe go play with the dirt outside or go point at the pictures in that puffy book you love about firetrucks while you shit yourself?
Your statement is just hollow. It’s defiantly ignorant, smug, selfish, cowardly and just overall, you seem to (without further qualification) fucking suck. To have failed you this poorly, can also confidently assume that your family is just generations of disappointment in front of and behind you. You’re useless lumps, impotently screaming at the sun… At least that’s what “People have been saying…”
Plain and simple… She was a woman, and a black person
She was doing better than the old white guy she replaced though
She was doing better than the old white guy she replaced though
Was she really though? She couldnt identify a single thing she’d do differently than Biden, who has a truly remarkable and historic level of low approval.
She had excitement and energy, then said she’d do nothing different than Biden. Lost a lot of energy. Got Time Waltz, more energy, and then the party told him “stop calling Vance weird” and we lost more energy.
She had a better shot at talking trump, she just loved to shoot herself in the foot.
What does “doing better” mean to you in this day and age in that context? Polls are no longer a viable tool. They are captured, manipulated and heavily biased. They ask misleading questions and ask them of non-representative populations.
Very big difference between “doing better” in “the race” and casting your vote on election day. Again, gramma in Pennsylvania didn’t think Kamala was doing better, or really she didn’t care what she was doing, because there was just one “key issue” that gramma would never get onboard with for Kamala… Gramma didn’t talk about that issue during “the race”, but she was thinking about it when she pulled the lever.
Thanks, I still need to play it. Maybe a good distraction for a bit to regroup and prepare for a rough road ahead.
Obama was a unique situation in that he was both an incredibly charismatic JFK-style figure and ran after the Republicans had managed to both start a very unpopular war and destroy the world economy.
Barack Obama also never released a campaign ad that said “Hey white dudes, we only think some of you suck.”
Don’t like those ads? Should’ve stopped proving them right. We will go to the grave blaming you and your ilk now
this is why she lost, morons complaining about themselves. who fucking cares, that ad was not targetted at you, and if it was, grow some thicker fucking skin rather than voting for a fascist. I don’t give a shit if the dems personally put me on a pedastal and said I was alone to blame for the US problems; I have a functional brain and can see what the actual problems are and who has actual solutions, or at least not exclusively ways to enrich himself and get revenge.
middle aged white dudes are the problem, I’m one of them. this morning, I was nearly assulted and arrested due to a roadrage incident. a dude in a pickup nearly sideswiped me at an intersection, I had to swerve to avoid him. At the light, he rolled down the window and started yelling at me. I rolled down mine because I honestly thought he was going to apologise but instead he started screaming insults at me because “you couldn’t let me have that one car length!!!”. I told him that after the shit this country just endured, this was how we wanted to handle things?
This was apparently the wrong answer because he jumped out of his car and started coming at me. I am not interested in a road rage altercation so I floored it and ran the red light. I would up cutting off a cop who saw the whole thing and let me go because I did the right thing.
this was my first interaction with a person since the election. I sincerly hope this was just tensions running high, but I can’t help but feel this nation just gave that sort of problem solving it’s full throated support.
I get more the sense that people don’t care about her so much - or him either for that matter - so much as how things in general just “feel wrong”. I’m no expert but the news media having been bought out seems a likely culprit. Jon Stewart tried to warn us but we would not listen. He did his part, but if people don’t value things, they tend to fall - or in this case be taken - apart.
