“Voters voted for the choice furthest to the right because they wanted the choice on the left to be more left”
He wanted an actual progressive and refused to vote for a Democrat since the Democrats aren’t embracing progressivism, despite the fact that not voting for a Democrat means there’s a greater likelihood that we end up even further from progressivism.
In short: the exact logic in your comment.
Less people voted Trump in 2024 than in 2020. It is not that Trump won, it is that Biden/Harris lost hard.
Trump: 74 Mio. in 2020, 73 Mio. in 2024
Biden/Harris: 81 Mio. in 2020, 69 Mio. in 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
Less people voted overall in 2024. That’s less for Trump and Harris. Because 2020 was the highest voter turnout ever. It was record breaking because of the pandemic. Without another motivator as big as the pandemic you’re going to see less voters for both Trump and Harris. You’re also going to see many different reasons claiming why. But it’s a fact that if you don’t have record breaking overall voter turnout in 2024 also, both sides will lose voters.
Yes. People want a populous movement. In the absence of left-wing populism (like socialist reforms), they will take right win populism (fascism).
Democrats campaigned on making billionaires pay their fair share and addressing health care and student loans etc so socialist reforms. But the majority of voters were still convinced that that would make them worse off unfortunately.
Biden campaigned on similar promises and ideals like resolving student debt and improving the economy. Even personally relevant promises like creating a public health jobs corps (relevant to my degree and field of study). The only thing he sufficiently accomplished were the initial vaccination efforts, but it’s as if we stopped having an actual president into and after 2022: The filthy rich managed to get exponentially richer with this war-supply economy and stock market presidency. My student debt is still a burden in the back of my mind and all of my available graduate-entry jobs are either severely underpaid or shilled out to robots that also vet my applications. Until the war profiteer and stock market billionaires actually pay their fair share (which they should have been a few years ago) or provide citizens with jobs that can sustain a healthy living, any good socialist promises that are made are flat-out lies because senility and flacid mental acuity won’t even be a valid excuse anymore.
Key word being, “addressing.” Medicare for All? Nope. They’re going to address healthcare costs. Student loans insanely expensive for the majority of Americans? They already tried addressing it. What are they going to do? Eliminate the filibuster to pass legislation? Stack the Supreme Court?
They’ve been a little better on taxing the wealthy, but raising taxes doesn’t mean much if you believe the revenue is going towards the military industrial complex or, “woke,” agenda, based on your political leanings.
Liberal half measures aren’t going to work anymore. They need a full-blown progressive agenda and the balls to ram it through whatever institution is in their way.
Did they? If they did, then they did a terrible job of it, since many people didn’t hear that message. The message that everyone heard over and over again is “I’m not trump”. Besides, promising to get rid of student loans as a campaign promise when you just spent 4 years proving that you can’t really deliver on that promise seems unwise.
That might have been in the footnotes of the DNC platform, but Kamala said none of that.
Here’s a quote from Stephen Semler’s newsletter:
For example, in this video clip, Stephen Colbert asks Harris, “Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be and what would stay the same?” Harris replies: “Sure. Well, I mean, I’m obviously not Joe Biden. So that would be one change. But also I think it’s important to say with 28 days to go, I’m not Donald Trump.”
First, that doesn’t answer the question. Second, that description applies to literally everyone except for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This is the quality of candidate you get when the Democratic Party chooses one for you.
More like out of 2 right wing options people went for the more right wing option.
Democrats have been moving further left ever since progressives joined them. This “democrats aren’t left enough” talking point is in line with the Russian strategy to polarize American politics more so that we dont get anything done.
People didn’t vote. Significantly less turnout this year than 2020. Further left is more exciting than an idiot chasing endorsement from Republicans.
It’s stupid, but if people weren’t stupid Trump wouldn’t have been a candidate.
2020 had the highest voter turnout in the history of our country because of the pandemic. Without a major motivator like the pandemic, we are not going to hit those numbers again.
So naturally there will be less voter turnout this year.
Then compare it to 2016 - it was practically the same campaign strategy, only this time it lost the popular vote on top of the electoral collage.
Trying to flip people at the margin is not a winning strategy. Obama won in '08 by campaigning to the left and promising meaningful change – it got people who normally don’t vote to engage. Why is that strategy so anathema now?
It happened because fascist enablers didnt vote
The fascists in this equation are the DNC and RNC. The enablers of fascism would be the DNC and by proxy anyone that voted for them.
The DNC were the party that was against fascism this election. The fascists were Trumpists. The enablers the non voters. They picked fascism over democracy
If only the DNC had given them something to vote for, instead of appealing to fear and guilt
No. Its the peoples fault for not voting. When the option is fascism or not they shouldnt need anything else. Aside from that Harris had policies which were known and easy to find. There is 0 excuse not to vote when democracy is on the line. Now you never have the chance to vote in a free election again
Threatening and guilting people didn’t work, in fact it failed miserably, and your answer is to double down on it? Congratulations, you’re now the DNC chair.
We are not Democrat, why would we vote for democrats? I can’t speak for everyone else here but I’m a communist, I would never vote for either right wing capitalist owned politician
Fear was all that was needed this cycle. Just wait, we will see soon.
To be clear: Harris sucks. Trump is a monster. Avoiding trump was all we needed to care about.
Fear was all that was needed this cycle.
If that was true it would have worked. It didn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Primaries happened. Biden won it, Harris likely wouldn’t have, but by the time Joe dipped it was too late to do the process again.
Oh, you mean the primary where no one else had universal ballot access? Where there was only one actually viable challenger, Dean Phillips, who the Democrats drove out of politics afterwards? That primary?
Like, FFS, even the pundit class doesn’t pretend that was a serious primary. Stop pretending a ceremonial vote means something.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field? He was the incumbent. It’s practically a given they’ll get the nod with token effort. The last time the incumbent actually almost kinda sorta had a challenge was 1992, it was Bush Sr., and he still shat all over them like 75%/25%. Even Carter in 1980 got the nod and he was polling at like a 28% approval rating at times. Stop pretending that a full primary wouldn’t have just been throwing money into a dumpster.
Now if you want to say Joe should have held to what he was considering in 2019 and not running a second term then we’d be in absolute agreement. His hubris fucked all of us.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field?
In a real primary? Fucking yes, are you fucking kidding me? The man couldn’t get through a single debate against Trump without looking like a dementia patient. You think he was going to make it through the same process that got him elected in 2020? A process he only got through because the party coordinated around him to block Sanders? You’re out of your fucking mind if you think he be the nominee if he had to get on stage with a single primary opponent.
Snap elections get held in every civilized country
They could have called one right there
Stop it Patrick, you’re scaring the liberals. Imagine how shocking it must be for reality to prove that the leftists were correct about everything this entire time. Again.
Really weird how leftists have a 100% accuracy rate about all of history going back 150 years, but I’m sure the liberals will take some Ws eventually.
Just keep barreling towards fascism, libs! I believe in you!
Either you are able to vote on harm reduction alone, knowing that your pick isn’t ideal…
Or you are so ideologically locked in that nothing but “your brand” is enough.
Harris sucks but the vote was to keep MORE, NEW people from being at risk.
Harm reduction does not exist, that’s shit that liberals tell themselves because they know that what they are voting for is evil.
Naw dawg you bought a trump by sitting on a pedestal.
It’s all fun and games to build the perfect candidate, but it wasn’t on the ballot.
Ignoring “harm reduction” just put thousands of trans and millions of immigrants right in front of the bulldozer. Own it from your ivory perch.
I guess you didn’t hear anything about Harris throwing trans under the bus last week, did you? I guess you didn’t hear anything about Harris having draconian immigration bills as harsh as what came from Republicans. Did you? I suppose you forgot it was Bidens ICE that was chasing down Haitians on horseback.
Republicans always seem to win with shitty candidates because they understand this intrinsically. They do not care that DJT is an utter buffoon, they care that he will enact the shit they want, and now they’re getting it because they refused to stay home. As the saying goes: Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.
So Republicans backed their guy, just like they did the last two elections, and there was no line that could not be crossed that would convince even a fraction of Republicans to not vote. Meanwhile, virtue signaling lefties desperately tried to convince me for months that I shouldn’t vote for Biden OR Harris because they were both equally culpable for a genocide that is happening halfway across the world, as if Trump would have been any better.
Yeah, we absolutely deserve to be punished for this. We let this happen. If Dems could actually get a solid trifecta in the government, we might have a shot at actually reversing some of the damage that has been accumulating since Reagan, but that requires people to set aside their purity tests and hold their noses at the ballot box. The real elitists are the Democratic base who feel personally slighted at the idea of compromise or harm reduction.
There were 14 Presidents since FDR. And many of the Democratic ones had ample possibility to enact progressive laws and chose not to.
You keep claiming that people like Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden or Harris are “left”, but they are center-right, in many aspects far right by European standards.
People don’t vote “perfect” also not on the left. They vote “this is current issues, who addresses these issues?” Trump pretending to care about working class people helped him. Biden/Harris made a point of alienating everyone that is against genocide, which should be a nobrainer for progressive politics, and also peddling racist messages with bragging about their deportation numbers.
The idea that the center to far right Democrats would actually bring any leftist solution is laughable. They haven proven time and time again, that they are the party of maintaining the neoliberal and imperial status quo.
The solution is to offer a progressive solution against the reactionary solution, so people can rally around your progressive solution. Providing no solution and denying the problems is a surefire way to demotivate and disengage people. Someone who wants genocide, deportations and neoliberal economics can always vote the Republicans. And the Republicans can succesfully further the image of the Democrats being the billionaire cultural elite party, while the Reps are the billionaire “hard working” party, peddling the lie of the American dream. But it can be peddled to Joe and Jose in the milling plant.
Respectfully, I have to disagree.
How many democratic presidents have had control of all three branches of government? It’s easy for Republicans to get shit done because they have the courts essentially in their pocket. If the Dems win the house, senate and presidency, they still have to contend with the openly partisan SCOTUS attempting to obstruct them from passing sweeping reforms that would actually fix things. We’re fucked for another generation in that regard.
Also, immigration was the #1 issue at the polls this year, even ahead of economy. There’s no way in hell it’s a bad strategy to campaign on how good Dems actually are with immigration and border security. If anything, we should have been screaming from every mountaintop about how Trump killed the most comprehensive border security package ever penned by convincing Republican congressmen to oppose it strictly so he could run on the issue. That means the issue is not actually something that Republicans care to solve, despite what they’ve convinced the American people of.
People who were not motivated or engaged to fight against what could very well be the end of democracy itself certainly won’t be motivated by progressive promises, especially knowing that they are very unlikely to be implemented. The people who stayed home this year are the ones to blame for everything that happens next, full stop. We can’t even point to the EC as a factor this time. A majority of Americans have bought into fascism.
California has a bulletproof Democrat supermajority, They don’t have any of the things that the DNC campaigned on. Why would I believe the DNC could get anything accomplished with a trifecta if a bulletproof Democrat super majority in California can’t. Democrats are indebted to the same donor class, CEOs and bankers that Republicans are. They are merely controlled opposition to Republicans.
This is the second time in a decade that the liberal establishment expected the US voting public to actually do something about all the fascism they themselves don’t seem to actually want or can do anything about.
The “Vote Harder!” brigade was warned about this - at one point or the other, “lesser evilism” is going to hit rock-bottom.
Trump won both times because he departed from GOP ideology, not his voters. Harm reduction doesn’t get voters to the polls.
This isn’t about you and me. A campaign centered around “stop this person” is just less effective than one centered around “let’s start doing this”.
Just saying this is a hypothetical reality. As you say, it doesn’t get people to the polls.
What it means is folks have to live with a FURTHER candidate because they aren’t smart enough to serve their own interests and take the NEARER candidate.
The difference is that expecting the candidate to change was a realistic expectation, while expecting the voters to change was not.