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.
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 is voters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.
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.
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.
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.
I’m pretty sure Biden being in the race, and him stepping aside, were all determined by the DNC, not Biden himself.
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.
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.
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.
Funnily enough the very same argument also can be used for Harris and genocide, immgirant oppression, warmongering and everything else here.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
They didn’t vote because Harris ran as a republican. Run as a progressive if you want those votes.
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.
Harris did not lose because she didn’t pull left enough. Lefties had nowhere else to go. She lost because Trump lied better
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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
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.
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.