I think you overestimate the amount of left leaning people in the U.S.
Who said Lefts didn’t vote for Harris?
Are you manufacturing this? Where are the exit polls?
Might a better reason for why Fascism won with this election be that Democrats, including Biden, Harris, the DNC, and the consulting class, failed to campaign to their own base, and even more than their base since most Americans, Dems and Reps, approve of progressive policies?
Projection man
Biden got ~81m votes in 2020, Harris only got ~67m. >14m fewer people voted for her.
Trump also dropped by ~2m, only getting ~72m this time around vs. ~74m in 2020.
Trump didn’t win because of a giant right-wing national shift, he won because of voter apathy on the left.
And you assume it’s the left because? Not everyone who voted for Biden in 2020 was a leftist, and most weren’t.
As in to the left of the (imaginary) political centre; not self-identifying Leftists. This cohort includes centrists, moderates, liberals and leftists amongst others.
There was certainly a right wing shift. The DNC did their very best (e.g. Cheney) to capture republican voters rather than represent the workers.
You need to seperate out the political machine from the populace.
The DNC did make a right-ward play to try and peel centrist/moderate voters who identify as Republicans but didn’t necessarily want to vote for Trump. They did this on the (now we know false) assumption that their base would turn out automagically.
But again, Trump won with fewer votes this time around than he lost in 2020 to Biden with. He didn’t gain standing, the only reason he was victorious was because those left of centre failed to show up to the polls. Voter apathy doesn’t denote a right-wing shift; it denotes a shit political platform.
Voters are still voting rather progressively on state-wide ballot measures, the people haven’t gotten more conservative - despite what the (elite-owned) media narrative would have you believe. Every datapoint and infographic regarding voter demographics is based on %s of voters, rather than absolute demographics.
I have to admit that I haven’t delved into the exit polls and analyzed which social groups migrated right or not.
But one thing that’s different about the 2024 election compared to 2020 is that COVID wasn’t happening to the same degree. There were a ton more mail-in ballots 2020 due to social distancing, which helped both parties as a bump in votes.
Why use 2020 as a data point though? Why not 2016? Why not 2012 and 2008? Might those elections be slightly different because a 1-in-100-year pandemic wasn’t happening?
If you compare those numbers, does the Dems’ numbers compare to those elections?
I want to say someone on Lemmy already posted the numbers recently in one of these posts. From what I recall, Dems’ votes returned close to pre-COVID levels albeit a degree lower, yet Reps’ votes were above pre-COVID levels. Why?
Might the explanation be the societal shift towards the right?
And how can you not see the national shift to the right in how the Democrats speak to rallies and voters? We are considerably more right-wing as a country than ever in the recent decades. This election was a Republican primary with how Kamala ran on pre-Trump conservative values and policies.
Maybe apathy exists on the Left because it is increasingly the case that Democrats don’t represent them anymore.
I used 2020 as a comparison for a few reasons;
- It was the most recent result prior to the 2024 election, so it will have the most comparable demographics.
- voting infrastructure from the COVID-era is still largely in place, allowing for more early and postal voting than pre-COVID. So earlier years are less comparable.
- presidential elections are just as much about voting against the worse candidate, if not more-so, than voting for a preferred one.
- both 2020 and 2024 could be seen as referendums on Trump’s policies, presidency and suitability for a second term.
Rather than looking at percentages, the individual counts are more important as they tell the underlying story.
The DNC’s GOTV campaign absolutely failed to motivate their base and undecided voters. Perhaps that was somewhat intentional, as a lot of the former GOP aligned ‘never-Trump’ campaign financiers have shifted to the Dems and have used their new-found influence to nudge the party’s platform rightward. The Cheney endorsements certainly didn’t do them any favours!
But looking at how even deep-red states have voted in support of abortion rights, shows that the general US populace is generally slowly drifting leftward - despite what the corporate-owned media narrative would have you believe.
Leftist here. I voted for Kamala. All the leftist media I consumed argued for voting for Kamala. All the leftists I knew vote for Kamala.
What are you talking about?
Leftists are so insignificant that we don’t need to make any concessions to them but so powerful that they are responsible for any Democratic loss.
Leftists are just about the only group that will go around saying they “won’t vote” if there isn’t a candidate making enough concessions to them. Leftists are a small group but they are enough they could sway an election if they came out and made their voices heard by voting instead of just holding signs and yelling. But getting that to happen isn’t as simple as just saying you’re against the genocide, because Harris did that and it wasn’t enough. It isn’t as simple as supporting unions, because she did that and it wasn’t enough. It isn’t as simple as supporting rights for women, minorities, and LGBTQ, because she did that and it wasn’t enough.
The right isn’t stupid enough to believe that they can get their oligarchy without winning elections, but belief in incremental change is fundamentally incompatible with a lot of leftist ideology.
Democrats spend far too much time and energy pretending everyone to the left of the Democrats are anti-electoralist anarchists.
getting that to happen isn’t as simple as just saying you’re against the genocide, because Harris did that and it wasn’t enough. It isn’t as simple as supporting unions, because she did that and it wasn’t enough. It isn’t as simple as supporting rights for women, minorities, and LGBTQ, because she did that and it wasn’t enough.
Yes. You’re absolutely correct that what the Democrats are doing is not enough. If the DNC can get that through their thick skulls, maybe we have a chance next time.
You can’t just say you support unions.
You can’t just say you’re against genocide.
You have to make people’s lives materially better, and until the Dems choose to do that, we’re in trouble.
There were a few people on the left (with followings on social media) advocating for third party votes because Kamala wouldn’t say that she was going to stop sending money to Israel.
Post election, it looks like third party votes didn’t spoil anything.
Oh yeah, I was arguing with them all the time. I figured they were bots. Seems like they have all dried up right after the election.
Nope, we’re still here. sorry your candidate lost! maybe she shouldn’t have tossed the 25 electoral points into the trash bin for 2 months right out of the gate. 🤷 If you want votes from the people who are not monsters you need to run candidates who are not monsters. I have yet to see people give a single reason why harris couldn’t have shifted on gaza that isn’t ‘lesser evil’, ‘trump bad’. never mind all the other issues with her campaign. hilariously she and biden and the rest of the dems don’t seem too upset they lost. guess they didnt mind getting trump and losing the senate.
Oh it’s you. The one who claimed it was a false dichotomy but I somehow predicted the future.
Let’s both watch what becomes of Gaza over the next four years on top of all the other bullshit Trump will pull.
Thanks for nothing!
I’m over pointing fingers and playing holy than thou.
The people who plan to build a Hungarian-style autocratic government are in power now, and they’re hoping the left is exhausted and tired of fighting this shit for a decade.
This shit is going to be dangerous, and we’re going to have to motivate people to push back hard than even. Pointing fingers just divides us and makes us even weaker.
That’s a bummer because progressives couldn’t be bothered to stop an erasure of minorities and lgbt alongside a subjugation of women.
Quite simply, either you align with them or you can get fucked.
At least that’s how it’s currently playing out.
Shortsighted progressives decided that people they dont know halfway around the world were more important than their friends and family.
Hope you can tell your wife/ girlfriend /sister you had the moral high ground when she’s declared property.
“But mom! I got a gun for self defense, how was i supposed to know that you’d be declared property even though they were screaming it at the top of their lungs?”
The DNC would rather lose with a neoliberal than win with a progressive. If they want to get there shit together they have to win with the working class and ordinary people.
They can’t be elitist centrists. They’ll lose every election if they do. The future is now old man
If they go further left they lose every moderate or right leaning Democratic voter don’t they? Why would you want your voter base to get smaller
To attract people who took one look at this steaming pile of economic dystopia, the parties that both support it, and walked away.
I’m not even talking about the loud ones that claimed to walk away but voted Harris out of conscience and harm reduction.
For someone that wants to live in society and not a bunch of rugged individuals at each other’s throats for oligarch scraps, it is very difficult to look at this cesspool and have hope or engage without feeling filthy and even more hopeless.
That could change if today’s neoliberals were supplanted by anti-corporatists messaging that it isn’t government’s job to get out of the market’s way, but to regulate and straightjacket the market economy into serving society as the lowly tool of society that an economy ought to be.
The people demanding there be winners and losers in an embarrassingly wealthy society ought to go live in the forest with nothing but a knife to see if they win or lose. A society supports one another.
So is it that leftists are too small a group to be worth making political concessions to, or are they a large enough group to have an effect on elections?
Why do Democrats feel entitled to the support of the left when they don’t offer anything to the left?
That’s the problem they’re both. They’re that kick you always need to keep the right wing nuts at bay. But this election the American far left became nuts too and lost their common sense. Anyways enjoy your king
