From the Article:
For weeks following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance, his campaign publicly maintained the illusion that he was still well-positioned to defeat Donald Trump. Privately, they knew otherwise. As Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau revealed days after the election:
After the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine, and Biden was still the strongest candidate. They were privately telling reporters, at the time, that Kamala Harris couldn’t win. […] Then we find out, when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign’s own internal polling, at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate, showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes.
The implications of this are staggering, and it should be treated as a massive scandal.
Well, they couldn’t tell the truth and risk a more liberal candidate.
I honestly have a hard time believing it was ideology and not the good, old fashioned inability of boomers to let go of power.
Edit: Not talking about the Democratic establishment. Speaking specifically about Biden refusing to step down until it was too late.
Biden is silent gen, the generation before boomers.
But yeah all the old politicians clinging to the levers of power because they’re selfish is a part of what has led us to this point.
It’s hard to truly know what went on behind the scenes, but there was a large amount of common disdain for Biden staying in the race after “we beat Medicare” - anyone who hadn’t already been clued into his cognitive decline was suddenly confronted with that reality, and people knew he was a clear loser at that point.
For Biden the floor only fell out beneath him after Nancy Pelosi and the donor class publicly announced they wanted Joe out NOW that the DNC/Biden camp realized the gig was up.
anyone who hadn’t already been clued into his cognitive decline was suddenly confronted with that reality
I remember when I said Biden was making more speeches like Trump, I was downvoted on Reddit for wanting someone younger than retirement age for president, even if I was going to vote for Biden.
You’d have a hard time believing a lot then, because that’s what actual voters were saying. If Harris had been more left-leaning in appearance, they wouldn’t have even captured the shift they did grab.
Clearly she didn’t support genocide hard enough or get the endorsement of enough Cheneys.
For your liking.
Yet, under his leadership, Minnesota passed some of the most ambitious progressive legislation in the country, including a child tax credit, universal free school meals, and free tuition at public colleges for families earning under $80,000 per year. Walz also delivered major labor victories, including paid family and medical leave and worker protections like banning non-compete clauses and anti-union captive audience meetings.
Nooooo Democrats ignore working peoplllllle! They’re terrible for the underserved!! Everyone knows that that’s why they looooossst!!
Walz then disappeared for a month. The campaign sent him into the background while Harris made appearances with Liz Cheney.
They threw progressives a bone, and then forgot about it.
How many of these were put onto Harris’ platform, and then how many had a chance of getting passed in Congress?
The only progressive one is the free college one. The rest are so bare minimum that India and Brazil have them (feeding schoolkids and paid parental leave.) Minnesota isn’t the USA writ large either.
No, they’re clearly capable of it when they want. That’s the frustrating part. This republican lite theme is an active choice national democrats keep making.
So why did they actually ignore working people? Because while you’re right that Harris’ platform was very progressive, and Walz would have been the most left-wing VP in recent history, the Harris/Walz campaign didn’t care about any of that. They campaigned on being tough on immigration, protecting Israel, being pro-billionaire, and reaching across the isle to Republicans. When asked about the economy, they deflected or talked down. When asked about change, they promised there would be none. You can’t be surprised that working class folks would feel left out in the cold when they were explicitly ignored.
The state that was run by the VP candidate.
Except, where did that guy go for much of Sept and Oct?
they’ll try to run the exact same plan in 2028 if we let them. Its all they know how to do.
I think the big media companies probably knew this too but needed to create a false horse race for ratings and clicks
I mean, either every single pollster in every major news organization was just terribly off on their prediction or there was a push from the ownership to make this election ‘more interesting’. (This is my own conspiracy theory and I have no sources to back this bullshit up with)
Not sure what you mean about pollsters. They said it would be a tight race, and it was. Trump did not have a landslide by any means.
Agreed. Trump won by 140k in PA, 80k in MI, 30k in WI. That’s less than 0.16% of the total vote. (source)
Yeah, but does that jive with all the facebook maps showing that the parts of the country where no one lives are ‘red’? lol. Using actual facts and logic with MAGAt’s is like trying to have a philosophical conversation with a goldfish.
Yeah people really seem to have a hard time understanding this. Like they think 51% is some huge plurality.
That’s the thinking with the elctoral college. Since most states are winner-take-all, a narrow victory can make an electoral landslide.
In 1984, Reagan won 58% of the popular vote - which is impressive, but nowhere near unanimous.
But due to how the system works, he won 98 percent of the electoral vote. Mundane only won in Minnesota and DC.
It was super close in Minnesota (only about 4000 votes).
DC was a crazy landslide, though. They HATED Reagan, who only took 13% of the vote in DC.
I’ve kept voting for the left most party with a chance, for my own conscience and for harm reduction, not for hope, for 20 years.
There’s been no hope because our left most party has met their opposition so far up their ass, they only look left to a full blown fascist, and both parties openly take the same corporate bribe money to keep this exploitative economy and it’s inhuman priorities exactly as it is while they war over how to, or if to, address some of the social issue symptoms it causes or exacurbates, so long as it doesn’t meaningfully effect quarterly earnings results.
I could at this point be easily be convinced to vote third party for an explicitly anti-corporatist party even if it didn’t have a chance.
The public, surprisingly bipartisan reaction (voters, not reps, obviously) to what happened a few days ago in New York has given me more hope for positive change in our cesspool of greed enablement than I have felt in my entire life. At some level, it seems many of our people do understand, despite all the corpo propaganda, that their enemy causing most of our ills aren’t to their left or right, but economically above, encouraging us to fight about the symptoms of their dictates to THEIR captured government.
I would rather a left-wing populist steal the corpo DNC’s base right out from under them as Trump did in 2016 to the RNC so it could have one of the only two banners that matter helping, but I sadly also think the DNC would rather do everything possible to lose than be dragged along like that and lose the corporate bribe gravy train that left-wing populism, unlike right-wing populism, would need to fight against.
Yeah, absolutely. Dems would rather lose than change. It just gives them more “pick us or you’ll be sorry” ammunition.
Edit: You don’t have to look any further than the bs soft-washing of the news media:
https://www.popehat.com/p/some-other-america-one-i-do-not-know