this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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[–] Psychodelic@lemmy.world 124 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean, Harris and the Dems didn't even try, like seriously. Getting Beyonce and all the other celebrities our fellow moronic Americans already see as members of the illuminati is not trying, it's literally the opposite

I mean, they spent $50m+ in fuckin Ohio! We lost fuckin Georgia while they were jerking off Cheney's and trying to convince white folks in the suburbs not to be who they are

It's legit insane to see the party straightup abandon working class demographics. Then again, this is the same party that now literally spends millions of dollars each primary on getting votes for Republican politicians

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 92 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

I was excited when Biden dropped out and Harris got this huge surge as the new young, not actively deteriorating candidate, then more excited when she announced Tim Walz and got a mid western, blue collar surge, and cautiously optimistic when everyone was briefly focusing on how anti-democratic and un-American Project 2025 was, but then started getting worried when all I saw running up to the election was stories about abortion rights and women voting against their husbands and celebrity endorsements.

It feels like Obama successfully ran a campaign of Hope and Change, and since then Democrats repeatedly campaign on maintaining the status quo and just not letting it slide too much further. And while it's possible to win an election on the basis of 'I'm at least somewhat competent', it might not be in the US when so much of the population sees how fundamentally broken wealth inequality is at baseline.

[–] rigatti@lemmy.world 39 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Not discounting anything you wrote here, but it still entertains me when people call the 60 year old Kamala Harris young.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 36 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Fuck I would not have guessed that. She looks 10-20 years younger than that

[–] rigatti@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago

Especially when next to Walz who is, I think, a year younger.

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[–] subignition@fedia.io 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In contrast to Biden and Trump she looks 40.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 36 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

They tried everything except giving Dem voters what they want...

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[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 107 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (11 children)

Are you fucking kidding? Because Biden 2020 was a progressive platform and Harris 2024 was a centrist one. They weren't even remotely similar. Biden may be a centrist, but he's very pro-labor, and he could see how important the progressive base was that election, so he literally sat down with Sanders and hammered out a platform that they could get behind. And while I've got a lot of problems with Joe Biden, he actually was very committed to that platform. He really wanted BBB to get through and he kept trying to find ways to abolish student debt.

Harris, on the other hand, had a handful of disparate, vaguely left policy positions, like the first-time homebuyer's credit and legalizing pot, but her campaign was mainly centered on economic opportunity for the middle class. She also committed wholeheartedly to the most right-wing polices of the Biden administration, like arming Israel and cracking down on the border. But worst of all, she made bipartisanship and Republican consensus a huge part of her campaign, promising to add Republicans to her cabinet , campaigning with Liz Cheney, and even praising Dick Fucking Cheney.

TL;DR, Biden campaigned like Obama in 2008, Harris Campaigned like Hillary in 2016. And the results were the same.

[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 59 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Do you even remember 2020? Nobody fucking wanted Biden. He was never progressive. He was literally mocked for telling donors "Nothing will fundamentally change." People turned out because of how much they hated Trump.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago

That actually occurred in 2019, not 2020. After Bernie nearly stomped him in the primary, he made a hard pivot to the left in 2020. As I said, he's a centrist, but he actually does have a strong history of pro-union activism, which made him a fairly credible (though imperfect) messenger for a populous platform.

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[–] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

I bet a lot of people saw this as Hillary all over again

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 32 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I sure did. I was genuinely hopeful when Biden stepped down, and when they announced Walz, I actually got excited. Then they started to try and reach moderate Republicans more and more, and I slowly realized they were doing it again. I felt like I was going insane watching them repeat the strategy that caused them to lose to the same guy in 2016.

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[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 68 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Everyone is still pissed about inflation, and her answer to what she would do better was 'nothing'.

Everything else is just noise around the edges.

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 40 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Because people pissed at inflation are fucking stupid. Inflation is down. They aren't pissed at greedy corporations, which have been the problem the entire fucking time.

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 29 points 2 weeks ago (14 children)

You know you've heard people say inflation hasn't stopped because prices are still high. Like they're going to magically get better prices when inflation stops.

Yeah it's stupid, welcome to America.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Actually they're not wrong, wages were not increased to keep up with inflation so stopping it alone wasn't enough.

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[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 weeks ago

We live in a nation of people that are a mix of uneducated and propagandized. If the party messaging doesn’t take that into account, that fault lies with them in addition to the voters.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 17 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

It's not enough that the rate of inflation is slowing. The problem is that wages aren't going up to match inflation. When people are working two jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck, do you think it means anything to them to tell them that "um ackshually, inflation is down 0.4% from last year!"?

This kind of disconnect is exactly why we aren't reaching voters.

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[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 64 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Literally Covid. People thoght they were going to die.

[–] Habahnow@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I actually don't think so. Like I speak with Republicans that are very dismissive of covid still, despite having family members die to it. If people were bothered by his covid response, they would continue to be bothered by the fact Trump shit the covid response. Instead it seems voters think everything was fine during his term (completely uninformed or unaware of the fact that he was impeached twice, raped women, a good friend and neighbor of Epstein, and tried to overthrow the government)

The apathy maybe comes from how Harris was hand picked (because it was so last minute that Biden dropped off) vs us having an actual primary with several democrats.

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Republicans aren't the ones who didn't turn out, idk what this has to do with what they think about Trumps covid response. If you want to know why 10 million more democratic voters turned out last time covids gonna play a large factor.

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[–] Kalysta@lemm.ee 58 points 2 weeks ago

Bernie.

Bernie was what got us to vote for Biden. Biden formed a comittee with Bernie and actually adopted a bunch of his ideas. That’s what got the left to vote for Biden.

That and all of us were reeling from the economy after coronavirus.

Meanwhile Harris told the left to fuck off with your Palestinians are human nonsense and tried to get the Liz Cheney constituency (that doesn’t exist).

[–] Comrade_Spood@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

Because we did vote for Biden and he was useless at preventing the spread of fascism in states, and then Harris's responses to how she would handle any of it, which was effectively "I will do nothing." The Democrats made the left apathetic to the electoral system by refusing to appeal to them and instead the democrats focused on trying to sway republicans and moved further right. The Democrats did the worst thing they could have done and made people apathetic and hopeless.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 44 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It ain't "the commies".

And he won by an incredibly tiny margin in a handful of states to win, literally no one was "set on fire" for Biden

Progressive policy is popular with the politically disengaged as well as others who are politically engaged

When the ones who are engaged try to warn people someone is a bad candidate and isn't left enough to motivate the politically disengaged, we magically go back to Salem and you all start blaming us for being able to see the logical conclusion of your dumbass plans.

Run another candidate in 2028 that's significantly to the right of the Dem voter base and the same shit will happen again.

That's not a threat, it's basic logic.

It might not be the candidate you want, but isn't stopping republican more important than you getting exactly what you want?

Obama ran a progressive campaign and was charismatic...

Why not try that again since moderates over retirement age keeps failing?

Kamala might be like three years younger than Obama now, but he entered the White house 16 years ago

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)
  • Obviously, the main reason for record turnout in 2020 was COVID.

  • Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn't even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was "untested" to put it mildly.

  • The economic situation was different.

  • Regardless of to what degree he was responsible, under Biden the US got entangled in foreign conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine.

  • It's not that there are 10 million commies that liked Biden but not Harris, it's that us commies believe that you can win over the working class by appealing to material interests.

  • Biden didn't campaign with fucking Dick Cheney

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[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Covid and Trumps handling of it.
But energy was high in the anti Trump camp anyway with BLM protests.

So saying the Dems need to move more right is the opposite of the right lesson. Just look at political donations to Bernie.. from across the US. There are no moderate republicans, they all stayed with trump, there is a huge untapped electorate in the US that wants something else, and I'd argue it is more left social democrats and what they bring.... But the capital class will never allow it in the US. The moment you talk wealth distribution, even MSNBC and such call you communist.

Edit: oh and Biden should have taken action on Trumps fascism on day 1. Chuck him in jail pending trial and get it over with. Everyone except a small part of his base distanced themselves from him, the time was in the first 100 days of taking office, but they did NOTHING.. they might as well have stormed the capitol themselves by now.

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[–] Not_mikey@slrpnk.net 37 points 2 weeks ago

Biden was running on massive infrastructure investment, student loan forgiveness, ending the war in Afghanistan, child tax credit and a $2000 cheque in the mail . Harris may have had those in her platform as well but she wasn't mentioning it or Bidens wins on these at all, her campaign was "I'm not trump" and we learned from Hillary that's not enough.

Biden campaign was "build back better" a motto for change much like another democrat who actually won. Harris' campaign was "were not going back" which implies no change and relies on you thinking the trump years were horrible enough to justify the current status quo, and apparently the only thing Americans remember about the trump years was the economy was "better" and wanted to go back.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 32 points 2 weeks ago

Ten Million commies in the US - lol - if only.
Flaunting your Dick Cheney endorsement isn't being insufficiently left. Its political suicide.

[–] troglodytis@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (16 children)

Have you seen the numbers of people who think they were better off 4 years ago?

People think they were better off during the height of COVID deaths. Our attention span is 27 seconds. We're idiots

Also, Harris doesn't have a penis and somehow that's supposed to matter

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[–] hark@lemmy.world 29 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

Covid is the reason democrats won in 2020, but they assumed they won because they're geniuses. Instead of trying to appeal to voters, they just tried to tell people to vote against trump. Turns out that isn't enough to motivate people when there isn't a pandemic raging on that is making people's lives miserable. Democrats really need to get their act together because 2028 won't be against trump, so the "anyone but trump" strategy will be even more useless and all that time spent kissing the asses of ghouls like dick cheney just tells people that republicans are okay to vote for.

[–] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Biden won by a really thin margin in swing states, the book Lucky went into detail about how close of a call it was, but he interpreted it as some huge popular win because of the high vote totals.

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[–] mannycalavera 29 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The lesson for Democrats is surely that after years and years of telling anyone they could find that had concerns about society "oh you must be a literal Nazi, cope harder la la la la whoop whoop air high fives and fist bumps that's roiiight ma BOI!" at some point these people are going to turn around and say "well ok then, I just won't vote for you because you have nothing to offer me".

I'm not saying the Republican party has done this any better, but surely insulting potential voters en masse and refusing to understand their concerns isn't a sensible way to win elections. I didn't work for Hilary either, and it hasn't worked for Harris.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 23 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, the disconnect you also felt here when you said that Biden is clearly suffering dementia was crazy. People just deluded themselves and gaslit like crazy instead of acknowledging that Bidens mental health was not up for another 4 years of presidency. And this topic alone dragged on for months, until Biden failed the candidate debate so badly, even the billionaire donors got cold feet. But again it was the billionaire donors who pushed for Biden to drop out, not the concerns of the normal people. The DNC has effectively immunized against the voices of the people. And with all the talk about Trump bringing the end to Democracy, the Reps held proper primaries every cycle.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago

Look, the Democrats have to own this loss, for once, like they should have last time. It is clearly insufficient to try and frighten democratic supporters with a probability of fascism which we've never experienced before. It is clearly insufficient to abandon the working class as they have for so long. We should never fund or promote far right candidates in primaries. The media should not provide free coverage for outrage candidates to drive viewershop. It is clearly a mistake to try and court conservative voters, because hardly any have ever crossed over. It was certainly a mistake for Biden to run again, and then to drop out so late, far too late to have a primary.

Maybe the fact she is a minority woman turned people off. I don't know. It's a stupid reason not to run women, but that possibility exists.

But it damn sure isn't the only reason we lost.

[–] holycrap@lemm.ee 25 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

From talking to people who sat this out, it seems Biden ending the rail union strike was a huge factor, and the cost of groceries was a close second. They wanted to vote against him in the primaries and were denied that opportunity.

Kamala was guilty by association.

Well, that and the fact she did not address these issues in her messaging. Or if she did the message didn't reach them. "She said things aren't so bad, but I can't afford groceries. She won't fix anything."

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[–] HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee 24 points 2 weeks ago

Step into a campaign to take over for a failing candidate who is unpopular and too old to realistically run, then make sure that everyone is certain that your policies will be exactly the same as the unpopular guy, then surprised pikachu

[–] PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Ok. First. Those votes were not, like, commies or something. Communists broadly (but not universally ) have no faith in electoral politics beyond the ability to demonstrate how useless electoral politics are for the kinds of change they see as required. The missing votes are likely non-explicitly-ideological Americans, and the disenfranchised left wing of the Democrat coalition, who are not revolutionary socialists - they are better described as social democrats. And why so many of them voted for Biden was, at least in significant part three things that you're pretending don't exist with this meme.

  1. Tremendous dislike of Trump.. which is actually still true, but he was not currently the president during this election. Trump had just spent the last few months massively fucking up the pandemic response very publicly and got covid immediately prior to the election, which made him look stupid and incompetent.

  2. Because of COVID policies, voting had literally never been easier. Shit loads of people voted early because it was universally available. Led to highest turnout ever.

  3. A competitive democratic primary process meant that we had a candidate selection process people could believe in to some degree. Brenie and Biden ran, and Biden won. Bernie voters saw that, looked at the situation and said "This is tolerable because we had a real process, and we can accept Biden as a stop gap under the conditions of Trump needing to be removed, and Biden being a 1 term President". It wasn't 2016, where a significant portion of potential Democrat voters saw the DNC's treatment of Bernie as unfair, and it wasn't 2024 where Biden decided to run with no true Primary after the deal was "single term president", then abruptly dropped out (good idea, shoulda done it 2 years earlier) and effectively appointed his successor by decree.

2020 was an anomaly, and as is true of 2020 in most data sets, using it as a comparison point requires many many qualifications, but Trump gained 40000 votes, Harris lost 10 million. Trump did not perform better, Harris lost voter enthusiasm, which hasn't actually been on the Democrat's side in presidential elections (which have more non-explicitly-ideological voters) since, like, Obama. It's not even necessarily that she needed to be "more left". It's that she needed to reflect the public's distrust of the political status quo and promise material gain for working people explicitly at the expense of someone else (Trump chose , for instance, immigrants and the democrats as the bad guys, but Harris could have chosen, say, rich fuckers like Musk) . She needed to be ready to rip up the floor boards, and she wasn't even ready to say she'd break from fucking Biden (who is broadly unpopular) on policy.

I really, really wish y'all democrats would stop trying to purge your own party of any dissent, because y'all coming out of this with the right lesson will be the difference between a brief period of Republican control, or several elections cycles of Democrats being unviable as a party.

[–] SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

True. Thank you. It's frustrating seeing the DNC shoot itself in the fucking foot to watch people on Lemmy start swinging on anyone but the people who made and executed the failure of a campaign strategy.

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[–] psion1369@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

What got people to vote for Biden but not Harris? A dire need. Not voting for Biden meant that Trump stayed in office. Even though the stakes were the same, too many people sat on the couch thinking it was going to happen again and they didn't have to go.

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[–] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The turnout was really high, the democrats main plan for this election was catering to the "moderate republicans" which backfired spectacularly (a smaller % of registered republicans voted for democrats than in 2020), left-wing was pretty much abandoned in the campaign... It's a horror all around, and the democratic party only have themselves to blame for this blunder instead of trying to point fingers at literally everything (so far I've seen blame thrown on LGBTQ+, Biden, Kamala's aides, left wing voters, etc).

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[–] Grayox@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 weeks ago

It wasnt commies, it was the working class cope harder.

[–] adhdplantdev@lemm.ee 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Mean is no one going to call out the strategy for like the last month to possibly 3 months was her pandering as hard as she could to Republicans moderate and isolating the leftist Democratic base?

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[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

People posting this type of stuff have to know that we have a an electoral college where swing states have a disproportionate influence on the outcome. Voter turnout was up in all of those states.

[–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

But didn't he also win the popular vote this time?

[–] scarabine@lemmynsfw.com 17 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, it was extremely Trump’s win. His first legitimate full win. There’s no EC shenanigans. Simply a majority of the votes and in a majority of the states.

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[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

This discussion would be entirely irrelevant if we had a more representative electoral system.

People could be free to vote how they wish, secure in the knowledge their vote would still be counted against the republicans.

The people not voting are disenfranchised by the two party system. Change how we vote and allow competition into the electoral process. Multiple political parties should be free to compete.

More people represented and involved in the political process

More people voting means more votes for democrats

More chances to defeat the republicans

More people on the debate stage calling out bullshit (and you could have still hold one even if one party decides to not participate)

And last but not least, shouldn't we want the most representative voting system possible? Shouldn't we be concerned when our working class brothers/sisters/so on are under represented to the point that they dont vote?

Still not convinced First-past-the-post voting is the problem? Republicans in Florida passed legislation protecting it. Republicans in alaska are trying to repeal Ranked choice voting because voters used it to pick a more moderate conservative (the alternative was Sarah palin).

Isn't the republicans liking and wanting something not the most ultragigagigantic red flag that ever existed?

Democrats have proven they can no longer go it alone. They had their chance. Time to swallow your pride and arrogance and let others participate. This fight isn't about the democratic party. It's about survival.

The United States of America is more important then the Democratic Party.

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[–] abracaDavid@lemmy.today 14 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I didn't want Biden either.

I don't know if y'all remember this, but the DNC decided to forgo a primary and forced Harris on us. When she ran in 2020 during the primary, she was so unpopular that she dropped out before any votes were cast.

Why did anyone ever think she would win? It's almost identical to when the DNC put Hilary up against Trump.

You can only fool me with this "lesser evil" bullshit so many times.

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