Great. Glad to see that we're learning nothing here. If I wasn't pushed into despair by the election results, seeing progressives respond this way to the loss might push me over the edge.
We are a bigoted country, no doubt. But, our working class is struggling. People are inherently good, inherently bad, brilliant, dumb, and all sorts of combinations of those. Material conditions, messaging, and framing all work together in bringing out these different sides of ourselves both at the societal and individual level.
Responding to this loss with "the only way to win is to be racist" is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right. If we decide to roll over and die because we're too chickenshit to fight, too cynical to have any imagination, and too self-pitying to even lift a finger, the most vulnerable of us (which includes me) will perish.
We HAVE to be better than this.
Harris' messaging problem is the same problem Hilary Clinton had in 2016. Instead of appealing to the base, she went after Republicans and just assumed the left would be on board. The Democratic establishment does this every time, move closer to the center and right and tell the leftists shut up and go away.
Keep pushing this message. Keep doubling down. I'm looking forward to the fact that most of you learn nothing, you insist the other side is just dumb, and you'll scream so from your lungs as 2028 is an even bigger bloodbath for the Dems.
California just voted to raise gas prices in CA by a full dollar in response to trump winning. Can't make this shit up.
Maybe it’s as simple as: outrage is memorable, policy is boring. For all too many voters, all they remember is the last thing that outraged them.
I don’t know how you work with that though, since people on the left seem to care more about policy, character, platform.
But maybe it tracks back to the “shift yo center” right before the election. I know it’s an attempt to attract any remaining undecideds and avoid last minute mistakes but that clearly didn’t work.
I don’t know if it’s just my echo chamber, but Harris, and waltz, both came out in the stage in a flood of emotion. They were live, genuine, caring. I know Trump tried to belittle Harris’ smile and laugh but she pulled it off. She seemed genuine and alive, in contrast to that ancient senile tyrant. Her rise was emotional, and in a good way. Then as the election approached, they became too cautious and lost that emotional jet engine that had them zooming into the sky
The only messaging problem was taking the momentum of the debate and shitting on it with the right-wing heelturn the moment the Cheneys said "never Trump".
The problem with Harris is the problem of all liberals: they don't understand the problems liberalism is causing. Fascism offers terrible solutions to those problems, and thus it wins.
She did try her darnedest too, though.
It's funny how people try to rationalize why Trump won, as if has any rationality behind it whatsoever.
You had me at white man
The more I think about it the more I'm convinced her problem was Biden. The Democratic senators that are winning in the swing states spent an entire year separating themselves from Biden.
Harris didn't get that chance. She took over Biden's campaign, his advisors, his ground network, his convention, 4 months before the election. If he had just recognized his time was over we could have had a real primary, with different campaigns to find the one that resonates with the people.
When she sat down on The View and said she wouldn't change a thing compared to Biden that was a messaging problem. People can't afford rent and grocery inflation is out of control and she thinks everything is fine and dandy? I voted for her but I'm kind of sick of being a perpetual afterthought who has been voting for the lesser of two evils for over 20 years. They dumped the working class in favor of chasing an imaginary pool of moderates and this is the result. Give us someone we can be passionate about and, even if they're lying, at least pretend to tell us what we want to hear.
I understand the poster may be very emotional because of the election. Yet, This strikes me as incredibly reductive.
I think she lost because, she represents the continuation of the current administration. People want to break from the status quo, even if that means harming society to do it.
The dems need a left wing populist, asap.
The problem is the Democrats are scared to push back hard, they try to move to the right to capture moderate voters, and then lose 10x as many voters to the left who don't care enough to vote because the Democrats are trying to make concessions with absolute lunatics.
The DNC seems like it just doesn't have a spine. Doesn't matter now, it's all fucked and it's too late.
She didn't? I believe that's exactly what she came across as when she said she wouldn't do anything different if she were to call the shots instead of Biden and also reminded everyone she signed off on most of his decisions. Sure, she lost votes because of sexism as well, but instead of fresh air she chose to bring stale coffin smell to the fart battle and lost to the stink Trump was all too happy to discharge. And that coffin did smell of a old white dude, let me tell you.
That being said, for such a gigantic loss against someone as obnoxious as Trump, there had to be a lot of factors in play. Sexism and stagnation of the party being just a tip of the iceberg.
Harris is missing 10 million votes that Biden got in 2020. It looks like many of those 10 million were suburban men who didn't vote Trump, just sat on the couch. misogyny is a viable explanation for this because otherwise you'll have to explain why Biden set the left on fire, or why Biden was so inspirational to men.
She lost the scrote vote, simple as that.
Okay but this post would imply Trump is white.
I'd need to crank up the color temperature on his photos quite a bit to achieve that.
The fundamental issue is that people don’t think the system works.
The Democrats have been padding themselves on the back all this time that they follow the rules. So, their message is more like the system does work and is in fact fair if you just follow the rules.
People are tired of that.
bullllseye
The problem with Kamala Harris' messaging was that white males still control 60% of the vote in America, either directly or by influencing their wives and kids.
And if you tell that demographic that they don't matter, then you aren't going to win.
