this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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I still think it was policy and not gender :/
But I understand that the evidence isn't exactly clear on this.
Exactly.
Harris was dead last on my preferred candidate list in 2020, and it had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with how little I trusted her due to her background as a cop. And she got hammered in the primaries that year, so I'm certainly not alone. I didn't like her performance as VP (she had a pretty poor public opinion score up until she became the candidate for Pres), and she certainly didn't convince me that she had any interesting policies this time around.
Likewise for Hillary Clinton. She was dead last on my preferred candidate list long before she won the nomination, and she didn't get any better after winning.
In both 2016 and 2024, I voted for a third party because neither major candidate interested me (and it didn't matter because Trump won my state by ~20% in each election anyway). I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who would have voted Democrat didn't bother voting or voted for a third party because they found her uninteresting. Her policies suck, her campaign sucked, and she has pretty much no charisma. It has nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being a crappy candidate.
So my vote is on a mixture of:
Being female doesn't register at all.
On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the other choice is orders of magnitudes worse in every category.
Both can be true.
The other side being worse doesn't necessarily motivate your base to support you, you need to actually motivate them to get out and vote. It also doesn't necessarily motivate people on the fence either. If you aren't an attractive candidate, you can't rely on the unattractiveness of your competitor to win you the election.
It seemed the DNC banked on the public caring that Harris is a woman of color and popular among celebrities, and I doubt the public particularly cares about any of that. Her policies were weak and she came off as not really having a plan, or in other words, riding on Biden's coattails. That's not a compelling argument...
Plus Biden had many of the same issues as Harris when he ran... he didn't even want to run. The DNC dragged him out of retirement. I think after the Hillary and Harris data it's become pretty clear a woman is not becoming president any time soon... not even sure if one could win the primary in the next 8 years after the trauma of this election.
It would be foolish to say that gender wasn't a factor, but I don't think it was the deciding factor.
It’s definitely both but it’s starting to look clearer that a man can potentially overcome the potential policy issue and a woman just can’t.
Apparently the gop doesn't need a policy to win. Harris lost to someone who just promised vague amounts of success without literally a single concrete plan in place. Maybe the dems just need to treat the voters like they're the dumbest fucking people on the planet and promise everything will turn to rainbows and unicorn shit with nothing to back it up.
Legalize weed, provide universal health care, give a job with a million dollar salary to every single citizen, create high speed rail across the entire country, fix the ecosystem, stop every war on earth, approve an annual day where you can legally slap your boss, etc etc. Then if asked for specifics just say they have concepts of a plan.
Why should dems bother doing anything concrete? Seems like the country is dumb enough to vote for anyone who tells people what they want to hear.
Because dems are smart, and care about things, so their party has to give qt least half a chance actual policy.
And this time around, Harris ran on republican lite. Courting Liz Cheny, anti-immigration, those that cared about those things were demotivated.