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Something to keep in mind.
Trump didn't win a significant number of new voters. He kept his base, which is roughly the size of what it was in 2020.
The problem was that Harris lost voters. In droves. Nationwide. And she took a lot of winnable downballot candidates with her. And I'm not even saying that to blame her. She ran a magnificent campaign while Trump was most noted for saying "They're eating the dogs!". So why did she still lose, and lose so hard? Because Democrats stayed home. Roughly about 10% of them overall, nationwide. Sure, some of them stayed home or voted 3rd party to protest Gaza, especially in Michigan. But the real story is that she underperformed so badly nationwide. I mean, for the love of God, New Jersey was competitive. That call about Iowa possibly going blue is going to be up there with "Dewey defeats Truman" in terms of political misfires. She severely underperformed with men and Latinos, especially Latino men. Which means this: 8-10 million people couldn't stomach voting for Trump, but they'd rather passively hand over the country to Trump vs. voting for a black woman. Whether the problem they have is the fact that she's black, female, or both is irrelevant. But the message they sent was clear. "We don't want Trump, but we'd rather step back and just let Trump take the country rather than vote for her."
The problems with bigotry in this country go much deeper than some people are willing to admit, and Harris just found that out the hard way. As far as the voting base is concerned, voting for Obama was a mistake that they will not repeat again, and they just proved that by handing Trump everything he wanted on a silver platter instead.
We can't even say that it's an outsized minority any more. A majority of the people in this country just spoke up and said that they either want the racism and bigotry or are at least willing to put up with it.
Trump won the election not because Democrat voters said "Trump!", but because they said "Not Harris."
This honestly cements my view that America is a racist nation, no question.
You don't get 15 million missing votes without a solid chunk of those being Democrats, bog standard Democrats, that didn't want to vote for a black woman.
If you ignore the multitude of policy issues she was to the right of the Dem voter base on, I guess you could blame it on that...
But that would just mean we'd repeat the mistake again...
Can we just stop running candidates who are to the right of the voter base?
We tried your strategy the last three elections and Trump has won 2 of them. It doesn't seem to be working
Oh please. You all, and let's face it at 15 million, it's not progressives that didn't vote here, but honestly if you didn't vote because of some pithy bullshit about having not progressive policies vs policies farther than the far right and into fascist policies, well you're definitely part of that problem and thanks for condoning racism you racist.
Edit: replied to wrong post
Ok, and for 8 years we've tried that strategy of insulting voters into voting D.
Two of those elections it went so badly trump became president, and the other time he lost by tens of thousands of votes across a couple states.
It's clearly not working.
So how about we stop repeatedly trying it and instead we run a young charismatic candidate with a progressive platform?
Even if it's just lies, that was good enough to get Bill and Obama 8 years each.
Look at the last 30 years of American political history and rethink why we're running candidates that can't even beat Donald fucking trump.
Well no worries there mate, as a progressive person myself, racist progressives like yourself have now ensured that the Democratic party will never run another candidate like that ever again! Congrats! You did it!! Project 2025 was made possible by viewers like you!
Yes, we all woke up to our future being a fucking fascist horror show. We're all grieving. Chill the fuck out with the "racist" shit, you just dividing the left more.
Yes, I'm sure some people are just misogynistic and racist and stayed home because of that. However, other people feel like it doesn't fucking matter. We understand that it does matter, but I'll be damned if I don't feel that way too sometimes. It's so goddamn frustrating when the Democrats tack right over and over again, hamstringing progressives along the way, and then turn around and say "Vote for us because we're the lesser evil. We've wedged you between a rock and a hard place so suck it up and do your patriotic duty like good little peasants."
Kamala's campaign veered right and abso-fucking-lutely alienated progressive voters. By the end I was legitimately worried she might actually end up being to the right of Biden economically.
Do I forgive lefties for sitting this one out? No. That doesn't mean they won't do it again and that, for the first time in what feels like decades, the Democrats need to actually learn the right lesson from losing an election.
At 15 million non-voters at this point, again, it's not progressives that lost this election and there's millions of Democrats here that went, "you know what, this guy's a criminal, rapist, racist but I'm going to just not vote today to make my point clear".
Democrats and progressives have divided themselves enough as it is without my help and both groups have enough people that are okay with racism taking power again, they've made it loud and clear they're okay with it.
As a minority that's had decades of living with this bullshit, nope, I'm done. Electing Trump once was bad but maybe just a fluke. Electing Trump a second time knowing full well what he is and what he stands for, nope America is a racist country and Democrats and Progressives are fine with it.
Votes aren't all counted so no, 15 million didn't sit out. I'm not saying it wasn't millions, but it's not 15 million.
You're fine being part of the problem then? Shit looks bad so you're not going to even try and be civil? You sound like those disaffected voters.
What if the folks that voted in 2020 and didn't vote in 2024 are the type of folks who just normally don't vote and weren't inspired this year? What if the same kind of "there's no way Trump can win" thinking had them taking the situation for granted? Again, not saying they should have fucking voted but maybe it's more complicated than a few million people didn't vote this year so apparently the entirety of the non-republicans are racists. Group punishment is in order?
Translation: “I’m not listening or even willing to pretend to engage in nuance! Which means YOURE RACIST!”
You let a convicted felon, found legally to be a rapist, racist win because you didn't vote due No True Scotsman, then yeah, you're a progressive that condones racism and are a racist in my book. You don't have to agree but then again, I honestly don't give a crap what you think at this point.
No, you’re still not getting it. And I wasn’t the original person you were arguing with. I voted for Harris, but there is so much nuance involved in the decision that writing it all off as racism is beyond stupid and helps no one but you—the same way the “I won’t vote for Harris because it’s a vote for ____” people were only doing it for themselves. Basically, it’s a glass house and stones situation. You’re both guilty of the same thing.
I know you're not the original person but you are extending the OP's argument so I'm just taking it from there.
No I do get it, I simply don't care about that particular nuance when your choice is "Man I won't vote because of X so I'll just let Mr. convicted criminal, rapist, overt racist win".
You enable racists, then you're a racist in my book and with 15 million voters, who again statistically are going to be a lot of bog standard Democrats here, who sat out and condoned racists at every level, yeah, that shows me that I was right in 2016 that this country is a racist country and I'm just going to have be okay with that.
Say you get two choices.
One is to poison a town’s water supply without telling them.
The other is poison that towns water supply, not tell them, and then pick off survivors as they flee from the town.
Can you stomach voting for poisoning a town’s water supply if you’re firmly against poisoning people, just because anyone fleeing the town would be able to leave if they managed to survive? That’s the choice we were being asked to make. I get that it’s definitely worse to shoot the survivors, but in the end…either way your vote was to poison people. Some people have strong feelings about it. So strong they couldn’t stomach being the ones to sign on to it.
We all know it’s worse adding the slaughter of the fleeing survivors…but signing your name to the poisoning is unthinkable for a lot of people. It kinda should be unthinkable for all of us.
And you’re just saying “well, all you people must love shooting survivors!”
Nuance, man.
I voted D like every election the last 20 years...
But you need to think about why you respond to people talking about how to better the adem party and increase our chances of beating Republicans.
We absolutely can stop running candidates. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we’ll be running candidates ever again.
The large turnout in 2020 was more driven by the will to remove Trump than to elect Biden. This time it seems they forgot how bad it was and decided to stay home.
Trump won because the DNC underestimated the sexists, racists and the idiot woke who think they somehow did something with this for palestine.
Editorial note:
i know woke is a poisoned word but I like to use to describe idiots who think they are so smart and better than others that they would rather let trump elected than admit that voting for the lesser evil is the right thing to do
Nailed it. People are still mad that Obama made it into the White House and we’re forever going to pay for it. And a black woman running for president? Americans all saw Trump’s serious cognitive decline — I don’t doubt that any outside of a hardcore few didn’t — but America made for damn sure it wouldn’t be Kamala.
Trump won because Harris was a shitty candidate who never won a primary for the president.
I was hoping she'd pull off a victory anyways but the lesson we should take away is that if a sitting president needs to step down from running for another term we need to have a snap election.
This all went to hell when Harris was appointed as our candidate.
I called it back in July when I said Democrats should have run Fetterman. Only appearance matters to the majority of Americans.
Trump won because Harris ran a dog shit campaign.
And Trump didn’t? It’s always very telling when you all love shouting BOTH SIDES from the mountain tops, but when it comes to blame-
Well that’s different.
Trump had nothing to campaign on. He insulted and threw temper tantrums. Yet…. Harris Rand a dog shit campaign…
Got it.
The entire point of a campaign is to attract voters...
So I don't see how both statement can be true...
Her campaign did a shit job at getting people to vote for her, how do you consider it magnificent?
It proved to not be enough. The people who were coming to her rallies were apparently all people who were going to vote for her anyway; the size of the rallies only gave the illusion that her campaign was attracting more voters. And with so many Democrats actively choosing to stay home rather than vote at all, it seems like nothing she did would have mattered anyway. But given the crap she had to work with, she ran a near-flawless campaign. She had no way of knowing that it just didn't matter.
You listed things they tried, but didn't work
Literally the only metric that matters for how good a campaign was, is how many votes they got.
And Kamala drastically underperformed.
So her campaign wasn't "magnificent" it was a spectacular disaster that couldn't beat trump with everything you listed and a billion dollars
Yup. If she ran a magnificent campaign she would have won.
I was arguing with my buddy about this last night. He kept saying that she had to pivot right to have any chance of winning the election. Me pointing out that she performed terribly in the election didn't matter to him. In his eyes shes did everything right and the voters are to blame I guess?
They can never give any logic behind it, and they'll never learn it doesn't work.
But moderates will repeat that line as often as Charlie Brown will attempt a field goal, with the same results over and over again.
If the argument is that Harris should’ve run a more progressive campaign, is there any guarantee that she would get more progressive votes than she would have lost from the center/independents?
Is there any evidence she gained any voters from the right/center?
Because Republican numbers went up, and Dem numbers went down...
But as I've said elsewhere, it's not that more progressive campaign would have gotten more progressivesnto vote for her. It's that nonvoters turn out to vote for progressive campaigns.
Too often people ignore history and say those votes can only be gained from the right. It ignores that one of the biggest reasons people give for not voting for decades is "both parties are the same" and never "the parties are too different".
Downvotes on this comment are delusional.
The only candidate in this election with a positive approval rating was the progressive guy (Tim Walz). Bernie Sanders and AOC are two of the most popular politicians around right now and both of them are very progressive. Obama won a historic election by running a progressive campaign. Andy Beshear won the gubernatorial election in fucking Kentucky with a pro-trans progressive message and is an extremely popular governor.
Liberals refuse to even pay lip service to the idea that regular people support progressive policy.
They're paid an insane amount of money to pretend Dem voters actually want the same thing billionaires and corporations want.
For voters supporting the current democratic party requires a certain level of delusional thinking.
You have to have really worked yourself into a position where given the choice between the bare minimum progress to prevent societal collapse and running full steam towards it, that you legitimately believe a light jog towards complete destruction is the best path forward.
You can't logically get into that position. You need to be brainwashed to the point where literally anyone who is to the right or left of you gets labeled an extremist who's equally as bad and should be ignored.
It's what the billionaire on WBs board was talking about when they bought CNN. They said the goal was to repeat Faux News but for "moderate" Dems.
I just never thought they'd fall for it.
It makes sense. The campaign thought the fear of Trump alone would be enough to bring in the progressive voters and she would have to work on persuading the center. They were clearly wrong in hindsight.
Why do you keep saying she didn't get progressives?
It's like if you repeat it enough it'll come try.
Every current indication is that the votes she lost were from the least likely voters. Election after election progressives have shown they'll show up and vote for the least terrible candidate.
The problem is with people who aren't politically engaged.
Despite the dangers of teump, Kamala was too conservative to excite them enough to get them to the polls.
Moving to the right costs more votes than it gains, there's no evidence it gains any votes in fact.
It just keeps wealthy donors happy
Yeah but if you start to poke fingers at the Democratic Party, you might start to realize that most of their corporate donors are fine with a Trump presidency. Almost like they were fine with Harris campaigning on keeping the status quo, because they'd win either way. Better to start blaming voters now!
Considering where Biden's polling was this summer, the fact that the Dems held onto New York is impressive.
This is the danger of lowering our bar to Trump's level as "good enough"
Biden could be better than trump.
Kamala could be better than Biden.
But if Kamala isn't good enough, trump would win.
Because as multiple people have been shouting for 8 years:
All of this could be avoided by running decent candidates who won a fair primary. But the DNC won't give that as an option because they want to use the threat of trump to push thru as "moderate" of a Dem as they can to maximize corporate donations.
Beating trump wasn't the DNC's goal, it was raising as much money as possible
I agree with you, but you should know that the media is already blaming “the small sliver of the Democratic Party who call themselves progressives.”
Pundits are talking about how Democrats need to shift even further to the right next time. So that’s not going to be fixed any time soon unless voters show up to primaries in a way that can’t be ignored.
The ones owned by billionaires who bought them to control a narrative?
They're always going to say the party has to move right. The entire reasons billions are buying them is to convince people both parties need to move right.
Yes - the ones who tell the majority of the party what to think and do.
If Kamala lost because racial bigotry — then how did Obama win? It probably has more to do with misogyny and single issue voters than it does race.