How does that work? Like, if a minority candidate is polling well in January 2027, everyone will rush to support them? It appears the oddsmakers have the Jewish Shapiro as the frontrunner at this point. Why isn’t everyone concluding from that that being Jewish obviously isn’t a problem? Because their belief in the inflexible racism of American voters is a fixed belief, not subject to change based on contrary evidence.
It reminds me of 2016, when all the polls showed that Trump would beat Clinton but lose to Sanders. Most of the “electability” crowd here chose to ignore the polls and listen to what the little voices in their heads told them about who would be “electable”, and look where that got us.
For moderate Democrats “electability” is a bludgeon to beat their opponents with, not a principle to be taken seriously.
The “just trust us this time” routine. I’m sure for the next few decades it will also be the same “it’s not time” song and dance. What starts as paternalistic racism will eventually become just regular racism.
We (the collective we) went all in for Kamala. We gave money, time, effort. We got our ass kicked.
I’m (and now I’m speaking just about me) the opposite of what you’re saying, I have always tried to vote for the best candidate. That has only worked once since MAGA came on the scene. I’m going to try something different next time. I’m tired of being the noble loser.
Trump won the popular vote. He gained ground among Hispanics and African-American voters - our traditional strongholds.
We LOST. Full stop. Campaign politics are a zero-sum game in a two-party system.
We can blame inflation, we can blame the late Biden withdrawal, we can blame a lot of things, but we shouldn’t look at 2024 as a narrow loss. It was an ass-kicking. We lost the House, we lost the Senate, and we lost the White House. That’s losing and that’s losing on a major scale.
Yep, and the polls showed- it was inflation, and to a lesser extent the Southern border. Both based upon lies.
Umm, no, the House was already lost, and in fact the Dems picked up quite a few seats.
There were only 48 Dems before, and two indys who generally voted. The only reason the Dem kinda sorta controlled the Senate is the fact Harris got to cast tiebreaker votes.
Now there are 3 more GOP Senators. And due to what states were having elections, the very very best the Dems could have asked for in 2024 was another tie. The odds were heavily in favor of the GOP gaining FIVE seats. They only gained 3.
DrDeth is right, people need to stop acting like getting 48% of the vote and just barely losing the House was some McGovernesque catastrophe. The consequences of losing may be catastrophic, but the Dems didn’t get their “butts kicked” by any reasonable historical standard.
Kamala may have also lost due to voter suppression, or as I like to call it, cheating.
I think the reason we didn’t hear Trump complain about cheating as much this time around is because he figured out how to get away with it and it did help him. Not sure how reputable a source this random Youtube channel may be but here’s a ten minute video talking about the role voter suppression played in 2024:
To tie that back to the larger topic, whoever is next up in 2028 will need to watch out for this.
Looping back to this again…it’s clear that voters are fed up with “the establishment”, “business as usual”, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, anyone who voted for both Trump and AOC is a low-information idiot, but guess what, that’s the electorate we have. We don’t need a sensible straight white guy, we need a Kung Fu hippie from Gangsta City.
Problem is that to some here, realism should acknowledge that no Trump voter will ever change while there are lots of left-leaning voters who will stay home unless the nominee is lefty. To me, the opposite is true — elections are won in the center. And, given the small sample size of presidential elections, it is hard to show who is correct.
One thing about AOC. I see no examples where someone as lefty as her won in a district where 48 percent or more voted for Trump. Candidates who can win in such districts, like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, are centrist. I wish she could be nominated, but that is unrealistic.
I think a lot of voters are now thinking in terms of “establishment” vs “anti-establishment”, as opposed to “left” vs “right”. Hence the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of AOC/Trump split ticket voters.
Ahem - the correct phraseology would be he’s too Ashbury Heights. He’s a fourth-generation San Franciscan - so oily NorCal scum, not greasy SoCal scum .
Let’s not forget that Biden dropped out of the race after the primaries were finished, which meant that Harris had very little time to get her campaign going. The fact that she got the nomination without running for it alienated some people (there were Democrats who wanted a contested convention, which would have been a disaster IMO). We’re not going to see those same circumstances in 2028. Weird things could very well happen, but they won’t be the same weird things, and there’s no way to predict what they will be.
It’s a long time until November, 2028. Many things will change by then. I expect Trump to wreck the economy with his tariffs and deportations. I also think that, apart from his policies, people will get very tired of Trump. It’s even possible that Trump won’t last the whole four years.
What I don’t expect would work would be for the Democratic Party to nominate some sort of Trump Lite. Biden beat Trump in 2020 by being the sane alternative. That sort of candidate would have a good chance, I think, especially after four more years of chaos and insanity.
The way I read your post is that a Democratic loose cannon populist like Fetterman would be the best choice.
I’m not ready to buy that but I understand the argument.
Agreed with this thought as well. I’ve already argued the focus at this point should be strategy for the 2026 midterms and how to win back some of the purple statehouses.
Sadly most Democrats and posters don’t see it that way. It’s 2028 or nothing.
I think people here really underestimate the number of swing voters. There are simply a lot of folks out there who don’t much follow the news. They don’t really see themselves as conservative or liberal. They feel (not without reason) that the political system simply isn’t working for them, but don’t really get into the weeds of why that might be.
I personally know two types of Trump voters. I’m familiar with the full-on Kool-Aid drinkers who believe the Orange One is divinely inspired and can do no wrong.
I also know Trump voters who readily acknowledge that the guy is a flaming ass clown, but thought he might bring down inflation, or liked that he talked tough on China, or just got off on the idea of someone so brazenly flipping both middle fingers at the political establishment.
The former group is pretty much irredeemable. If on a perfectly clear day, Biden or some other Democrat said the sky was blue and Trump said it was plaid, they would believe Trump unconditionally.
But the latter group can absolutely turn on Trump if food prices continue to go up, if their wages remain stagnant, if they see law-abiding friends and neighbors hauled away on bullshit pretenses (or if they themselves are “accidentally” rounded up because of their last name or appearance).
A mistake that Trump, as well as a lot of his opponents are making right now, is thinking that everyone who voted for him is a MAGA-hat-wearing diehard. But that’s far from the case.
It’s never too early to speculate, but really we should just nominate whoever proves to be most courageous and successful in opposing Trump over the next two years.
Also, I wonder why nobody is talking about Tim Walz. I thought he did a fine job during the campaign, and as a straight white Midwestern guy with progressive credibility, he seems likely to be acceptable to a broad swath of the Party. I’d certainly consider voting for him if he were to run.
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