Straight, white, male, native-born, and middle class or higher are we?
The list of how I got taken in is about the same.
Also I’m on TikTok, and for the last couple of weeks there was a surge of nice liberal white ladies confidently predicting a Harris win and backing it up with a lot of sensible-sounding declarations about Trump being unable to pick up new voters, about women winning this election, about early voting numbers pointing to a lock for Harris. “We are going to win, and we are going to win BIG. Texas might even be in play!”
Now I feel like this is the rise of the left-wing grifter.
How could Biden have been a stronger supporter of unions? How much good did this do Harris?
Scaremongering has been a thing for many years. What is newer is a refusal to acknowledge the normal rules (ex: conceding elections when the loss is unequivocal), probable permissiveness of the judicial branch (depending on interpretation), concentration of media, the brazenness of the lies (which would be unacceptable before Reagan), the minimization of fact checking, the polarized bubbles and the denial of obvious positive points.
It is easy to characterize people as stupid, and some are. Many people care nothing for politics and many get their news from highly incomplete sources. But plenty of Trump voters knew that Trump lied but saw it as humorous, trolling, worthwhile if it upset others, anecdotal, “being in on the joke”, yada yada. Many Trump voters did not believe his lies. They just didn’t much care.
When hearing people say they weren’t voting for that nasty man, I did not fathom they’d vote turd parties instead of H/W.
Posted by @Kitten_Mitten in the MMP thread:
“The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them”.
~ Turkish Proverb ~
I reject the framing of “pro” and “anti”. It makes it sound as if we’re all as tribal as the people buying Trump duvet covers.
I’m pro-Democracy, rule of law, science, education, integrity and compassion.
That makes Harris a good, if flawed, candidate for president, and Trump utterly disqualified for any one of a thousand statements and actions.
Yep. I believe it was on CNN where they emphasized that all the swing states being won by one candidate was the most likely scenario; something like 60% of simulations.
The reason being, that the polling error between states tends to be correlated. So, if they are all saying “coin flip”, and it turns out one underestimated Trump support by 2%, well, probably they all underestimated his support by 2% and he wins all the coin flips.
In terms of my own answer to the OP, it’s broadly the same as others have said. Harris seemed to be having momentum in the final weeks, while Trump was imploding. And, when the Harris campaign emphasized “That’s not who we are” about whatever bile MAGA had said that day, I wanted to believe it.
Not break the railroad strike?
Vow to appoint SC Justices that would overturn Janus?
For me, it was because I presumed her campaign knew what they were doing when they pivoted rightward. Instead, I think they very much drove down turnout, which is ultimately what seems to have lost the election.
This. I’ve been anxious for weeks. Canvassing didn’t help, any.
I disagree. Harris ran a smart campaign with no blunders. Nothing she could do that would overcome the fact that the USA had three high years of inflation during Biden,
I fear this presidency quite a lot. I’m a Jew. When ethnic hated is stirred up, the Jews usually get the short end. And my daughter is of child-bearing age. And my son is non-gender-conforming. I’m really anxious.
Because I could not believe (still can’t believe) that the American electorate, for the second time, chose Trump over a far better qualified candidate. And given that Biden was pushed out due to obvious age-related issues, WTF was Trump allowed to continue to run?
Three years of inflation after Trump’s tariffs and during a global pandemic. Yes, this was while Biden was president, but he was not at fault. I do agree that she ran a good campaign.
Yes, of course he wasnt at fault. In fact the inflation started under trump. But people just do not understand that the president has little control over inflation. Still, they blame the President for the economy nonetheless.
I’m saying if they lost the media would not be pushing “election anxiety” counseling as a feature story.
Sure, instead it would be “The election was stolen”, again
This was the biggest factor for me. I couldn’t imagine how he would have gained any votes since 2020. After months of trying to overturn the election, the insurrection, the years of whining about it, and being charged with so many crimes? I thought for sure at least some of the people who did vote for him would drop away.
Instead, it looks like he actually got more votes, and Harris lost so many that it handed him the win. I don’t understand any of that, and I don’t think I ever will.
The reason Harris lost is because Democrats and most posters on this board forgot the James Carville saying that helped Bill Clinton win his first term - It’s The Economy, Stupid.
That is pretty much it with a good dose of “open border” immigration fear tossed in.
Harris and Democrats did little to nothing to effectively counter GOP/FOX/etc propaganda on those two issues.
If you’re saying that Harris et al never said relevant and convincing things on either inflation or the border, I disagree. The Dems talked about both and made points that would convince any rational person.
The problem was that 50%+ of Americans never heard a word they said. Those Americans heard only what FoxNews and talk radio and right-wing podcasters and Elon Musk wanted them to hear.
In recent days I’ve seen several interviews with Spanish-speaking people who have family members who are undocumented. And they all voted for Trump and say “He won’t deport any of us, we all work and pay taxes and are law-abiding.”
And before and after they say this, Republicans are interviewed saying “yes, Trump will deport ALL the illegals* because they broke the law by coming here and by definition they are not law-abiding.”
And the Spanish-speaking interviewees still don’t know that this is coming because the news they access NEVER MENTIONS IT.
I’ve seen interviews with other Trump voters who had NO idea that he’d ever filed for bankruptcy. Who had NO idea that he’d been adjudged a sexual offender. Who had NO idea that his campaign had approved teleprompter remarks that Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage.
They had NO idea.
We are amazed that so many could vote in the guy who promises to wreck the economy with tariffs and promises to put millions in deportation camps and promises to stop all actions that could ameliorate climate change.
They did it because they never heard anything about any of that, just as they never heard Harris talk about action on prices and inflation and the border. (And what on earth could she have done to break through their unwillingness to expose themselves to actual information?)
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*More than once in the past week I’ve heard Republicans “correcting” MSNBC or CNN hosts who use the term “undocumented;” IT’S ILLEGALS, they say.
ETA: I did believe Harris would win in a close race. Recent trends convinced me. That Iowa poll was impressive. And like others, I didn’t think Trump could get much above the ceiling he’d had before.
I mentioned GOP/FOX/etc propaganda. What you posted is a TLDR argument that I agree with.
Yet the Democrats failed because they had no plan or method to defeat the bullshit being spread about those issues. They assumed the “He’s a horrible rapist/felon/conman/liar” argument was all the needed to do.
The longer Democrats make excuses rather than looking at how things could be done differently in the future, the longer it will be until the Democrats win the WH, Senate and House back.
I really doubt the Democrats could have had any sort of plan or method to defeat the bullshit.