Because they’re promising to solve problems Americans care about, like the border. While Democrats virtue signal about how racist Trump’s plan is while hiding their own plan in case any progressives on Twitter want to call it racist (which, to be fair, they definitely would).
I really hope the answer isn’t that they should have found a underrepresented group to stoke hate and fear against (of course all under the guise of solving a problem), but it sounds like that’s the consensus answer right now.
I don’t think I can support a party that plays chicken with that approach, because I think it will inevitably stop playing.
Trump’s promised ‘plan’, such as it is, is demonstrable nonsense, while Biden (and Harris) have used the ‘soft power’ of diplomacy and persuasion to make workable, long term solutions to the immigration ‘crisis’ (which is largely a self-created one of legislative ineptitude in not creating a system to handle immigrants). Unfortunately, Biden et al was terrible about ‘messaging’, i.e. boasting about how well their ‘virtual wall’ is working at reducing immigration pressure.
Stranger
Yeah, exactly. Biden had good policy, but instead of selling it Kamala just attacked Trump’s policy, which to the uninformed voter gives credence to the allegations that she’s for an “open border” or something.
By failing to drive home what their policy is, Democrats allowed Republicans to set that narrative.
I don’t think it’s the consensus at all.
You mean they’re lying about the problem first of all, because as Stranger points out, bidens executive actions have been very successful, but also the GOP blocked a conservative bill to strengthen the border.
People who actually cared about the problem shouldn’t have voted Maga, this is just another example of how gaslighting with slogans like “open border” works.
Again, seriously!? What would need to happen for progressives not to blamed for an election loss?
In this election we had a centrist nominee and a VP pick that also moved to the right, while progressives all had to hold their tongues and were not even given a chance to air grievances on Gaza or reservations about Biden, let alone talk about progressive policies. No voice, no invite. They were completely sidelined.
And still oh it’s their fault. It’s the “loony left”!!
…and they didn’t “hide” their immigration plan, either. They had sponsored major legislation, that would have implemented their exact plan, legislation that was shot down by Trump, which he did explicitly because he knew it would fix most of the problems. Harris was quite clear that the plan was, “Reintroduce that exact legislation with a Democratic majority in Congress, so Trump can’t ratfuck it again.”
Public legislation that was discussed on the campaign trail several times is the exact opposite of “hiding” their policy.
They’re not winning because they lie, they win because they promise to address this issue. That promise is a lie, but it is what won them votes.
We could also promise to address the issue, and as a bonus be telling the truth.
I’ve pointed out the same exact thing literally dozens of times in this thread, including in the post right above yours, where I agreed that Biden had the correct policy, the Democrats just failed to sell it.
Yeah, exactly. So how are we going to fight back against the gaslighting? Clearly “But Trump’s plan is RAAAAACIST” didn’t work. How about by hammering home again and again our own plan to deal with the crisis?
If Progressives didn’t fuck up our electability, then I wouldn’t blame them.
Kamala did a good job of distancing herself from those whackjobs, but simply not platforming them further is just not enough to repair the damage that they’d already caused. She needed a public Sister Souljah moment to actively repudiate the particularly crazy stuff.
Sure but you also say “[republicans are] promising to solve problems Americans care about, like the border. While Democrats virtue signal”
That’s not what happened at all. If you say things which I think are false, I am going to say that, it doesn’t matter if there are true things in other posts.
Firstly, I don’t know who was saying that border protection was racist versus trump’s actual racist rhetoric being racist.
But secondly the key issue is that most Americans seem to have heard little about what democrats were actually saying and/or heard Maga lies about how “extreme” they were.
So frankly I do think the idea of getting the precise details of clearing the asylum backlog right is precisely the wrong lesson from this election. It would have made no difference at all, and again been miscaricatured as “open borders”.
They need to get a foothold in new media and have a voice first.
How much more can they have been deplatformed? They had no platform whatsoever.
Ask a random person on the street for a part of the progressive agenda and I’ll bet theyll either have no idea or will repeat a false talking point about them.
In fact, progressive policies are popular when Americans are polled on them. Historically though, Democrats are afraid to run on such policies for fear of being called communist or whatever.
And this last election shows the utter bankruptcy of that approach. Democrats ran on what, a decade ago, would have essentially been the GOP platform. Progressives were silenced. And meanwhile MAGA went full lunatic.
And still conservative media painted the democrats as pushed around by supposed extremist leftists. And you seem to have happily swallowed this particular talking point and think the issue is that democrats should let the right wing force them yet further to the right and listen to the progressive wing even less.
That is what happened; the fact that behind their “deportations are racist and evil” rhetoric the Democrats actually were planning to process and potentially deport their way through the 2 million asylum seeker backlog does not mean that they didn’t also virtue signal rather than selling their rational policy.
I mean, that’s literally what I’ve been saying this whole time. We failed to communicate the message that we want to deal with the border, which is why “most Americans seem to have heard little about what Democrats were actually saying and/or heard Maga lies about how “extreme” they were.”
There are tons of Progressives in New Media; they just don’t point people to the Democratic party, because they think Harris is not far left enough.
What we need are some Liberal voices in New Media. There are a handful, but they’re drowned out by the Socialists and the Tankies and the Progressives.
I saw a billion headlines about the “Uncommitted Delegation” and their ridiculous demands. “How much more can they have been deplatformed”? How about, “you’re not committed to us? Great, we’re not committed to you. You’re not Democrats and your policy is not Democratic policy; goodbye”.
I don’t think Democrats need to change policy. Democratic lawmakers are for the most part solidly Liberal.
The issue is with the New Media landscape on the Left, which is mostly full of Tankie brain rot and circular firing squads.
Mainstream Democrats have been running on slightly stale Republican platforms since Bill Clinton. And the GOP keeps shifting further to the right to the point that Nixon would be considered a flaming liberal (in financial aspects, for certain) and even Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be ‘right’ enough to earn a speaking spot at the RNC.
Stranger
You’re so right. Here is the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform, let’s go through it and see just how Republican it is.
Ok, page 1: a Land Acknowledgement. I remember when Reagan used to read those at the start of every speech.
Chapter 1, the economy - mostly criticism of trickle down economics, we all remember how much the Republicans hated that, right?
Chapter 2, more anti trickle down, tax cuts for the lower classes, tax hikes for the rich… All your standard Republican policy.
A whole chapter on gun violence, we know how much Republicans love gun control, they hate that 2nd amendment!
Marriage protections? Civil Rights for LGBTQI+ as the policy paper calls them? We all know these are decades old Republican buzzwords!
I doubt think you can coalesce a national party around the “We’re MAGA, but we won’t be as openly nasty about it” banner while MAGA currently exists.
Who on Earth suggested that?
The reason I need to push back @Babale is because what you’re suggesting is essentially doubling down on the failed strategy of the 2016 and 2024 elections; of trying to court centrists and the center right and sideline the “far left” as you want to put it.
How many elections do we need to lose before we’re allowed to question this strategy?
No it isn’t. You can put it in italics but this was not a major factor at all. I’m sure we can find some isolated example of someone saying it once but currently Googling “democrat deportations are racist” only seems to find examples of republicans saying that this is what democrats are saying.
Meanwhile, trump’s plans were spelled out in racist terms, with concepts of “bad genes” “poisoning the blood”. But apparently the problem is someone sometime calling him out on it.
But again this is backwards. We didn’t communicate the message because we can’t communicate any message right now. If we could, fewer people would have voted based on objectively false facts.
Again I reject the loading of “far left” given how popular most progressive policies are to the average American. Which is also why such channels are popular on new media. But it’s true that such people don’t feel well represented by the democrats because, they aren’t.
Nonetheless, if there’s a prominent progressive channel that is advocating for extreme positions and did not endorse Kamala, feel free to point it out. I’ll wait here.
And what happened? Were they ultimately listened to? Were they given a chance to speak and did it influence Kamala’s message on Gaza at all?
Progressives have been utterly sidelined for many years at this point. I’m surprised your news sources made such a big point about this given the outcome was so predictable.
No one is stopping corporate democrats from engaging in new media. They just can’t find an audience because it turns out their positions aren’t popular.
LOL, how can it be a repeat of a failed strategy if the people I’m saying we need to cut ties with are still here?
“Our side never ever called Trump’s policy racist. Anyways, Trump’s policy is racist and here is why…”
And yet, multiple Democrats who have done a better job of distancing themselves from Progressives won, even in states or counties Kamala lost. We won Senate races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. We won House seats. We passed legislation to protect abortion access in multiple states that went to Trump. So I’m not buying the idea that it’s impossible for Democrats to communicate and it’s not our fault if we lose because it’s not faaaaaaair!!!
Who did endorse Kamala, aside from Cenk at TYT?
His nephew Hasan, the biggest political streamer on Twitch, certainly did not endorse Kamala. Did The Majority Report? I can’t find any confirmation that they did?
Much like conservative comedians talking about how they’re not allowed to joke about trans people, they were given a billion chances to speak about how they are being silenced, yes. And the Democrats were too chicken shit to denounce them, because they were afraid to piss off people who are neither Democrats nor Liberals to begin with.
Good one!
Where is “here”. Like random left wing people say things the democrats wouldn’t run on. Ok? What are the democrats supposed to do about it, get rid of the first amendment?
At the DNC, for one.
How Muslims ever thought Trump would be a better choice than Harris is beyond me and I wonder how the Harris campaign didn’t convince them?
You want them to be excommunicated or something? You were talking about giving them a platform earlier and they have none. They had 0% of the speaking time at the rally. So: false.
Now you’re saying…I don’t know what, what does it mean to cut ties further than they already have?
Correct; those statements are in no way contradictory.
I’m a random person on the internet saying that trump’s words on deportation are racist. And that the democrats in no way talked about it in those terms. What’s the supposed contradiction?
And do you have any actual objection to either claim?
What are you claiming that Kamala failed to do that those senators did do?
That’s clearly not an answer to the question. Your suggestion was that progressives “don’t point people to the democrat party” and the cite currently is…an example of one of the most famous progressive channels endorsing Kamala. I can just others that told their viewers to do that, but the point is, you are supposed to be presenting evidence of your claim.
Not by the democrats though, so this idea that the democrats didn’t do enough to silence them is false. Unless you’re suggesting the democrats seize control of all media somehow?
…or you could respond to the point. Whether you agree with the naming of “corporate democrats” is irrelevant to the point of whether you agree that democrats representing the more centrist wing of the party struggle to gain popular support on new media.
I did in the next sentence that you conveniently didn’t quote. I can see the kind of discussion this is. We are done here.