This is my thought on immigration issues in most countries where it’s a problem. Yes there are more migrants about, and a lot of them don’t have good asylum claims. The solution that works is to expand the bureaucracy so that people get processed quicker, and the ones that should be deported get deported quicker. But that solution isn’t politically viable, while the “make their lives suck until they stop coming” solution is.
Gotta disagree with some posters upthread suggesting that democrats had been condescending.
Possibly I missed something, but I rarely saw democrats touting a strong economy. Certainly not enough to push back against right wing media that was lying about the economy, and left wing media that dodged it.
And I disagree with the characterization of only the rich benefiting from a growing economy. Millions of people got a job, and median salaries outpaced inflation.
Yes of course many people have struggled in this economy, the same as always in the US. But this was the polar opposite of “it’s the economy, stupid”.
It’s a messaging war, and RW media is winning it, handily.
I have no doubt that if trump had been president these four years everyone would be acknowledging a strong economy and he would be cruising to re-election.
Nothing. The dems would have had to listen to the people and ran an actual left candidate during the primary. If they actually wanted to win instead of just playing the good cop bad cop con.
And so it begins…
I read someone assert that the percentage of voters who consider Biden and Harris moderate is minuscule compared to those who consider them scarily leftist.
If this is the case, then the idea that “the people” want someone further left than them is debatable. Don’t we talk all the time about how popular liberal ideas and policies are, while liberal politicians who work for them are significantly less popular?
Harris did not present an economic plan that addressed peoples concerns. It could not have been more clear that inflation was causing economic distress for many people. Why didn’t she talk about a middle class tax cut and expanding the food stamp and EBT program so people could afford to pay their rent and eat?
I think the only thing she could’ve done differently was be male, and/or possibly a Republican. Maybe she could’ve openly denigrated and threatened an under-represented portion of the population, too. We’ve had two examples in recent memory of qualified female candidates who lost to the woefully unqualified Trump. She ran a great campaign, especially considering how little time she had to get it up and going.
Honestly, I’m kinda giving up on the US. It’s not the country I thought it was.
It remains to be seen how much Project 2025 and Trump will come back together (but I agree, on the rest).
While it’s true that the people who created that are different people than Trump, don’t seem to have been doing the work under his guidance, and he pretty clearly distanced himself from them during the election, they were still offering a strong Executive role (which would appeal to Trump) in exchange for a Fundamentalist wishlist.
Trump is a transactionalist and, as said above, fairly blasé about the impact of his choices on others, so long as it doesn’t affect him and it serves his own interests. Ultimately, if he can’t get any significant part of Congress to go along with anything that he’s selling, then he’s just a 4 year lame duck with Federal immunity. For Trump, that’s probably sufficient but I don’t think that’s his primary vision. We also all still need to fear whatever compromising materials might still be out there in the world, held by Russia, Turkey, China, etc. against Trump. Even if he has no big plans for what to do with the US government, that doesn’t mean that he’s necessarily free to do nothing. He’ll have to trade with someone, to get something done. If the fundies are the only group that will have him, then he needs to work with them.
Well look how many things they managed to pin on Kamala that were false: gender reassignment without telling parents, enforcing trans in sports, post-birth abortion, “border czar” / “open borders” etc etc
The stuff the Dems said about Trump has much better basis in fact, especially project 2025.
So this theory at best could only be a partial answer, we would still need to explain why one set of hyperbole was so much more effective than the other.
Because Trump never underestimated the intelligence of the American public.
In an indirect way, Biden and his ego still cost the Democrats the election. If he would have publicly announced in, say, 2022, that he wasn’t going to seek reelection, he would have given the Ds plenty of time to go through a thorough primary process and coronate and prepare the next successor. Instead, by refusing to drop out until only months remained in the race, he forced the Ds to take action flat-footed.
There is nothing Harris could have done differently. The country wants change (any change; no matter how dangerous) and a member of the current administration can’t convincingly argue they are for that. Half the country has embraced nihilism thinking it can’t get worse than it already is. Boy, are they in for a surprise.
Harris ran a decent campaign, unified her party, raised a lot of money and won some celebrity endorsements (though these are overrated). Some people say “any solid candidate could beat Trump”. This isn’t true - Trump’s support has been incredibly resilient under surprising conditions. It is not true beating Trump is as easy as debating better, having a more positive message, etc.
Voters seemed to like Trump’s negative messages against immigration, against business regulation and against perceived “liberal-woke” values. A more positive message may not reflect how people actually feel about the economy or immigration. Some people do not wish to be led by people with certain characteristics, and Harris could do little about that.
If looking for what could have been done differently:
- Was the raised money spent wisely? Did it fully consider the best ways to get out voters and get message?
- Should her campaign have been both more negative and more humorous? - “weird” got under Trump’s skin but was earlier on
- Negative messages from those who worked with Trump were discussed too late
- Did not differentiate enough from Biden, who remains unpopular
- Media did not attack Trump’s age or fluency anything like Biden; not sure what Harris could have done about this
- Harris seems relatively successful about winning over Black voters but not Latino males
- “It’s the economy”. More focus?
- Would a different VP made much difference?
- Polls predicted a very close race but Trump won most of the seven most contested states. What could Harris have done to win, say, Wisconsin?
- Less identity politics, though Harris did not overplay these.
- Made more use of her Silicon Valley backers?
- Did the Democrats rely too much on Trump’s legal problems, or assume most voters would agree about their take on Trump’s deficiencies?
- Trump’s numbers among women were better than I would have guessed. But why?
- More appeal to some libertarian values: smaller government, more choice on personal issues, less focus on big programs?
Harris failed to sell the message that Trump is just some politician who says one thing and does another. He is not the Great Conservative doing Conservative things, and who only ever lies to piss of the libs.
That’s no secret to anybody, even Trump’s supporters. In fact, many of the votes he received were from voters who convinced themselves that he won’t actually pursue the most radical proposals he espoused during the campaign.
That’s far from my experience of any MAGA that I’ve met and far from my experience of any news media, from any political party.
Go to any comments and you’ll see millions of them saying that, given the White House, Trump will half the budget and destroy the Deep State built by prior administrations. I’m the only person that I’m aware of that points out things like Trump’s passage of defund the police, increasing immigration quotas, okaying NSA surveillance of Americans, etc.
Clearly, she erred by running on sound policy, good governance and a forward looking message. Most Americans want a dark, dystopian message about threats from the Other that can only be averted by surrendering freedom in return for security.
Unfortunately, you may be right.
Right, but she stated it as a given that Project 2025 was his plan, when he said it was not and spent hours a day pontificating on what his plans actually are. She should have let Trump state his plans himself. It would have been a powerful statement if Harris could demonstrate that she doesn’t lie while Trump does.
And those celebrity endorsements don’t do her much good if they make ridiculous statements like Oprah saying Trump might take away women’s right to vote, or Obama repeating the widely debunked story about Trump calling Nazi’s fine people.
When not complaining about Trump, the rest of her speech usually sounded like a high school valedictory address with a bunch of inspirational hype landing flat without useful information of her agenda.