Except that there is no genocide. “Israel is committing genocide” is Putinist propaganda.
“Muslim and Arab voters” didn’t decide this election. 13 million Biden voters who stayed home did.
You wanna know what Harris should have done differently? Tell Biden to stay in the race.
Well at least we agree on the last part.
Reviewing, problematic hijacks.
Reopen tomorrow.
This topic was automatically opened after 9 hours.
Moderating: This thread is not about Gaza, don’t hijack it.
She was accused of word salad because she had difficulty answering questions about what she would do differently in comparison to Biden. Instead of going after independent voters with a battle plan she went preaching to the choir. She became Biden 2.0
Sherrod Brown couldn’t win reelection in his home state.
Democrats can win the presidency without carrying Ohio. Happens all the time.
Neither did Donald Trump.
Eh, Trump is definitely a Florida Man now.
They can keep him.
The New Republic has some thoughts that mirror my own - it’s time for the working class to remake the Democratic Party in our image, whether the leadership likes it or not.
This here is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans lose and they claim everything is unfair and fixed and then go behind the scenes to improve things while Democrats spend their time attacking each other publically.
You don’t think republicans attacked each other? Do you remember how we arrived at speaker Johnson? Republicans fight all the time, it’s just the biggest bully won and then the rest fall in line.
That said, I agree with the need for change of course and with most of the new republic article. Wishy-washy centrist courting was a terrible strategy. Essentially it’s letting Republicans dictate what Dems do; so scared of being labelled “communist” or whatever that the party avoids mentioning any progressive policies (which actually poll extremely well, even among republicans).
That and a failure to get to grips with new media seem the key failures to me.
I remember quite a few attacks from the Republican side after Trump lost, and especially after Jan 6. There was a brief, glorious moment where it seemed like the Republicans thought they could be rid of Trump, and spoke openly about that. That’s when Ben Shapiro described Jan 6 as “worse than 9/11”, for example.
Then they got the memo that Trump still had their party by the balls, and they quickly shut up.
She was accused of word salad the minute she first spoke publicly to a national audience. That’s also about the time that the MAGA crowd nicknamed her “Heels Up Harris.”
If you do any better with oratory than MTG, Lauren Boebert, or Donald Trump, you’re incomprehensible to this crowd, and – profoundly intellectually secure as they are – it simply must be a ‘you’ problem.
There was a lot of deception too, once this became the talking point.
For example, on Megyn kelly’s show, they did a segment about how Harris does not give clear answers to questions and showed an example of her rambling. However, it turned out that they had spliced together the response, cutting out exactly the sentences where Harris had gone into specifics. So it was very much a knowing deception on their part.
Of course not everyone watches that show, but more common was just famously taking Harris’ response to a question asking for specifics on reducing prices, and just showing the first couple sentences, where Harris begins by talking about where she grew up.
Begins
Because in the same response she goes on to talk about the housing credit, small business loan etc.
So, sure, there was a perception that Harris spoke in word salads, but was it true?
More importantly, if we’re going to say Democrats lost because Republicans had a talking point, then let’s just concede every election in advance. Conservative media is hardly going to say “The new Democrat leader seems bright and articulate with a clear vision for the country that we just happen to disagree with”.
There are many white liberals who want the party as is and there is going to be a fight for a different direction.
LGBTQ+ issues may be important to certain people, but they are not close to the #1 issue for the electorate. Trans and sports may be a minor issue, but the fact is that the sporting bodies are going to make gender determinations in these instances, and arguing that it doesn’t matter, never happens, well sports really don’t matter… not a hill worth dying on.
Some of us don’t want to lose every election going forward for the foreseeable future, thank you very much.
From the linked article:
No, thanks. How about instead of ruining this perfectly good party and making it irrelevant for the foreseeable future, go support a party that already runs on this unelectable platform, like the DSA? And then the rest of us can get back to issues Americans care about.
Describing Kamala as taking a rightward tack on immigration, as that article did, is downright dishonest. Fixing our asylum system isn’t a rightward shift, unless you’re starting at the Republican straw man of Democrats wanting to open the border.
Eta: and maybe I’m wrong, and the more radical platform is exactly what people want. In that case, great - beat us at the ballot box. But I don’t think you will, because Bernie underperformed compared to Kamala.
TL;DR. I don’t think there’s anything the Harris campaign could have done tactically to do any better. I think their loss is due to a fundamental issue the Democrats need to address: a large percentage of Americans deeply distrust the progressive left. It isn’t even a matter of specific policies they don’t like; it’s the belief that given the chance, the left will gradually boil the frog. A quote from C.S. Lewis that I’ve seen making the rounds sums up this fear:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Quite simply, a plurality of Americans chose the literal robber baron over what they were convinced were the would-be omnipotent moral busybodies. It’s why the Democrat’s sincere insistence that all they want are things that are good, necessary and rational doesn’t reassure anyone on the right. It’s why the Right constantly calls the Democrats “Socialists” and “Communists”. It’s the perception that the Democratic Left consists of technocrats who will tell the proles– for their own good of course– to shut up and do what they’re told, and anyone who goes along with them are the Sheeple. In essence, the Democrats are no longer the party of populism. And no, it isn’t a matter of the Democrats merely needing to do a better job of explaining that all they want are things that are good, necessary and rational; to quote a religious figure again:
Then it came burning hot into my mind, that, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house he would sell me for a slave
Now why should the Right believe such silly, paranoid things? Well maybe it’s because they have already had things crammed down their throats they deeply dislike and are facing the possibility of more, and the Left keeps telling them how wrong and evil they are for objecting. It’s like a left-wing version of a fundie theocracy, legislated morality only with progressive morals instead of conservative morals.
As long as the Democrats keep responding to these fears with repeated insistence that there’s nothing to worry about, that they have the best of intentions, or even worse keep insisting that they’re the ones being oppressed by the evil fascist Right, then the Democrats will continue to lose ground.
Information bubble exist for everyone now. So, whatever your view, it’s reinforced by like minded peers much more often than it used to be. Those bubbles are not applicable in general elections because if your bubble isn’t big enough, you lose.
A ruling Dem coalition perhaps has more problems now with bubbles and people insisting on their way or no way. At this time it’s a lot of no way for the Dems.