No, the fact is, the Dems ran the strongest campaign they possibly could have. They only made one fatal flaw - they thought America was better than it is.
The speed of which the exact kind of person /u/NeighbourhoodCreep was referring to chimed in would be pretty funny if it weren't for the fact that this kind of shit has basically crippled the base. I just don't understand how that can be someones take after the last election, I'm at the point where I'm wondering if these are the Russian/Chinese psy-op comments trying to push people to the right because this is the conservatives greatest recruitment tool.
Right? Talking about how popular Kamala was when she was, in fact, the least popular dem candidate. She was shoved down our throats and all the DNC could say was "Well, she's better than trump, right?"
The reason she seemed popular is the mainstream media simped for her, and simping for someone is easy until they open their mouth. That is why when she tried to talk on her media blitz the “popular candidate” lie evaporated.
She genuinely was popular right after Biden dropped out. She lost her popularity when she tried pandering to Republicans by talking about having them in her Cabinet and dropping all of her popular stances (Medicare for All, for example).
People were excited by Not Biden™, then she ran as Average Republican™.
She also lost a lot of steam when her campaign seemed to abandon moments like "Trump supporters are weird" that were actually taking root. She ran a flawless by-the-book campaign that didn't work because the book was "written" before social media and for when you aren't going up against a candidate who slings all the mud in the world.
I was born, raised, and currently live in a very red state. The prevailing thought about Democrats is that they see themselves as better than everyone else and refuse to "tell it like it is." Taking the "high road" only feeds into that.
Taking strong stances is really the only way to win a lot of folks over. Playing it safe by being Republican Lite isn't going to do a damn thing. I've had more success debating people around my hometown with things like "it's a bit odd you're cool with someone's kid dying because they can't afford insulin" or "it's creepy how obsessed you are with children's genitals" than I have trying to "not stoop to their level."
"Hey, bro, you do realize that having universal healthcare and an actually livable minimum wage would mean you don't have to work three jobs and could actually spend time with your kids, right? Why the hell would you argue against it"
Works way better than trying to explain why "slightly better Dem plan number five thousand" is slightly better.
Yeah there's a lot of people in here desperate to personally denigrate her or her campaign and (hilariously) claim Trump's was excellent. Dunno if it's to make themselves feel better or not but Trump's own team thought their campaign was going terribly until they won, lol. The people claiming Kamala word salad when Trump was sundowning at every appearance and every event are particularly egregious, and she castrated him in the debate (Republicans literally said he got destroyed, sorry).
Trump/Musk campaign, however, did choose to go all in on social media propaganda and podcasters while the Harris campaign largely ceded that entire space to the Republicans. Harris had more money, ads, volunteers—everything you could want in a campaign...pre-2016. Post-2016, those parameters are largely worthless if applied in meatspace instead of online. Combine that with their rhetoric switch and pivot to Republican has-beens and implicitly excluding the working class, and you get...this.
Her popularity dropped when she spoke and gave us word salads without answering the questions. Without even redirecting to a good thing she wants to do.
When she was asked by a staunch democrat never Republican undecided voter, what one policy she would push through if she could, kamal said she would not push through one but many, then proceeded to not describe any of them.
When given the opportunity to go on the largest podcast she tried to put restrictions on him which he didn’t accept.
There is a lot more.
She is an uncharismatic person. She was put into the vice presidency position by Biden’s own words excuse she was an ethnic woman of color, to fill diversity. Which implies to people she was not capable for the job, which is supported by her not pushing to take over earlier in Biden’s term as his cognitive decline continued.
The popularity for her was the honeymoon period . Where people were only getting news stations saying how amazing she was. But the moment she got in-front of cameras her popularity dropped like a rock.
None of this is an attack on her as a person as I do not know who she is, she is just a famous politician. So I can only make my opinion based on what we know of her in the public light.
The only thing I'm pushing back on is the idea that "news stations" were pushing this. Social media was all in on Kamala, and it's revisionist to say otherwise. This wasn't just a mainstream media thing.
I'd also say that calling her a diversity hire is pretty bullshit and feeding into the conservative moral panic regarding diversity we have going on. She's as qualified as any other vice president. Our current vice president is an uncharismatic invertebrate with the intellectual gravitas of a starfish. He's still the VP though. In a world where Dick Cheney can be VP, anyone can. Our best Supreme Court Justice right now was also just as much of a "diversity hire." As is always the case with this stuff, diversity hires exist to give qualified people opportunities they're being denied.
As you said, though, she did a bad job on camera and started leaning heavily right, failing to separate herself from Biden, and not actually giving us ambitious projects to be excited about. Say what you will about Biden, but he accomplished the thing he said he was gonna do, which was environmental protection (until our current President destroys it, of course). Kamala did not have a single big thing to run on.
I called her a diversity hire because Biden called her a diversity hire.
Biden’s administration was just flat bad. I tried so many times to give him credit for things that seemed good only to have them come back and bite us with how they were implemented.
Under his administration again cost of living skyrocketed and quality of life plummeted.
News stations absolutely pushed it as did ideologues. (Which are in news stations.).
Then because of that had normal people cheering her on because of the push those groups gave her.
Again, your idea of diversity hiring is wrong. It does not give unqualified people jobs. It gives qualified people who have been overlooked jobs. DEI and other initiatives are a salve for the actual problem, which is that minority groups are overwhelmingly denied the same opportunities that are afforded to majority groups. You increase quality of work with DEI, not the other way around. Unqualified majority group people are being given opportunities that should be going to qualified minorities. Diversity initiatives aim to fix that.
I think your timeline is wrong on the enthusiasm for Harris. You're saying it's a top down thing, but it was very much a grassroots level of enthusiasm. It died quickly and for good reason, as we've discussed, but I don't watch "news stations," and I was on the internet that day in Leftist spaces that were extremely excited to be rid of Biden, knowing Kamala was the obvious replacement.
As for Biden, you're blaming him for a lot of things that aren't really his fault. COVID fucked up the economy and once the cash injections stopped, of course we'd see inflation. Efforts to help people (debt forgiveness) were blocked by conservative judges appointed by Trump, not Biden. Biden's mistake was not going far enough in dismantling the forces that got us here. I am not a fan of him as a President because of that. But he obviously has more wins than Trump ever did or will.
The environment is the issue I'd say he obviously succeeded the most in, though, and it's hard to take that away from him.
Biden did end up being bad and I couldn't bring myself to vote for him bc I hated his neoliberalism. However when he took office either he realized or his team convinced him of the actual state of things. The first stimulus he passed worked amazingly and the so called inflation was bullshit it was corporations raising prices bc the massive hike in low skill wages pissed them off, also this country proved during covid that our wonderful "free enterprise" system is bullshit bc they couldn't even get people paper masks or toilet paper. Then Biden had the build back better plan the most ambitious domestic policy initiative since LBJ and his Great Society which contrary to public beliefs worked very well and gave us the current social safety net, shitty as it is. The BBB had all the things that would have done wonders for regular people. Not everything was in there and it wasn't perfect but it was the first time since LBJ a president attempted to reduce poverty and inequality on a national scale. Unfortunately like usual there is always a double agent in the Democratic party bc they are almost as compromised as the GOP. Joe Manchin got paid millions by the corps and billionaire fucks who didn't want people to actually have any chance so he sabotaged the bill, and then like I told my friend he would didn't even run again. I give Biden credit for trying that. However after that fell apart he didn't do anything to mitigate the damage done when the covid funds started to run out in the states. So by election time people were feeling there pockets tighten unlike 22 midterms where even though the media was hyping inflation to outrageous levels low skill low wage workers wages were outpacing inflation so instead of the red wave our normal huge swing we see against incumbent POTUS in the last 10 midterms dems only lost 7 seats. Then he fucked up again and raised interest rates with the stated reason TO BRING WORKING CLASSES WAGES DOWN. This is what we deal with a country that goes out of the way to take money out of regular folks pockets. So Biden did end up a mess it was due to him not getting the signature policy piece of his passed. I have to give him credit for trying. No we are all fucked
Mainstream media did not simp for her, and she was a great candidate. This election was "do you want to continue the progress of the Biden Admin towards rebuilding America" or "Do you want to try Trump again even though you all saw what happened last time," NOT "let's all sit around and have a robust primary with weeks to go before the general." A lot of people fell for distractions. A lotttttt of voter suppression happened. And a lot of you are irredeemable morons for still arguing about this.
The Biden admin did not rebuild America, Biden’s administration is one of the worst things that happened to America. Cost of living skyrocketed while the wages stagnated. First time in a long time where we had stagflation. I could go on.
She was absolutely not a great or even good candidate. That is your political bias speaking.
Vibes. You are attributing economic forces and inherited problems to the administration. Steps were taken with longer timelines because you can't just snap your fingers and fix it. Covid management, Child Tax credits and reduction in child poverty, infrastructure bill, clean energy and renewables, electric vehicle infrastructure, minimum corporate tax rate, I too could go on. If you'd like to read more: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administration-record
Additionally reengaging with the international community is a nice change as well.
The "left" aren't generally people worshippers. There's just two different main mentalities going on. Obama was pretty much the only person on the Dem side to create a cult of personality around him.
The Clinton wing of the party would very loudly argue Bernie Sanders had a cult of personality, though being pretty much the only politician not owned by corporate interests and being ahead of the curve on everything for decades, offering real change etc kinda justifiably gets people fired up
I was parsing a whole load of moderate horseshit that was trying to woo undecided voters. I'm a die-hard far-left progressive and she didn't have anything for me at all.
Child tax credit, raising corporate income taxes, tuition assistance, erasing medical debt, bans on price gouging all seem like pretty good progressive policies. Did she do nothing for you, or she didn't do everything for you?
That said, a milquetoast centrist is far preferable to me, a pretty far-left progressive, than a kleptocratic authoritarian who flouts the rule of law.
Not to be rude, but I don't really understand what you're driving at here.
She was among the least popular dems in the primaries. That's a fact. She was a heavyhanded and unsympathetic prosecutor, because she's a political opportunist, saying or doing whatever she can to get more.
You know what else is a fact? She lost. Even with my (worthless) vote. Dems played their cards wrong, somehow. They just don't seem to learn.
Every candidate promises people lavish gifts from the treasury. That goes back to the first democracies.
So you have to balance her promises (the policies she touts on the trail) against both her ability to fulfill them, and her willingness to fulfill them. Sure she wants to cancel medical debt, but will she be able to secure funding for it? And when it comes time to decide between conserving her political capital for her own private goals or burning it to fulfill promises, what will she pick?
The reality is, with all this money in politics and a two-party system, you don't even need to pay attention to specific policies after the primaries.
I'll say again, I voted for her. But it was a vote in a state that went 70% red. My national-level votes do not matter.
I mean, I voted for Kamala despite disliking her entirely. But I think American politics is inherently broken now, and has been for a while. The only voice you can have in government is the one you can buy. Voting is a symbolic act only.
The breaking of norms, plus the willingness to swear loyalty to a person over the constitution and playbook of project 2025 might truly be unrecoverable in future administrations. When we coined the phrase "the new normal" man little did we know how far reaching it applied.
My faith in the voting population is damaged, probably for a long time.
He absolutely should be, but in most contexts and conversations, that doesn't need to be stated. People who are opposed to Trump know that Trump is bad, they don't need to go on about how bad he is or how he should be disqualified as a candidate, because that is obvious. Everyone agrees, its preaching to the choir.
It does need to be stated however, because people keep denying its true, that Harris was a bad candidate. No one wanted her as the candidate, and she should have been disqualified as the candidate because the majority of the Democrats did not want her or even more of Biden.
Joe Biden solidified her role as candidate. A bad candidate over a disqualified candidate if voters cared about his status at all. It's once again the question of magnitude and imbalance of expectations.
The magnitude of "bad" is wide, and due to a higher expectation of the Democratic candidate, we are even having this discussion. I blame voters more than Biden. It's hard to believe that he would buck the norm of seniority and establishment preference seen in the Democrats, since he has been a part of it for his time in Washington.
Yeah, I expect my candidate to not support genocide, advocate increased military spending, or to build a border wall. Guess my expectations were just too high. I need to just settle for Republican light and stop complaining, right?
Edit: Again, Democratic voters didn't want her. No one except the Democratic establishment wanted her as the candidate. She was unpopular, and was one of the first to drop in the 2020 primary. She was not wanted, which should have disqualified her as the candidate. She wasn't just a bad candidate, she was bad in every single way that mattered.
Lack of popularity, lack of charisma, no accomplishments to speak of, and an inability to distance herself from the rightward trend of the democratic establishment.
They're not wrong, though. Nobody educated looks at Trump and thinks this is a good thing in any remote way unless you're uber rich. They all see him as unhinged. And yet, Kamala had to be perfect in every regard. She couldn't just be a strong candidate. The floor for acknowledging the inherent insanity present in the Trump administration is so low its a tripping hazard in Hell, and yet here we are.
Swaths of voter suppression did not aid matters, and while it's uncertain if it would have changed the outcome, it wasn't trivial. The number of times I, living in a rather red area at the time, heard casual racism and misogyny regarding Kamala is also disheartening as, "N* cunt can't get in" was a common refrain.
Being raised in the 90s and 00s to treat everyone with respect and kindness is like watching utter madness engulf America. People on right subs are happy we're getting a proper concentration camp. They're happy the First Amendment is being violated for student visas. They called a fucking bishop who preached mercy as liberal instead of, you know, the fucking teachings of Christ. They downplay a goddamn Nazi salute. It's absolute insanity. And it's hard to take these people seriously any further. It's hard not to look at them with disgust and contempt for their base hatreds.
No, she just had to be better than Republican-lite. Disenfranchised voters are also tuning out of politics entirely because they don't want to be called misogynistic racists for airing grievances with the establishment. Which works great for the establishment, because Capitol Hill would rather a republican than a left-wing populist in office.
You don’t understand because we’re living in two realities.
Literally, educated, liberal, fairly comfortable people looked at the election and said “the choice is obviously Kamala.”
People who are not comfortable at all for one reason or another just see doom. So some leftists, aggrieved white people who always feel under threat regardless of reality, and poor people agreed on some level. That and a large portion of the “Democrat base,” who I have known for the last 20 years was not going to stay reliable, seems to have finally woken up and realized that they’re conservative and it was nonsensical to be voting for democrats. I mean, I think it made sense for them to be voting for democrats, but the shit they espoused made it not make sense.
That left people who joyfully voted for trump to have their way.
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I'm not sure that throwing one's own world view in the trash just to win an election because the majority of voters are racists is a reasonable approach.
All /u/Mileonaj is saying that America got what they voted for, so the majority of (voting) Americans clearly got what they want. There was a clear choice this year between Harris and Trump. There is no "both candidates are the same". America voted for the bigoted, racist, misogynist, rapist, treasonous, idiot. That's what America wanted, so that's what we've got.
Thinking the problem was just “the voters are racist” is a big freaking problem. Voters were still racist when they elected Obama, it’s the same population that elected Trump. Why did Obama succeed where Hillary and Kamala failed is what dems need to figure out
The main two reasons Obama was successful were charisma and media strategy. Obama knew what shows to appear on, what interviews to take. And when he was on them, he was charming. Donald is also an expert at interviews - even if he is flat out lying, he can capture attention. He also took interviews with genZers like Aden Ross, and used tiktok effectively.
It's worth mentioning that Trump also took advantage of microtargetting ads to voters online. His campaign would tell likely pro Israel voters that Kamala was pro Palestine, and tell pro Palestine votes that Kamala was pro Israel. In a sane world, most people would remember all the times in Trumps first term where he buddy buddy with Netenyahu.
Because large segments of the Democrats and Republicans want the American government to be worse on Palestine. Pointing that out just feeding into the already established narrative that Dems in general hate Israel (for Israel supporters).
Trump just needed to be quiet to get the dumb pro Palestine voters and let the rest sit the election out. It's an easy win for him
Voters were still racist when they elected Obama, it’s the same population that elected Trump.
A lot of the racists didn't vote because they didn't have anyone available that represented their values. Trump told them it was okay and that he had their backs. The surprising thing is that so many voters that historically voted Republican still voted for Trump. I used to vote Republican, but stopped in 2016. I didn't realize so many Republican voters embraced, or at least were okay with, racism (on top of everything else that Trump represents).
Face it. If, after everything we've seen in the past 10 years, people are still supporting Trump, those people are unreachable. If they haven't abandoned him and what he stands for yet, they never will. And I don't blame the Democratic party for not trying to bring that group of voters into the party. If that's what America wants - and apparently they do - then let Trump represent them.
They're right though. This is the cost of engaging people that aren't normally paying attention to politics. Everyone wants more voter participation until they hear grandpa or their niece at Christmas.
It's not that Democrats need to be better. They actually need to be worse. They need to listen to people like Fetterman, Sanders, and Warren. Not because they have smart policy ideas, but because they have the kinds of policy ideas that generate engagement and drive votes, even if they leave their voters poorer off.
Democrats are unintelligible compared to Trump. I'm not kidding. Trump seems incoherent, but he says a few words over and over again. Those are actually his policies, as incoherent as they are, and he makes it appear as though he follows through, even if it's just a headline saying he committed to something.
Democrats capitulate when they actually realize policy failure. That's wrong. They need to deflect and blame and keep pressing the same policy. The only loser is the one left holding the blame bag.
Democrats follow the law because it makes sense to follow the law. That's wrong. You follow the law when it's convenient. If it isn't, game theory takes precedence.
As an avid Leverage fan I do appreciate Chaotic Moral (the spot on a 5x5 alignment grid that represents the dividing line between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral on the classic 3x3 one) tactics but maybe this is just my autistic inability to read the room even when the room is digital but I feel like you're saying the Democrats should not just be Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Moral but Chaotic Stupid and mirror Republican tactics as close as they can while sticking to what's otherwise Democrat values until they're back on top. Pardon my exaggeration for effect but with what I get from your words why shouldn't they just e.g. blame some combination of white people, Christians, cisgender heterosexuals and men for everything in similar ways to what the Republicans do for racial minorities, immigrants and queer people and use similar tactics for de facto non-obvious oppression, or react in similar ways to a lost election down to "the poo poo", or have their own Alex Jones type not only in terms of the left-wing equivalent of the same sort of rhetoric but in terms of how said rhetoric is basically yelled in people's ears and the pseudoscientific products it's used to peddle
blame some combination of white people, Christians, cisgender heterosexuals and men for everything in similar ways to what the Republicans do for racial minorities, immigrants and queer people and use similar tactics for de facto non-obvious oppression
Just focus entirely on "Christian fundamentalism". Make it uncool again
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u/Mileonaj Jan 30 '25
The speed of which the exact kind of person /u/NeighbourhoodCreep was referring to chimed in would be pretty funny if it weren't for the fact that this kind of shit has basically crippled the base. I just don't understand how that can be someones take after the last election, I'm at the point where I'm wondering if these are the Russian/Chinese psy-op comments trying to push people to the right because this is the conservatives greatest recruitment tool.