The idea that democrats would abandon their base and try to flip republicans was idiotic beyond belief. The exit polls show that practically no republicans were swayed by this, as anybody with a functioning brain could've told the democrats. What they ended up doing was to alienate and demoralize the people who might've showed up to vote for them while having no impact on the republican vote.
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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I agree, it was a colossal mistake for Harris to try and win over GOPers. But Harris’s policies remained those I listed.
I had no issue with Harris campaigning with Cheney. Cheney and I disagree on 99% of things, but we agreed that Trump is a corrupt piece of shit. Cheney and Kinzinger sacrificed the easy Republican win to go against Trump. As did Romney to a slightly lesser extent.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists. That your could vote for Harris and still be a capital R Republican.
I've met (e.g. was raised by) these people. I thought it was a large part of the voting population.
Clearly I was fucking wrong. Clearly this was a niche. But I understood the strategy. I see people complaining that Harris moved too far to the right but I can't think of a single right wing policy she picked up. Sure she picked up/was always following neoliberal policy, which aligns with neocon policy, but that was a given. We already had Biden, Harris was an extra step towards progressive, but not a leap. In either case I was happy enough.
Suffice to say I don't buy the argument that Cheney cost Harris any voters.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists.
You can facilitate the more moderate alternative by passing electoral reform in blue states.
This has already happened in Alaska, which has already implemented Ranked Choice voting. The voters picked a more moderate conservative over Sarah Palin.
Republicans are trying to repeal Ranked Choice voting in Alaska by the way. More proof that electoral reform is the way forward for our country.
Now all we have to do is convince democrats to support democracy in states they control. I guess step one would be beating into their heads that they are no longer allowed to fight the republicans alone.
Democrats must allow more political parties to participate in the electoral process. Given their flailing looking for something or someone to blame for their failures (again), I think they still are not willing to do so. I hope I'm wrong.
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Nah I have republican family, they didn't see cheyney voting for kamala and say "oh wow I should do that too," they said "that fucking turncoat, rot in hell!"
I mean, what would you think if you saw idk fucking AOC or Ilhan going "man I'm going trump over this gaza situation?" Bet you still wouldn't have voted trump lol, it's a "nice try" but it is also the dumbest most out of touch move tbh.
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Let’s see, so we’re blaming Biden for stepping aside too late, his advisors for not encouraging him to step aside, the DNC for not holding a second primary, and Harris for trying to get voters by reaching across the aisle.
Let’s for once try Occam’s Razor.
Can we just accept that more than half the ~~nation is~~ voters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.
That's the explanation that requires zero introspection and change on behalf of the Democratic party. Democrats need to learn something here. Democrats need to finally implement that change obama promised all those years ago.
Unless their purpose is to lose.
I think the real answer is all of the above. Biden waited too long to drop out, which didn't give enough time to properly hold a primary. This resulted in Harris being nominated with no way to gauge how popular she would be. She then ran a terrible campaign spending too much time courting moderate Republicans. This resulted in progressives being disillusioned and not voting. Her stance on Israel and Gaza turned away Arab voters who also didn't vote. All of this combined together to pave the way for a second Trump presidency.
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Because that’s the simplest explanation
No, it's even simpler than that. The majority don't pay attention to anything past headlines. There are numerous reasons for this, time, effort, working 3 jobs to make ends meet, etc. And that's something the Republicans excel at, they have spent the past 60 years developing an entire network of media to spread their propaganda masking it as factual "news".
Because people aren't looking past the headlines... if you break that down and simplify why that is , you get to the base of the average person having a hard time in the current economy. One party telling them that it is hard and they'll change things, and the other party telling them it's not actually that bad. If you're having a hard time and one group keeps insisting that you're really not, you're probably going to pick the other side if those are the only options. It's not rocket science, fuck, it's not even political science, it's just ignoring the issue and trying to convince someone being beaten to death by the system that they're not actually getting beaten.
But actually committing to do something substantially FDRish for the working man isn't an easy sell within high level Democrat party leadership. I don't know why this is true exactly but I expect it has to do with money and power.
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Are we completely ignoring the right wing echo chamber on social media and cable news? I've encountered no shortage of people who have been completely sucked into that world and buy into the bullshit. Not all of them are innately evil, but their candidate of choice certainly is
So you’ve got 4 issues all resolving to personal issues from the Democratic Party, a very simple explanation that they lost due to their own inner problems, and you occams razor to “it’s just *ism”?
Why is self reflection so hard for Dems.
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Democrats certainly like the "America is racist" narrative because it gives them justification for chasing the racist vote next time.
I feel like Occam's razor points to a DNC that hates voters, as exemplified by your comment and there not being a fair DNC primary to actually select the most popular candidate for 8 years, and voters responding in kind.
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I recall reading early on that DNC campaign advisers were recommending against continuing with the "weird" rhetoric, and the article mentioned some specific people who had worked on the 2016 campaign. It floored me that those people still had jobs. I guess they got their way eventually. I now have no expectation that they won't be doing the same shit in 2028.
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
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refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
55 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)
(5 children)
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
That's because they're paid by big money donors to prevent any movement to the left while big money donors pay the GOP to move further right. This shifts the center (Overton Window) further and further right over time, causing the Democrats to ultimately move towards the right over time.
Obama said that if he was a politician in the 1980s, he would be considered a Republican, and he wasn't wrong.
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"DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one."
I think I had this exact revelation during or right after the 2020 primaries and it has deeply impacted my approach to voting ever since.
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The same progressives that didn’t show up to vote?
Yes. The lesson here is you can't win without progressives, and if you try they will punish you.
You seem to be trying to imply that progressives aren't important, but the reality is exactly the fucking opposite.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration. Everyone I know voted. No one I know irl felt democrats didn’t go far enough left.
That is a talking point being repeated a lot on lemmy.ml though. Which is telling considering its reputation.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration.
Well no shit, when those are only things in the multiple-choice response anywhere close to what voters are really feeling, of course that's what they're gonna measure!
But you have to read between the lines, interpret and understand what the data is telling you. Why are they worried about immigration? Why are they worried about inflation? The answer is because they're economically insecure, falling behind while the rich get richer, and seeing the inequity do nothing but expand day by day. They fucking want leftist economic reforms because those are the things that would actually help fix their problems, but they're never gonna be allowed to express it on a goddamed survey made by neoliberals who are more interested in huffing their own confirmation bias to pimp themselves to their corporate donors than actually helping the citizenry!
Who said there was multiple choice questions? Read between the lines? What are you rambling about?
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No one knows the political lean of who didn't vote.
Tell that to OP for their comment:
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
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They didn’t vote because Harris ran as a republican. Run as a progressive if you want those votes.
Hahahaha....oh wait you're serious....BAHAHAHA. Harris didn't run as a Republican and you know it. And no permutation close to it either. And either you know it or you didn't actually pay any attention beyond "I saw her on the same stage as Liz Cheney so they must be pulling right". If you had paid any attention you would see that those last minute inclusions of Republicans was around the threat Trump posed to the country. They got up on stage and literally said that they didn't agree on most positions, but that the need to keep trump out of office overshadowed party alliance.
And given all that if you were actually progressive (and you know wanting to make progress) and being realistic you would look at the actual options and have seen which was as close as you could get to your preference and votes to move the needle in the right direction. Enough people didn't do that (or didn't agree with what I assume are our positions and preferences...very to the left of Trump for myself and presumably many others here) that we ended up with this mess.
There is plenty to learn but "HaRiS RaN As A RePuBlIcAn" is not one of them.
She fucked up. I thought oh shit she might be listening to Bernie when she picked Walz. Then she never looked left for another moment. She played center right and tried to, in the words of another comment, "scrape shit off a fascist's boot". I voted for her, harm reduction etc.
They fucking blew it. If we ever have a real presidential election again they better run progressive hard.
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I voted for her. I’m just dxing the problem, which is enthusiasm. Stop apologizing for their shitty campaign. They should have continued to attack Trump and co a weird. Keep Walz at the front of the campaign. And run on ending the Genocide and improving people’s lives.
I felt my enthusiasm drop for Harris every time she made it clear that she didn’t give a damn about progressives. I still voted, but it is obvious that the electorate didn’t buy her bipartisan and it in fact depresses the electorate. The results speak for themselves.
Harris didn’t run as a Republican and you know it.
She touted an endorsement from Dick Cheney, said she'd put a Republican in her cabinet, and said she'd pass Trump's immigration bill.
Maybe you were born yesterday, but I’ve been politically aware since the beginning of the neoliberal era. I remember Reagan & Thatcher, and I remember Bill Clinton’s triangulation and every rightward lurch the Democratic party has made since.
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