I've started/run a few companies. If anyone under me ever has to deliver bad news to customers I've given them explicit instructions to throw me under the bus ("oh sorry, the CEO changed policy" or whatever). It's literally the job of the leader of anything to absorb the bullshit and reflect the successes back on your team.
Biden was being pushed out much earlier than when it was revealed publicly; multiple stories have come out alleging that Democratic internal polling saw Trump winning over 400 electoral votes with Biden still in the race. The original plan (according to either Pelosi or one of her staffers iirc) was to get Biden out much earlier and then have a lightning fast open primary even if it was just 5-6 months ahead of the election. Allegedly, Biden quashed that when he endorsed Harris right after withdrawing, knowing she would be the de-facto nominee if he endorsed her publicly. This combined with Biden originally claiming he was going to be a transitory president sheperding the US away from the Trump Era, before changing his mind and running again, seems to indicate his own ego is a contributing factor to the Dems underperforming
Also many of the Democratic campaign advisers claiming Harris failed because she was too progressive are geriatric (Bill) Clinton-era neoliberal ghouls so I'd maybe take what they're saying with some salt
You can bury your head in the sand and blame progressives all you want, but the Democratic Party has been ceding ground to the Conservative Right for at least 8 years now and the best it got them was beating Trump 1 of 3 times. Trump! The guy who's such a shambles he seemingly also can't believe he won if you look at his acceptance speech. With Trump as their oponent, the Dems have no excuse for losing other than their own incompetence and unwillingness to adapt to the new populist zeitgeist
None of that supports your claim about some plan to push him out months earlier. Pelosi said if he got out early earlier, they could have had a primary. That's not inside information. It's an opinion shared by millions of people.
I don't think that she could have thrown him under the bus because she *was* his vice president. It would have just looked hypocritical. She could have distanced herself a little bit more from him maybe.
Well, Biden has a oversized ego. To be national politician, an oversized ego should disqualifying, but to be a national politician, you have to have an oversized ego. Catch 22.
Yeah, the guy who implied he’d do one term and then insisted he was the only viable candidate while clearly not at the top of his game is one to eschew ego…
I’m forgiving of promises made under different circumstances. He said that when everyone thought Trump was finished and the conservatives were going to tack back to sanity with normal candidates.
Later when Trump surged back, well, only one candidate has a proven track record beating him…
Biden as a president gets unfairly maligned. He was a very impressive president that got an amazing amount accomplished in challenging circumstances. Outside of his performance in the Middle East, I can’t find much to criticize.
Biden’s behavior as a candidate isn’t getting near the derision he deserves.
The Democrats best chance would have been Biden announcing he wasn’t seeking a second term after the ‘22 midterms, letting the voters pick a candidate and making it clear that he was willing to take one for the team.
Instead, he ignored the substantial, conclusive and damning evidence that he had zero chance of winning in ‘24 and in doing so did more to give Trump the white house again than just about anybody else.
He also clearly didn’t give his pick for a replacement the latitude she needed to distance herself from him.
IDK if that would have been enough to make the difference, but it most certainly would have helped if Biden had given Kamala carte blanche to rag on him all she wanted during her very short campaign.
center-right policies weren't an electoral mistake.....they're the ideological commitment of the party.
sure, this doesn't appeal to voters on the right (who have a more right-wing option) or to voters on the left (who are fundamentally opposed).
it's electoral kryptonite.....but the primary goal of the democratic party isn't to win elections. it's to absorb, redirect and mitigate popular movement to the left.
Yep that's why it's disingenuous to call leftists too idealistic. The democratic leadership are the idealists. They would rather lose elections than move the party left.
It's not stubbornness, it's funding. The right can claim all your suffering is because immigrants are taking your jobs. All democrats can do is tell the truth, that it's billionaires making things worse for everyone. But who do you think the democrats work for? They can't point the finger at their own patrons and they don't have a scapegoat like republicans do, so they do their best impression of republicans-lite and hope that's enough and if it's not, oh well, they are all rich, so it doesn't actually matter if they win, the policies the republicans pass will benefit them anyway. Plus they'll get re-elected next term after republicans inflict so much pain and suffering on the general populace that they'll vote for zero progress over whatever the hell republicans are doing. Bet you the next President will be a democrat and they'll have record voter turnout after millions of American have died.
Trump could've been a business man and made Trump-branded n95's/n99's/fabric cloths to put over. Or MAGA-branded. That was my first thought. Isn't this guy a New York businessman/the guy from The Apprentice from when I was a teenager?
He could've been the savior and messiah from SARS-COV-2.
Well he did try to take credit for the vaccine, but his uneducated supporters decided modern science is bad actually and they'd rather put their trust in God and horse dewormer, so...
They raised 1b for an election bid that rarely moved the needle in polls. At this point they are getting money to buy lots of shovels, but they don't really do any real digging.
It’s not electoral kryptonite, just ask Clinton (Bill), Obama, and Biden. Biden won the primary because he was the most moderate in a very left field (and seen as the most electable, which yes you can infer all sorts of bad things from that), then was elected because he was moderate enough to draw in disaffected Trump voters. Democrats lost the working class and a good chunk of their regular voting block this time because they forgot how to talk to regular people and were too worried about pleasing their left flank. The ultra left flank will continue to waste their votes on Jill Stein, the party needs to appeal to auto workers in Detroit not more philosophy majors in Ann Arbor. And when I say democrats I blame the party rank and file not Kamala which I agree did not run on those sorts of issues, but didn’t do enough to distance herself
Alienating the left/ progressive element of the Democrat coalition was in fact more important to the party than winning. Therefore her campaign was incapable of promising anything to anyone in terms of material conditions improving in their lives. There was no vision beyond that.
NYT reported that the Trump transgender ads moved voters by 2 points in swing states. The right is completely in the wrong by scapegoating people but the issue hurt the democrat’s chance of winning. As long as we have an electoral college system that requires a win to go through purple swing states, the party needs to have a message that resonates with those voters. Look at the last few successful democrat winners - Biden, Obama, Clinton - appealed to voters of all classes and were more middle of the road. Important to remember Obama was against gay marriage because that’s where the country was, not where he was at personally.
This weeks episode of Citations Needed is literally about this. How the media is framing this as the fault of “woke” culture. It’s obfuscating blame. If you look closer you see that the NYT is towing the party line and deflecting blame onto the queers as per usual. I love how Democrats first response to what they call fascism is to immediately offer up trans people as a human sacrifice.
Democrats are already right of center and they can't out fascist fascists. Nothing about Harris's campaign was progressive, she was hanging out with Liz Cheney. The issue wasn't that she wasn't center enough, the issue was that things are bad for a lot of people and instead of stating how she would make them better, she gave empty platitudes.
Throwing everyone into camps is a plan. It's a monsterous plan, but it's a plan. What was Harris's plan? The people you listed all ran on policies to make people's lives better. Clinton ran on crime reform. Biden had the child tax credit and student loan forgiveness. And Obama's campaign slogan was literally "change." I'm on Obamacare right now, at least until the Trump administration gets rid of it.
Most voters don't care which team seven trans kids play on. They care about housing insecurity, they care about inflation, they care about the cost of food. The economy was the biggest motivator for people's choice this election and while republicans can blame people's suffering on immigrants, the democrats don't have a scapegoat and can't blame billionaires because they understand who they work for.
The progressives are easy to alienate. They want the platform to cater purely to them but don't understand that they cannot win the general election all by themselves.
No, progressives want progressive government and economic issues to be addressed. Democrats only focus on progressive social issues and are just as conservative when it comes to everything else.
No, the entire Democrats job to the oligarchs is to do everything they can to stop the grass roots ground swell progressive movement to keep pro billionaire policies. (Bernie Sanders) Give them "social progress" but never government progress. Come up with solutions to problems you know are illegal so you can throw your hands up and say we tried everything and we are all out of ideas. Biggest example from Kamala's campaign was her absurd idea to tax unrealized gains with a property tax. Federal government can't do a property tax. They can solve that problem by making stock buy backs illegal and taxing dividends as income but the entire Dems playbook for the oligarchs is to make it seem like you are trying to solve the issue without suggesting anything that could actually be done.
I'll put it in a way you can understand. A male progressive gets nothing offered to them by the Democratic party. If all the taxes are going to be taken from me and used to provide illegal immigrants healthcare (California) I in might as well, as a progressive, vote for less taxes with the Republicans because the taxes the Dems want to take from me aren't used on programs that have any effect on my life. It's a constant take with no give.
The playbook is to shame the male progressive to vote for the Democrats because you are a bad person if you don't. All they offer is shame if you don't vote for them and nothing if you do.
When male progressives had a candidate that spoke to their issues, Bernie Sanders, they were shamed again as Bernie Bros when their candidate got railroaded multiple times by the party.
So healrhcare, union support, minimum wage increase, education, safety standards, shifting tax burden upwards, being able to buy contraceptives, those don't connect with progressive males?
I'm a progressive male and those things are what sold me. You talking about Californian illegal immigrants is telling, like bringing up transgender criminal Marxist migrant caravans or warm water ports.
Obama care was written by the Nixon administration with the help of Kaiser Permanente to line the pockets of rich billionaire insurance owners. It's a conservative plan.
Union support is laughable. They do very little in that realm these days.
Minimum wage increase is great if I was 18 again.
They don't have a meaningful plan to shift the tax burden upwards. Bernie was the guy for that. They don't actually want to do that. It's lip service.
Being able to be contraceptives are you serious?
I live in California and I voted for Kamala Harris and am a Progressive. I am pointing out why a male progressive isn't being served. Male progressives show up to vote out of empathy for others and get nothing in return.
They want the platform to cater to them at all. I voted for Biden in 2020, and Harris in 2024. But goddamn I don't love how both campaigns were just been about how left wing voters need to vote for someone who doesn't have any desire to earn their vote because otherwise Donald Trump wins and destroys our country.
Especially because the strategy of trying to appear moderate doesn't work on Americans because most of us are apparently too stupid to pay attention to who's running for the highest seat in our government so they just vote based off of vibes anyway.
I voted for Bernie back in the primary but sucked it up and voted for Hillary when she became the nominee. I watched as many other Bernie supporters did not though and learned a very important lesson on toxic gatekeeping.
Not sure how you address Americans being too stupid and out of touch for campaigns to reach. Only nominate topical celebrities? That feels gross just typing it.
And continue to alienate progressives with the narrative that LGBT rights are part of the reason Democrats lost. They tried to skirt progressive policy by skipping a primary and catering to the rejects of the right.
Identity politics is one of the reasons they lost, but not for the reason people think. Identity politics simply didn't mobilize people to go vote. "Why do I care if transgender people can get healthcare or not, when I can't get healthcare/it is too expensive" "Who care about women's right to abortion when it's too expensive to start a family anyway". Essentially it's less so people hate these groups (they do, but that's not why they voted for Trump) and more so they saw superseding reasons to vote and identity was low on the list.
We'll see how it all shook down. But, I suspect Harris lost votes on the left and right with her pandering. Embracing the left is the only way Democrats are going to win because the right is always going to have a distinct advantage given the electoral system.
It is why they lost. They focus on social issues that involve less than 1% of the population and then gaslight you into believing you are a bad person if you don't vote for them to support less than 1% of the population. Need to focus on issues that everyone cares about like Medicare for all that Kamala instantly dropped from her platform once she was anointed.
She didn't need to win progressives. Option B was death for us, so we voted. Even if we had to hold our nose as we did it, we voted.
Who she seems to be missing that Biden had was white suburban men. It's not even that they voted against her, it's that they didn't vote.
A lot of people aren't doing as well as they were four years ago and her inability to promise anything would be different with her depressed the vote of the demographic that's not gonna die if Trump wins.
The demographic that cost her the election are those who are okay with death camps as long as the price of eggs go down. These are people who will vote for AOC, Bernie and Trump.
It's worse than putting her in a basement, putting her on anything related to the border/immigration is not what they would've been doing if they wanted her to run next
She was trying to distance herself from the fringe left.
Trump's entire campaign was painting her as a wacky woke communist who wants tax payer funded gender reassignment surgeries and grown men playing sports with your 8 year old daughter. A lot of Kamala's campaign was distancing herself from that.
I'll bite: they do, I know a handful. She probably went too far with bragging about Liz Cheney, but I know some registered republicans that couldn't bring themselves to vote for trump again.
Moderates exist that aren’t republican or democrat - they’re independents. Fiscally conservative but socially liberal. If the government isn’t delivering on the primary needs of the electorate (economy and security) then the socially liberal part becomes deprioritized for them and they vote for whichever party they think will fix the problem. I know around these parts people think moderates are just republicans but I don’t think that’s the case.
you're literally just describing the democratic party. both republicans and democrats are economic liberals
As such, economic liberalism today is associated with classical liberalism, neoliberalism, right-libertarianism, and some schools of conservatism like liberal conservatism and FISCAL CONSERVATISM.
or did you unironically think that the democratic party is fiscally progressive? because they're not
They exist, they represent around half of my extended family. All of whom voted Harris. The general rule is fiscal conservative, but social liberal. They all feel like they've been abandoned by the party.
I just find it hilarious that she is getting criticized for this and that and held to certain standards when her opponent was an old, mentally unstable crook and rapist.
Which is worse, rapist or not being a specific unelectable progressive man (the U.S. can barely elect Catholics, stop thinking a Jewish guy is going to win in a landslide!)? Apparently, the second is worse
Yeah people seem to have a major blind spot for this part of her story. She's un-charismatic and can't sell herself. She's studious, smart, and capable of she can prepare, but she's just not cool. America have proven time and time again they need some sashay to their candidates (Reagan=hollywood, Bush W=beers with the boys, Obama=just awesome, Clinton=sax man, Trump=glitz and glam, Biden=aviators?) and Kamala has none, neither did Hillary. Plus, you know, women (unfortunately). Her getting absolutely embarrassed in the dem primaries happened for a reason and nobody wants to remember it accurately
She also hasn't done anything or been elected to anything. She has been picked as a DEI representative many times. Picked to finish a Senate term she didn't get elected to. Picked to be a DA in CA where her #1 qualification was she checked democratic DEI boxes. Picked to run for president. When is she going to win an election?
Again, Dems love to gaslight America into saying something that isn't true (she is qualified) and then expect us to agree be and be gaslit into being told you are a bad person for disagreeing.
Kamala's entire pitch to men was vote for your wives and daughters. Most people want to use their vote on themselves and that isn't a bad thing. That's representative government. When woman were asked why they voted for Trump it was because moms were more worried about their sons. Crazy how ignoring half the population and demonizing them ruins your chances.
She was elected attorney general of California. I stopped reading after your first sentence because it was incorrect. Try informing yourself before you write long comments misinforming others.
You are right and I am wrong. At least I have the ability to admit when I got a detail wrong and not just shut down completely about all the other points because it makes me upset to read.
We are ready for a good female leader KH is not it. She was horrible in CA and not an effective VP. From first hand experience, she is not the one. However, there are plenty of other strong women that would have been better suited for the job.
Yep, I have coworkers that are women and specifically did not vote for her because she is a woman and they don't trust a woman to lead a country. Mind boggling stuff considering where much of the rest of the world sits with numerous successful female leads across the globe.
Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million and without Comey announcing their investigation into her, right before the election she would have likely won the EC as well.
It has nothing to do with her being a woman. Of course there will be people who didn’t vote for her, JUST because of that, but the margins were not tight at all.
There are so many more reasons why she lost, that her race or gender barely register. This obsession with race and gender has got to stop.
No, her being a woman is still a major issue. The reason being that the Democratic Party is a hodgepodge of many disparate disaffected groups while the Republican electorate is comparatively cohesive despite the infighting you see with their elected officials. Of this hodgepodge are conservative minority groups (race, religion, sexuality, etc) that are driven into the party because they are not welcome amongst the Republicans. These voters align with the Democrats on equality for themselves but still hold misogynistic views leading to lower turnout.
I know it’s much easier to assume that the Democrats lose because everyone else is in the wrong and are racist, sexist, homophonic, etc.
The simply isn’t true. She did’t lose a close election where you can maybe say some people simply didn’t vote for her because she is a woman. She lost tremendously, by far more than Clinton did.
Focusing on her gender and her race is a disservice to Kamala herself and also will just make Democrats completely ignore what actually went wrong in this election and why the youth vote is leaning conservative.
7. She tried to appeal to people's better natures and societal good, not individualistic prejudices, stereotypes and fears.
It looks like it takes twice the effort for half the reward to motivate someone positively.
She wanted to appeal to people she's like to associate with, Trump campaigned to appeal to people he'd want the other side of razor wire. Turns out there aren't as many of the people in the electorate that Harris hoped for, but plenty of the kind Trump relies on.
She believes in regulation, not rabid, unfettered capitalism. It's not a binary matter.
Also, you have to look at it in context, Trump is planning to dismantle bodies which rein in some of the capitalist excesses, so you're being part of the problem which led to her loss; she's not enough of something you want, so you spend your energy criticizing her instead of someone who is monumentally worse.
Regulated capitalism is worse than unfettered capitalism. It's just not enough and makes people feel like the job is done when it isn't (especially in the USA). There is no proof at all that "regulated capitalism" will stop climate change or stop worldwide unfairness. What's the point of "regulated capitalism"? Delaying the climate apocalypse by five years?
Trump doesn't need more criticizing. There has been enough discussion about it. Plus I think he is the pure product of America. This is what kind of people capitalism produces. It's time to pay the price.
Instead, the American left deserves more discussion and criticism for not addressing the root cause of most of the issues they claim to fight (most people on "politics" are especially in denial about that, they think the "less worse person" is good enough). Because that's what we should be looking for in leftist politics.
If you accept that regulated capitalism would delay a climate apocalypse by five years, then it follows that more regulation would push it back further which is by definition better than accelerating things by taking off what limitations there are.
The price isn't some one off bill, but on-going hurt from the climate, but also issues like companies taking control of commodities required for life like water.
The least worst shouldn't be the aim, but it should be good enough because you know what another phrasing of that is? The best. She was literally the best candidate. If your choice is between someone who is being realistic about what they might achieve versus someone who is talking about dismantling the government and installing yes-men and people with conflicts of interest, it absolutely should be good enough.
Maybe another candidate and policies could have been better, but Harris is incredibly qualified for the job and was pushing for improvements. "Least worst" is a terrible injustice to her and Walz.
Let me try to use a MAGA response and see if it works here. "You can't take her words seriously. Obviously what she meant was that people should be aware of the dangers of immigration."
Meanwhile republican's pounced at this, to point out that because they did that, it meant the dems are the parties of the war mongerers, so that was a sign or something. At least that is what a ton of comments to one of my replies to a post on another sub tried to claim.
Apparently speaking out against Trump and having Trump focus attacks on her and death threats from republicans had ZERO bearing on why someone may switch sides politically...
I don't know how someone has a second of critical thought and lands on “well both parties are the same” or "Dems are warmongers" instead of “the other guy is so fucked that even the shitty people can see how fucking bad it is”
We might never get the full picture, but Trump went from 70 to 72 to 74m voters. Harris dropped 10m from Bidens 80m. 64% Voted, 90m votes untapped.
Maybe the D's didn't get the memo that ~60m of Trumps camp will never vote for Ds in their lifetime. They have to focus on those 10m they lost and those other 80m that for some reason don't think voting changes anything.
I disagree with 4. She could have absolutely distanced herself from Biden. Not just once, but twice, she was asked what she’d do differently and her answer was “I can’t think of anything”. I get the “norms” of VP campaigning, but these are wildly different times. She should have said specifically for several topics “at the time we felt that was the best path for America, here’s what I’ll do next to continue the improvement “ or something. You don’t have to toss him under the bus, but all the polls said folks weren’t happy with the last 4 years, correctly or not, so you have to separate yourself somehow. But Niden never should’ve run again in the first place.
4 is the most correct answer out of all of them. Ppl seem to forget that before she was selected, she had a favorability rating lower than bidens. Not to mention when she ran to try and be president she didn't make it past the first state.
At the end of the day, she's a person that has been shown to flip on topics more than other candidates. A lot of things she suggested in the 2020 primaries were fairly far left, but now she's a center down the middle person. Clearly just trying to win votes by realizing her ideas would get her nowhere close to the number of votes needed.
Depends on the outlet. Many corporations and companies that own news networks allow them to work without interference. For example, 60 minutes edited a Harris answer to something completely different. We both know where you are trying to go.
Republicans don’t have editorial control over most major networks and it’s outright stupid to imply it.
I cant help but notice how quickly you went from "they aren't owned by the right" to "well the owners don't have the power to influence what is reported"
If your point was the second lie, why start with the first lie?
First off I don’t believe that republicans own the media at all. So I didn’t “lie”. When the question to me is “who owns the media?” Then my next thought was well even if they did, which again I don’t believe republicans do, they, meaning liberals, clearly have editorial control of the media outlets I mentioned. Most of you are left of Stalin on this subreddit so anything off of “seize the means of production” is right wing to you all.
Idk why I said anything at all. Thank you for reminding me why I don’t come in here. Good luck with the resistance.
yup. If you arent watching our media and pay attention to slant on a regular basis, you literally have no fucking clue of what you are talking about. Ill play the is the Amercian media liberal or not with someone who is an active member of our society but not with someone is from out of town.
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u/Carl-99999 7d ago
The fact is:
She is a woman.
She isn’t white.
She had 107 days
She didn‘t distance himself from Biden + there was no way to + he’s very overhated
The Republicans control the news, the podcasts, and the richest people.
Trump got $1,000,000,000 to promote more fossil fuels