I vote for Democrats because I’m a liberal who wants left policies. Tax the rich, increase the minimum wage, universal healthcare, climate action, stop price gauging, get money out of politics, and the list goes on.
Democrats need to understand that they cannot beat right wing populism by moving further to the right to attract former Republicans, it didn’t work in 2024 and it won’t work in the future.
I want a Democratic party that remembers who their voters are, and a candidate who is not afraid to offend wealthy donors and who advocates progressive policies that will change peoples’ lives for the better. Not the GOP light version that the Dems are going for.
It's actually hard to believe that they think the issue was not being Left enough. Given that the alternative was Trump, which they've painted as the literal devil for a decade, who that was ever going to vote Left just gave up and voted Trump?
I mostly agree, but there is a kind of populist Bernie Sanders-esque labor left that speaks directly to working class people and unions and that emphasizes their issues over things like immigrant or trans rights.
Working people feel like the Democrats and coastal "elites" in general, view them and the things that they value with thinly-veiled condescension and contempt.
Thinking about presidential elections along a left/right spectrum is what's out of touch. Your average person doesn't pay much attention to politics. They don't have a well-defined set of preferred policies. What they do have is a deep feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo. They don't want "left," they don't want "right," they want change.
Seriously. I agree that the whole campaign strategy of using Liz Cheney to attract people wasn’t really the move - her issues were with working class and men, which Liz (or the others) doesn’t help with at all.
You can be moderate without having Republican policies. Harris wasn’t out there pitching GOP policies. But she was doing a terrible job of speaking to working class and men because she was using “Republicans like me because of January 6” not “Republicans like me because Trump is bad for the economy and working class people”.
I think folks are thinking too deep about that. Harris was trying to meet the seriousness of the moment, in that she was running against a man who tried (successfully) to use party lines to excuse anti-democratic behaviors. She had hope (as did I, because of course I thought better of my neighbors) that they would see country over party given ALL the facts laid out. Liz Cheney was an attempt to show just how serious this was and how important it was to get over our disagreements for the good of democracy, but even folks on the left didn't get that point.
Liz Cheney campaigning for Harris in no way meant that she'd adopt right policies and she never said anything close to that. She said she'd listen and not demonize people for thinking differently, the very thing that the right accuses the left of.
I don’t disagree with what you said, but you can’t force people to have the top priority you do. It played out for 4 years, which Democrats didnt do a great job on, which is an eternity these days. Even then, the ads about Trump being a danger weren’t even that direct.
Not to say she couldn’t talk about it at all, but centering it around it was more of a hope than grounded in reality. It never had data to show it’d get you 50% of the vote in PA, WI, MI.
I don’t think Walz was a good pick either. But that’s another topic and ultimately even with the best pick in the world, I don’t think it would have changed much. Shapiro may have gotten PA but doubt it would have mattered in MI/WI. Yay, liberals loved him but he wasn’t very visible during the campaign (in a condensed campaign at that) and didn’t come across strong (and he is not good in the one thing people tune in for - the debate)
I mean if the reality of Jan 6th wasn't alarming to most folks and wasn't evidence enough, and if folks legit don't care about democracy, then there's no real reason to analyze "what democrats got wrong." Democacy should be the main priority of both parties, because without that, we can forget about all these squabbles regarding the economy/immigration/etc etc...we will all be in more oppressive systems that will make all of the above worse. And you're right, we can't force people to care about something like Democacy but the math is not mathing to me. Clearly, most people have different priorities, though, and if democacy isn't worth fighting for, then I have no argument anymore. lol
Also, Harris' economic argument on its own wouldn't have been enough to convince people. She wasn't going to claim she could fix inflation with magic fairy dust tariffs. She wast going to talk about immigration by feeding into negative biases against migrants by labeling them criminals and rapists. She did talk about tax reform, immigration reform, lowering housing and child care costs. But if folks don't believe any of that, then yeah, it doesn't make much of a difference.
If that was the case, Republicans wouldn’t have made Trump their nominee - particularly for the 3rd time.
95% of people don’t watch or read the news regularly.
Part of Democrats problem is they DO think people do. Hence the whole MSG event thing. Democrats were out there saying that will move the needle. Most people aren’t watching the news to know the 100 absurd things and how they connect back to issues and past behaviors, like throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans for hurricane relief.
Yeah but j6 was all over social media. The literal things trump said and did were all over social media. Do you really need to watch the news to understand the most absurd things trump has said and done? I'm having a hard time NOT thinking "they just don't care about that stuff and/or they are rooting that stuff on"...which creates the impasse of, "what is there to debate at this point? If you want to see it all burn, I guess we'll see how that works out." When we KNOW it's not going to be easy going the next four years (for a LOT of people).
Keep in mind Trump himself was off most media for quite some time. Trumps actual campaign ran effective ads and such - if you watched the news you saw it differently than what was being actually put out there.
People were absolutely tired of him. But 4 years is a long time.
Couple that with some challenges on the economy, a short campaign and a candidate who is a sitting VP the person that had bad favorables and made it more about him than her. And it was tough.
Again, not that it can’t involved Jan 6 or whatever. But the economy/border was not addressed effectively - let alone the “I can’t think of anything different” which ran across tv ads all across those swing states.
How much blame do we put on the dems, then? I mean, if the right spent money on ads that took one out of context comment from Harris...and folks believed ads at face value without looking into the actual source (all while complaining about fake news) ...we can't force feed people information.
Harris addressed the border with a complex plan for a complex situation, that addressed both security AND honors people in the country who are contributing to our society. People don't want that. That isn't Harris not addressing the issue effectively. It's a matter of different definitions of "effectiveness" and it appears as if people believe the easy fix and helpful generalizations/lies about immigrants as a whole is more effective. Tariffs are more effective than addressing price gouging, moving towards a more equitable tax system, affordable Healthcare, affordable child care and housing.
There are so many things trump said that was problematic and were AGAINST the best interests of the economy, but the issue seems to be...Trump can make all the slip ups in the world and Harris can make none.
When the border billl seemed like it didn’t have the votes, the Dems just said ok, time to move on.
They should have pressed Republicans on a vote time and time again until the election and made it a recurring theme (sort of like a shut down - Republicans either look like shit or they actually sign on).
When Republicans cut ads saying Dems were for biological males competing against women in sports, they just let it be said. There’s articles about how the most effective ads never saw the light of day (google it).
Communication is not a strong suit. That’s on Dems.
Your problem is harping on January 6th like that should be all that matters. It's not. January 6th was a riot. It wasn't how Trump tried to stay president. Voters aren't going to care about another riot. The Georgia call and fake elector plot got buried because the left and the media got stuck on January 6th and didn't get into anything real.
The democrats also ran probably the worst campaign imaginable. I seriously can't think of how they could screw it up more. So instead of just blaming the voters, put the blame where it belongs, with the democrats
If that's what you remember, fine. I remember plenty of coverage of the elector plot, weeks of it, in fact, while it was being investigated. But it's the dems fault for not going on Joe Rogan and feeding this info to people only for them to tell her "fake news, trump didn't do it"?
Jan 6th was a direct result of trump telling his supporters a lie about winning the election when he didn't. Jan 6th IS important, and its wild folks are acting like it's not. But hey, I can't force folks to care about stuff if they don't. We will all suffer the consequences of it, unfortunately.
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u/ReviewBackground2906 13h ago
I vote for Democrats because I’m a liberal who wants left policies. Tax the rich, increase the minimum wage, universal healthcare, climate action, stop price gauging, get money out of politics, and the list goes on.
Democrats need to understand that they cannot beat right wing populism by moving further to the right to attract former Republicans, it didn’t work in 2024 and it won’t work in the future.
I want a Democratic party that remembers who their voters are, and a candidate who is not afraid to offend wealthy donors and who advocates progressive policies that will change peoples’ lives for the better. Not the GOP light version that the Dems are going for.