In light of the recent election, it’s clear that the Democratic Party needs a significant leftward shift to better address the needs and concerns of the American people. The party’s centrist approach is increasingly out of touch, limiting its ability to appeal to a broader base and especially to young voters, who are looking for bold and transformative policies. The fact that young men became a substantial part of the conservative voting bloc should be a wake-up call—it’s essential that the Democratic Party broadens its appeal by offering real solutions that resonate with this demographic.
Furthermore, one major missed opportunity was the decision to forgo primaries, which could have brought new energy and ideas to the ticket. Joe Biden’s choice to run for a second term, despite earlier implications of a one-term presidency, may have ultimately contributed to the loss by undermining trust in his promises. Had the party explored alternative candidates in a primary process, the outcome could have been vastly different. It is now imperative for the Working Families Party and the Progressive Caucus to push for a stronger, unapologetically progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. The time for centrist compromises has passed, as evidenced by setbacks dating back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, the persistently low approval ratings for Biden since 2022, and Kamala Harris’s recent campaign, which left many progressives feeling alienated. To regain momentum and genuinely connect with the electorate, a clear departure from moderate politics is essential.
I’m open to the idea that there were other mistakes made, but ideally the list of this should at least be spelled out.
I’ll start. Gaza. Also, https://theintercept.com/2024/11/07/harris-trump-election-immigration-border/
Well, 2020 was not a normal primary, with “electability” being too much of a concern as per https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/electability-eye-beholder-what-hell-do-we-actually-know-about-n1020576
Hmm. This is a good point but I think that there may be another explanation for this. These races wouldn’t have been so tied to Gaza or the immigration/deportation and border issues, so it’s possible Harris took a big it from that while downballot, there wasn’t any hit. And the underperformance isn’t that wide - the GOP won most of the battleground Senate races to take majority control over the Senate.
That statement contradicts itself. Either losing them cost her the election - meaning that having them on board would have saved her and lifted her to a win - or they didn’t, because they weren’t enough to win.
This is another puzzling point. It’s true that there was a shift here - see for example https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/31/biden-border-immigration-bills-congress-2024/72399226007/ - but while he’s to the right of where say Obama was, he’s still to the left of orange voldemort. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68428154 and https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-06-18/in-an-immigration-pivot-biden-announces-plan-for-undocumented-spouses as compared to https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/trump-2024-immigration-policy-mass-deportations-stephen-miller/
Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face.
I mean we know some did, since they told us. Liz Cheney for example voted Harris.
You’d have to list out which concerns got dismissed?
Obviously I don’t agree - dismissing everyone’s concerns does seem like a bad idea - but I also don’t think everyone’s concerns were dismissed. Rather, Harris supported a $15 minimum wage floor - https://ca.news.yahoo.com/harris-voices-support-15-minimum-172336812.html - and there were hopes that this could go even higher once she was elected. She also supported Medicare For All in this election - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/kamala-harris-stands-health-care-issues-vies-democratic/story?id=112159503
Of course one of the most prominent issues was Gaza, but I’d argue that even here the concerns weren’t dismissed, not with Harris saying that she will not be silent on human suffering in Gaza as per https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-tailors-ad-messaging-on-gaza-israel-to-sway-michigan-pennsylvania-voters/ar-AA1toi71 - but this message simply was not strong enough.
Waiting on final numbers, but from the unsourced estimates in the other post, it seems like this is a false narrative. Rather than former Dems voting red like I first thought, it seems previous non-voters turned out red instead. As to why…
I think this is the only point where we agree on. I’m seeing elsewhere, e.g. https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-economy-immigration-11db37c033328a7ef6af71fe0a104604 , that this is exactly why some shifted.
But as VP Harris probably couldn’t have divorced herself from the economy.
So 2020 was not a normal primary, but one held in 2024 wouldn’t have been either. I think we are agreed on this point - had an actual primary taken place, that weakness would have been exposed, and someone other than Harris - who could more easily distance themselves from the most disliked parts and policies of the Biden-Harris administration - could have carried the torch, improving the odds of a win.
I’ve been talking about the problems the whole time.
Kamala was the media’s preferred candidate and was widely treated as a frontrunner but mismanaged her campaign to the point of dropping out before a single vote was cast. Voters weren’t the problem here, as nobody ever got a chance to vote for her in the first place because of her bungled campaign.
There’s a difference between taking majority control over the Senate and winning most of the battleground states. Republicans flipped four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana. West Virginia and Montana are both solidly red states, and it wasn’t very realistic that the democrats would ever hold either with the shift towards political polarization. The Republicans really just won two battleground states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the PA race was extremely close. Democrats, meanwhile, won Michigan and Wisconsin, and are ahead in Arizona and Nevada. Democrats won most of the battleground senate races, it’s just that the senate seats up for reelection were favorable to Republicans. Looking just at the senate races, it was a pretty respectable result for the democrats, it could have been a lot worse - this despite the fact that Kamala got the worst result of any Dem candidate since 20 years ago.
It’s not puzzling at all. Many Latinos have conservative social values, but in the past they were willing to look past that because there was a substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats on the issue, and they could be convinced that Trump’s focus on immigration was racist. When the democrats dropped that and adopted right-wing positions on immigration, that reason disappeared.
The problem is that you have these deep rooted lesser-evilist brainworms that don’t actually reflect reality. Everything would make more sense if you ripped them out and stopped looking at things from that perspective and assuming everyone else sees things that way.
That is literally one person. A person who does not in any way reflect a significant constituancy of voters. What a ridiculous argument.
That statement and a quarter will by you a piece of gum.
She was always very clear on supplying arms to Israel completely unconditionally. Nobody gives a shit about sweet talk, we wanted actual material action. It’s like handing a mass shooter another clip while asking him politely to pretty please stop and saying that you disapprove of what he’s doing and by the way there’s more ammo where that came from if he’d like to keep going.
The message wasn’t strong enough because it was bullshit.
I disagree. To some extent, sure, she’s be associated with it, but she could have at least tried to distance herself from it. Hell, she could’ve said something like, “Look, the economy’s not great, but that’s because we were recovering from COVID. We had to make the best of a bad situation. But going forward, things will be different, before we were merely mitigating the damage, but now, with your support, we can begin building towards a future that will be brighter than ever. We are going to [policy X, Y, and Z].” Instead the messaging was more along the lines of, “The economy is great, actually, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sow discord and get Trump elected.”
Democrats have this pathological inability to self-criticize, accept fault, or just awknowledge problems, and Kamala was a particularly bad example of this. It alienates people and speaks to a lack of confidence. What harm would there be in distancing herself, at least a little, from Joe Biden? Is it going to hurt Biden’s future career prospects?
Yes, that is one point of agreement.
Yep, definitely time for someone to look at themselves in the mirror.
Yeah, you can’t actually just rip out brainworms. THat’s not how those are treated. This is how they’re actually dealt with: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/neurocysticercosis#treatment
Likewise, the way forward here would be to patiently educate someone willing.
I think the way I’ve summed things up do reflect reality. I did make a mistake (due to having insufficient data) about Dems flipping red, which I’ve already acknowledged. Actually, Harris is on track to get most of the popular vote that Biden got in 2020, which was one of the highest periods of turnout on record. It’s just that voters who sat out 2016 and even 2020 turned out over the economy this year for the GOP, along with important single issue voters in swing states (Latinos over immigration and Arabs/Muslims over Gaza) switching sides.
More data is needed. Importantly the gerrymandering by the GOP that started in 2010 and was blessed by the Supreme Court makes me think that we can’t look at 2008 or earlier for precedents. And even comparing to 2012 would be hard since Obama had an incumbency advantage when the plan was still new and not fully implemented.
With limited data, Clinton’s more progressive (I said more progressive, not actually progressive) platform in 2016 failed to excite voters, and even more progressive ones failed in the primaries.
This is why I am such a fan of RCV - instead of having to battle it out in the primary, RCV would allow Dems to safely run more progressive candidates side by side with more moderate ones, allowing voters to say which ones they prefer the most without worrying about “electibility” so much (as this means the less electible candidate’s votes would go to the other Dem to boost that Dem instead of assuring a GOP win).
Again, look in the mirror.
As this is subjective, no citation needed. However, I’d argue that her change from her 2020 platform does in fact represent she is capable of reflecting and changing - she changed her 2024 platform to reflect the more “electible” platform of Biden that won 2020.
And the result was actually a very close election in the battleground states, as per https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4ve004llxo but as you also pointed out.
That’s why I didn’t mention them. Agreed overall - the point is that having to campaign for a primary in 2024 would have exposed the faults along with putting “electability” back into the picture. Exactly how this happens is less important than it does indeed happen.
I missed this. Conceded, you’re right.
Yeah, the WV loss was basically certain. Although higher hopes were had in Montana, obviously they didn’t pan out.
Yup, I remember this being an issue back in 2018 as well. Seeing that Senate terms are for six years, this makes sense. But that gives hope that 2026 will be more like 2020 with Dems barely retaking the Senate. Though that assumes there are still free and fair elections by then.
Agreed.
You’ll have to explain this. Based on the other speculative posted I referenced earlier, in terms of the popular vote it seems like Harris will have more than Clinton did in 2016 and only be short by a few million compared to Biden. If you look at EC numbers, Harris had more than Clinton, and the 2016 winner and the 2020 winner won by more than 300, while this year the number fell short of that.
It’s definitely a bad&painful result, but I wouldn’t call it the worst.
Ah, that makes sense.
The reason it was puzzling is because I had forgotten. It’s a personal bias (my inner circle of friends includes Latinos with very liberal families, but this obviously is due to a selection bias and doesn’t reflect the grouping in general).
I can give you a longer list if you like, of all the former Republican politicians who have gone on the record for supporting Harris. It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s fair to say it wasn’t enough, but it’s more ridiculous to say it was just one person when we know the real number is at least more than an order of magnitude greater.
We’re in agreement here.
I have nothing to back this up, but I had a feeling that once Harris was elected, actual action would eventually have been taken. She just couldn’t say anything but empty words prior to election day to avoid losing the Jewish bloc - but based on what we now know of the overall vote, it seems like that was a risk she should have taken.
I think the GOP would have had a field day with “before we were merely mitigating the damage” (why didn’t you just fix it? maybe because you don’t know how?)
That’s exactly what Harris tried to do, as per https://www.npr.org/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5055895/harris-is-signaling-her-campaigns-priorities-the-economy-could-be-key-for-voters (fight price gouging, expand child tax credit, encourage more small businesses) and per https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardmcgahey/2024/09/30/harris-opportunity-economy–closes-the-economic-gap-with-trump/ (the opportunity economy).
You’d be right if you said trying to use this was a mistake, but - I feel she was trying to share in the credit for the good numbers on the economy as per https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/harris-inflation-solid-economy-00183210
Voters care more about their own personal finances. If things are more expensive for them, why do they care that the economy’s numbers look good? Another thing I think a primary would have prevented.
I think at the time the thinking was being too distant from B would cause two problems. First, why didn’t she do anything more as VP? Second, not able to take any credit for the few good things.
No, the number did not fall short of that, it’s just that Arizona and Nevada have not been called for Trump yet, but they will be soon. At that point, the electoral map will look exactly the same as 2016 except that Clinton won Nevada, which Kamala is losing. And Clinton won the popular vote while Kamala lost it. So yes, it is pretty objectively a worse result than 2016.
The only thing I was wrong about was that it wasn’t just 20 years. We actually have to go all the way back to 1988 to see a result this bad for the democrats, an election where George H.W. Bush won California.
An order of magnitude greater than 1 is 10. That’s still completely insignificant, obviously. Individual politicians don’t matter unless they draw in constituencies (and don’t alienate other constituencies), which did not materialize.
This is essentially a conspiracy theory. It’s no different from QAnon people explaining away anything Trump does that they don’t like by saying that he had to say it to appease the deep state and get elected, TRUST THE PLAN. It’s completely baseless cope and every piece of actual evidence clearly contradicts it.
But even if it were true it doesn’t matter in the context of assessing why she lost, because there was no possible way for voters alienated by her public stance to know that she was lying and secretly on their side.
No no no. You cut off major parts of what I said. The only similarity is, “We’re going to make the economy better going forward” which every politician ever is going to say.
You do acknowledge the main point afterward though. I think we’re in agreement on it being a mistake for her to not distance herself from Biden and not sufficiently acknowledge people’s economic problems.
Yep. I think there’s still a tiny disagreement here over whether or not Harris could have put enough distance - but we both agree that a primary would have proven it either way and solved the problem with a different candidate if it wasn’t possible, so that’s perhaps immaterial.
Both Harris and I provided more specific details than that.
Space limits on posting. But actually I agreed on those points and didn’t feel the need to respond to them - Harris never said the economy was really and painfully bad outright and never sought distance from Biden.
Agreed, the latest numbers do suggest that if there was split voting, it was in favor of the Dems downballot and orange voldemort rather than the opposite, like we saw in 2020 for Biden.
I was just pointing out that this did draw in some, but as you said it wasn’t enough.
Oh, that’s right. I spoke too soon - should have waited for the data.
But from your own wikipedia pages, Clinton wont 65,853,514 votes while the estimate at https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18340229 says “Kamala around 73 million” so Harris objectively did better than Clinton on the popular vote in terms of raw numbers.
So worst case 2024 will still be better than 1988 in terms of EC numbers. Anyways, if I’m reading https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/president/ it’s still too soon to call - the reason being that it’s mathematically possible for Harris to still win those two (if she won all the remaining votes left to be counted). So still too soon to tell.
So let me give some quotes here to back this up.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/4/harris-says-will-end-gaza-war-in-final-election-appeal-to-arab-americans
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/kamala-harris-says-two-state-solution-is-the-only-path-after-meeting-with-netanyahu-b2586161.html
Harris didn’t have much in terms of actual action, but her position post-Hamas was still for a two-state solution and to put an end to what was happening in Gaza.
The problem is there was no plan for that - but she only had three months to rush a campaign through. So less “TRUST THE PLAN” and more “hope she can figure out a plan once she’s in office.”
It’s not a conspiracy theory because she did actually say these things, but if you’d question if these would end up as broken promises … it seems that the voters who cared about these things shared your questioning.
Again, it wasn’t secret, but was based on the speeches she gave, along with this bit of protestor inspired impromptu: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/harris-appears-to-agree-with-protester-accusing-israel-of-genocide-what-he-s-talking-about-it-s-real/ar-AA1szCVt
Obviously it wasn’t enough, but, it wasn’t kept as a secret.
Yes, Clinton got fewer total votes in a lower turnout election, but by every other metric the election was less bad than this one was for Harris, whether we look at the EC or votes compared to the other side.
As for Gaza, there is one very simple and straightforward action that Biden could have taken (or still could actually) or that Harris could have said she’ll do: place conditions on arms shipments to Israel (or even just stop them entirely). Refusing to do that is a complete endorsement of Israel’s actions. Like I said, it’s like saying that you disapprove of a mass shooter’s actions while handing him another clip. Words and speeches are completely meaningless unless that is addressed, all she ever said was essentially, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they could resolve their differences without fighting? But of course I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and will keep arming them unconditionally.” There is no indication that she would’ve been at all willing to take meaningful action.
It used to be the case that politicians would promise to do good things, and then maybe sometimes they’d actually keep their promises. Nowadays they don’t even promise anything and people just convince themselves they’ll do what they want regardless. Like, even if she had said that she’d stop shipments, sure I would support her, but it would not be entirely unreasonable to question whether she’d follow through. But in the case where she couldn’t even say it, the chances of her doing it are basically zero.
No need to rehash what I said above, beyond that I’m still waiting for the data.
Agreed. Now, my understanding is that Harris as VP can’t actually do this, that authority runs from Biden down to his cabinet secretaries. But she could have made that promise. It’s still not taking action, but maybe it would have been enough.
So minor disagreement here. You say complete, or 100%, while I’d say like 95% or 97%. Perhaps an immaterial difference.
But your proposal above, for Harris, is just more mere words: “Harris could have said”
I think calling for a cease-fire is a mite bit stronger than that, but again perhaps the difference between us is so small as to be immaterial.
Agreed, definitely a problem. No need to rehash about the Jewish voting bloc stuff - we understand why this was done and we saw first hand that it didn’t work out. So with 20/20 hindsight…
After Oct 7, 2024, I would too. To say otherwise is an insult to the families of the hostages - telling them that they aren’t important enough to protect, that it’s okay for this to happen to them again.
On here we completely disagree. “I will stop the Gaza war by any means necessary.” seems like a pretty big indication.
Meanwhile,
Source: https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-trump-cease-fire (link to quote in the “free rein” link on that page)
To be fair, the above is also a really big indication.
That’s why I used the word, “unless.” If the words are addressing that point, then they’re meaningful, but as long as they aren’t, they are not.
Does it now? There are lots of ways to stop a war, for example, by destroying the other side’s willingness or capability to keep fighting. You know, like Trump said, “finish the job,” and then there won’t be any more fighting because one side would all be dead. You’re choosing to interpret it to mean what you want it to mean, and a supporter of Israel would interpret it to mean what they want it to mean, typical equivocation with no indication of what it actually means in practical terms.
What you don’t understand is that politicians are most responsive to voters in the lead-up to an election. After they get elected, then they’ve already gotten the votes they needed, so they can focus more on lobbyists and corporate donors. That’s why there is zero chance that she would’ve become more pro-Palestinian when in office, because the voters are far more favorable to Palestine than the donors and lobbyists are.
Ah I think I got your meaning now.
Yes.
I assume this is just an example and you aren’t seriously suggesting this is what Harris means. Harris has been very clear on the need for an immediate ceasefire.
Well, the alternative meaning doesn’t fit with what Harris has said about getting to an immediate ceasefire - you can’t have a ceasefire if you’re trying to kill every last person on the enemy side. That contradiction makes me think I’ve interpreted it correctly.
I got that. I figured this was an important constraint on Harris being able to speak in support on Gaza in fact - AIPAC withdrawing their support of her.
This is a good point, AIPAC would still be around after the election.
I think zero chance is too extreme. Consider this,
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103
Also, the goal wasn’t necessarily to make Harris pro-Palestine, but simply more anti-genocide. As the situation in Gaza worsens, I could see a possibility where from the grassroots a movement of change, going thru e.g. Sanders and AOC, would eventually convince Harris to evolve her position here as well.
Now, as you point out there are powerful forces that would resist that, but the outcome of that battle would not have been a foregone conclusion.