2024 Election POST MORTEM

[Lawnmower_Man]

@Xiaolongbao

wtf he is talking about?

@skydiver8

Life comes at you fast…

ThEsE pOkEr gUyS aRe So SmArT!

[MasterofthePwn]

Why do you think that Obama was elevated and elected primarily for his healthcare plan rather than I dunno, being the most charismatic person to say that the Iraq War was going to be a disaster from day 1 and then pounding that message relentlessly when the American people finally came around to violently agreeing with him on that point?

[eyebooger]

@Trolly

The Biden admin was the most pro-labor, pro-working class one the Dems have had since Carter, loads of union endorsements, etc. Didn’t help. Sherrod Brown is on old-school, labor-friendly Dem, he got blown out by a car salesman. Possibly the Dems haven’t gone far enough and/or they’re not messaging it in a simple enough way for voters to understand. The other terrifying possibility is that this just isn’t what median voters want in 2024.

It’s this. Well not just this, but it’s definitely this.

Here were the simple messages from this election.

Trump: Mass deportation
Kamala: Abortion rights

Economy > women. I was hoping it would be the other way, but it’s clearly not.

[mosdef]

@Trolly

The Biden admin was the most pro-labor, pro-working class one the Dems have had since Carter, loads of union endorsements, etc.

I feel like I am repeating myself, but the upshot of my point isn’t that Biden wasn’t “left enough” or whatever from a policy perspective, it’s that voters need easy to understand, tangible benefits right in their hands that obvoiusly came from the Dems. Good policy isn’t tangible enough. Union endorsements aren’t tangible enough. Social security checks are tangible enough. Heatlh care coverage that you actually have is tangible enough.

[mosdef]

@jmakin

It doesn’t really matter to the lowest quintile that wages rose faster than the top quintile when they were already drowning and are still drowning. The fact that people somehow still miss this is perplexing.

I would adjust this to say that of course realy wage growth “matters” from a policy perspective, but what matters from an electoral perspective is narrative.

Effective narrative: Me no have health care, am dying. Me vote Obamaman. Obamaman make Obamacare. My now have health care. Me vote more Obamaman.

[WichitaDM]

He was elected for his charisma. His politics are dogshit and his performance in office was very poor. That’s my entire point.

If you don’t have an Obama level politician(who isn’t coming around every cycle) to sell the lie that you are for a left leaning platform people won’t buy it and these people can’t win. Also the more times we go through the cycle of MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER VOTE DEM TO SAVE: (Insert whatever the party landed on that cycle Abortion, Democracy, Health Care, etc) and then we elect them and they don’t enact or in most cases even attempt to enact what they run on the less the electorate believes them.

It’s the political version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

[Trolly]

@WichitaDM

The Obama example is another obvious one. He wasted his entire political capital and a supermajority on Romney’s health care plan. That is at best extreme political incompetence.

What should he have spent his political capital on instead? Serious question, he wasn’t going to get M4A passed or abortion rights enshrined. Also, the Dems ran on stopping an Obamacare and were successful for a decade.

[Xiaolongbao]

Trump is a cancer to democracy and will be a fascist dictator if elected again.

But thank god he survived the assassination attempt.

[JordanIB]

@gman42

Also, a clip got posted recently of some college girl saying she’s voting Trump because he said “I won’t sign a national abortion ban”. I guarantee she’s not the only one stupid enough to think that statement means “I am the candidate that’s in favor of abortion rights”. (also, Narrator: He gleefully signed the national abortion/IVF/contraception ban the millisecond it crossed his desk.)

In fairness to the woman in that clip, I don’t think she interpreted that way, because she continued by saying something to the effect of “and he’s keeping it with the states”. So I think she understood how he has portrayed his position on it, but obviously LOL to anybody taking Trump saying “I won’t do x” at face value.

And perhaps another SSC moment from me, but I kinda believe he’s not going to sign a blanket “no abortions in the USA” law. We all say how good he is at branding and politics. He’s knows that doing that would be terrible politics. Maybe he doesn’t care anymore if he’s not running again. If anything, it’ll be something awful like no abortions beyond 12 weeks unless a GOP government doctor reviews your case and determines it’s medically necessary. Which I guess we could call a national abortion ban, but he’ll brand it well enough that the media will say “well it’s technically not an abortion ban…”

[WichitaDM]

He could have still passed M4A. You are falling for the lie that the Dems have used to explain why they didn’t do it. Nuke the fillibuster for gods sakes. You were elected by a huge mandate to do M4A and a host of other things and they let one old white guy passing away end any hope of doing that because of norms.

Obama spent his whole two terms pandering to the right. Let’s not pretend he was stymied by bad luck or insurmountable procedural issues or whatever else.

[jmakin]

Thanks for clarifying, I agree with that

[WichitaDM]

First off this party platform is ridiculously large. But here is the 2008 platform. Stuff like meaningfully increasing the minimum wage is in there. Did they do that when they had the chance? Of course not.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-democratic-party-platform

[Melkerson]

@Thickcut

It was just trump is evil and took away your rights (should have been enough anyways).

Yeah, we can skewer Dems for a lot of things, but this was a straightforward message that they hammered. Should have been a clear winner and it didn’t work.

[freddbird]

@bobman0330

His entire economic platform was centered on full-employment, wage growth for workers, reshoring good jobs.

One lesson I learned, inflation is a more important economic force because everyone experiences it. Unemployment only impacts 3-10% of people at any time and most folks vote like only other people could become unemployed, not themselves.

[MasterofthePwn]

Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, by January 2010 Massachusetts had already replaced a Kennedy with a R promising to vigorously oppose Obama and Obamacare with the end result being the public option, etc removed from Obamacare.

So either 1) Massachusetts voters are world class technocrats who parsed through the Obamacare text and then (stupidly) decided to try to tank it because they thought it wasn’t good enough or 2) your theory of the case is completely wrong.

[CanadaMatt3004]

@WichitaDM

Is it shocking these people didn’t show up and/or switched their votes to someone who actually will do a lot of what he says? Not really.

My wife brought this up the other day and it simply does not make sense to me no matter how I try to turn it over in my mind. The things Trump says he will do are fucking awful.

I put forth this analogy.

You have to choose between two restaurants.

Restaurant one advertises a steak dinner, and when you order it you could end up with anything between a steak dinner, a hamburger, or nothing at all. Not great, yes, but still not actively harmful.

Restaurant two advertises that they will serve you a plate of shit. And whatever you order, they serve you a plate of shit because thats what they said they will do from the outset.

Who the fuck is eating at restaurant two?

[Melkerson]

@CanadaMatt3004

Who the fuck is eating at restaurant two?

More than half of America apparently.

[WichitaDM]

Not passing the bill in the first year is mistake one. Not passing any meaningful legislation in that period with a supermajority is shameful and unforgiveable.

Go look at the platform they ran on and get back to me on how much they even attempted.

[Trolly]

Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with what you’re saying, just elaborating.

Think we all agree the Dems need to:

1. As a permanent minority party, enact big LBJ progressive policies in the face of GOP obstruction and courts controlled by billionaire Nazi memorabilia collectors.

2. Find a way to message these big accomplishments in a way that the dumbest, most tuned-out, most politically illiterate voters you can imagine will understand.

3. Make Gen-Z stop being fans of violent incels and sex trafficking streamers and get them to read books or something.

4. Hispanic outreach? They’re MAGA now?

5. Do all this in the face of a media environment completely controlled by billionaire perverts, from legacy outlets like NYT to Twitter to the Rogan podcast.

Anyway, gl, the free world is counting on us to unfuck this before climate change makes the planet uninhabitable.

[WichitaDM]

At some point you get so fed up with Restaurant 1 you stop going. That’s mostly what happened. Trump didn’t get a different amount of votes this time. People mostly just didn’t show up for Kamala and stayed home.