Manchin is gone
Imagine for a second Kamala making a statement like, âI donât support allowing trans women to play in womenâs sports.â And think about the backlash she would get from the most vocal portions of the left, Dems, progressives etc. Thatâs the difference between the right and the left.
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Think at the time of Hillary, they were concerned that they personally would either intentionally or unintentionally get caught up in the deportations/hassling of undocumenteds and overtime they have convinced themselves that wonât happen.
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Ds who call for âpragmatic centrismâ believe that the backlash from the left just makes the callout even more effective, ala Bill Clintonâs Sister Souljah moment.
The more I think about it the more I donât see anything Dems could, or frankly, can do differently because people are voting against the system that is broken. Dems are half the system.
This is a place where we actually share a bedrock principle with MAGA. We all think the American system is fundamentally broken.
I have no idea, but wonder if the rebuild on the left isnât somehow built on that shared belief.
Iâm not saying anything Bernie hasnât been saying for decades but it really feels like that is the key. Something laser focused on the system. Stripped of the social stuff that divides.
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On reflection, I think this is actually too pessimistic. The root problem here is that voters donât trust Democrats, so they assess their reality for evidence that Dems are off fighting esoteric culture war battles and ignoring their problems. And they find some old Harris clips about sex change surgery for inmates and see $3 eggs, so itâs confirmed. If they had more confidence in Dems, theyâd remember how big their raises were the last couple years and how worried they were that COVID was going to cause a worse economic crisis than in the 2000s.
Harris was a weak candidate and was dealt an awful hand, but I think she ran a really good and effective campaign.
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Just to be clear, Iâm not advocating for pragmatic centrism. Iâm just pointing out that the left would never be ok with a candidate who made that statement whereas the right, especially the Christian right, is perfectly ok with a candidate who says and does any number of things that doesnât align with their narrow orthodoxy.
As evidence of this, her performance in a number of swing states (MI, WI, GA, NC) compared with 2020 was significantly better than adjacent non-swing states. This indicates that people exposed to the actual campaign directly were impacted somewhat. The dark corollary to this is that there must have been something ambient pulling against her. Whether itâs social media, $3 eggs, racism, sexism, or the fact that xenophobia is really alluring is up for debate.
On the other hand, her performance in PA, NV, AZ was lackluster. Still better than the national average, but lackluster. So this cuts against the theory that the campaign had a big impact.
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I feel like she started very well and then slowed down big time. Closing was pretty strong, but it was too late.
By far the biggest mistake she made was being complicit in not getting a coalition together to tell old man Biden that he was not running for a 2nd term.
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Thereâs a much more simple explanation for this. Swing states democrats were more motivated to stop trump, because they believe their vote counted. Non-swing state Democrats just didnât give a fuck this election
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Her campaign wasnât perfect, but she did run with a message of abortion rights which is strong on paper. The just people want Trump to round up immigrants and lower prices. Facebook and Twitch have turned Boomers and kids into reactionary fascists and you canât out-campaign that.
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Ideally, someone will video it
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Youâre entire way of thinking is based on a man who allowed himself to be tortured to death in service of others, and here you are, riding in on a wave of mutilation and pettiness, to celebrate your new god king.
Youâre a pseudo-christian.
I guess I donât see an obvious reason why 2024 was so different from 2020 in that regard.
This user wonât ever learn that personally attacking anyone who has a differing viewpoint will not win people over to his cause.
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Republicans have never cared but they wonât stfu about it. Vance was suggesting shutdowns in September.
I donât even think it was immigrants. It was the economy, or rather peopleâs perception of it. When all is said and done, voters are simpletons. If theyâre worried about prices, jobs, and money, they arenât voting for an incumbent
Harris ran a great campaign. Her biggest mistake (in my opinion) was that she refused to sufficiently distance herself from the incumbent. Ironically, that woman from the View probably sunk her more than anyone when she asked if there was anything different sheâd do from Biden and Harris basically answered no nothing comes to mind. I saw that ad ran over and over and over
Of course, Trump will be worse
Agree that overall the campaign was absolutely fine, and also agree that she and the campaign did seem ill-prepared to solidly answer some of the most obvious attack lines or questions. This is one. âWhy didnât you do it in the last 3.5 years?â was another one that while tricky, you can prep a decently punch answer. And her weakest moment of the debate was the âAre people better off now than they were 4 years ago?â question at the start, which I canât for the life of me how you havenât prepped a good answer for that. You have a tough needle to thread there, but it wasnât a great look ignoring the question and doing her prepared opening.
But these are mostly nitpicks, I donât think she was winning even with the best answers to these, because it doesnât change the fact that folks have walked into stores the last couple of years blown away at what some things cost.
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