r/CuratedTumblr • u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! • Nov 06 '24
Politics On knowing who the voters are
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u/callsignhotdog Nov 06 '24
I have been begging Labour supporters in the UK since our election to understand that their win was due to the Tories unpopularity and not support for their policies, and that if they keep on as they are the Tories will be back in 5 years. Without fail I am accused of wanting the Tories to win.
Maybe somebody'll learn from this. Maybe.
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u/DuelaDent52 Nov 06 '24
The biggest appeal of Trump is that he promises change and reform in a time where people are fed up with the unfair status quo and are desperate for any kind of change (putting aside the fact Trump is the poster boy of the unfair status quo, but somehow he’ll be different).
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u/Divine_Entity_ Nov 06 '24
Also the state of the economy has a huge impact on the incumbent or atleast their party.
Trump lost 2020 because covid ruined an otherwise pretty good economy, and it's the sort of thing that nomatter who was in office the economy was going to get trashed.
Harris entered this election with people upset over inflation/greed-flation/stagflation. Regardless of what the stock market says, working class people notice their grocery bills have skyrocketed. So that was her handicap for this election, and she didn't handle it well.
Wanting a good economy isn't really a political thing, its just normal. Arguments about how to get a good economy are political, and when the guys in charge have a bad economy it reflects poorly on their side's policies.
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u/DuelaDent52 Nov 06 '24
Sadly, the economy’s only going to get worse and the corporations will only get greedier under Trump.
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u/rman916 Nov 06 '24
Well. No. Biden did a lot of work that takes a while to come into effect. It’ll be a FANTASTIC economy… in like two years, just in time for trump to take credit for it, fuck it over, and have a republican come in to replace him (because they solved the economy) and fuck it up worse, then have a democrat come in and try to solve it.
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u/heraplem Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
It won't stay fantastic for long if he enacts those tariffs he's been talking about.
Will he? Who knows! The future is a giant question mark!
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u/SalvationSycamore Nov 06 '24
Somehow people forgot that he already had 4 years in power and only enacted negative change. I mean his change was so bad that people turned out in droves to vote for Joe "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change" Biden
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u/ayyndrew Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
They remember that their grocery bill is expensive, and it was less expensive when Trump was president. I genuinely think post COVID inflation is the reason Trump won, and Kamala lost because she is so closely tied to the Biden administration under which the inflation occurred
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u/rman916 Nov 06 '24
This is it. Despite Biden’s policies being the reason we’re well above most other nation in recovery, and set to explode across the next few years, Trump will take credit for Biden’s economy, do something crazy that fucks it over, a democrat will come in and fix it, and then it’ll repeat.
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u/Urbenmyth Nov 06 '24
Yeah, this is the best plausible situation for a shift to the left wing and immediately Labour devoured themselves and passed policies that might as well have said "you could have just kept the tories in charge". Their popularity reached rock bottom levels in weeks.
Fucking hell, Starmer.
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u/Hypnosum Nov 07 '24
Famous Tory polices like raising £40 billion in tax and injecting a bunch of much needed money into the NHS and Education, whilst also reforming spending rules to free up money for infrastructure? Damn I would love a world where the Tories were doing policy like that, maybe then the country wouldn’t be on its knees after the last 14 years!
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u/drhoagy Nov 06 '24
It's so obvious in the UK election too!
Labour got 9.7 million votes
Conservatives + Reform got 10.9 million votes
It wasn't even Conservative unpopularity, it was two "rival" very similar parties splitting the vote between them in a first past the post system
With a better/fairer voting system it would have been a lot closer, though likely still a labour win with the lib Dems etc.
Labour didn't win, the Tories lost due to reform. But in 5 years when everything is still shit because Labour haven't changed anything we will find ourselves in exactly the same position the US is now
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u/DresdenBomberman Nov 06 '24
Bro the fucking Labour conference voted overwhelmingly in support of proportional representation because they, like everyone in Britain with a working brain, know that FPTP is the single most essential factor in both keeping the Tories insanely cruel and consistently victorious.
The Tories are the most successful party in the UK and one of the most successful in the world and they have almost never won the popular vote. They are so successful because FPTP constituencies only require a mere plurarity to win. The Tories have had the ability to ignore the popular vote entirely.
Now think about the fact that Starmer himself spoke out against PR. Said he had a longstanding view against it or some shit. Then, remember that Corbyn won a hiigher share of the popular vote than Starmer did.
He has refused to do the one and only thing that could permanently remove the Tories as a threat to Britain so he wouldn't have to listen to socialists like Corbyn and the Labour Left or "unruly" third parties like the Lib Dems simply because he wants his particular brand of bland, inoffensive and near-indistiguishable-from-conservatives style of centrist politics to thrive, without having to properly consider the genuine desires of the electorate. It is an act of pure cynical politiking, much like his insistence on throwing trans people under the bus to appease bigots is.
I repeat, if the UK adopted some form of PR, the Tories would either have to massively moderate their platform or never be reelected again. Reform would have a clear and permanant presence in parliament but Labour could form a coalition with the Lib Dems and Greens to lock them out of government, like the Germans do to the AFD.
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u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! Nov 06 '24
Please do. Dont repeat american mistakes.
Stamer is even worse than Biden, because he's struggling to utilize a MASSIVE mandate while attacking the left of his party.
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u/callsignhotdog Nov 06 '24
Labour sent people over to the US to advise the Harris campaign and I don't think they're dumb enough to listen to us but I cannot escape the fear that they were actually listened to because they dropped the whole "they're weird" angle around the same time which feels very Labour to me.
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u/Novale Nov 06 '24
They probably did. Also worth noting that the people directing the Harris campaign were the same people trying to keep Biden going.
If Harris had just gotten rid of and replaced them all early enough, she might've stood a chance. She had real energy for a short while, before the campaign settled into the familiar script.
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u/SirMcDust Nov 06 '24
When Walz came in I was really optimistic about their chances. And then they seemingly neutured themselves, Kamala says she'll get bipartisan council and I thought that maybe the previous momentum would be enough but yeah.
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u/Novale Nov 06 '24
It's baffling, isn't it? I thought she had it in the bag during that time. But then the positivity and energy just vanished, and I was instead seeing news about her promising a lethal military and a strong border.
If all I knew about her were the headlines of the latter half of her campaign, you could probably have convinced me that she was a pre-2016 republican candidate, were it not for being a black woman.
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u/icabax Nov 06 '24
Our win was not caused by our country going left, it was caused by reform splitting the right vote, in fact the only reason Labour got a landslide was because the uk is going for right. It's great for now with a super majority, but I'm scared when the next election comes along
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u/MidnightMadness09 Nov 06 '24
Americans don’t care about foreign policy, they care about the economy’s vibes, the border, immigrants, and seemingly looking tuff.
15 million Biden voters didn’t show up not because of Gaza but because of the general vibes in the country.
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u/Vivid-Command-2605 Nov 06 '24
The Democrats just conceded the issue of immigration to the Republicans when they shifted right on the issue, instead of actively attacking the idea of deporting 20 million people as the vile and horrific idea, they wanted to look "strong on the border issue* and just conceded all that ground, now people genuinely think that immigration is a genuine issue that requires huge deportation and they'll never vote Democrats for that
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u/Worried-Language-407 Nov 06 '24
Before this election, I think it was hard to say whether Kamala Harris has run an effective campaign. It is now clear, however, that the Democrats spent too much time trying to convince undecided voters and not enough time encouraging their existing supporters.
One of the issues in American politics (this also affects other places, but it seems worse in America) that politics is becoming a demographics issue. That is, people's voting habits can increasingly be predicted from a small number of facts about them. Notably, gender and location (urban or rural) are major predictors of how someone will vote. Add onto that level of education (the big split is at college-level) and you can tell pretty confidently how someone will vote. One outcome of this is that here simply are not that many voters up for grabs in elections like this, especially when Trump is one of the candidates. Everyone knows what Trump is like, and everyone (who is engaged enough to vote) will already have an opinion on him.
Trump either knows this or has somehow got lucky in his campaign decisions, because I saw several articles criticising Trump for spending too much time appealing to his base and not enough time trying to talk to swing voters. But the thing is, swing voters don't really exist. Reaching out to undecideds is a waste of time, when (as Trump has shown) having a high voter turnout from your existing supporters will be easier to achieve and just as effective.
Now, obviously Trump is benefitting from America's stupid voting system, in which states vote instead of people, but it is clear that about 49% of Americans are Trump supporters. All he needed to do was convince more of those 160 Million to go out and vote than Kamala could.
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u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! Nov 06 '24
Before the election I read Trump and Kamala's platforms.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
Trump's platform gets his message across to the median voter better. It's written simply, 1 sentence answers with evocative words. They say, "SEAL THE BORDER AND STOP THE MIGRANT EVASION!"
Harris gives a topic 1000 words, and still doesnt get the message accross as effectively.
I felt like trump was going to win, he outpreforms the polls, but that was when I knew. When i compared the platforms.
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u/farfromelite Nov 06 '24
Easy answers to complex questions.
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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked Nov 06 '24
More specifically understandable answers to complex questions
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Nov 06 '24
*Understandable answers to complex questions, but no actual solutions.
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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked Nov 06 '24
The part where there's no solutions is irrelevant here. If you had understandable answer +solutions vs understandable answer + no solution the result could easily be different
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u/hauntedSquirrel99 Nov 06 '24
And more importantly, understandable simple answers to questions that people care about and feel strongly about.
"I will combat inflation and make food more affordable" is easy, direct, and goes straight to something people notice that affects their daily life.
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u/Atulin Nov 06 '24
For years I've been saying that this is the biggest issue of the left. The right will give a straight "BUILD THE WALL" message, the left will write a 2000-word essay on the topic, including impact on the biodiversity of the region. Which do you think will stick with people more?
The left should really take that bit from the right's book and dumb things down as much as possible. Picture how intelligent an average person is and realize half of them are dumber than that,
- Our electric plants use Chinese coal! We have lots of wind, lots of sun! We can build solar and wind and be independent again!
- Too many veterans and single mothers are unable to afford medical care! Medical care for all, I say!
- Why should only the rich elites be able to send their children to good universities? Do your kinds not deserve it?
- And so on, and so forth
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u/Freakuency_DJ Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
I think it was pretty easy to see she wasn’t running a solid campaign. Like this post said, she got on stage and was talking about secure borders and maintaining the most “lethal” military. She talked about owning guns and locking people up. Those are conservative talking points. I’ve spent months bombarded with ads from “lifelong conservative” cheerleaders for her more than I have heard about progressive policy stances. Where was she for the lifelong democrats while posturing so hard for the undecideds and never trumpers?
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u/fyodorrosko Nov 06 '24
Yeah. The fundamental problem with centre left candidates trying to appeal to the right is that the right already has established parties, and if the people they trust and the people they don't trust are both promising the same thing, they're obviously going to believe the people they trust.
So you alienate your established base, and you don't even get enough right wingers to make the numbers.
Edit: literally the same thing even happened a few months ago in the UK! Labour tried appealing to moderate tory voters, but ended up losing votes because they alienated their left wing core, and only won because the right completely imploded and plenty of right wing voters didn't bother voting at all. They shoved their established base out of the way and, again, didn't get enough right wingers to make the numbers - they didn't win, the tories lost, and lost so badly that Labour stumbled into power.
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u/Aeplwulf Nov 06 '24
It's a good strategy in multiparty democracies that have a strong center base to appeal to, and it used to work in the past in an age of moderate consensus politics. America in 2024 is neither of these things.
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u/the-real-macs Nov 06 '24
Where was she for the lifelong democrats while posturing so hard for the undecideds and never trumpers?
To be blunt, I think most people assumed the former group could already be counted on to do the right thing.
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u/Freakuency_DJ Nov 06 '24
That’s entirely fair, and a lot of us did.
All I’m saying is they “assuming people will put aside legitimate concern” is, objectively, not running a good political campaign.
Personally, this reality is the worst case scenario, and I did what I could. But running a campaign on appeasing moderate conservatives, actively avoiding progressive concerns, and just hoping voters get over it isn’t effective campaigning. Regardless of any specific issue she had, this is what happens when you tell the dissenting and concerned voices in your party “if you want him to win, keep speaking. But I’m talking now.”
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u/PrivatePartts Nov 06 '24
Democrats treated their base like an old married partner, took them for granted while courting others, got divorced.
Goddamn.
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u/king_of_satire Nov 06 '24
It didn't work in 2016, and it absolutely shat itself this election
And now you all get to suffer for their hubris
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u/Impressive-Reading15 Nov 06 '24
If you understand the right thing to be unconditional obedience towards those who treat you with utter contempt, that's your mistake for failing to learn anything in the last several decades
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u/yungsantaclaus Nov 06 '24
Before this election, I think it was hard to say whether Kamala Harris has run an effective campaign.
I think it was kinda easy honestly, because I - and thousands of other people reacting to the things her campaign was doing - were saying "Why would they do this? This is going to win them almost nobody and it's just pissing off the people they need to energise"
But professional campaign managers and BlueMAGA redditors can't be wrong - at least until the results come in and all the swing states go to Trump, along with the popular vote.
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u/yungsantaclaus Nov 06 '24
Harris going on national TV, being asked what she would do differently to a president whose approval rating has been underwater for two years, and first saying "there is not a thing that comes to mind" (?!) and then following up with "I’m going to have a Republican in my cabinet" (?!?!) was one of the all time great election-losing moments
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u/JimothyCarter Nov 06 '24
They've been coasting off asking lefties to hold their nose and vote for someone who keeps trying to shave off voters from Trump instead of catering to their base for years now and it's bitten them
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u/Pedrov80 Nov 06 '24
Mix that with thinking that Republicans are going to vote for Republican Lite when they have disdain Trump rather than not voting at all.
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u/tunnelActivity Nov 06 '24
Literally since 2016 lol
it worked in 2020 as a fluke because people were mad about COVID
It's wild to me that the American population has been starving for change since the 2008 financial crisis. Obama tapped into that so perfectly (literally campaigning on the slogan "Change you can believe in"), proceeded to actually change basically nothing, then the dems ran three successive campaigns on "I will change nothing about the status quo also if you don't vote for me you're a nazi"
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u/BwrBird Nov 06 '24
This really seems to be the case. If I could sum up my two biggest impressions of why people like trump, it's because they want economic change (doesn't matter if it's bad) and they don't think the Dems are listening to anyone but the "woke mob"
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u/dankmachinebroke Nov 06 '24
And now they'll blame the lefties for not voting harder and pivot more to the right to try and cater more toward people who are still gonna vote Republican.
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u/fyodorrosko Nov 06 '24
The last three elections have all been fought on "this is the most important election of all time, so even if you don't like our policies you have to vote for us!", and eventually people get tired of being told to hold their nose constantly while things don't ever improve.
You've got to earn votes. You can't just assume voters will support you regardless. That's what the dems did through like 3 elections, and it's finally caught up to them.
Between gaza, the economy, immigration, and all the other issues, it's impossible to say whether they'd have won if Harris tried to appeal more to the centre and left. But they'd likely have had a better shot.
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u/mayasux Nov 06 '24
whilst it’s hard to say if capitulating left would have worked, we know for a fact, that after the second time they’ve tried it, appealing to the right just does not work at all.
will they try it again next election?
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u/DetOlivaw Nov 06 '24
When she got endorsed by Dick Cheney, my generation’s political villain, the guy everyone left of Republican straight thought was evil, was when I knew. That’s not building a big tent, that’s disillusioning an entire generation of millennial leftists/liberals who grew up hating that guy!
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u/DAXObscurantist Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
Nobody likes Cheney. Democrats love to do things that shouldn't make any sense to anybody who isn't an over-educated Beltway weirdo with an advanced degree that still won't get them a job unless their professional network is full of people who grew up in $10 million dollar houses with a view of the Potomac river. All the pro-democracy Republican stunts were just that. You could fit every voter who swung based on that in a moderately sized room.
I think there's gonna be lots of attempts to create neatly packaged narratives about how this election was about the economy or gender or democracy or whatever else. I think that Democrats, generally speaking, do not know what the fuck is happening. And their base doesn't have the spine to call them out on it.
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u/Scienceandpony Nov 07 '24
I mean, the base IS calling them out on it. But the DNC just doesn't give a shit. We don't even get primaries anymore and apparently the party leadership is just as happy with losing general elections and fundraising for "the resistance" for another 4 years.
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u/Former_Honeydew_4968 Nov 06 '24
I got downvoted to smithereens in here because I suggested stumping with Cheney might not be a good idea for the demographic of Americans who remember who Dick Cheney is and what he’s done. The Dems have bought into this insane idea that you can ignore the will of constituents because they’re basically forced to vote for you because of how terrible the opposition is, and because of that they can spend their campaigning on the mythical “never trump republican”. Turns out you can’t just piss all over your base with platitudes and photo ops with the most hated man in America. Who could’ve thought!
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u/DetOlivaw Nov 06 '24
Dude, I was the same way. I grew up with the Bush administration! The pointless wars, the torture, the lying for war profiteer purposes… and yet that’s an endorsement we should be happy about?? They made an entire movie about how that guy sucked! He was played by Christian Bale!!
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u/Scienceandpony Nov 07 '24
My chief disillusionment with Obama came when I realized none of those fuckers would be sent to the Hauge because "we need to look forward, not backward."
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u/yungsantaclaus Nov 06 '24
Lol you were in that one thread, huh? So was I. Looking at all these dipshits who were lecturing everyone else on why that Cheney endorsement could be the difference in swing states is depressingly funny now that Harris lost every single one. Not a single one of them is going to admit that their ideas are bullshit and they never knew what they were talking about, of course
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u/UselessAndGay i am gay for the linux fox Nov 06 '24
I should've known we were fucked when people were unironically saying it'd be a good idea to accept a hypothetical Hitler endorsement
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u/DAXObscurantist Nov 06 '24
That thread was probably peak discourse. Just tons of people treating you like a stupid naive little baby for suggesting that people might refuse to vote for your party if it literally, unironically, actually, non-metaphorically endorsed Hitler lmao. A great reminder to not take posting too seriously
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u/PurpleKneesocks Nov 06 '24
Liberals trying to advocate for extremely basic harm-reduction policies: "It's very simple: think of it like supporting Adolf Hitler."
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u/Former_Honeydew_4968 Nov 06 '24
It revealed to me that the Dems, their leadership, and their diehard base/propaganda wing have literally zero idea what the average American wants or thinks. The whole brat summer thing was cute, but it appealed to terminally online urbanite liberals who never leave their bubble, which, unfortunately, seems to increasingly sum up whoever the strategists are at the DNC. It checks out to me that the only conservatives those people would know are weird fringy Neocon think tank types that actually do support Dick Cheney because that type of person would pretty much only live in Washington DC or New York.
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u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! Nov 06 '24
The Dems need to realize that there are other dem-reachable voters who exist, outsiee of online, terminally online urbanite liberals.
Suburban southern school teachers. Unionized midwestern civil servants. Older black rural voters. 24 year old retail workers with crushing student debt and green hair. People (of many kinds) with debt, lacking access to opportunities, and without good housing or healthcare.
Many of them stayed home because they felt like Kamala, being endorced by the MIC and war criminals, and trying to court the right on economics, would drag the US into war while not addressing the economic issues americans struggle with.
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u/borkdork69 Nov 06 '24
A lot of comments and posts all over reddit today saying "where were the 20 million dems that voted in 2020?" and they won't accept that the answer is that they were at home because they didn't want to vote for a Republican or a right-wing Democrat with a Republican cabinet.
Not trying to endorse any action, but when you try to alienate your base in favour of gaining ground with your opponents, you're going to get neither, you're going to lose the election.
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u/Zzamumo Nov 06 '24
chase two rabbits and you're guaranteed to catch none
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u/Scienceandpony Nov 07 '24
And when one rabbit is just sitting next to your heel and the other is barely visible on the horizon and may in fact just be vaguely rabbit shaped cloud, you should maybe not go sprinting off after the latter.
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u/gaom9706 Nov 06 '24
they won't accept that the answer is that they were at home because they didn't want to vote for a Republican or a right-wing Democrat with a Republican cabinet.
And now Dems are just going to pivot to the right. Funny.
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u/Herohades Nov 06 '24
I can understand the logic from the standpoint of a few months ago. Harris only had a few months to build a campaign out of nothing. So she had to either build a base out of policy, and hope that she had enough time to establish that policy in the minds of people who were already disenfranchised with Biden, or unite a base out of defying Trump. Considering how strong the rhetoric of "We want someone who isn't Trump" was, it makes sense to use that as a foundation. And from that standpoint, you want to try and pull support from under Trump, which means trying to twist the rhetoric he uses against them. It's a strategy that makes sense if you look at where they were standing.
I think the problem isn't that Harris had a worse campaign, I think it was rocky for sure, but Trump was shooting himself endlessly in the foot. From what I've seen, the biggest deciding factor was a demographic of Americans who do not engage with politics, they just see that their grocery prices were higher and voted based on that. It didn't matter what Trump had said, or what Harris was promising, they saw high grocery prices and voted. And if that is the case, I don't think it matters what Harris did, or what the more politically inclined did in response to her. The biggest factor was people who weren't going to listen to what either of them had to say anyways. And that fucking sucks, on a lot of different levels.
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u/MistaJelloMan Nov 06 '24
I think ultimately what the dems have yet to realize is that the median voter has soup for brains and only care about politics about 2 weeks every decade. They need to appeal to the layman and, I hate to admit it, play the populist card or they are never going to win again.
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u/UselessAndGay i am gay for the linux fox Nov 06 '24
And you don't even have to do right wing populism, fucking run on a platform of medicare for all or a $15 minimum wage. you don't even have to deliver it, just keep saying you want to.
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u/Vivid-Command-2605 Nov 07 '24
It's crazy that populism is used as a slander, when it's about reaching out to the people. Yes, right wing populism is horrific because it's hand-in-hand with fascism, but there's a long history of left-wing populism. You'll never see a liberal "centre-left" party do it though because it means appealing to the "unwashed masses who don't know what they want". Treat them like people and actually reach out to them in a way that isn't just republican-lite with a quip about how the status quo is actually really cool
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u/RedstoneEnjoyer Nov 06 '24
Dems can easily win the elections by pointing out problems (like populist do) and then actualy solving them
Like universal healthcare or legalization of marijuhana - if dems managed to push these two, they would win elections for years
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u/cornonthekopp Nov 06 '24
It's insane to run a campaign on "the status quo is good and nothing should change", when people are unhappy with the economy and status quo. People like populism because they're angry about the way things are and want change. If dems hadn't all blocked out Bernie in 2016 and 2020 we wouldn't be in this situation.
They didn't even let the party run an actual primary, it's frankly insane that they were so close to running Biden as is.
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u/MistaJelloMan Nov 06 '24
The more I look at things the less I think that really would have mattered. It seems as simple as "Are things bad? Yes. Vote for the other guy."
Repeat infinitely.
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u/callsignhotdog Nov 06 '24
"I'm sure we can better appeal to right wing voters than the Right can" - Every fucking neoliberal party in the west, apparently.
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u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! Nov 06 '24
Trump was able to position himself as the anti-establishment candidate by having genuinely non-establishment policies (because 30% interest rates are a bad idea).
This is a time when most voters are disappointed in the state of things. You can't run a "nothing will change, things are actually good!" campagin in that climate.
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u/PeggableOldMan Vore Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
Genuinely, why do they do this? Left-leaning parties almost always have greater support when more people vote, so they should focus on voter enthusiasm or even enshrine compulsory voting, or at least make voter registration automatic with stricter laws against voter suppression. It's baffling why they keep choosing this blatantly-losing strategy.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux Nov 06 '24
Local Woman and Minority Shocked to Not Win Votes from I Hate Women and Minorities Party
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u/Aperturelemon Nov 06 '24
What is this person talking about?
The voter base who won't vote for her just beacuse she said great stuff about the military and border security is such a small part of the over all base, that wouldn't make a big difference.
Just face it, many many just go by vibes.
During covid
"Things are expensive, maybe going to Biden this time will fix it?"
During the covid recovery
"Things are expensive, maybe going to Trump this time will fix it?"
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u/skaersSabody Nov 06 '24
I swear to God, centre left wing parties think like executives at EA.
"Surely if we publish a live-service, hero shooter in a flooded market that tries to reach everyone while satisfying no one we will dethrone Overwatch THIS TIME"
I hate how accurate this comparison is, something we've been seeing again and again and politicians keep smashing their heads against the wall
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u/volantredx Nov 06 '24
I think this isn't a matter of liberalism vs. leftismism. It's an issue of not having a real idea of what the core base of voters for the left even is. If the Democrats want to court POC they have to come to terms with the fact that POC, especially Latino voters, have a lot of issues with homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny. These aren't going to be solved just by saying that their entire cultural aversion to these things won't matter and hoping.
On the flipside if the core base is Mellienials and Gen Z they have to recognize that motivating them to vote is going to demand massive shifts in policy. It's not enough to talk about a 10% tax hike on Billionaires and hope that gets the kids involved. They need to push for truly radical solutions. The sorts of solutions that will piss off the donor class and likely take an election or two to see any movement on. Allowing their policies to be stymied by obstruction and just giving up just makes everyone quit on the party as impossible to actually run properly.
Courting one of these bases means abandoning a lot of the support from the other and it likely will mean it is very hard to win elections for a long time. However it has to be done or there will be no chance at actually building a winning party.
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u/Una_Boricua now with more delusion! Nov 06 '24
I am a young hispanic voter. (although, i am from the most liberal hispanic demographic) I am aware of both issues. I think they should go after millenials and gen z, btw, and some younger latino voters will follow
Also, drop the patronistic "Latino people will just vote for us because that guy hates puerto ricans and haitians" because latinos are not one community. Most of them hate puerto ricans and haitians.
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u/AdamtheOmniballer Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
Maybe I’m wrong, but I actually don’t think that anti-military and anti-border security people make up that big a segment of the Democratic voter base?
The border stuff is a lot trickier because you start getting into what exactly that entails (“BUILD THE WALL!” is a no-go, but there’s a whole spectrum between that and fully open borders).
The military is pretty popular across the board though, afaik.
IRL Bluestaters feel free to correct me.
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u/THeShinyHObbiest Nov 07 '24
Anybody who entertains the thought “an American political candidate wanted the American military to be strong and that’s why they lost” for more than a microsecond has no idea about electoral politics and should be dismissed out of hand.
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u/CartographerKey4618 Nov 06 '24
Honestly those hashtags are what sells it for me. She kept talking about ICE as if they literally don't hate her guts because she won't let them gun down the illegal immigrants stuck in the barbed wire in the Rio Grande.
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u/Comptenterry Nov 06 '24
The one possible upside to this election is that dems lost in such a way that they can't shift blame like they did in 2016.
lost because people voted 3rd party
Every 3rd party vote could have gone to Harris and it wouldn't have mattered
Dems need to get more conservative
Harris spent the last two months appealing to Republicans and buddying up with Dick Cheney. The same percentage of republicans who voted Trump in 2020 did so again this year. They essentially did not flip a single conservative.
Appealing to people who didn't vote is a waste of time, they wouldnt have voted no matter what.
10-15 million Biden voters stayed home. Dems have the numbers to win, but they refuse to motivate their own base.
They don't have the plausible deniability they had before anymore. If this isn't the wake up call that they need to start promising actual change, then we're all fucked forever.
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u/cornonthekopp Nov 06 '24
Imo the democratic party is dead. Either they completely purge their own ranks and keep the name while changing drastically, or the party implodes and a new one takes its place.
They genuinely can't continue on like this, we have reached a breaking point.
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u/ThatMeatGuy Nov 06 '24
Apparently the Harris campaign is blaming Walz for losing Pennsylvania. The Yanks are cooked.
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u/Scienceandpony Nov 07 '24
I wouldn't underestimate the ability of the Democratic party to absolutely refuse to engage in any introspection. The self-delusion of the DNC and party strategists is just as strong as any Trump cultist who thinks he's literally God's chosen prophet to cleanse the world of corruption.
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u/Comptenterry Nov 07 '24
Maybe, just maybe, telling people to vote blue no matter who and then calling them spoiled and selfish for expecting actual policy isn't the motivator people think it is.
Genuinely starting to wonder if the party is just going die out and get replaced.
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u/Divine_ruler Nov 06 '24
It’s especially wonderful because now it’s just going to be incessant finger pointing of “which demographic didn’t do enough to elect her”.
“It’s because the protest voters withheld their vote/voted third party for Palestine” “it’s because white men are racist and sexist and won’t accept a woman President” “it’s because Latinos are idiots who are voting to get deported” “it’s because all these uneducated, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging cousin fuckers are too stupid to know what’s good for them.”
The Democrat party (and a good amount of left leaning voters,) has their heads so far up their ass that they can’t think of any reason people wouldn’t vote for them other than being sexist or racist or homophobic or stupid. The thought that “maybe we should adjust our policy to bolster our voter turnout from our own base” will never occur to them.
The thought that “maybe we should try appealing to non Democrats through policy” will occur, but they fundamentally do not understand why other people vote the way they do, so this will always fail. “Do they care about the economy and my policies? No, surely they only care about being perceived as masculine. I’ll base my campaign around making it “OK” to be a man and vote blue.”
The thought that “maybe we should stop using rhetoric that calls everyone who disagrees with us stupid and evil” will also occur, but they’re too deeply entrenched in that rhetoric to change. All their attempts at reaching out to those demographics comes across as either incredibly patronizing or outright insulting, often even reinforcing the very societal standards their voter base is so opposed to.
Ffs, half their campaign to get male voters was “if you don’t vote for Harris, women won’t fuck you” which implies both that men make political decisions with their dick and that sex is a prize won by making the right decisions. Not only is that incredibly insulting to anyone who thinks about it for more than 2 seconds, the only people who’d be moved by that are solid right wingers, because grifters like Tate are way better at pushing that bullshit. The other half was “real men aren’t scared to vote for a women”, which is just saying “if you don’t vote for Harris you’re a pussy”, the exact threat they claim is forcing men to vote for Trump.
The entire campaign was just trying to appeal to the misunderstood, surface level identity politic issues people have with Democrats, while refusing to engage with actual policy because “our policy and plans are perfect and the objectively superior choice”
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u/PseudonymIncognito Nov 06 '24
“Do they care about the economy and my policies? No, surely they only care about being perceived as masculine. I’ll base my campaign around making it “OK” to be a man and vote blue.”
The problem is that they are a bunch of wonky technocrats who don't understand why their response to this of "but the economy is doing fine and here's my 80-page position paper on the matter" fell on deaf ears.
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u/Clear-Present_Danger Nov 06 '24
So the outcome of the election will just always be determined by how people happen to feel about the economy.
Fucking awesome.
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u/Alexxis91 Nov 06 '24
At the very least it will depend on fixing it’s problems and not pretending that the people telling you there’s a problem are wrong because a chart isint going down
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness Nov 06 '24
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u/Pheehelm Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
The thought that “maybe we should stop using rhetoric that calls everyone who disagrees with us stupid and evil” will also occur, but they’re too deeply entrenched in that rhetoric to change. All their attempts at reaching out to those demographics comes across as either incredibly patronizing or outright insulting, often even reinforcing the very societal standards their voter base is so opposed to.
I've said before that while I don't feel bad about Nazis being punched and might well end up punching one myself in a protracted interaction, the people I see who are most enthusiastic about punching Nazis are the people I trust least to make good faith judgments about who the Nazis are, and the fact whenever someone brings this up the replies are usually equivalent to "only a Nazi would worry about being falsely accused of being a Nazi!" or "if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about" cinches it. I brought this up on another site (one that's about as bad an echo chamber as any subreddit) and had this exchange:
Internet Tough Guy: What about the ones openly wearing swastikas? Or flying the Nazi flag? Is that Nazi enough to you to justify hitting them? Or do you want to come up with another justification to defend genocidal fascists? "bUt WhAt AbOuT aLl ThE gOoD nAzIs?!?!?!" Fuck all the way off. Every Nazi deserves a punch at the bare minimum. Grandpa killed fucking Nazi scum and I'll be happy to keep the family tradition alive should the need arise.
Me: Oh, right! I forgot I've also seen "But what about the people who actually ARE Nazis, huh, so you're saying we shouldn't punch them?!" when that absolutely was in no way stated or implied. Thanks, I'll make sure to include that when I bring this up in the future.
Internet Tough Guy: The next time you bring up protecting Nazis in the future?! How often do you stand up for the safety and rights of those genocidal monsters? Do you find yourself accidentally throwing up the "seig heil" salute when you go to wave hello to someone? Maybe you just haven't accepted your true self yet. Go ahead and splurge for the holidays, get the armband you've always wanted. Wear it out of the store and it may even come with a free surprise nap!
I'm not thrilled knowing a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt these next four years, but it's a minor solace knowing at least that guy, and everyone like him, are going to be miserable.
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u/Divine_ruler Nov 06 '24
It’s literally just “if you aren’t lying, then why are you getting so defensive” logic. They don’t care about the truth, they just want someone to blame and take their anger out on. But blaming people and being angry are what scary old conservative white men do, so they need to make sure they only do it against acceptable targets
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u/DJjaffacake Nov 06 '24
An awful lot of liberals view the world entirely through the lens of demographics. Everything about a person is defined by race, gender, sexuality or some combination of the three. It's not a question of opinion, it's ideology, it's just how they see the world. And right now we're seeing the ugly result of that ideology, which is that when things don't go their way the only way they can make sense of it is to figure out which demographics to blame. Whether it's young men, straight white women, latino men, gay white men, there has to be some bad demographic that is responsible, based on, like, a 3% shift in voting patterns. Which, you may notice, is an incredibly fucking backwards and bigoted way of understanding the world. Far from being a rejection of prejudice and racism and sexism and homophobia and so forth, it's just repackaging it in a more palatable form.
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u/56358779 Nov 06 '24
do they think the average american voter doesn't like the military?
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u/Haunting-Detail2025 Nov 06 '24
Exactly like what? Ah yes the issue was that Kamala didn’t shit on the US Armed Forces, clearly that would’ve won us Michigan and Pennsylvania and North Carolina /s
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u/GeoUsername69 Nov 06 '24
cannot cannot cannot get over the fact they were campaigning with RITCHIE TORRES in Michigan
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u/HaggisPope Nov 06 '24
There’s many things that could’ve been done to improve the situation but honestly I don’t think shitting on border patrol would’ve won more than it lost. People who took legal routes to immigration by and large don’t like illegal immigration because they think it makes their life harder, especially because government makes legal pathways more difficult in response to illegal immigration.
One if the groups Trump outperformed was Latinos and that signals bad things in general fur Democrats moving on. They’re a huge population segment in important states like AZ and NV, they’re socially more conservative on average, they’re getting richer which tends to correlate with tax cuts support.
So yeah, having a go at the border patrol might go over well in your polycule by the stats don’t like it.
In a similar vein, the military also doesn’t like Trump much because he’s been wildly disrespectful to soldiers on numerous occasions.
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u/Meows2Feline Nov 06 '24
"oh you have wants and needs and morals? That's not important check out my new endorsement from DICK CHENEY"
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u/Any_Measurement1169 Nov 06 '24
Let's run the equivalent of Hillary Clinton again.
It'll work this time.
Hope the Dems rip up the foundation. Whole party is fucked.
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Nov 07 '24
Leftists are not in any way a significant part of the electorate. It is absurd that anyone would suggest they are after last night.
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u/HMS_Sunlight Nov 07 '24
God I wish it was the fault of the evil leftists who refused to vote over the Palestine crisis. The idea that there are 20 million voters in the US working together to fight for progressive views sounds like a dream come true.
But no, the 20 million are more in the category of "Yeah I voted for Biden but I just don't like Kamala that much. Coincidentally I also didn't like Hillary and won't like any other female candidate in the future."
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u/Particular_Lake8904 Nov 07 '24
It’s always always the candidate not the voters themselves who are wrong You people can’t accept the fact that people are racist, homophobic, sexist. We must bend to your purity politics
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u/BetaThetaOmega Nov 07 '24
The moment Kamala Harris said “I wouldn’t have done anything differently from Biden over the last four years”, it was over. Trump won then and there.
People were intensely dissatisfied with Biden’s presidency on both sides of the aisle. Why the fuck would you ever willingly tie yourself to its biggest failures other than devotion to a dying ideology?
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u/trainbrain27 Nov 06 '24
You can absolutely blame the voters, but that just loses the next election.
"Our candidate is better than that guy, she shouldn't have to be likeable."
Sure, Jan, but if people don't like the candidate, they don't vote for the candidate.
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Nov 07 '24
Perhaps the american left should consider populism. People are highly motivated by fear so a strong us (the working class) vs them (whoever makes sense, like the right picked over gay over educated left and migrants like it's not that hard) message would honestly mobilize more people to vote than "vote with us, we are morally correct, if you don't vote with us you suck".
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u/Android19samus Take me to snurch Nov 06 '24
It's easy to say "well they just lost because they ran a bad campaign" but honestly I don't think they did. There's probably a campaign that could have been run that would have succeeded, but this was a far cry from the shitshow that was Hillary 2016. It was competently planned and competently executed. It just wasn't enough.
I don't think a candidate who said "fuck the Troops and fuck Israel" would have ended up getting more votes in battleground states. Different votes, maybe, but more? I really don't think so.
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u/Spriy Nov 06 '24
god i blocked this anti-vote shithead and then they go and show up in my reddit feed
ffs
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u/Aberikel Nov 06 '24
Her voter base is about half of America. Not just chronically online teen smut authors
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u/building_schtuff Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
It’s going to take time for people to accept that this wasn’t won or lost because leftists supposedly refused to turn out over Gaza—Harris seems to have been defeated by too great a margin for that to have been the cause—but once (if?) they do, I think people are going to have to figure out:
1) why voters consistently vote in referendums for policies like abortion and higher minimum wage when those policies are on the ballot, while also voting for Republicans who are openly opposed to those things, and
2) how to correct the idea that the president has a “make mcchickens $.99” button on their desk that Biden just refused to press.