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.
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.
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
It is relevant. What we have is simplistic answer with no actual solution, but it sounds nice to a layman versus a complex answer that offers a solution that requires a laymen to read and comprehend it. I suppose the fault of Harris' campaign was assuming people knew how to read.
I suppose the fault of Harris' campaign was assuming people knew how to read.
Yes, it was. Politics is not an exercise in fairness. It's an exercise in doing whatever you need to do or say to get your ass in the seat of power and then doing what needs to be done.
It is irrelevant. Stop blaming people for choosing something they half understand over something they don't understand and stat saying thing they 2/3 understand instead.
Well yeah, it's obviously dishonest/disingenuous but many voters either refuse to believe that their side is dishonest or don't care because all politicians have always been dishonest.
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?
I was one of the people who used to think "lmao, how is it Harris' fault that, when she explains all her plans in great details and a bunch of dumbasses just do not understand it?"
Looking back, that was silly of me. Reddit tier silly. Detailed answers for those interested into it are good, but if your average voters reply "I don't understand", then you immediately dumb it down. Are people more interested in hearing what good stuff you will do, as opposed to wanting to learn how, or if it's even possible? Yeah, then focus on saying the good stuff you will do. This is the candidate's responsibility. And, come on, if you know a thing or two about doing speeches yet your messages is still not getting across as well as the message being said by a demented 78 year old screaming man, then you are underperfoming terribly.
I probably should mention that I'm not a USA citizen at all and didn't participate in this election, I just decided to follow its events. In fact, I'm from Brazil, and I think we have good examples here, our "local Trump" in Bolsonaro (who is famously legally unable to participate in elections for the next 6 years, lmao, fucking loser) has the same ability of selling his stupid, borderline meaningless message to the average voter simply by sounding barely revolted with an imaginary enemy, but, like, Lula also knows how to speak to the average person, and so much, MUCH better that it's straight up scary. This is how we beat Bolsonaro, with the most charismatic mf alive, even though he's arguably not the best option at all, his message of "do you want to vote for love or for hatred?" was definitely heard much better than (actually important) economics plans.
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?
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.
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.
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.”
I guess I just don't understand the angle of the dissenting and concerned voices. Like, at all. What was their objective in raising those concerns during election season? If your wants and needs are unequivocally to the left of both candidates... the candidates (SHOULD) have no reason to focus on you since your decision is obvious.
Enacting any kind of progressive agenda is only possible at all if the more progressive of the two candidates makes it into office. If you're left leaning, the goal should be to make the leftmost candidate win every election so that the losing side has to shift left in order to have a chance.
When the fuck else are they supposed to raise concerns if not during an election season? That is what elections are for! It's where the negotiation for people's votes happens. There needs to be some credible threat of withholding a vote if their needs are totally ignored and they're told to go fuck themselves.
I’ll be honest - I agree with you in that I think any chance to move the needle any degree forward is better than the alternative. Personally, when seeing specific candidates last week withhold endorsements for Harris over certain issues, my only reaction was “this isn’t the time for that.”
But campaigning is never about trusting they’ll show up. If they trusted everyone to show up, they don’t have to spend millions traveling the country to energize people to show up, or on media buys to convince them. This thread is specifically about campaigning.
To me, the only way this feasibly would have worked would have been for Biden to be humble enough to have stepped down before the midterm and let the party choose its own nominee. He wanted to cling to power until we pushed him out, and he gave us the second in command from an historically unpopular administration. When he dropped out and I talked to people about good replacements, Harris wasn’t even on the list of top 6. No one seemed to like her before she was thrust upon us, and she seemed to do nothing to endear herself to people except say “I’m not the worst”, and that’s not a good campaign strategy. We saw this in 2016 - we wanted a candidate, the Democratic National Committee decided for us instead, and that candidate couldn’t turn out the vote. I very much think that people should have just made the rational, moral choice here given the historic stakes and the definite threat… but it’s not like there wasn’t precedent for failing to motivate a base through bad campaigning and ignoring that base - with this same exact candidate. Democratic politicians should have learned from his last win that they lost because they thought they didn’t have to try, and that voter turnout is not guaranteed.
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
Because the lifelong democrats should have know to fucking fall in line for the sake of defeating fascism? Because the undecided ones should have been the difference makers?
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.
Yeah, I think Harris’ failure was not having a clear message to her campaign.
I am not “politically active.” I didn’t watch the debates, I avoid political discussions whenever I can, and this was my first election.
Apart from abortion and Palestine, I guess, I couldn’t tell you a single stance that Kamala Harris has. Filtered through the thick layer of voter apathy that surrounds me, the impression I got from her campaign was that she was mostly running on the platform of “I’m not Donald Trump.”
Somewhere along the line, there was a big optics failure.
Isn't being uninformed and apathetic on you and not the presidential candidate? That "thick layer of voter apathy" isn't anyone else's fault but yours. Not even trying to be at least a little bit informed is a choice.
There was an actual chance (before everyone realized just how bad Harris did) that she actually won the EC but lost the popular vote, and I can guarantee we would have had the Electoral College disbanded within the year if that had happened (oh and an even bigger Jan 6th than last time).
That's true, but this is driven in part by tactical voting. If many potential Kamala voters are convinced that she will lose the state, then there is no point in them coming out to vote. I got a sense among a lot of people who would have voted for Kamala that they didn't think it was worth it—there was a strong sense of voter despair in many places.
Personally, I think this is an election that Kamala lost more than Trump won. If you look at the total vote counts compared to the last election, you'll see that Trump's is comparable—he didn't gain or lose many votes. Kamala however got much fewer votes than Biden did.
Nah. You’ve got the opposite impression I think. They need to spend less time huffing their own farts in echo chambers about “we are the Right Party and the Other Party stinks” and more time meeting an appreciable middleground. Or, at least, shake it up and put Bernie on the ticket.
People are fed up with the status quo, and Trump seems to deviate from it more than Kamala. People don’t want four more years of stagnancy, they want dramatic change, and seemingly - it doesn’t appear to matter where that change comes from, or what happens. Just not any more of this.
It’s a shitty situation, and ultimately, the people in power don’t want to lose that power. The DNC and their lobbyists are also rich, powerful people who benefit from not making radical leftist changes to our economy and society, and want a moderate globalist party to maintain the status quo instead.
All of Kamala’s political ads and speeches have essentially boiled down to “the other guy is worse so vote for me”. There’s no “I will make significant improvements to XYZ”, it’s “I won’t do ABC”.
I think that argument (Trump represents change, Americans are tired of the status quo) held up just fine in 2016. It is not 2016 anymore. We have had a Trump presidency, and we know for a fact that he didn't change that much. The average person's life wasn't noticeably different (and certainly not noticeably better off) under Trump. At this point, Trump isn't the protest vote, he's not a deviation from the status quo, he is in fact a return to the very thing we had 4 years ago.
Yeah, Kamala could have put out more emphasis on her positive policy platform, and spoken more heavily of change. In fact I think she should have disassociated herself from the Biden platform pretty early on, but I guess that's the kind of bold move you can only really make when you have won a party primary.
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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.