Summary

Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, with many voters—often women—expressing doubts about whether “America is ready for a female president.”

Some said they “couldn’t see her in the chair,” or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, “you don’t see women building skyscrapers.” Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line.

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Biden’s administration.

Ultimately, Hall believes that Trump’s unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harris’s campaign efforts.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Persuadable voters seemed really focused on prices. It’s hard not to be condescending here. Eggs are expensive because of bird flu. Rent is high because not enough housing is being built, mostly limited by local issues. Gas is high because of Putin’s war. Anyone who thinks electing Trump will bring those prices down because they were lower last time he was president is fucking clueless.

    I’m interested to see how much of a factor unenthusiastic Democrats were. Trump got about the same number of votes he did in 2020, but Harris got far fewer than Biden. It looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.

      We also made it decidedly less convenient by making mail voting more difficult, and then the media kept blasting a “going out to vote might get you assaulted by Trump supporters” narrative that frightened people.

  • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    That’s a generous way of saying “Most Americans are overly sexist and/or racist and are willing to make up any reason to not vote for a woman of color despite any evidence to the contrary”

    • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Just at the shop work at most citizens make below $15 an hour even trades jobs

      Not just any fucking reason

      Most US citizens are struggling with overpriced housing, sky high taxes, ginourmous energy costs, inflatated food costs, and all on below living wages

      Fuck the Democrats and the Republicans both for exploiting the citizens

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        I’m glad the enlightened centrist take is always here to offer the right answers.

        • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          Just see the US underneath on the daily when on the job

          The real US that is hidden beneath all the media sprinkles and the propaganda icing

          Gets worse every election no matter which “party” “wins”

          • TimmyDeanSausage @lemmy.world
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            14 days ago

            One party gets into power and throws shit everywhere. The other party gets into power and cleans as much shit as they can, but it’s on the ceiling and seeping into the walls. They never get all of it. Often they only get a small amount of it. It’s never the shit thrower’s fault though. Both parties are covered in shit.

        • EldritchFeminity
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          14 days ago

          You may find it an absurd opinion, but I’d say it’s exactly why the Democrats can’t help but grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

          They’re simply bad at showing off the good that they do and they spend their campaign time courting some mythical moderate Republican voting base that wouldn’t vote for them anyway by moving further and further right, disenfranchising their voting base. Who they then blame for their loss. Leftists don’t like voting for the lesser of two evils and vote with their heart, while Republicans vote for the nominee, regardless of their positions or values. And the stats show that the Democrats failed to motivate people to get out and vote. Trump actually lost 2 million votes compared to 2020. If there’s still elections in 2028, we’ll see a resurgence in votes for the Democrat candidate after 4 more years of this monstrosity, but people have forgotten just how bad it really was.

          The economy does better under Democratic presidents. That’s a verifiable fact. Biden added 500,000 jobs to the economy and brought inflation down, started student loan forgiveness programs, and all kinds of other things. But the Dems didn’t talk about that, and the media sure as hell wasn’t when going to when they could blast Trump’s absurd claims instead. And when we did hear about it, it was through the lens of the economy as a whole, not what you average American experiences day to day. Inflation is down, but prices aren’t, and wages haven’t kept up in decades. According to the IRS, 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.

          So when Trump says he’s gonna change things, and Harris looks like it’s gonna be more of the same (no matter how much hogwash Trump’s claims are and things are only going to get worse), it’s gonna do nothing to alleviate the grievances leftists have had with the Biden administration on all sorts of things like the genocide in Palestine. They’ve heard the “vote for me or it’s the end of democracy!” song and dance too many times while seemingly getting nothing out of it.

          • ctkatz@lemmy.ml
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            14 days ago

            They’re simply bad at showing off the good that they do

            pardon me, but I think this is an extremely bad take. because the two things that were glaringly obvious to me over the last 8 years have been

            1. the total whitewash, sanewashing, and normalization of trump in every aspect by major legacy media and
            2. the total ignorance of any democratic accomplishment by that same media.

            it is extremely hard for a party to proclaim their good things when the people who have the most exposure to the public outright refuse to tell people about it. pundits have complained bitterly about the democrats communication problem on network tv but never seem to question those same tv networks why they won’t talk about what the democrats just did. and when democrats appear on those same shows and bring up their accomplishments themselves the hosts are completely disinterested in the topic and don’t allow the democrat to expound further on their accomplishments.

            this country has a severely unbalanced media coverage and bias issue that no one wants to talk about because it exposes how much the media has been bought and bullied by the right wing. for at least 40 years it’s just accepted that what a republican says goes unchallenged while the democrat gets no positive press whatsoever. acceptance of the false “liberal media” trope is baked in and simply taken as fact. it’s no wonder why the news is distrusted and no one pays it any attention anymore.

            • EldritchFeminity
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              14 days ago

              I agree, the media has an absurd right-wing bias. You need simply look at the view ratios between the posts of right-wing and left-wing politicians to see how leftist messages are filtered out. And that’s not even getting into stuff like the company that bought up something like 500 local news channels after 9/11 with the sole intent of running more anti-Muslim broadcasts.

              But even beyond that, when you look at the Democrats during the campaign, it’s all maintaining the status quo rhetoric or shifting away from what their base wants to court the nonexistent moderate Republican, not showing how they’ve moved towards what their voting base wants.

      • Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Dems and Reps are both corporatists (though you could argue Reps are moving towards some neo-feudalism) neither is willing to severely curtail the big money interests. I think you’re right that people are genuinely hurting and anxious. People are also probably sexist and racist. Harris had a hell of a lot of disadvantages to overcome in the president’s race and she didn’t.

        Mostly though, reality doesn’t matter anymore for probably a supermajority because people are so checked out. Just vibes - and the vibes are bad

        • btaf45@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          Dems and Reps are both corporatists

          Here’s why we know this is bullshit. Reps keeping cutting corporate taxes. Biden raised corporate taxes. Harris was going to raise them more.

          Saying someone is a ‘corporatist’ is a meaningless generality. Focusing on tax rates always provides crystal clarity on whether the label is real or not. Cutting their taxes is the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd top priority of corporations. If they cannot get a politician to do that, they don’t control that politician.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I just want to say this to all the people who are making up the most hare-brained excuses for why Harris lost.

    Kamala Harris cobbled together a campaign in days that took a campaign that was going R+5 and counting and turned it into a toss-up. She had 107 days. From day one, she was held to an infinitely higher standard than Trump. Trump held a debate where he famously said “They’re eating the dogs!” and “I have concepts of a plan!.”, and Americans were just fine with it. But Harris wasn’t perfectly articulate with details over some economic plan or another and apparently this makes her unfit for President. She put up a near-flawless campaign, especially given how stuck behind the 8-ball she was. It ultimately just didn’t matter.

    Arab-Americans were outraged over Harris’ support for Israel because of the genocide in Gaza. So to protest this, they voted for a man who has vowed even more support for israel and to genocide even harder, and also try to kick them out of the country in the process.

    Latino men opted to vote for a man who made it a focal point of his campaign to round up and deport Latinos en-masse because the alternative was voting for a former prosecutor who also happens to be a woman.

    White people decided that they want someone who’s going to fix the economy, so they decided to vote for a guy who campaigned on raising the cost of living by an average of about $400 a month while promising to appoint a budget czar who already said he actively plans on imposing “hardships” on poor people.

    Well, it’s either that, or tens of millions of people in a country with a long-established history of racism and misogyny refused to vote for a black female president and just used these niche issues as excuses.

    I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, and I know what I’m about to say sounds racist as hell. But Obama was a fluke and America in general is just not willing to elect a minority again. That’s just all there is to it. The rise of Trump, the rise of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, and the 2024 election are proof of that. Democrat initiatives did relatively fine. The senate went GOP, but that was predicted with the loss of Manchin and Tester. Democrats in the House did fine. Kamala Harris did not.

    And for those who believed that embracing centrist policies is what cost us the election, or we weren’t left enough, or we should have listened to people like Bernie and AOC: People like Bernie and AOC are wildly popular in their districts and with the far-left coalition of the voting base. But they are wildly unpopular outside of that. And keep in mind…I love both of them and would gladly vote for a future AOC as president. But given the current political makeup of the country, putting someone like Bernie or AOC on the ballot would have made the ass kicking Harris just got seem tame. Sure, they’d have won states like California and Massachusetts by gigantic margins. But they’d do little to nothing to flip red or purple states.

    The fact of the matter is that the 2024 results prove that Americans like what the Democrats were selling. They just don’t want her to be the one selling it, as evidenced by the fact that only she underperformed so spectacularly. People were so unwilling to vote for a black, female President that over 10 million of them opted to stay home knowing full well that they were essentially voting for Trump.

    A majority of this country is white. A majority of this country will not vote for a minority president again in this political climate. And if the Democrats put up another minority candidate in 2028 (assuming we even have elections), they will lose again. That’s just all there is to it. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. It’s not right, but it’s the truth. You know how black people across the south have been fighting gerrymandering so they can have majority-black districts and vote for black candidates? Or for that matter, how minority candidates do better in minority districts when championing minority initiatives? White people are doing the same thing. And there’s a lot more of them. And they just proved that they absolutely will vote against their best interests vs. voting for a black woman.

    • EldritchFeminity
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      14 days ago

      One thing to note about Bernie and AOC is that they’re not popular, but their policies are. During 2016, polls showed that even the majority of Republican voters supported Bernie’s policies - but only if you told them what the policy was before you told them that it was Bernie’s.

      The Red Scare is still ongoing today, and having been labeled socialists and communists has made them untouchables and pariahs. And there has never been any Red Scare equivalent for the KKK or white supremacists, or for corporatism or anything, but there has been for socialism, unions, and anything else that puts power into the hands of the people.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      14 days ago

      I want to comment that you nailed so many valid points.

      I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, and I know what I’m about to say sounds racist as hell. But Obama was a fluke and America in general is just not willing to elect a minority again.

      This one, I don’t think I agree that it was a fluke.

      Democrats are continuing to let the loudest crybabies take over the room. And then compromise. Conservatives are right on one thing: the message that Kamala put out to their people was, “You don’t want to vote for a fascist.” Which doesn’t resonate with them. What they instead saw was a person who was going to keep things the same.

      Can a minority run again? Absolutely.

      But only stop catering to the status quo and bowing down to companies. Do Bernie Sanders shit.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        This one, I don’t think I agree that it was a fluke.

        Fluke probably wasn’t the right word in hindsight. He won and got re-elected decisively. Maybe they consider it a “mistake”. I don’t know what the right word for it is. However you want to call it, they just will not allow it to happen again.

        Democrats are continuing to let the loudest crybabies take over the room. And then compromise.

        That is a decades-long flaw in the Democrat party that had little bearing on this election.

        Conservatives are right on one thing: the message that Kamala put out to their people was, “You don’t want to vote for a fascist.” Which doesn’t resonate with them.

        Actually, many of them were on social media actively advocating for him because of the authoritarianism. They were pretty open about voting for a convict/dictator/rapist over a nig…uh…blackperson…uh “Democrat”.

        What they instead was a person who was going to keep things the same.

        Here’s the problem. When 51% of your voting base is giving very strong signals they don’t want a minority as President and telling you they want things to remain the same, offering up a minority candidate who wants to change everything is not going to win you elections. Doesn’t matter how benevolent their ideas are. The American voters just said they are willing to vote against policies they like simply because they don’t like the person selling it.

        In the past 3 Presidential elections, the GOP put up the literal worst candidate in history. In two of those 3 elections, the Democrats put up women. Trump won. The only time he lost was when they put up an old white guy. Then they complained about him being an old white guy. Then, rather than vote for the black woman, they voted for another old white guy. And a whole bunch of people are here saying that we would’ve won if we just put up an even older white guy with the same policies.

        Which is basically the Democrat party as a whole saying that they may not want an old white guy as President, but they’ll sure as hell put a white guy in the White House before a they put a woman there, and certainly not a black one. They tried twice, and voters stayed home. And they stayed home knowing full well what that meant. What does that tell you?

        Can a minority run again? Absolutely.

        Assuming we have elections again, a minority will not sit in the Oval Office in my lifetime. And if they put one up in 2028, they’re going to lose just as hard. The American public – from both parties – have sent a loud and clear message that they will not put a woman in charge of the US, certainly not a black one. And if you think, especially after 4 more years of the Trump Hate Machine blasting propaganda 24/7, that a minority is going to have a snowball’s chance in hell, I’ve got beachfront property on Mars you may be interested in.

        But only stop catering to the status quo and bowing down to companies. Do Bernie Sanders shit.

        Then wonder why you lose again. Outside of his voters and the far left, people don’t want Bernie Sanders shit. We may disagree with them, but there’s more of them then there are of us.

        • prole
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          13 days ago

          Outside of his voters and the far left, people don’t want Bernie Sanders shit. We may disagree with them, but there’s more of them then there are of us.

          Thanks. So many people here seemingly have never met a real person IRL before

    • shadowfax13@lemmy.ml
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      13 days ago

      hard disagree, progressive policies up for vote were adopted even in deep red states unlike the fake progressive party.

      this sort of holier than thou analysis same as dnc is why they never fix their smugness towards voters.

      “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”

      outside the bubble of .world and reddit, the above statements are seen as nothing but dogshhit gaslighting. people understand that trump is stupid, incompetent and repulsive but they also correctly see that dnc are double dealing scammers who have no problem mass murdering kids for few million in campaign donations. for how many brown women murdered in gaza and now lebanon did harris opened her mouth full of aipac money. her career is full of oppressing poor and blacks and including single mothers, and at the same time sucking up to the rich including trump. she has shamelessly flip-flopped on issues wherever she had seen more votes. why the hell someone would vote for a smug power tripping hack like this in name of democracy and lesser evil. she would have absolutely nuked gaza, lebanon & iran to get funding from aipac and mic for a 2nd term, while inflation and corporate greed would have remained unckecked same as trump.

      and if not for trump and dnc’s over the top fear mongering, she would have likely lost many deep blue state. she lost like hillary because they were planted by the megadonors to create a win-win situation for them for that they sabotaged sanders in 2016 and warren in 2020.

      even the votes dnc got this time were mostly in despair, and many of them unlikely to do it again, those who sat out were disgusted enough to not care.

      the same people wishing more genocide and mocking egg prices were dismissing any criticism of biden & harris as russian troll. and now they are surprised that many of them sat out for not wanting to do anything with this farce of an election where you loose against the oligarchy not matter who you vote.

      imho i don’t see dnc winning again, it will be better if aoc and warren form a new party and destroy them for good.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        hard disagree, progressive policies up for vote were adopted even in deep red states unlike the fake progressive party.

        Which is why I said the policies weren’t the problem. She was. The voting base did not want to vote for a black woman. The rest of the election went pretty much as predicted.

        “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”

        Tell me which one of these is wrong.

        Is it the one where Trump got no criticism for “They’re eating the dogs!”, while Kamala Harris was criticized for not being perfectly articulate?

        Is it the one where people criticized Harris for supporting Israel, then voted for someone who was going to … give even more weapons and support to Israel?

        Or it is the one where the only two women were both beat by Trump after a smear campaign from the mainstream media?

        Or the one where Trump has vowed to increase prices on goods by slapping tarrifs on everything? Or the one where Musk already said he was gong to impose hardships on people?

        Or the fact that the country as a whole has been leaning hard into the racism since Obama was in office?

        And as for bernie, the entire Democrat base had been saying that they didn’t want Biden because he was “too old”. And here you are offering someone older. Which means his age was never really the problem, was it? Because half the country just voted for a dementia patient , and the other half are now saying we should’ve put up someone older.

        And try getting AOC over in independent or right-leaning areas she’d need to pick up a win. Good luck with that.

        outside the bubble of .world and reddit, the above statements are seen as nothing but dogshhit gaslighting.

        Prove me wrong.

        people understand that trump is stupid, incompetent and repulsive but they also correctly see that dnc are double dealing scammers who have no problem mass murdering kids for few million in campaign donations.

        So the answer is to vote for someone who’s going to mass murder even more people? Remember, last time Trump interfered in the middle east, he moved the embassy to Jerusalem which pissed off just about everybody and sent Jared Kushner over there, who did exactly nothing outside of collecting $2 billion from the Saudis which they still refuse to explain.

        But sure, the dnc are the scammers…

        for how many brown women murdered in gaza and now lebanon did harris opened her mouth full of aipac money. her career is full of oppressing poor and blacks and including single mothers, and at the same time sucking up to the rich including trump. she has shamelessly flip-flopped on issues wherever she had seen more votes. why the hell someone would vote for a smug power tripping hack like this in name of democracy and lesser evil. she would have absolutely nuked gaza, lebanon & iran to get funding from aipac and min for a 2nd term, while inflation and corporate greed would have remained unckecked same as trump.

        And tell me how voting for Trump was somehow better in any possible way. And if you abstained from voting knowing all of that full well, you essentially voted for Trump.

        and if not for trump and dnc’s over the top fear mongering, she would have likely lost many deep blue state. she lost like hillary because they were planted by the megadonors to create a win-win situation for them for that they sabotaged sanders in 2016 and warren in 2020.

        Ah yes, it was all a Democrat conspiracy to…hand the Presidency to Trump. Oooooooookay…

        the same people wishing more genocide

        voted for Trump.

        and mocking egg prices

        Which is the result of bird flu.

        were dismissing any criticism of biden & harris as russian troll. and now they are surprised that many of them sat out for not wanting to do anything with this farce of an election where you loose against the oligarchy not matter who you vote.

        So voting to lose harder was your solution?

        • shadowfax13@lemmy.ml
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          still stuck on “trump is worse” instead of dnc has become so bad that trump didn’t matter.

          say that the mayor election is between two criminal, one of them has scammed you of your life savings and killed your family & neighbours in front of your eyes and the other candidate is said to be even worse. are you going to vote for first candidate or plan of shooting him ?

          “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”

          Tell me which one of these is wrong.

          all of them

          • she has no standards, she was a corrupt cop who rose in dnc for her sucking upto megadonors.

          • asking to ignore a genocide is enough to loose all credibility. it only infuriates people when they ask to reward them for burning kids alive in hospitals. what’s trump gonna do reincarnate the gaza population and kill them again ?

          • “happens to be a woman” : who had happily jailed single moms and supports israel killing women for aipac money. its the same excuse as pedophile asking for respect because he is a priest.

          she is a entitled hypocrite who has never struggled as black or woman and lived among the elite enabling their corruption same as the white woman hillary. biden would have been the same but he likely got the pass because of being part of obama admin, his son dying and covid mismanagement by trump.

          those still stuck on defending dnc needs to understand in two party system we need to have opposite options else we are basically begging to continue to get trodden by the oligarchs. “the trump is worse”, “harder genocide” just make people loose faith in the system and sit it out.

          i honestly wont be surprised if dnc puts token candidates so they can divert any criticism and reforms by blaming their loss on racism and sexism just like israel uses antisemitism.

    • JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      So much this. The voters fucked up the country - they just don’t want to face up to the reality that their childish narrow-mindedness hath wrought. The political mechanism was merely what it has always been.

    • acchariya@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Regarding election of a minority, I think this country would elect an Arab American before a woman. Anecdotally, talking to right leaning voters who really had no great feeling for trump, the theme came up again and again “how can a woman go toe to toe with Putin or the Saudis?” “Will generals listen to her?”.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I think a lot of your comment boils down to a few things that Americans need to accept:

      • Americans don’t care about policy. They like sound bites, and Trump gives those for days.
      • People vote against their interests in the name for change, even if it negatively affects people like them (but importantly, not them)
      • America is a deeply racist and misogynistic country.
      • Playing it safe doesn’t win elections in America, but minorities only win if the other choice is uninspired.

      Where I disagree is that it was a toss-up. Harris has performed worse than Hillary, which is wild considering how deeply unpopular she was. Frankly, before she ran it was obvious how disliked she was.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I’d agree with your paraphrasing but it exists in a media vacuum.

        • Americans don’t care about policy. They like sound bites, and Trump gives those for days.

        That’s a comment on media that Americans consume, not necessarily Americans.

    • lemmingthelemmers@lemmy.world
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      They lost because they lost touch with America.

      You can blame everyone you did in your post because you fail to see the bigger picture.

      The democrats did not let you take place in democracy. There was no primary. Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite. She would never have been elected by voters because she is a hollow shell of catchphrases and memorized talking points.

      She is unrelatable and therefore unelectable. She had no platform except that she was going to keep doing the Genocide Joe walk.

      The only tears that you should be crying was that they were able to get you to vote for them while genociding kids Gaza, effectively saying “yeah I don’t care.”

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        The incumbent President was the nominee. Generally, the incumbents don’t hold primaries because the outcome is all but certain, and party leadership has never forced an incumbent to step aside before. By the time Biden dropped out, there was no time for a primary. If we’d have tried dumping Biden, holding a primary in a country of 350 million people, and running a general election campaign in barely 3 months, we’d have been a laughing stock. We’d be infighting for months while Trump was running a general election campaign unopposed. The RNC would be saying “We’re firmly behind Trump. Biden is so bad that the DNC forced him out of the race and all of the other options are so bad that they can’t settle on one.” If you think that the election was a slaughter, that scenario would have made everything exponentially worse.

        • lemmingthelemmers@lemmy.world
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          Makes you wonder why it was allowed it to happen at all. It’s not as if Biden wasn’t showing signs of aging the limited times he was seen in public on the first go-round. He should have been primaried again, but it was worth it for them to lose the Whitehouse to Trump 2x. This should be a layup for a major political party to be in opposition of, but old Bernie was too extreme for the corporate warhawk democrats because he wanted to tax the rich.

          Here’s the truth: the democrats don’t give a shit about democracy and they sure as hell don’t give a shit about you.

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite.

        She was the chosen one of the elected delegates. Just because somebody is elected as a party delegate does NOT make them an “elite”. Fuck that shit. It doesn’t take a lot of money to be a delegate. It mainly just takes a lot of commitment.

  • Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    “I can only think of one occasion when someone mentioned stricter taxes on billionaires or any similar policies. The atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza only came up six times in more than 1,000 calls. The idea that Harris was not leftwing enough seems false”

    The problem with this anecdotal evidence is that the campaign almost certainly put this kid to work only calling likely Republican voters… An absolute waste of time, and of course these are the things those shit brains would be saying… If he had been put to work calling people who had voted for Biden but were less likely to show up this time he would have gotten a lot more genocide, she’s not progressive enough, and tax the rich messages

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      Exactly. On the fuckin head.

      Just goes to show how deeply-run this “focus on courting the fascists” was in the campaign.

    • prole
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      13 days ago

      On ok… So that’s anecdotal evidence, but not your terminally online ass seeing everyone on Lemmy upset with it and assuming that was any indication of real world demographics?

      Got it.

      • Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee
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        13 days ago

        Nah, we’ll have to wait for someone to poll the people who showed up last time but sat it out this time to know for real why they did it

  • eran_morad@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    She was a lackluster candidate, yet clearly the only reasonable choice. The problem is that the electorate is full of fuckbrains. Any fucking excuse would do - black, woman, price of eggs, whatever. Everything’s about to spiral the fuck outta control (let’s see what egg prices are gonna be like after tariffs n shit). Bitches wanted this in place of having a lackluster, mediocre, caretaker president. Alright. Play ball, bitches.

  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    Sucks man. I was really hoping to get to the Grand Canyon before they start strip mining it for uranium, but I might be fleeing with my family before we become the rape capital of the globe. India is still king, but judging from the chuds who vote for him, it won’t be long before we surpass them. I won’t have that for my wife and daughter. They deserve better.

    • eran_morad@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Look at a population density map of the US and India and take comfort in the fact that we do not live in close enough proximity to each other to ever take the title of world’s rape capital. MURICA, BITCH!!!

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    14 days ago

    “Wages may well be rising at all levels, but everyday inflation was more discernible to voters.”

    Your wages only rise if you change jobs. If you aren’t willing, or able to change jobs, your wage increase (if you get one AT ALL) is not beating inflation.

    • prole
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      13 days ago

      Maybe in a world where unions don’t exist (so give it a year or two)… But no, that’s absurd.

  • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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    14 days ago

    “I know why she lost”

    She lost because 11 million people sat out this election. That’s it, that’s all there is.

    The fact is that most of this country leans blue, and when voters turn out, blue typically wins. This is why the GOP is doing everything they can to make sure people don’t vote.

    Trump has a vote ceiling of around 74, maybe 75 million. In 2020, 81 million people voted for Biden.

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Why do you think 11 million people sat out?

      Like, if you’re walking down the street and one person calls you a horse they’re a jerk, if two people call you a horse they’re both jerks, but if everyone keeps calling you a horse maybe it’s time to go get fitted for a saddle. The Dems got called a horse 11 million times here.

      • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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        14 days ago

        I get what you’re saying, but apathy at that scale isn’t calling democrats a horse. It’s taking a backseat on your future.

        • Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee
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          14 days ago

          You have to try and see it like a young person who hasn’t fully developed the ability to understand long term consequences and also probably isn’t paying all that much attention. Imagine if the choice had been between Trump and Cheney, would you have bothered to show up? Now imagine all you saw was that Cheney supports Harris, and the other guy is Trump. There’s no one to vote for.

  • takeda@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Author gave many reasons I saw on social media, especially the top ones she mentioned like economy concerns or that she is a communist which are the opposite of reality.

    She concentrated on what people are saying instead of why.

    We are living in a world where huge part of population abandoned traditional news such as TV, newspapers and is getting their vote about the world via social media through memes and influencers.

    The biggest problem with it is that this unlike traditional media is open to foreign interference. We had report of American bloggers being paid by Kremlin ridiculous amount of money, we have evidence of bots being used to persuade public opinion, astroturfing groups on Facebook and other social media that were traced to Russia.

    And we still did nothing to stop it.

    Half of America lives in a different reality. And it isn’t just America but those efforts are happening also in Europe and other Western countries.

  • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 days ago

    I really don’t think that sexism was the leading cause of her loss, or even one of the top causes.

    She alienated a sizable voter group in a swing state, and people who are struggling to buy groceries are not going to vote for a person who is literally in the second highest executive position in the ruling party, unless they make changes people can see, and have a good campaign on change. When I heard harris give speeches I always thought “well, you have a direct ear to the president and are one of the highest ranking democrats in the US. Why don’t you use this to make change now?

    • slabber@lemmy.ml
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      When I heard harris give speeches I always thought “well, you have a direct ear to the president and are one of the highest ranking democrats in the US. Why don’t you use this to make change now?

      Well said!

  • very_well_lost@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

    This. This right here is the issue.

    According to the studies done by the Federal Reserve, only 54% of Americans have enough savings to cover 3 months of expenses. That means nearly half the country is basically living paycheck to paycheck.

    Dems say wages are on the rise? So is the price of food, with some items still 50% more expensive than they were at the start of the pandemic (and now in even smaller packages to boot). Many Americans are also still stuck working a laughably low federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Why should they care about wage hikes when they haven’t gotten a raise since 2009? Meanwhile a large portion of the working class is in food service where the base rate is even lower and they have scrape by on tips — tips that are harder and harder to come by as fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to eat out.

    Dems say unemployment is falling? Of course it is, when many Americans have no choice but to work multiple jobs just to make rent. And speaking of rent, it’s up a average of 30% which is even higher than the supposed ~25% wage growth Dems were running on.

    If someone is living hand-to-mouth, struggling to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomach, the last thing they wanna hear about is fucking GDP or employment rates or the stock market. Millions of Americans are getting screwed by the economy, and when Democrats run on a message of prosperity, that spits in the face of their lived experiences. Meanwhile Trump tells them that the system is rigged and they’re getting screwed. He points the finger at all the wrong things, of course, but at least he acknowledges that things suck, even if all his proposed “solutions” are all empty demagoguery.

    Stop telling working Americans how great the economy is and start telling them what they want to hear, what they know in their bones is true: The system is rigged against you. The ownership class has spent the last 3 decades gleefully stealing our wages, raping the environment, and padding the pockets of politicians so that we all stay divided and distracted. Stop running for the economy and start running against it. Run against robber barons and union busters like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Run against the Kochs and the Waltons who’ve been fighting for decades to keep wages low and the keep the pockets of rich politicians full with hundreds of millions in PAC money. Run against Comcast, run against Starbucks, run against fucking Nestle.

    And while you’re at it, stop taking economic policy advice from capitalist assholes like Mark Cuban. Stop flaunting all your celebrity endorsements — more rich people who understand absolutely nothing about the day to day lives of working Americans. And for the love of God… please, please stop running to the right at every opportunity you get.

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    While I get it, I still find it weird that so many British people, including card-carrying members of Labour and British journalists volunteered to campaign for a foreign politician. It’s a damaging look in hindsight, and is likely why the US-UK relationship will be dead under Trump, as opposed to tight back in 2016.

    With that said, he’s not wrong. The US is absolutely not ready for this, and it’ll take decades of education and a rebuilding of the Democrats to claw back from this.

    • Ross_audio@lemmy.world
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      It was dead the moment we didn’t elect a low towing fop.

      Russia funded and led the conservative movement here in the past 10 years. We got Brexit, we got incompetent government, they got a place to park their wealth (a lot of it is still here), they got crimes without much fuss.

      Europe was weakened.

      As the funding for Trump’s loans and Musk’s Twitter buyout as well the moment we woke up and voted for a different party we became a target state instead of a puppet state.

      Even Boris Johnson realised we had to help Ukraine. They replaced him with Truss and Sunak, more controllable puppets.

      There are of course other factors, but the effect of global oligarchs spending fossil fuel wealth is clear in Western Democracy at the moment. Saudi is another big influence, they court both sides as long as they aren’t crossed.

      Every crisis delays climate action, every election they can influence delays action. The longer they delay the more profit they get.

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Harris lost because she thought ultra restrictive border policies and handing out home mortgages was going to persuade voterers

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      I think both things play a factor, but ditching shitty policies and messaging would be a lot more straightforward process than reducing the number of raging misogynists in America

    • invertedspear@lemm.ee
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      The economy concern is straight up the issue, but the twist is that it has to be the economy as seen by people who don’t understand or don’t care about macro economics. GDP, inflation suppression, and all the other measures Biden did to help the economy wasn’t helping families buy groceries. And you can forget that trip to Disneyland. Buying power was still fucked. Now the carryover of those measures combined with the long-term bad but short term positive jolts of the next trump administration is going to increase buying power for just long enough for Donnie boy to take credit.

      If you find yourself with extra money in the next 4 years, remember it’s borrowed against your future. Better to save it, or heavily reduce your debts than to get that new car it take that family trip.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      This again is why I have so little faith now. The economy is such a cut and dry thing. Inflation went up in april after biden took office and obviously did not come from his actions when he had barely started. Inflation was largely tamed by increasing interest rates and looking at the fed rates from obama onward you can see where they dropped under trump and my satan I can’t believe folks don’t remember trump bully pulpitting the fed to drop them. he was whining insistently about them ruing his economy (which given his deep state rhetoric we know what he was implying). oh man then I would get folks with the inflation is caused by xyz. yeah its caused by a lot of things but the main way a president (really the fed) effects them in the short term (short term being years) is with the interest rate and we have a very direct example in the last few years. The idea that trump is the better choice for the economy is so friggin ridiculous.