I highly doubt the left will do anything uncivil. How can they win back the country? Is it too late?
Perhaps these two factors contributed to this:
- Harris is a woman and maybe some Americans just don’t want a female president
- Harris maybe leaned too hard on celebrity endorsements, at a time when Americans are feeling worse-off financially, which perhaps made her seem out of touch to middle America
It’s actually incredible how they tried to copy Hilary Clinton’s campaign tactics of endorsements and warnings about Trump.
That didn’t work last time. Why would it work now?
True. Maybe Harris should have focused more on working class endorsements, union endorsements, etc. I dunno.
Or just talk about her policies: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50802-harris-vs-trump-on-the-issues-whose-policies-do-voters-prefer
While I’m sure the statement “some Americans just don’t want a female president” is true, I think the vast majority of them were going to vote Republican basically no matter what.
To paraphrase the conversation that took place on the left:
“The DNC isn’t doing well among young straight white men and it’s getting worse. Barack Obama polled at 66% favorable among that demographic in 2008, and that number has fallen every election until now Harris is polling in the low 40s. There’s a lot of them, and we’re losing them.” A hot mic caught Kamala herself saying exactly that. “We’re losing men.”
Responds the feminists, “Look at the pathetic men throwing a fit because they’re not fully in charge. Something something privilege something something patriarchy. Be better.” I’ll note this didn’t come from Kamala’s campaign, it came from the faceless rabble. The people who said “Yeah no we should probably also talk about issues that are important to men” got shouted down. So white men see that as “The people who vote for this candidate hate me no matter what, and yet they demand my vote no matter what.”
Kamala started this race as Biden’s running mate, then Biden showed up in “mummified during the 6th dynasty of the Old Kingdom” condition at that first debate. No time for a primary, Biden’s out and Kamala’s in. Now she needs a running mate. They put out an APB for a white guy preferably from the south but the midwest will do. There was some brief discussion of North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, well-liked lame duck democrat from a former confederate state, ticks all those boxes. But we landed on Tim Walz. As far as I can tell he was a genuinely solid choice; I’d never heard of him before he was announced as a short runner for Harris’ running mate. Every headline I read about the guy was some new and exciting way he was a saint. Almost suspiciously so. He’s still the only one on the campaign trail who I’d lend a lawnmower to.
Problem #1: We heard the APB as it went out. Here’s my turn to get shouted down: This works on women, muslims, and a significant number of black men, because those demographics have an automatic in-group dynamic. You see posts talking about “My boyfriend was talking to me at the gym and a woman I’ve never met before comes up to pretend to be my friend. I see u gurl.” So both Hilary and Kamala had the white chick vote sewn up just for existing while female. Obama, to a slightly lesser extent, had a similar effect among black men. That doesn’t work on white guys, or at least, the white guys that does work on are very reliable Republican voters.
But, credit where credit is due, Walz seems like a solid guy. If they hadn’t announced out loud they picked him to identity pander I wouldn’t have noticed.
Problem #2: The next time I saw Walz, he was on a commercial cosplaying as a straight white man. “Governor Walz here in a camouflage hat with a dog. Watch me perform a minor repair on an antique SUV.” They ran ads that literally said “I bet you’re tired of hearing how much white guys suck. I mean, some of them do…” That same ad says “They’re really talkin’ to guys like us.” No they weren’t.
They ran ads talking about “I’m a REAL MAN and I’m MAN enough to vote for a WOMAN.”
I didn’t see Tim Walz talking about “The boys who played on my football team are struggling to afford homes. They’re choosing not to get married or have children because for an increasing number of young men it’s just not in the cards.” No I heard a doughy guy dressed like a cowboy say “I eat carburetors for breakfast.”
Among a male loneliness epidemic they ran an ad that said “Women will withhold sex unless you vote for Harris.”
Obama polled well among young men because he engaged with them in their spaces. At the time, Facebook and Twitter were where the young people hung out, and he showed up there to talk to us, which was a welcome change from George W. “An internet” Bush. Obama campaigned on messages of hope and progress. I don’t recall Kamala herself really doing much actual reach-out, and her campaign messaging was either lazy attempts at pandering or naked feminist grievance airing. “We need you to show up and vote for us for the second decade in a row even though we’ve done nothing at all to measurably improve your lives in that time, when we had the power to do so we pissed it down your leg, and we’re okay saying out loud that we thoroughly hate you” has proven to be a losing campaign message.
Turns out there are more straight white men than feminists and queers in the United States voter pool. Hilary proved it and Kamala proved it, pandering exclusively to the former while demanding the support of the former will lose an election to worn out diaper hitler.
Fair points. Biden won enough men in 2020 though. Maybe Kamala was just seen as too leftist or too focused on women’s issues or something… I’m not saying she was those things, but maybe some people saw her that way.
If you look back at her primary in 2020, she was.
Hard to wash that off with some last minute recanting, like with fracking and other such campaign claims.
Her hand was tipped as to her ideal term in office 4 years ago, I’m surprised Trump didn’t use that shit in attack ads given how much more stereotypically progressive she was then.
Personally I called it in when a clip of hers saying “we’ve got to get woke” (not sure about the wording but the word woke was used positively) from some talk show aimed at black people from this year came out.
You need to live in a parallel dimension to think that word is not absolutely fucking nuclear waste in the political discourse rn.
