I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
Harris ran a much more progressive yet inclusive campaign then Biden but I don’t think people were ready to vote for a Black Indian woman.
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.