This is a good article calling out the true problems with the campaign.
I keep seeing people blame voters, but the only group to blame is the Democratic Party. Parties exist to serve and represent voters, not the other way round.
The Dems failed to address the genuine concerns of their traditional base - primarily the economy - and that left the race open for the Repulicans.
The Democrat message on the economy seemed to basically be “things are not as bad as you think and we’ve already done what was needed”. Instead they focused on abortion and a threat to democracy as the main issues of the election.
Yet for many lower income households, they rent and have been hit doubly hard by inflation. Home owners have been shielded from the rent portion of the cost of living crisis, and experienced less hardship. The dems did not seem to understand that and effectively left the field open for the republicans.
Looking at the numbers, Trump hasn’t significantly grown the Republican vote or if so, it’s a relatively small increase. Yet the Democrat vote is way down on where it was in 2020.
There are lots of other failures on the part of the Dems - allowing Biden to run essentially unchallenged, the leadership aggressively pushing back against concerns about his suitability, Biden waiting until very late to step back and Harris being coronated and having to use Bidens existing campaign. Harris was a decent enough candidate but she was given an impossible task thanks to an out of touch and poorly led party.
The Dems lost this election, rather than Trump winning it.
No, Trump won it. He got votes and those votes were from people who cast them. Yes, democratic party has problems, but the far bigger problem is that enough people voted for Trump when given other options.
About 16 million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than voted for Harris in 2024. The Democrats found a way to take 16 million people who cared enough to vote last time and get them not to vote this time.
Shit, Trump lost 2 million voters from 2020, too. This should have been a layup.
If you choose not to decide (or vote) you still have made a choice. Biden voters who refused to vote Harris chose to let the rest of the country decide for them. They will be worse off for it. Hopefully they learn from this but I doubt it.
They weighed their experience under trump, and under Biden, and realized at worse they were the same. Trump objectively wasn’t as bad as your cult implied for a lot of Americans, and Biden was far worse than the Harris campaign acknowledged for a lot of Americans.
Between these two facts lies the failure of democrats, Harris offered nothing different, at all, during her campaign, where as Trump at least acknowledged the problems people are facing and offered different.
Perhaps people are just tired of the Democratic party deflecting blame for all their failures.
Dispose of First Past The Post voting, open the field for multiple political parties to compete to defeat the republicans. Democrats will put the country first right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs
Well we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they’re killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line
Well we’re waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard, if we behaved
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face
Well I’m living here in Allentown
And it’s hard to keep a good man down
But I won’t be getting up today
That was over forty years ago, and ever since Bill Clinton’s triangulation, the Democratic party has only further abandoned the working class. Gore, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris are all of this unbroken neoliberal Clintonian dynasty.
Have you seen this clip? Michael Moore on the Democratic party: https://youtu.be/MVnIatb7iVI
Remember when people said they’d take “Any functional adult” over Trump? Well… That’s why I still blame the voters here. They had their functional adult and didn’t seize the opportunity
This is what you get when “any functional adult” is the standard you hold your leaders to.
Well it turns out that isn’t a good enough standard to get enough people up to vote, but I did hear it a lot from a lot of active posters online.
I’m not convinced Kamala is a “functional adult” she never won a primary. -In fact she got less than 1% of votes in the two primaries (AK, and NH) she did run in respectively, in 2020..
I completely understand your frustration. It sucks knowing that things are going to get worse and it could have been much better if those who didn’t vote, voted for Kamala. And we’re all definitely going to need time to fully process this.
In my opinion though, and I’m not saying that I’m definitely correct - but the feeling I get the reason that the democrats lost is because lots of people felt completely disillusioned with the democratic party. I want to be really clear: Fuck Trump, he’s a fascist in a party of fascists doing fascist things. they will undoubtedly cause death and harm. If there was any justice in this world they’d be on trial for crimes again humanity. But the democrats did not offer enough hope for people to get out and vote. They basically ran on a campaign of “vote for us because you have no better option, the other guy is the worst”, and that is just not an inspiring campaign. Their ongoing support for the genocide in palestine, their lack of interest in fighting for the rights of trans people, all of these things and more left many people, myself included, feeling absolutely abandoned by the democratic party.
I still think that leftists should vote, and they should vote with their heart and with thoughtfulness and think about harm mitigation. But I also cannot blame anyone who just couldn’t muster the energy to go out and queue for hours to express their support for a candidate that they felt very little love for.
I really hope that my love and compassion comes through. It’s hard to express over the internet, and it sometimes feels a little silly, but it’s what we have left. Our love for each other and our hope that the future can be better, even if we may not live to experience that better future.
I really appreciate your thoughtful response, and no question everyone could have done better here. And the country absolutely needs to heal from the division Trump has caused the last 8 or 9 years. The thing that blows my mind though, is when people who didn’t vote have the audacity to blame someone else for Trump being elected. The votes are the smoking gun here no matter what else was at play. We had a normal person, more than happy to step in and prevent the further spread of this national cancer and she gets blamed somehow when things go south. Run a better campaign, sure, that’s a fair critique. But ultimately the voters did shit the bed here
I don’t buy this. In Nebraska there was an election between an independent union leader and a career politician. The union leader lost.
The consensus seems to be that people that voted democrat in 2020 voted republican this time because they experienced inflation under Biden that think it was his fault.
People don’t vote for numbers they vote for stories. They vote for their feelings. Do they feel like they’re in a better place today and they were the four years ago. Do they feel like they’re better off financially. Do they feel like the economy is stronger. And the answer for most of us is no of course not. So regardless of the reasons for that they’re going to vote that way. That’s just a harsh reality of elections and economics.
I agree. Which is why I don’t believe the narrative that Harris lost because she didn’t go far enough left. Even though I wish our politicians would. I think too many voters don’t feel the same way.
I don’t know if it’s that she didn’t go far enough left in so much as she didn’t go and far enough left on certain issues. As odd as it might seem there is a populist movement in the Republican Party. They do appeal to the working class for some odd reason. Their policy decisions don’t always reflect it but their rhetoric oftentimes does. After all a number of Republican states passed fairly economically Progressive ballot measures.
Four years ago you couldn’t buy toilet paper. Are some people worse off than under Trump 1.0? Of course. Is more than half the country worse off? Fuck no. People have goldfish memories and Dems did a terrible job touting their wins that did make Americans better off under Biden.
Just as an aside I never actually had problems buying toilet paper. I don’t actually know anyone who did. I know that’s not really pertinent I just always find it funny people say that.
That’s exactly what I’m saying though. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves and the stories the parties are able to sell to us. Reality doesn’t matter the stories that we buy matter.
people that voted democrat in 2020 voted republican this time
Both parties lost millions of voters since 2020. Trump lost about 2 million, Harris lost about 16 million.
It wasn’t people switching parties, it was people not voting because Biden didn’t make a difference in their lives and Harris promised more of the same.
no no, I think it’s really that she wasn’t horribly racist enough. really, it’s that she didn’t tack hard enough to the right. she should’ve promised to build two walls, one on canada too. she should’ve promised to kill the palestinians even faster, actually, she should’ve resurrected the corpse of kissinger and then sent him to michigan to explain why they needed to die. THAT will solve things.
