Kamala Harris truly is Hillary Clinton 2.0.
Many of Harris’s mistakes were similar to those Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Like Clinton, Harris cozied up to billionaire donors. Mark Cuban, for instance, said he was delighted that Harris was abandoning Democrats’ commitments to progressive principles and letting the business community propose the policies it wanted. Like Clinton, Harris and Tim Walz made hubristic campaign stops in solidly red states like Texas and Kentucky rather than spending the final days laser-focused on crucial battlegrounds. Like Clinton, Harris emphasized celebrity endorsements while failing to successfully court unions. (Most notably, the Teamsters declined to endorse her after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike.) Like Clinton, Harris focused too much on the danger of Donald Trump (which is very real) and not enough on the reasons why she would be good at being president herself.
I’ll just say that all the policies she proposed seemed entirely uninteresting to me. Credits for first time home buyers and something about building new homes seemed like her main talking point. This is great for all the people that don’t currently own a home and want to but does nothing for most people that also need help.
It benefits you by reducing homelessness and poverty in general which has a much higher cost for society in the long run. Holy fuck you guys are so self centered.
That was not her message. So get off your high horse. It was “I’m going to build houses and it’ll save money for some people that probably aren’t you”. Periodt
But the exit polls showed that most people felt they were worse ofd today than 4 years ago. You expect all those people to read between the lines to figure out this will help make things better for them eventually? That’s not how politics works.
Do you really expect everyone to vote in the name of altruism? How naive can you be?
after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike
JUST LIE my god youll already be in office and can make up some nonsense why you had to break the strike (Im not antiunion, Im just saying)
JUST FUCKING LIE or were all the existential threats you wouldnt shut the fuck up about (instead of actually having a platform) not worth doing whatever you needed to get into power!?
… sigh
You’re right that she was Hilary 2.0, but for the wrong reason.
It has very little to do with policy.
The difference between winning and losing was almost certainly just people who preferred a man over a woman as president. Whether they will say it or not, America is still not ready for a female president.
“In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points.”
This election, Trump won men by 10 points again.
Democrats have got the largest share of women’s votes in every election since 1988.
Losing 10 points of the male vote isn’t caused by support for Israel, or a lack of progressive policies.
This is the sad truth.
I’m not going deny that there were certainly sexist people that wouldn’t vote for a woman. But I don’t think I can agree it was the difference between winning and losing.
I think it’s much, much more likely that the progressive voting bloc that was able to start winning the primaries in 2020 and was railroaded by the party (twice) that’s been completely shunted off to the side in favor of some mythical swing Republican voter is very much the reason.
They think putting a woman of color up as the candidate would be enough to win that bloc. Which goes to show the root of the problem. It’s the rainbow capitalist issue. “If we slap a pride flag on the person of color we got as our new representative and change our single bathroom signs to say ‘all gender,’ we’ll be in the right! We’ll fool those hippies and socialist dirtbags yet!”
This has failed them. Over and over. The most thinking people of the entire country (biased opinion, I grant) aren’t easily appeased. Things were so bad in 2020 that bloc mostly held their noses to vote for Biden. And they figured running against trump was the only ammunition they needed to lock down that bloc and they could hold them no problem while also courting the neocons!
They are funding a genocide. Basically perpetrating it. They were going to have to bend over backwards to get anyone left of Biden to vote for them. And they unquestionably didn’t. They basically told us to go fuck ourselves. Again.
And they fucked themselves by doing so.
Your reasoning doesn’t explain the male vs female vote difference. Kamala won essentially the same percentage of the female vote as Biden, but lost because she didn’t capture male voters. Why would only male voters abandon her based on the policies you mentioned?
It’s the economy. They can scream the economy numbers are great but the people are feeling it differently at the grocery store, gas station, paying rent, etc.
Right, economy. Both candidates ran on fixing it. But one wasn’t a black woman…
Democrats are not leftists, they’re center right. I’m so sick of people thinking Democrats are going to fix this, protect that, and make things better. Democrats serve their corporate masters, and they’ll make vague promises that they know they won’t keep.
This is what happens when anyone that warns someone is sick gets burnt at the stake as a witch.
When your own party is criticizing the candidate, you need to realize that 17 million more aren’t going to put the effort into complaining, they’re not going to hold their nose and vote.
They’re just gonna stay home.
So when the politically active tries to warn the party, it would behoove the party to listen to it’s base.
Yep, Dems win by increasing turnout, Republicans win by depressing it.
So Dems campaigning on how great they are wins elections
Dems campaigning on how bad Republicans are only wins sometimes and usually only if the incumbent is a Republican.
Unless we make changes we’re gonna switch to rotating every 4 instead of 8, and the moderate Dems allowed to make it to the general will never fix stuff as fast as Republicans can break it.
The current plan just isn’t working.
Unless we make changes we’re gonna switch to rotating every 4 instead of 8, and the moderate Dems allowed to make it to the general will never fix stuff as fast as Republicans can break it.
If the next election doesn’t have fuckery.
I really don’t care, do you?
If people didn’t vote for Harris it just means they are happy with fascists.
I care because I’m not happy with fascists, and yet, due to others’ apathy, ignorance, malice, or a mix thereof I have to live in a land ruled by fascists.
Yeah at this moment I am not ready for recriminations and finger pointing. A bunch of people voted FOR that idiot criminal fascist and I’m reserving all my rage for them right now.
great, lmk when that rage does literally anything productive
they already know youre mad at them. fun fact: it makes some of them even happier to vote the way they did. but, sure, be angry! oh those damn, foolish, selfish people! …
ok, yes, welcome to the last 40 years. hi!
now what?
Hey, I’m beyond doing anything productive at the moment and I recognize this. So how about you take a break from sniping at people who are probably on the same side as you are and let them take the time they need to process this so they can get to a place where they can chart a course of action?
That’s one interpretation of what it could mean but one I expect is overly simplistic.
There is a difference between being happy with fascism and not feeling motivated enough to resist it. If the tide has any chance of turning towards what would be more healthy it will have to come by creating a platform that really excites and motivates a large number of people to invest in it. It has to feel authentic to those who are feeling unmotivated today eg the millions of former Biden voters who did not turn out. It should activate people who are not reliable voters to genuinely support the cause.
I’m no leftist but I do agree that Democrats and others whose main goals are to leave unchallenged the status quo of growing wealth inequality cannot win going forward. The promise of a truly experienced greater tangible quality of life, enough food, affordable housing, access to affordable medical care, debt relief, high minimum wages and/or UBI, etc would move the needle better towards excitement and engagement than abstractions like defence of democracy. “A chicken in every pot”. We need another FDR. We need a strong middle class and that has to mean powerful unions.
Edited for paragraphs.
Dems definitely lack a coherent, interesting economic message. Any new proposal - medicare for all, UBI - immediately gets sucked into a quagmire of details. Turning to Republicans for the votes they need to win in general elections has been such a consistently losing strategy that I have no idea why they keep doing it.
Meanwhile Republicans keep running on “You feel poor and it’s Their fault,” continues to resonate, for varying definitions of “Them,” as long as GOP is out-of-power. It’s simple. It feels good. It completely absolves them of needing any policy more complicated than “Get rid of Them.” It’s a winning strategy as much as the Dems have a losing strategy.
Dude those are promises completely devoid of validity or meaning.
“Vote for me and I’ll fix everything”.
Trump says it: “great!! Let’s vote him”
Any democrat says it: “but how? Have you considered the plight of the fruitfly??? I cannot vote for you unless you explain everything in every detail”
I forgot that trump just needs “concepts of a plan”
Pretty much this, by now pretty much everyone knows Trump and knows what he wants and what he stands for, and we had a referendum of sorts. If that alone isn’t enough motivation for someone to go to the polls or request a ballot it’s pretty disingenious for people to point fingers at the DNC or Harris because they weren’t jazzed up enough.
Like, if someone isn’t willing to stand in line for a couple hours in an attempt to ensure that their great-great-grandchildren have a habitable world in which to exist we’re a pretty hopeless species, right?
88% of the dems didnt agree with assisting in the Israeli war crimes. And yet Biden/Harris (and trump) were going to do it anyway. But you want to preach about people who didnt vote for harris embracing fascism…
Instead of saying that Harris or the dnc dropped the ball, consider that over half the voting population in the US chose a senile, white, male, racist, felon who increased your taxes unless you were rich and stole classified documents, that is chums with Putin.
Maybe instead of “the dnc dropped the ball” it could be considered that the slight majority of Americans are just racist, sexist, uneducated, short sighted idiots?
No one needed to know much beyond seeing how bad trump has been. There shouldn’t have needed to be a “make Harris better” plan. America seen that trump shitbox and still chose him.
It’s nice to blame voters for parties failing to win elections. That absolves the party of responsibility - “we were right, it was voters who are wrong”.
But that won’t win an election. And that attitude will gift the mid terms and even 2028 to the republicans.
The DNC fucked up - it backed Biden despite clear signs he was not a good candidate for this election, the primary process who a fig leaf of democracy rather than putting forward the party’s best and brightest, it then fought concerns of Biden health and hid the truth, then when he finally stepped down late in the day it arranged a coronation for Harris. And then after behaving undemocratically repeatedly it had the gall to make the election about “saving democracy”.
Voters didn’t do these things, the DNC did.
Instead of demonising voters and non voters, it’s better to ask what should the party have done differently to win them over and what does it need to do to win them over in the mid terms.
It’s nice for you to ignore that over half the voters in this country voted for someone that they knew was a sexist, racist, felon. A slice of bread with no advertising should have gotten more votes than him.
@ColeSloth, ok, but what does it say about our candidate and campaign that they lost to such a clown? Thats what we should be focusing on, not name calling and finger pointing.
and as for:
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together
88% of the dems were against gaza and the dem leaders decided they didnt care and would lock the voices of people who do care out of the convention. Thats acting like an imperial, not a coalition partner. If the dems want a coalition with the left, then act like it, otherwise you should learn to be happy with losing, because centrists dont have the votes to win much of anything, and they didnt have them before the election either.
Progressives are tired of this republican bullshit within the democratic party. If you want to be republicans, great, then go ally with maga. Otherwise tack left. You pick, we’ll be standing right here for a short while, then we need to ditch you lame centrists milquetoasts for good and go it alone.
It doesn’t absolve. If people are acting like it does, then they’re wrong and it still is true without absolving. It just points out that people voting for trump is overwhelmingly the problem.
And also, the Democrats ran their failed diet republican strategy. But if they fucked up twice as bad as they did, there’s sill no reason to vote trump, and that remains the main issue.
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together until ranked choice, no electoral college, and no citizens united. That’s the front door to the future.
The non-magas have to lock arms and stand together
Except not all non-magas want to. You can scream and cry and call names all you want. They just don’t show up to the booth. So what should we do instead, because living in the imaginary land of what voters ought to do has gotten us another Trump term.
Fucking seriously though. I can see the frustration with the DNC, but some form of action is a hell of a lot better than the total dismantle of America as it is right now. These people could have easily looked into Kamala’s policies that show quite a few good ideas, and a few that I personally didn’t jive with (increase child tax credits, while the people like me and my partner are staunchly against having children that will grow into a world on fire, get absolutely nothing). Didn’t stop me from voting for her though, you know why? Trump has NO plan (GOOD plan, they’ve got PLENTY of bad plans lined up for us all!). AT ALL. So, America’s idiots STILL chose this orange buffoon, with no plans at all, just sparkly words, and now we are really sitting here and trying to blame Harris, who only had 107 days to get her message out there? Come on, Lemmy. I thought you were better than this…
The government allowed lies to be told on TV and on the internet under the guise of news. There were no real consequences to those who had listeners and repeated foreign government talking points for money. We have not seen any real investigation on how much interference was ran on social media.
Nearly every human being believes that they are a good person making rational decisions, so its important to examine the environment around these people to where they can believe they made the right choice when it comes to electing Trump and sadly, it seems our mostly unregulated free speech that let it happen, because the republican party is more organized and effective in communicating their platform and slandering their opponents than democrats are, and they motivated more people to vote than the democrats could as a result. Anger and hate are strong emotions and motivators, and unfortunately the republicans keep on using them and it keeps on working.
I have no idea what you’re blaming Lemmy on, if anything I’d expect the userbase here to be more active and left-leaning voters than average. People have a good reason to be frustrated, and I think pointing that frustration at the only alternative option we had for a political party failing election after election to learn how to communicate and how to deliver on what the people really want is a reasonable take.
The government allowed lies to be told on TV and on the internet under the guise of news. There were no real consequences to those who had listeners and repeated foreign government talking points for money. We have not seen any real investigation on how much interference was ran on social media.
I agree.
Nearly every human being believes that they are a good person making rational decisions, so its important to examine the environment around these people to where they can believe they made the right choice when it comes to electing Trump and sadly, it seems our mostly unregulated free speech that let it happen, because the republican party is more organized and effective in communicating their platform and slandering their opponents than democrats are, and they motivated more people to vote than the democrats could as a result. Anger and hate are strong emotions and motivators, and unfortunately the republicans keep on using them and it keeps on working.
I agree.
I have no idea what you’re blaming Lemmy on, if anything I’d expect the userbase here to be more active and left-leaning voters than average. People have a good reason to be frustrated, and I think pointing that frustration at the only alternative option we had for a political party failing election after election to learn how to communicate and how to deliver on what the people really want is a reasonable take.
I’m basically pointing out how senseless some of these comments have been, on almost every single post about either Harris, Walz, or the DNC. The biggest problem this election, that we know of as of yet, was the absence of votes, and white men and women, Latino men and women, voting against a women of color.
The people here may be left-leaning, or at least say they are, but they have nothing but shit takes trying to blame Harris for a shit campaign. They actively chose to allow a fucking criminal to determine the future of their country. It is really quite a take, considering that she actually had policies, told you where to find them, and was CONSTANTLY berated on interviews and shit. Trump got softball questions, and no matter fucking what, he always got away with every single stupid and evil thing he did or said.
Crazy.
You realize that you need people to have children if you want to keep having a doctor or firemen or farmers and so on? Child credits benefit you even if they don’t go in your pockets directly.
You’re the exact type of person that prevents social programs from being implemented, if it doesn’t benefits you directly then no one should get the benefits.
Can you go over my comment one more time, and point to me where I said I was against the credit completely? As in, I said I didn’t think it deserved to be there at all?
