The “voters wanted to punish Dems more than they wanted to save democracy” messaging is wild.
The economic messaging was the main thing but even taking that as a given that they had to follow their donors’ interests, it was just a really poorly executed campaign. Had to be to get the worst results since the Republicans won California. Tbh Harris just has terrible political instincts and she would’ve never survived a competitive primary (as evidenced by 2020).
One thing that’s staggering to me is that they left Hasan Piker as an untapped resource. I’m not like a big fan of his but if you have this field of streamers where all the big names are right-wing, except one, you should really consider, like, figuring out what he’s tapping into or doing right, idk, hire him as a consultant, go on his stream, do something with him. The Democrats are so slow to adapt strategically while the Republicans are much quicker to adapt, and idk what that’s about, complacency ig.
Obviously the Dick Cheney strategy was completely useless, as usual. Democrats are married to this conventional wisdom, treated as a truism, that the way to win is by appealing to the median centrist voter, along this purely one dimensional spectrum of politics which is completely divorced from reality. I suspect the article is correct that they’re too caught up in analytics that they lose sight of how people actually think.
Don’t over analyze it, America is not ready for a woman to be president. So many women just want to take down other women that its just not time, which is sad. Adding some racial diversity in there just sealed the deal.
More women voted for Hillary than Kamala by percent. The gender gap was way wider too. You can literally just look at the statistics and disprove your own bullshit. Kamala didn’t lose because she was a woman because even compared to the other recent woman candidate she did poorly with women.
Funny how female Democratic senators won in three of the swing states Kamala lost, almost as if sexism wasn’t the deciding factor… but that could imply that Kamala failed for a reason that’s potentially her own fault, which might require some kind of self-reflection on the part of the Democratic party, and we absolutely can’t have that under any circumstances. The Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed.
Not one word in there about turning to the right, campaigning with Cheneys, ignoring all progressive policies, and generally behaving like R-lite in a bid to court R-votes that never came, with no message other than “look how much worse Trump is”. I’m a little disappointed in Rolling Stone, but not at all surprised that the people they interviewed left those things out.
Ultimately, if this is their analysis, they’ll make the 2016 mistakes for a third time in 2028.
