Harris only received five percent of Republican votes — less than the six percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the seven percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him. While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020.
Meanwhile, Harris lost households earning under $100,000, while Democratic turnout collapsed. Votes are still being counted, but Harris is on pace to underperform Biden’s 2020 totals by millions of votes.
yeah this was a really fucking stupid idea and I think any Dingus on Twitter could have told you the same. The Trump voter base does not move. everyone’s been saying this. I don’t understand the Democrat strategy at all
I don’t know what the actual numbers are on this, but I have to imagine the number of progressive voters who want more progressive policies far exceeds the number of Republicans that will vote Democrat. if anyone has a source to this data, I am interested in it.
Here’s a fun little tip if you’re ever able to try this again.
MLK Jr. never appealed to the white man, he never tried to win over whitey nor tone down his message so that he didn’t alienate his opressors, and he never tried to get the Klan on his side.
Notice how we don’t have segregation anymore? It’s because if Dr. King did these things, he’d have been luaghed at.
Kamalas campaign thought they could win without offending any megadonors, despite seeing what a bit of honesty did for them right after biden was replaced.
Ive never seen such obvious virtue signaling, I’m not sure kamala even believed her own words.
Ding ding ding! Trump went further right and got more support. DNC should go further left. People want radical change in 2024
This. Right. Here.
Stop the triangulation it needs to die already.
If we wanted to be Republicans we’d be Republicans for fucks sake…
We can’t have 2 parties fighting to be the most hateful party of the billionaires. I mean I guess we can but only one gets to win.
The Democrats have been chasing the mythical moderate conservative at the expense of the progressive left forever and have learned nothing. I want a fire and brimstone progressive who is belligerent and aggressive
Yeah, the notion that she was going to put a Republican in her cabinet…did anyone think that was a good idea? I mean, outside the beltway media?
I know every early on she was talking about possibly having a Republican Vice President before she wised up and went with Tim Walz and ran on his progressive ideas for about… three seconds till Nancy and the DNC told her to just do what Hillary did, as that worked for her and Kamela is obviously the second female president right now. /s
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The Republicans had their little tea party a few years ago. The Democrats need a Guillotine Party to properly represent us.
The Tea Party forced the GOP to rebrand and restructure itself around the most extreme right wing ideas possible
Occupy Wallstreet tried to do the same thing, and… were savagely beaten by the police over it.
The police choose who they will protect and who they will serve.
They had the billionaire Koch’s to fund that. We’re never getting a billionaire to fund the leopard party that will eat their faces.
:(
Yeah, there should have been limits set on campaign costs, lobbying, media, etc. It’s at a point where it doesn’t seem like it’s even possible to have a middle-class focused campaign that can openly say its basis is on taxing the fuck out of the top 1%.
But all I know is this: the second Trump term will make the standard of life in America far worse for most people. There will be hunger in 2028 for someone to simply say “We’ll fix the middle class, and we’ll make Musk, Bezos, etc pay for it”. Hopefully by then what’s left of twitter will not be as relevant as today, so that the message can at least have a hope of spreading through social media successfully.
The guillotine party knows how to deal with the second estate.
If there’s one lesson the DNC should learn it’s this.
They won’t. But they should.
Why learn anything, the policies they want will be implemented anyway 🧠
Because they are selling peace with unicorn kisses and hope just to steal your money and you pay for it with hope.
They only learn what they want to hear.
It literally doesn’t matter if all you have to do is lie and promise everything.
Stupid article.
Talk about not learning anything… 🤦
I mean that’s basically what Obama did. It’s what Trump does. If you promise 100% and only give 30% you’ll be remembered as a good or good ish president. 60%+ and you’re the greatest president of all time. But when you promise -10% you’re just not gonna win.
NO! Harris just needed to go further right. Forced goose-stepping marches at rallies. Pledges to eradicate all minorities. Promise global wars of conquest.
Outflank Trump on the right, and the republicans AND democrats will vote for you.
Don’t tempt centrists.
In a really morbid way that would’ve been funny to see, if only to witness the confusion of conservatives.
So left wing Democrats responded by sitting on their hands instead of voting, knowingly allowing the country to slide into whatever authoritarian hellhole that awaits us? Now that’s the definition of pettiness.
We kept trying to warn you.
And every time - every last fucking time - anyone told you that moving to the right was going to cause people to stay home, you lot shot the messenger. Every time someone screamed the writing on the wall out loud, centrists who were so happy that the party was finally embracing genocide and Cheney were like “Russian! Tankie! Trumpist!”
I voted for Harris. You’ll blame me anyway. Democrats will always shoot the messenger and double down on their simping for fascists.
I said basically the same the article says a couple of days ago and was pelted with a gazillion negative votes. Centrists are averse to learning from mistakes, otherwise they wouldn’t be centrists.
The liberal tries to become an arbitrator, but he is incapable of solving the problems.
“I do not think that liberals understand the difference between influence and power, and the liberals get confused seeking influence rather than power. The conservatives on the right wing, or the fascists, understand power, though, and they move to consolidate power while the liberal pushes for influence.”
Thanks for sharing that link. It unfortunately still shows to be true even today. :(
Every time someone screamed the writing on the wall out loud, centrists who were so happy that the party was finally embracing genocide and Cheney were like “Russian! Tankie! Trumpist!”
Edit: the downvotes prove my point hah
Of course, they also said that you would be gone as soon as the election was over, since they couldn’t accept that anyone who deviated from their pro-genocide orthodoxy could be an actual person and not a Russian bot.
There will be no apologies from any of them for their disgusting near-constant libel that only stopped once there was a rule against calling people Russian bots. They just switched to calling anyone who saw what was going to happen a Trump supporter instead.
They’re too busy trying to figure out how to justify how this loss means they need to move to the right.
Yes, my friend was one of them. I was shocked when 2 weeks before election he told me he was planning on not voting.
I asked why and he cited holding the same position Isreal as Biden, and courting republicans like Cheney, saying that was not a good look for the party at all.
I told him it’s not ideal, but we need to vote to keep Trump out…. Sometimes we just have to be pragmatic.
He responded saying it’s the Dem establishment that keeps allowing a boogey man like Trump to rise so they can shove center right corporatists down our throats. He said he was abstaining from voting to send a message to the DNC, and followed it up with, “we survived a first Trump term, I’m sure we can survive a second.”
I asked why and he cited holding the same position Isreal as Biden, and courting republicans like Cheney, saying that was not a good look for the party at all.
I told him it’s not ideal
And this is what you don’t get. There’s a huge fucking gap between “not ideal” and “supporting genocide to the point that Dick Cheney likes you.” And you didn’t acknowledge it. You just belittled it with “not ideal.” Because you couldn’t admit that what Democrats were doing was monstrous and unconscionable.
Anyone who pulls this “you didn’t get 100% of everything you want, but…” shit? They got 100% of everything they wanted. Especially the genocide support. And especially Cheney.
“we survived”
Many didn’t and even more won’t this time, your friend is a genocide supporter
So not voting for genocidal candidates now make genocide support? stop projecting.
The Dems were hellbent on supporting gneocide. People chose to be fine with it, even attacking people who called it out.
The flak we got here for saying for months the Dems need to stop the genocide support to win the election now raises the question whether they were just tactically wrong, or whether they werent really into the genocide themselves. That would explain why now there is efforts to project it on the other people.
At every turn we were told that supporting genocide is better than supporting genocide and homophobia. Saying we should push for a non genocidal candidate, for which there was plenty of time at first, got immediately shut down.
The most consistent position of the Biden/Harris fans was to accept genocide, because that was the strongest criticism raised consistently against them. Now you end up not only having lost the election but having lost the election because you were in support of genocide.
It is no wonder that Trump managed to win, when the center is so morally bankrupt. It is no wonder that there was no way to inspire people to vote for Harris and Biden if the messaging constantly was “yeah we are morally bankrupt and we are also genociders and racists, but we are less than the other side. This is as good as we allow to happen”.
This is on the Democrat elites and their supporters. Own up to it instead of projecting the blame.
Democrats: Support Israel, say they want the conflict to stop and a two States solution. Want to send weapons to Ukraine. Support minorities in the US.
Republicans: Support the genocide of Palestinians, of Ukrainians and of minorities inside the USA.
Voting for Republicans and not voting (so leaving the door open to them) is supporting genocide.
So every Israel aka genocide supporter had a safe vote with Trump. Everyone who opposes it had no choice with either party.
we survived a first Trump term
As long as you weren’t one of the million Americans who died of COVID thanks to his misadministration.
Or the Capitol police who died as a result from his attempted insurrection.
I mean, he’s an ex-pat who was living in Hong Kong, S Korea, and Vietnam for most of Trumps first term… so I’m sure he didn’t feel it as hard as most of us who were here for it.
“Thousands of my countrymen will perish, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
It’s a mistake reasoning as if you’re taking of one guy. Maybe one third of your population voted, and most of those voted for Trump, it means that most of you guys are pretty ok with dying during the next COVID or whatever
He responded saying it’s the Dem establishment that keeps allowing a boogey man like Trump to rise so they can shove center right corporatists down our throats. He said he was abstaining from voting to send a message to the DNC, and followed it up with, “we survived a first Trump term, I’m sure we can survive a second.”
I remember when I was 14.
Certainly hope we can
Yeah, I am definitely in the camp that Trump part 2 will be worse…. but we don’t know for sure yet
Keep in mind Trump is pushing 80 and has a steady diet of McDonalds and Diet Coke. Here’s to hoping nature takes its course.
Do you think Vance is going to be better?
Funny thing is your friends opinions are popular on lemmy.ml which makes it seem like foreign actors are pushing these talking points. They definitely worked in Trumps favor.
Now the blue MAGA is talking about the election being stolen…
Seriosuly how did you expect to win against Trump by copying Trump? People always chose the original authoritarian nazi asshole over the knock-off copy.
You know what wouldnt have worked in Trumps favor? Stopping the genocide in Gaza. That would have led to a landslide victory for the Dems.
Keeps allowing Trump to rise? What does he expect the Dems to do?
I don’t agree with him, but I think he’s expecting them to support liberal progressive policies. Seems to be taking the stance of “if we can’t improve things it’s better to watch it all burn rather than slowly rot”.
Tell him that not voting to convince them to run liberal progressive policies won’t work. You can’t play Mexican standoff because the Dems have an out: the center voters.
The article says otherwise.
So no one is ever allowed to think otherwise. Gotcha.
What exactly do you think should have been done differently for Harris to activate this “just win with centrists” option? Because it very much seems like that was just tried and failed miserably.
I’m not OP so I don’t actually know him so I can’t tell him anything, although I do know one person like that. As for your point I’m not sure that actually follows since those center voters didn’t show up to save Harris this time. If the DNC keeps losing elections at some point, assuming we’re all still here and we even still have elections, they will have to try something different. It’s a very risky play but I also can’t say it won’t work.
Harris relied on the left showing up for their rights and for democracy. That was a ton of her campaign. And the left didn’t show up. If they don’t show up for that, they won’t show up for anything. They will try something different and that’s going all in on the center voter, who actually show up.
I replied to your other comment where you said basically the same thing, but the short version is there clearly isn’t enough center voters for that to be a winning strategy. If they try that next election (If there even is a next election) it’s going to be an even more lopsided victory for the Republicans.
You’re right. I don’t buy this narrative that the dems lost because they were left enough. The polls show voters were motivated by inflation and thought Biden’s progressive policies were to blame.
Well Biden for example could’ve done a much better job actually persecuting him for his crimes. He can do that as the head of the Executive branch.
Sorry dude, the problem is well beyond “leftists” and sooner or later you’ll need to confront that.
The average voter mindset is “which president will get me cheaper food?”
My parents get fed propaganda from Wechat (yes that Chinese app) saying democrats are letting too much illegal immigrants in, taking up too much resources.
We are legal immigrants, but shes doesn’t see “illegal immigrant” is a dogwhistle about all immigrants that they dont like like black or brown people, or anyone they deem inferior.
Doesnt help the fact that Eric Adams and NYC democrats are building homeless shelters near Chinese American population.
My parents told me some of our relatives in NYC voted Trump, Asian Americans voting trump.
They say some Asian American co-workers at their workplace are supporting Trump.
My parent say “Its fine, we survived one term under trump”
Everyone who’s a US Citizen in our household voted Kamala Harris. We tried. Our state PA still went red.
My US Citizen mom once said, “maybe we shouldn’t vote for democrats, look at what they did in NYC (refering to homeless shelters)”, and I reminded her about the Chinese Exclusion Act. So she vote Harris because I told her to. Like she didnt have a mind of her own. If her children turned out to be conservatives, she’d vote trump. Some people just dont care about politics. Similarly, some people have apolitical children but political parents, those children then vote for who their parents vote for.
We need to fix this voter apathy. Democracy is just broken.
(oh wow didnt mean to type a paragraph, sorry for the wall of text, election results still enraging me…)
Blue state examples are often particularly confusing for the politically uninvolved, as Eric Adams is pretty close to a Republican. Once a state gets blue enough, anyone with ambition will just say they’re Democrats and then do center-right stuff. Often the state parties are not ideological enough to deny the brand when it’s just easier to make a bigger and bigger tent of insiders.
Don’t be sorry, everything you said is correct.
Honestly unfortunately mostly unrealistic: a systemic chage towards deliberative democracy (not just USAs broken electoral democracy) would be the best according to most political science. It’s (way to) slowly happening in some European states (so the right shift may reverse that trend again). This indirection vie simple voting tends to lean towards populism and manipulation. Which got unfortunately incredibly obvious in the presidential election…
I’m not one of them, I voted a month or so in advance by mail.
But I wonder if some people are tired of the lack of change with Democrats in charge and believe that things need to get worse before they can get better.
As “hardcore-left” as I am, I just cannot fathom, being so dumb to not vote “to show the dems”. The policies of bad Republican presidents hurt us till today. Think about Reagan vastly accelerating the gap between rich and poor, or Nixon with his failed war drugs.
Pretty much, although it’s probably an exaggeration to call them Democrats. In reality most of them are likely unaffiliated with any party. But it was literally Harris’s job to convince them to come out and vote for her and she failed at it. When a candidate loses an election, barring election interference, it’s their fault. Harris fucked us all by running as a diet Republican. Odds are anyone in here reading this did everything we could to hand her the win, but she pissed it all away by trying to steal votes from the Republicans instead of convincing people that they needed to get off their asses and come vote for her.
Dude, she had like 100 days to put together a campaign. She had to make a gamble and trust that the 2020 Dem voters were already in her corner so she could go after some big fish with the little time she had.
Dude, lets be real. The only reason the DNC pushed Biden out of the way was because polling numbers said the incumbent advantage (and his policies) weren’t going to be enough to win it for him. So Kamala comes out of the gate with a boost (because she’s not Joe) and promptly proclaims she can’t name a single policy decision she would have made differently than Biden. That’s not winning undecided voters from either side.
She got handed a losing Biden campaign that was on fire, and thought the smart move was to double down on his policies that were already losing him the election, and then to throw in some Republican talking points. It was very obviously a losing strategy no matter how little time she had. The Democrats have been relying on “not Republicans” to carry them to victory for so long they seem to have forgotten why people vote for them over the Republicans.
Everything is "very obvious ” with 20/20 hindsight.
This stuff was all talked about prior to the election.
Looks like you agree with the announcement 🤦
For many, actively supporting Israeli genocide is something they simply can’t support.
If there’s anything that this election has proven, it’s that there are A LOT of one issue voters in this country, across the board. They’ll ignore everything else for the one issue they care about above all else. And when you only have two viable parties, that forced a black and white decision.
The fundamental solution is eradicating First Past the Post and getting ranked choice voting so we have a multitude of parties that are all more nuanced instead.
But that won’t happen unless we abandon both of the major parties we have now, and they can’t let that happen because that means they lose power.
What is Trump’s stated opinion on Israel and its war in Gaza? What is Trump’s stated opinion -and first term actions- on Muslims? Seriously, the Biden & Harris = “genocide” horseshit was 100% designed to disenfranchise Democrats. Congress votes on foreign aid. Congress is largely Republican. Protesters NEVER went after Republicans.
So why are the democrats currently taking part in genociding Palestinians? Thats horseshit too?
Is anything stopping them from being vocally opposed to the situation?
Both candidates messaging was they would “get the war over with” but I guess it sounds better coming from Kamala than Trump?
Oh 100%. But if there’s anything this election proved, it’s that the average American is fucking stupid, gullible as shit, and unable to determine propaganda from reality.
So now they get genocide and child rape. NICE
They all campaigned for Harris and mostly held their criticism to themselves. Harris is the one who decided to go campaign with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban.
I seriously doubt left wingers were the difference in this election. I doubt there are significant enough numbers of far left people in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin for it to have made any real difference.
“That’ll show ‘em!”
Harris relied on the left showing up for their rights and for democracy. But they will literally never show up. This is why the Dems will never, ever rely on the left showing up ever again. Dems will go hard center next election.
I don’t think there’s enough center left for them to go any harder center without going further left. They were already running on a bunch of right wing Republican policies. They’ve only got three options. Go harder right and actually become diet Republicans (all the oligarchy, but only half the fascism!). Stay exactly where they are. Or go left and return to being mildly progressive. They’ve shown that where they are currently is a losing proposition, so realistically their option is to try to appeal to the middle of the Republican base, or walk back some of their right shift of the last few decades. I don’t think they’re going to be able to successfully out Republican the Republicans so they’ve really only got one viable play.
I don’t know how else to say it: Harris relied on the left with abortion rights and saving democracy, and the left didn’t show up. The center cares about inflation and housing, which Harris did not address enough. They will go to that center, Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid”. There will be no real progress, just economy for the center.
Left isn’t just social policies, it’s economic policies as well. She should have been talking about inflation and housing this election in addition to things like abortion. Instead she decided to focus on border control and foreign policy, two Republican talking points, and even worse she decided to go right on both of them.
We live in different worlds because I think her focus was on abortion and saving democracy. Border is both center and right imo, you’d be amazed.
Foreign policy is an example of how no one cares about Gaza or Ukraine (or NATO), which are what the left cares about. The left didn’t show up. Yes the Gaza situation is fucked, but the difference between Harris and Trump are stark and vast.
The difference is in who they will fuck over so we can stay greedy and entitled. Democrats fuck over poor people, republicans fuck over minorities and immigrants. Both groups fuck over the rest of the world.
The left would vote for the “won’t fuck anyone over” party if there was one.
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Well let’s hope so so they can collapse and a real leftist (or even just sane) party can rise from the ashes.
They did, but it isn’t great knowing how much better they are than you? We can at least take comfort in their “moral high ground” even though they let a guy who explicitly stated he wanted to be a dictator become president.
It’s not like they could’ve made their voices heard after she became President, you know?
It’s not so much as that it collapsed as it was artificially inflated in 2020.
The drive for covid-safe vote by mail turned out far more people in 2020 than 2024 and that helped Biden.
Trump seems to have turned out just as many as before. Plus, I don’t think any of the blue wall states changed their vote by mail policies.
Trump was pushing for in person voting in 2020 as well, that didn’t change.
Why do people keep saying Democrats. These were not Democrats. They were political apathetics who were so dumb they didn’t see a difference between an existential threat to America, convicted felon, and pathological liar… And a woman with a clean record.
No actual Democrat gave up voting for Harris because of the obvious reach to Republicans who saw that existential threat.
They gave up because of disinformation silos and the economy, stupid
a woman with a clean record
People died in her prisons and she kept some after their term so she could use them as slave labor to put out wildfires
and she supported genocide while promising it would continue under her, not for nothing
Is this intended to be a parody of a No True Scotsman?
Nah man. Everyone one who stayed home let a rapist, child rapist, gain the highest office. Trump voters full throatedly supported it. Talk can fuck yourselves and choke on it
Voting Democrat temporarily does not make you a Democrat no differently than Liz Cheney voting for Harris or the first-time low-propensity voter who thinks “they’re all the same, but since covid impacted me I’m getting rid of the current guy.” People just voted against Trump more than they were voting for Biden or his policies. They just wanted him out and to try something different purely because of covid.
This time around, those people just said, “Both Sides.” And sat out. Presumably because they drank the Russian Kool-Aid and live in media silos.
That said, I misread the title and paragraph not referencing Democrat, but Democratic support, so my mistake.
You had it right the first time, people voted for change in 2020, and they did it again this time. Same same.
Cool-aide, silos and two parties who both neglected the little guy given that their wealthy backers can’t stomach doing so. Yes the Democrats ignore them less (Joe Biden’s effort to forgive student loans) but it wasn’t enough, and Trump says what desperate people want to hear I guess.
Poor form, but fuck the abstained for letting the rapist become president. Genocide bad. But genocide with a child rape seasoning is fine. Yeah fuck you guys
Imagine still not getting it.
We didn’t vote for Trump. Harris knew (or should have known) we wouldn’t support her genocide. Now she lost.
Yes, a Trump win is bad. But I would rather a Trump win than to let Democrats think I will vote for them no matter what.
Third party until they completely reform their shenanigans.
I’m not sure that the problem was going too far towards Republicans rather than not going far enough, because I expect that the leftists staying home stayed home in solidly blue states. I think that the political positions that many people here on Lemmy wanted Harris to take would have been extremely unpopular with the electorate.
With that said, it might have been impossible for Harris to move to the right convincingly, because she couldn’t plausibly distance herself from Biden’s unpopular policies. I wish the Democrats nominated someone who could have criticized Biden in a way that Harris could not.
These problems are well beyond petty “leftists”, but centrists will never engage in introspection about their failures.
Petty leftists weren’t even a significant part of the problem, IMO. Biden is very unpopular, people didn’t want more of the same, and Biden’s vice president looked like more of the same. However, the Democratic party was too hierarchical to nominate the sort of candidate that they needed to nominate.
Hell, they nominated Biden himself even though his age could have given them a perfect excuse not to nominate a sitting president. He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum. History is going to remember him as the emperor with no clothes.
He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum.
What? Didn’t he step aside when he had COVID infection this year?
17 July - Biden tested positive for COVID.
21 July - He stepped down.
Source on him throwing a tantrum?
Many senior Democrats were calling on Biden to resign long before he got covid, but he repeatedly made defiant announcements that he would never resign (and Harris supported him). He’s the guy who said that he would only resign if God told him to! His covid infection appears to have been mild (lasting less than a week), and he resigned not because of it but because pretty much the entire Democratic establishment (led by Pelosi) told him that he must.
Many senior Democrats were calling on Biden to resign long before he got covid, but he repeatedly made defiant announcements that he would never resign
Is it possible that there were different camps in the DNC and there was another camp which wanted to ride on incumbent advantage? Especially when Biden was performing well with the hand he was dealt? US had the best recovery post-COVID, after all.
