And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?

  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
    6·
    3 hours ago

    They did know it had a serious impact on likely Dem voters, and likely Independent voters, in swing states, and they did it anyway.

    … Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-israel

    From July 25 through August 9, pollsters asked voters if and how the Democratic nominee pledging “to withhold more weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians” would impact their vote. In Arizona, 35% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).

    Even bigger shares of voters said they would be more likely to support her in November if President Joe Biden—who dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Harris last month—secured a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In Arizona, 41% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 2% who said they would be less likely. In both Georgia and Pennsylvania, it was 44% versus 2%.

    …

    Biden dropping out and being replaced with Kamala was an opportunity for Kamala to change the Dem stance on this.

    Kamala would have stood a much better chance at winning if she massively broke with Biden and did an about face on Gaza, and there is basically no way her campaign did not know this.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 hours ago

      … Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.

      They were in a bubble of other blue-no-matter-who media and were assured by the consultants from Clinton’s campaign and the Labour Party that they could ignore those polls.

      So really, it would have taken a big enough push from the public that MSNBC became anti-genocide. Hypothetically it could have happened, but the Democratic base is too disorganized to pull that kind of bottom-up messaging coup off.