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.
To be honest Harris wasted time and effort sucking up to the infinitesimally small number of non-MAGA GOPers. Time that would have been better spent emphasizing her pro worker policies.
Bipartisanship is dead.
No one wants to work with people that they view as inherently evil, corrupt, and a threat to democracy.
The way political cooperation, negotiation and compromise are viewed as acts of unforgivable weakness in the US sets up a climate where functional democracy appears impossible. The US seems destined to lurch from one impulse to another with half the country thinking each is a colossal mistake and an affront to their way of life.
No, I do not mean this as any kind of “both sides” argument. The fact there are only sides to determining how a society governs itself, the winners and the losers, is the point.
We have a two party system which is inherently hyper polarizing as it paints everything as being black and white. It is an unbelievably stupid and undemocratic system, and unfortunately, nothing will ever improve until we replace our broken two party system with a modern multiparty democracy
The best way to do that is with some sort of ranked preference voting system. The sooner first past the post is replaced with a ranked choice system, the better.
and unfortunately, nothing will ever improve until we replace our broken two party system with a modern multiparty democracy
… and you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to fuck that up
Honestly when was the last time we even had it. Clinton’s first term?
Well at least when it wasn’t just dems caving to republicans
Yea courting Republicans was a bad move IMHO. But she’s a establishment dem. So go figure.
Yes. When you abandon the left, they don’t vote for you. This is what Clinton did too
They have clearly internalized the pervasive trope that leftists will vote for them, because they have no other choice, so the only thing that matters to convince is the right. Looks like they calculated wrong.
Obama got people excited about healthcare reform. Biden got people excited about student debt relief. Clinton tried to get people excited about a female president and Harris centered her campaign around running against Trump.
Social programs get people excited.
Biden got people excited about student debt relief.
This is not why Biden got elected. Trump so badly mishandled Covid that everyone left of center demanded change.
everyone left of center demanded change.
I think you mean “everyone left of FASCISM” because liberals are center-right at best. Center left is Social Democracy (Bernie Sanders and AOC)
The failure to realize Covid is the only reason Biden won cost the Democrats. In the swing states 2024 Trump beats 2020 Biden by vote count.
agreed. Biden won because people voted against Trump. Every other time Biden ran, and there were many, he couldnt even win his home state. He was and is a joke of a politician, and his legacy is a Trump win becaus he was so unpopular.
“Never underestimate Joe Bidens ability to fuck everything up” –Barrack Obama.
I don’t think you can point to one specific thing that got Biden elected. Covid mismanagement was a huge part of it, but student debt relief and other progressive proposals that Bernie pushed the campaign into played a big part as well. Even with Covid, I think there’s a good chance that Biden would have lost if he’d run the same kind of centrist campaign that Harris and Clinton ran.
Student debt was not a campaign platform he ran on, it was something he did during his presidency.
He did run on Green New Deal and the original proposal that later became the $2 trillion Infrastructure investment/bill/plan.
But to your point, yes he ran on platforms that people got excited. Both of those platforms were new economic opportunities for people in a time when people when much of the labor class was jobless from COVID.
Every time
The funny thing is that Harris had a lot of progressive policies. She didn’t tout them for some reason. Which I suspect was to get GOPers on board. Have a look here and wonder why she didn’t talk more about them: https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris-2024-campaign-promises-here-are-her/
Because most of them were worth less than the bits than they were stored on. She never would have gotten them through congress. She just put them there. 🤷 You’ll note the things she could have done unilaterally like end shipments to israel and commit to keeping kahn she flat out refused to do/support.
This is similar to how someone will slowly abandon their old friends to be relevant with the “cool” kids who will never see you as part of their group no matter what, and your old friends end up making new friends leaving you alone. If this doesn’t work in real life, I don’t get how this could work in politics.
The Democratic party has to stop treating us like the old friend they visit every so often just to get something out of us while forming closer relationships with others who have no business being their friend.
This is so true and I’m saying this a white guy who has only felt the economic impact of their failures. I was a radical leftist when I was 15, now I’m 40. The only thing democrats have ever offered is damage control, they can’t blame the voters for being apathetic.
The new friends in this instance are very rich and they entice the Democrats to leave their old friends with lots of money. But the old friends is where they get their power. The Democrat party loves money.
I don’t get why it’s hard to comprehend. By becoming (even) more conservative, more “R”, they betrayed (even more of) their base. Why would timid Republicans want to vote for traitors pandering to them?
Shit I was saying when Biden was still running and I got crucified for it.
As you shift to the right you leave your base behind, ignoring a growing, left swinging faction within the party is going to lead to outcomes like this. Working class people all have the same problems, and one party says they’ll do something about it. They’re lying, people who are generally smarter and paying attention know they’re lying, but that’s not most people.
The other party has had a chance, and failed to do anything to alleviate the concerns of the working class. Regardless of the circumstances, or their actual ability to affect change. And they spent the entire election cycle trying to curry votes from a dedicated base instead of getting voters excited about something.
Swing left, swing hard. Become the unhinged leftist the other side is already accusing you of being.
Its a two party system, why would anyone think being a bit more like the other guy be a good idea?
Why would someone pick knockoff awful when the name brand is right there?
Monopolistic competition makes a lot of wild assumptions that can result in such ideas.
I was called a Russian asset in 2020 for saying this and even more in 2024.
It sucks so much to be so right about something so horrible.
There’s people saying anyone saying dems need to move left are just spreading Russian propaganda
Yep, surely if we get elections in 2028 (unlikely) we need to run a KKK member as a Democrat! You have to vote for him, Trump’s 3rd term will unleash a nuke on Africa.
Please ignore they both want to nuke Africa.
Not only that, if she’s not targeting Democrats they won’t feel motivated to vote for her. Yes, yes, fascism was the other option. But people are not smart, and I say that as a people.
Democrats would prefer to lose than become more progressive because the rich and powerful still benefit from Republicans winning or Democrats winning as long as Democrats are still centre-right wing.
As soon as Democrats move left the elites start to lose so Democrats don’t.
And we won’t have another election again, so these democratic voters who stayed home have denied themselves any other opportunities to right this ship.
It was the stupidest of ideas. Republicans were never going to vote for her in any numbers. She was all about gun control, she personally owned the 12 million border crossings, she had all those defund the police sound bites from her earlier years, and she couldn’t effectively separate herself from the difficult economy for middle and low earners - while failing to communicate that she even cared about the common man’s plight or would try to help it. Even her proposed tax plan raised taxes on lower middle class, at least the charts I saw (including here on Lemmy). And Republicans have seen four years of Trump and think all the Nazi and “all Republicans are racist” talk is literally the stupidest thing on the earth. Abortion was all Dems really had, and although lots of Republicans are pro-choice, Trump had promised to veto a national abortion ban (for whatever that’s worth).
I remember when Democrats were for the working people. They need to stop being "We’re not the Nazis"and start telling us who they are. But I don’t think they want to tell us who they are. They’re no longer the party of the working man, they’re the party of corporate interest and global governance, and they’re also almost as authoritarian as the right. Maybe the collapse of the Democrat party will result in the birth of an actual socialist party in the US. We’ve seen major party changes in the past. Will it happen again, soon?
“I remember when Democrats were for the working people?”
What was the Great Depression like?
Lmao, for real though, FDR was the last President that prioritized the working class over the capital class. And in turn capitalists tried to overthrow the government or have him killed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
FDR was the last President that prioritized the working class over the capital class
And he only did all that to head off a socialist revolution.
It was the stupidest of ideas. Republicans were never going to vote for her in any numbers
It is what the donor (capital) class wanted. Liberals are capitalists which means they serve the capital class first and foremost.
I think the real problem is that we live amongst a sea of imbeciles.
Dang, how did that work out? Oh? Alot like 2016 you say?
Are you telling me enthusiastically embracing the support of the Cheney’s lowered democratic turnout!?! Whoda thunk?!?! Hopefully that’s the end of the neoliberals
she tried to win over moderates, not republicans.
I’d say it worked judging by the 70 million votes or so she got.
The real problem seems to be dem voter turnout instead, for whatever collection of reasons that is. I would argue it’s mostly voters being stupid, but that’s just me lol.
I highly suspect this is because there was no Democratic Primary. I’ve heard the old tired excuse “they typically run the incumbent as the democratic candidate”. But this is simply asinine, it’s crazy. They waited until less than 6 months from election day to randomly put Harris in the running. This is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen happen. There was no chance for Democrats to vote at all!
In 2016, Democrats didn’t vote for Hillary because she just didn’t “do it” for them. We got Trump thanks to their adorable little protest vote.
2024 14 million registered Democrats didn’t vote in this election because Harris just didn’t “do it” for them. But since they HAD registered, they were prepared to vote.
I’m starting to detect a really stupid, petty pattern, here.
How much of it was due to voter-roll purges, bomb threats at polling stations and other voter-suppression fuckery?
Not enough to justify a 20% reduction in democratic turnout.
Both her and Clinton should have been braver with VP choice.
They both chose VP milquetoast when the time called for people wanting change.
Walz was a great choice. The best moments in the campaign came from him.
They lost because they were pandering to republicans, not because of Walz
Waltz was great until the DNC told him to stop calling Vance weird even though it worked and to stop talking major shifts in his elections would work.
And then he was mute except for playing games on twitch.
I don’t even remember who Clinton chose for her vp
Tim ‘theres room in the Democratic party for pro lifers’ Kaine.
Man, maybe the Dems lost because the VPs are named Tim … They should really look into people with other names maybe.
Tim Kaine. A pro-Wall Street centrist.
Walz was great. They put him on a leash, though. Remember when he was going around calling the Republicans “weird” and they were freaking out about it?
(Edit: They’re STILL not over this btw, Benny-boy “dry wife” Shapiro made a tweet after the election that went something like “We proved we’re the normal ones after all”.)
