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.
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.
Dang, how did that work out? Oh? Alot like 2016 you say?
I think the real problem is that we live amongst a sea of imbeciles.
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.
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.
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!
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.
If there’s one lesson the DNC should learn it’s this.
They won’t. But they should.
We need to go through them or around them. They wont change and they wont be convinced. That sort of sniveling triangulating intellectual cowardice cant be cured.
The two parties have a lock on power. There is no going around them as you’ll just be ineffectual and corrupt distractions like Stein and RFK jr.
Body knows the problem. Everywhere you see they went to far left not left enough. Everyone has their opinion and nobody knows why this happened. I just know if single issue voters on gaze didn’t vote then they get what they deserve.
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.
Such a fucking stupid take.
They only learn what they want to hear.
the party can’t fail it can only be failed
If there is one lesson we should learn, it’s that they don’t care to win. They are owned by the same corporate big wigs as Trump. They’re on the same team, capitalism.
It literally doesn’t matter if all you have to do is lie and promise everything.
Stupid article.
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.
Hell, just imagine if Democrats hadn’t let the parliamentarian stand in their way on the minimum wage. Just that by itself would have made it a lot harder for Republicans to claim that Democrats don’t give a shit if their voters can pay for food.
Sinema’s thumbs down remains Democrats’ last word on the subject. And it’s not like she was the lone obstructionist in the party. She was one of EIGHT Democrats who voted against raising the minimum wage.
that parliamentarian is just too darn powerful. We’ll never be able to beat them.
Clearly had a mandate from the people, what with being an appointed position that no one voted on. In a democracy, that always beats those we get to vote on.
Talk about not learning anything… 🤦
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
I mean, the article clearly says that she won moderates.
I’d even be happy to settle for someone in the middle of the party willing to fight for the party’s supposed ideals. Remember when one of her slogans was “when we fight, we win”? Not “when we bipartisan, we win” or “when we coopt conservative issues, we win”.
Talk is cheap. She won’t learn from this. If she did she would be fighting the shit out of him taking office.
Instead they’re happily handing over the vulnerable of this country to Nazis.
The Republicans had their little tea party a few years ago. The Democrats need a Guillotine Party to properly represent us.
Actually, the Guillotine Party sounds like a great idea.
Literally with that name. 😍
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.
Because the Tea Party was useful to just make the Republicans more unapologetically anti-government (something rich people like) while Occupy was demanding that Democrats become unapologetically antagonistic to rich people.
The police choose who they will protect and who they will serve.
the police have no choice. They are owned by the billionaire and exist to protect wealth and privilege.
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.
:(
The guillotine party knows how to deal with the second estate.
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.
2028, I’ll be campaigning on Squeeze the Billionaires Until the Pips Squeak.
I want to be hopeful but I can’t find a logical progression to that stage knowing what the Republicans plan to do and their stranglehold on popular social media. The population will continue to be brainwashed into thinking Trump gives a shit and see him helping while also being told right wing Democrats are communists…
No one else stands a chance when we have corporate media or right wing social media as our options. I know there was a socialist candidate this cycle and Lemmy was literally the only place I saw her.
My take on this is that the DNC has never understood that to win the presidency in the last 20 years you need to be a fire brand.
I think this stared in 2008 with Obama who won I believe because he fired up the base with great speeches about hope and change. It didn’t really happen, BUT the man knew how to give a speech. That got people inspired to do something and they voted.
Bernie was another fire brand - told it like it was and it appealed to a large population.
trump won using the same idea, but just the opposite of hope and change yet it worked. It tapped into a visceral and deep frustration that this country has left them behind.
The modern view of the American president to the population is less of a wonky politician and more of a cheerleader for big ideas, even if those ideas are abhorrent and exceedingly horrifying.
Harris just wasn’t the person to pull this off, she was too wonky and it felt like the entire campaign was playing the old card of “we are not trump” Instead if they really wanted to win they would have found ( 2 years ago) a feisty out spoken progressive leaning firebrand that would have inspired people to vote for something better.
The only reason that (bland) Biden won was because of how badly trump fucked up the Covid response.
I think when she was announced as the candidate, she fired up the base just fine. She was different.
Then she spent the rest of the campaign reassuring people that nothing would change, pissing away that enthusiasm.
Which is really weird because her professed policies WOULD have changed things. https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris-2024-campaign-promises-here-are-her/
One of the frustrations I had was her solution to the housing problem was to just build more houses and give out some money. Sure great, but what I wanted to hear, and I think many other also wanted to hear, was her talking about corporate hording of housing and what she would do about that situation. But she just ignored it completely and so did Biden.
I think instead if she came out swinging against corporate greed, even if she actually did nothing about it, would have given her more votes.
My one hope out of this is that the massive swing to the right will be countered with more vocal progressives.
There are plenty of houses. Repossess then from Blackrock and sell them at normal rates
Building houses and giving out money WOULD have helped the housing problem. WTF?
I didn’t say it wouldn’t have helped. That wasn’t the point of the comment.
What I was getting at was that if she wanted to motivate voters, especially more progressive voters, then she needed to go bigger than “build some houses and hand out some money.”
What they wanted to hear from their candidate was a bolder and stronger solution like outlawing corporations from owning thousands of homes. Take a firm stand on corporate greed and corporate inflation. But she never talked about that.
She didn’t even really have a plan to build more houses, just some subsidies that wouldn’t put a dent in the problem. She should have proposed something ambitious that people could get excited about. The crazy thing is Biden had some big ambitious policies that he actudlly enacted like the Inflation Reduction Act that dwarf anything Kamala campaigned on. It’s the opposite of a winning approach that sells the stars and delivers the moon.
Exactly. “I’m not trump” barely got Biden in when trump was the incumbent with covid running rampant. It didn’t work for Clinton in 2016 and unsurprisingly it didn’t work for Harris in 2024. The level of incompetence at the DNC really makes me think the actual goal is to prevent our politics/country from shifting to the left at any cost.
My feeling is that once the DNC starts to acknowledge the progressive ideas then they open the flood gates to challengers to their (limited) power.
The Dems also need to get it through their skulls that it’s not just trump. The problem was present in McConnell and Gingrich. We need multiple parties willing to work together for the good of all Americans. Unfortunately the democrats are idiots with the policies of a quite reasonable right wing and the republicans are fascists who have spent 30 years rejecting their own ideas when said by democrats
