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.
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 🧠
Such a fucking stupid take.
They only learn what they want to hear.
the party can’t fail it can only be failed
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.
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.
The Republicans had their little tea party a few years ago. The Democrats need a Guillotine Party to properly represent us.
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.
2028, I’ll be campaigning on Squeeze the Billionaires Until the Pips Squeak.
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.
the police have no choice. They are owned by the billionaire and exist to protect wealth and privilege.
Yea courting Republicans was a bad move IMHO. But she’s a establishment dem. So go figure.
According to conservatives on reddit, she is “far left, even more extreme than Bernie” and that’s why she lost.
How so… she is a far right democrat. Pro big oil and corporations and heavy handed on many issues from her time as DA.
If anything she is to far right for most dems.
Yeah I dunno. But conservatives are convinced she’s an extreme leftist.
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
Dang, how did that work out? Oh? Alot like 2016 you say?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Today we learned, there are no moderates
there are moderates, politically, the problem is that the political environment is so heavily galvanized they don’t really show up clearly.
Most conservative moderates are either going to vote trump (in which case they aren’t that much of a moderate) or they’re not, and they’re going to vote for dems, (which is more moderate)
The problem at hand is that moderates just don’t get any political attention, even though they’re like 30-40% of the voter base, if not more.
I’d say it worked
The election results say otherwise.
losing sure, but biden had historically high voter turnout, probably as a result of the mail in voting over covid.
This turn out is pretty high as well we’re looking at about 71 million votes right now. For an “unpopular candidate” this is pretty clearly, good turnout.
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.
Dems said to the left. “We offer you nothing and you owe us everything”.
Why are they surprised their entitled demand failed?
Guess you didn’t listen either, since you thought they offer you nothing
I’d wait to hear what they offer me that I’m concerned with that they couldn’t have done already. They demonstrated they didn’t want my vote.
Let me rephrase that a way you can understand.
If things were as dire as they wanted us to believe, why were they ignoring us and brining on Liz and dick Cheney?
Why did they ignore us whenever we asked for something? Because they believed they had our vote no matter what.
I don’t want to sign off on another genocide.
you owe them everything? You owe them a vote bro. It’s not that deep.
If I owe them a vote, they owe me some policies.
yeah, and those polices weren’t global tariffs, deleting the DOE, and fucking over most of the federal government.
That sounds like they were offering the status quo. I.e nothing as nothing would change.
I am dissatisfied with that deal.
Sorry dems, but you only get nothing for nothing.
I am dissatisfied with that deal.
and you prefer a second trump deal?
Like you can pretend like you aren’t satisfied here, but you’re being presented with a would you rather of, would you rather cut your arm a little bit, or stick a needle into your eye. And you sit there and go “yeah no i dont think i want any of these options” except you forgot to read the fine print where the second option is the default result.
I’m dissatisfied with either. One actively repels me but the other isn’t appealing either.
Neither is th default here because neither is the incumbent, though Kamala is closer.
So if neither is asking for my vote or bringing anything i want, why would I show up?
Blame me if you like, but the truth is they failed because they were not appealing enough. And that’s simply all there is to it.
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.
As an outsider, if the democratic candidate has to do anything to “appeal to you” for your vote, to prevent a fascist party from taking over, then democracy is obviously not for you. That’s just being a fucking dumb moron. “You didn’t ask nicely enough, so let’s hand over the country to the Nazis”
If you’re a politician who doesn’t appeal to your base then democracy is not for you. That’s just how democracy works.
This mentality is what the Dems keep applying and it doesn’t work. Trying to shame people into voting isn’t an effective message. You can argue that it should be, but what matters is how things actually are and how a party can act most effectively based on that. It’s either adapt or keep railing against reality and lose.
they aren’t “shaming” people. They’re expecting them to do the bare minimum. That’s pretty commendable i would say.
Alright, well “expecting them to do the bare minimum” isn’t a winning strategy either. Expecting people to do things they’ve demonstrated they won’t do doesn’t make any sense.
well if you don’t consider upholding the values of the people within the government structure worth voting for, than maybe democracy isn’t the thing for you.
That’s completely upside down. Democracy means the people within the government structure are supposed to uphold the values of the broader population. If you think the people in the government structure should be the ones to set the values, then maybe democracy isn’t for you.
i mean sure, if you thought i was defining democracy, that’s one of the ways you can define it.
I was just making the argument that you shouldn’t give a fuck at all if you don’t even care to uphold the values of such democracy, yourself.
Also if we’re being semantically pedantic here, a democracy is technically just a form of collective enrollment in governance. The people collectively as a unit decide who best represents their values, and then they elect that person to a position they see fit for those values.
fun fact, we call people who are represented by politicians, constituents.
You keep blaming the voters for deciding the Democrats aren’t representative of them.
Have you thought about blaming the Democrats for not being representative of the voters they want?
You can blame both, honestly. The US has always had the same political game as ever, people should be wise enough to understand how to play it. If you ever want to get to a more stable democracy that no longer has the stupid two party system that prevents any form of real representative democracy where you can actually have a selection of parties that represent you perfectly, the choice should be obvious.
At least with Harris they could try to work with her and convince them to change their views for the future as they ruled. Trump will call you a left wing lunatic and slam the door in your face. Zero influence and no chance for progress (and even regression) vs some influence and some chance to progress.
Are you saying its common sense to vote Kamala because she would help dismantle the two party system?
Not that optimistically (And realistically, not common sense either apparently), but yes, it’s a potential path. And a peaceful one, among a multitude of bloody ones.
I wish I had the same blind faith as you but I need some sign they will go against the corporations that are currently running the working class into the ground for profit.
Not sure why you think I have blind faith? I’ve got blind faith in no one. Least of all the american voter lol.
people keep saying this, but she got like 65 or 70 million votes?? Seems representative to me.
Not representative enough.
not as representative as trump either apparently.
The far left is definitely in no ways representative of the average democratic voter either.
Or, maybe it’s the fault of the campaign for doing nothing to appeal to those people. Like, I wish that we could of voted to not have trump today. But we didn’t and have shown historically that it won’t happen. At that point it’s on the campaign. Spent the whole time trying to become the new Republican party and it backfired. Fucking stupid DNC don’t learn shit and still bitch at the end.
it’s not the “new republican party” i dont know why people keep saying this, nobody seems to understand ANYTHING about politics and it’s starting to annoy me lmao.
How would you describe the Democrats immigration policy as of this year? Because they voted yes literally on a Republican immigration bill. They continued to champion that “hard border” bill throughout the election. The concept of a hard border was a Republican one that the Dems took and now the Republicans have gone to ethnic cleansing.
"Don’t know anything about politics when you dont even got a 4 year memory. Remember the border wall? Dems are pro border wall now. Israel committing a genocide? Dems are on isreals side, the Republicans are just even more blood thirsty.
Please. I don’t know how to not be pedantic when I say this. Please go read up on the Democrats policy proposals from previous elections and compare to now. Check it against Republicans. Please I beg of you to read.
To top it all off, the Dems are a neo liberal org. A ideology that became popular in the US from Ronald fucking Regan. They are at their core an ideologically right wing org with a left wing base they hate and occasionally have to give concessions on.
No better example of this than the fact they literally championed how many Republicans they were getting endorsements from, campaigned with Liz Cheney, and talked about how lethal our fucking army is while decrying the evil college students for protesting a genocide.
Like. Idk what else to tell you. Idk what else I could show you. This is the reality you live in. The Dems concede to the left or they die to fascists. The left doesn’t have its own party and yet it’s the base of the Dems by virtue of no other option. That base has made it as clear as physically possible. Concede or die. That’s politics baby.
How would you describe the Democrats immigration policy as of this year? Because they voted yes literally on a Republican immigration bill. They continued to champion that “hard border” bill throughout the election. The concept of a hard border was a Republican one that the Dems took and now the Republicans have gone to ethnic cleansing.
to be clear the “hard border bill” you’re talking about isn’t that hard. The two primary things it did were increase funding to the border patrol, ICE and the immigration judges. The primary issue at hand is twofold, massive influx of immigration to an unprecedented level. And the lack of infrastructure to handle it. When people come to america to claim asylum, they are by law, required to have an asylum trial. There are currently not enough judges to hold all of the trials that need to happen, thus people end up with multi year court dates, and stays in sanctuary cities. Some of these people will get through and become citizens, some of them wont, but for now, they’re under temporary status citizenship.
If you consider “funding the courts so people can get citizenship” to be a hard border bill, i question what a relaxed border policy for you would be.
Now to be fully transparent here, it does also constitute shutting down the border if more than 5000 migrants pass through in one day. Doesn’t require it, just allows for it to happen. There are arguments around this being unethical or even illegal immigration law. but a temporary shutdown likely beats the current mess we have right now (surrounding wait dates and what not)
If you’re talking about HR2, than that’s not a dem bill. Idk why we’re talking about it.
Dems are pro border wall now.
some of them are, but this is probably due to republican and conservative propaganda, they understand nothing about the border either.
Dems are on isreals side
do you have any stats on this? I recall seeing that support for israel is mostly in the older population. And republican leaning, as far as popular sentiment goes, it seems the majority of people agree that israel is probably being too aggressive and that we should do something about it. Unless your minimum buy in here is genocide in which case this is an untenable conversation and i can’t go any further.
Please go read up on the Democrats policy proposals from previous elections and compare to now.
i mean if we’re talking about the obama admin, they did a shit ton of deportation and bombing of the middle east. Idk what that’s worth to you. But it’s one of the admins of all time so. Policy proposal is a moot point anyway, so i won’t engage on those grounds.
A ideology that became popular in the US from Ronald fucking Regan. They are at their core an ideologically right wing org with a left wing base they hate and occasionally have to give concessions on.
i’m unsure what you mean by this, but it is my understanding that most of the US voting base in the dem party is moderate or generally liberal (soft left). And that a minority of it is left leaning (moderate left), or far left (hard left). Lemmy is a good example of the far left. And voter turnout seems to agree with this, considering that like 70 million people turned out to vote for kamala. If the majority of the population were as principled as people on lemmy i would expect maybe 50 million.
while decrying the evil college students
do you have an actual example of this? I know that trump has said that he would deport them, but i havent heard the harris campaign say anything of that nature yet.
The Dems concede to the left or they die to fascists.
i really don’t think it needs to. Maybe i’m wrong, but everything i understand about politics and sociology leads me to believe otherwise.
it is in fact politics, i will give you that one. Now if only the voting population was more capable of doing literally anything smarter than being ok at guessing sometimes…
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.
Democrats called those Twitter users Russian trolls. They are now advocating to restrict social media so this cannot happen again.
They are now advocating to restrict social media so this cannot happen again.
source?
Saw a brazen example yesterday about how social media is the fault of it all. It was an article like this one https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/07/10-democratic-thinkers-on-what-the-party-needs-right-now-00187993
What we’ve seen is that tens of millions have opted into a right-wing information bubble, largely online, that has grown to eclipse almost the entire traditional media infrastructure. Often, in that bubble, they’ve become the willing consumers of lies and outrage. Trump’s real misdeeds are whitewashed while audiences are encouraged to embrace cathartic rage against rotating groups of enemies — many of which seem to suspiciously mirror historically unpopular minorities. In this fractured information environment, clownish strongmen thrive, their meme-like public personas enrapturing otherwise disengaged voters — a trend we’ve seen across the globe, as social media increasingly displaces traditional media.
Democrats need to recognize that it is impossible to win votes by improving voters’ lives, when your opponent has a national rage machine it can toggle on or off at will. We will see the next iteration of this game soon enough, when the right switches to praising the precise economy they blasted for years, likely spiking economic satisfaction through the roof. This capacity — dominating media and social media, and its power to shape public opinion — has been the obsessive focus of the right for years. Democrats have almost completely ignored these questions in favor of wonky policy and kitchen-table economics. If the party continues to ignore this problem, it courts oblivion. Democrats must find a way to make headway in modern media, and wrest more control of the national information environment from Trump and his band of thugs.
My favorite line
Let’s start with where Democrats should NOT go. We should not blame Vice President Kamala Harris or her campaign.
Why didn’t you quote the part where they are discussing restricting it?
Why don’t you, if it’s so important to you? Be the change.
It’s important to me that when someone makes a big claim they back it up. The challenge is that the article doesn’t say what was claimed.
I didn’t make the claim therefore nothing for me to back up.
Too much effort to go look for it. Keep an eye out and you will frequently come across an article where they discuss the need for “more control over social media because of foreign interference”.
“I’m not lying, I’m lazy”
Dope
You don’t remember the TikTok fiasco from a few months ago? It is basically the same thing but for Twitter.
I don’t understand the Democrat strategy at all
Someone else summed it up better than I can. The democratic party is doing exactly what it set out to do.
They have no interest in furthering progressive policies so they don’t. That’s why the DNC chair is calling Bernie Sander’s critique of the party’s platform bullshit right now, instead of admitting he’s right.
The system is as it does.
I mean, realistically, they’d adopt leftist talking points and then abandon them after they won, like they did in 2008.
And in 2020. I think I can count on one hand the policies he ran on getting put into place, and I lost track of how many some Boogeyman kept it from happening.
But we always gave more weapons to Israel without question or congressional approval.
without question or congressional approval
Do you think Congress wouldn’t have approved it? The Democrats are mostly in AIPAC’s pockets, and the Republican would send them even more arms if they could, since they are openly, vocally pro-genocide.
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.
Progressive left leaning policies are very popular
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.
The militancy of Malcolm X’s message played a big part in that. Powerful whites were scared of Malcolm so they decided to work with MLK
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?
That was a media lie. She said that sarcastically and both her and the reporter were laughing. Media didn’t report that fact, other than the original interview which aired like one time.
She said repeatedly toward the end that she would keep people she disagrees with close to her in the white house because she’s open minded or something