It’s literally 2016 but worse somehow.
One source close to the Harris campaign tells Rolling Stone they reached out to several staffers in and around the campaign to voice concerns about the candidate embracing Dick and Liz Cheney.
“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” says the source, speaking about Dick Cheney. They say a Harris staffer responded that it was not the staff’s role to challenge the campaign’s decisions.
A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney — and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris — was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign.
Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.
I recall reading early on that DNC campaign advisers were recommending against continuing with the “weird” rhetoric, and the article mentioned some specific people who had worked on the 2016 campaign. It floored me that those people still had jobs. I guess they got their way eventually. I now have no expectation that they won’t be doing the same shit in 2028.
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
It was all Hillary people. Why the DNC keeps hiring hillary and her people? Well Hillary owns the DNC. It’s a private corporation that has private share-holders and their product is ballot access for the Democratic party.
If you want to run as a democrat for almost any office in the entire country you have to go through the DNC.
“DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.”
I think I had this exact revelation during or right after the 2020 primaries and it has deeply impacted my approach to voting ever since.
The same progressives that didn’t show up to vote?
Yes. The lesson here is you can’t win without progressives, and if you try they will punish you.
You seem to be trying to imply that progressives aren’t important, but the reality is exactly the fucking opposite.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration. Everyone I know voted. No one I know irl felt democrats didn’t go far enough left.
That is a talking point being repeated a lot on lemmy.ml though. Which is telling considering its reputation.
Polls made it clear voters were motivated by inflation and immigration.
Well no shit, when those are only things in the multiple-choice response anywhere close to what voters are really feeling, of course that’s what they’re gonna measure!
But you have to read between the lines, interpret and understand what the data is telling you. Why are they worried about immigration? Why are they worried about inflation? The answer is because they’re economically insecure, falling behind while the rich get richer, and seeing the inequity do nothing but expand day by day. They fucking want leftist economic reforms because those are the things that would actually help fix their problems, but they’re never gonna be allowed to express it on a goddamed survey made by neoliberals who are more interested in huffing their own confirmation bias to pimp themselves to their corporate donors than actually helping the citizenry!
Who said there was multiple choice questions? Read between the lines? What are you rambling about?
You said:
Polls made it clear
If you don’t know that polls are almost always multiple-choice, you have no business trying to cite them.
almost always
So you acknowledge that they aren’t alway multiple choice but in the same comment you pretend that I have no business citing polls that aren’t multiple choice because it makes you wrong. Got it.
Fuck your HOA suburb.
lol wut
I mean I didn’t think they went far enough left. I still voted for them, but certainly I wasn’t enthused. I don’t know who would be.
I haven’t met anyone with that sentiment irl. Everyone I know either wanted Kamala to win or felt Biden and Kamala was radical left extremist and his progressive policies were the cause of inflation.
The polls reflect that.
This narrative that democrats didn’t go far enough left is something I’ve only seen on lemmy.
Get out your rich ass bubble white man!
Lemmy.ml is the bubble. lol @ your attempt at race bait
No one knows the political lean of who didn’t vote.
Tell that to OP for their comment:
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
It’s not about”progressives” it’s about the average Joe voter who (in some ways rightly) couldn’t see a difference enough to make voting (an unnecessarily difficult chore) worthwhile.
The second problem, is that there is no collective class consciousness. At best there is maybe a collective unconscious feeling. Progressives often ascribe a much greater awareness than is warranted to the proletariat. Ironically after likely doing no organizing other than debating each other in closed left wing YouTube and Reddit threads.
It only makes sense if you assume the Harris campaign was trying to lose, like in The Producers.
Ironically (?), If they went Springtime for Hitler they might have gained votes.
The very point we are trying to make here is that that is what the Dems tried to do, and it did not in fact work.
We said as much, but of course they didn’t listen, as is our Cassandra curse.
You know you’re cooked when Bill Kristol is going around like, “Hey, shouldn’t you be running a more progressive campaign to turn out more voters?”
The idea that democrats would abandon their base and try to flip republicans was idiotic beyond belief. The exit polls show that practically no republicans were swayed by this, as anybody with a functioning brain could’ve told the democrats. What they ended up doing was to alienate and demoralize the people who might’ve showed up to vote for them while having no impact on the republican vote.
I’m really curious as to whose colossally dumb idea it was to campaign with Liz fucking Cheney?
I agree, it was a colossal mistake for Harris to try and win over GOPers. But Harris’s policies remained those I listed.
Let’s see, so we’re blaming Biden for stepping aside too late, his advisors for not encouraging him to step aside, the DNC for not holding a second primary, and Harris for trying to get voters by reaching across the aisle.
Let’s for once try Occam’s Razor.
Can we just accept that more than half the
nation isvoters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.It wasn’t more than half the country, in total 65% of the country voted for any candidate. Trump got about 55% of that, or a bit over 36% of the country. That’s still way higher than it should be, but well below half. There’s a bunch of possible explanations for why the remaining 35% of the country didn’t vote, and only some of those explanations would be tacit support of Trump.
Good point. More than half of voters would have been accurate.
That reduces the sting of disappointment in my fellow man a tiny bit.
The 35% of the country did vote. If you choose not to vote for any candidate, you are voting, “both these options are indistinguishable to me, I’m good with either.” Not voting is still voting. You’re just endorsing whatever the people who do vote decide. You’re basically saying, “I consider this race irrelevant and don’t care about the outcome.” That is what you are voting for if you don’t vote.
I think the real answer is all of the above. Biden waited too long to drop out, which didn’t give enough time to properly hold a primary. This resulted in Harris being nominated with no way to gauge how popular she would be. She then ran a terrible campaign spending too much time courting moderate Republicans. This resulted in progressives being disillusioned and not voting. Her stance on Israel and Gaza turned away Arab voters who also didn’t vote. All of this combined together to pave the way for a second Trump presidency.
No primary also means they can’t test what ideas are popular.
no way to gauge how popular she would be
Her approval ratings have always been trash. We were well versed in who she would be.
She actually went to the primary on a decently progressive platform (for a Democrat). Then she ran for president as center right standard Democrat.
That interview where they asked her what would be different if she won versus Biden, and she said she couldn’t think of a thing. That fucking ruined her.
Not a thing will change. Not a single change. Nobody thought to coach her on the most obvious question to ask or they told her the winning line was to stick with the guy who had to drop out?
I’m so fucking sad and sick. Arm yourselves before it’s too late.
I wouldn’t put it past day one dictator and project 2025 that he’s never heard of to immediately put a stop to weapons sold to anyone that doesn’t qualify.
I’ve been armed and fully trained for a number of years, they won’t put a restriction on sale of weapons, That might be viewed as a constitutional violation. What they will do is put a restriction on the sale of ammunition. Or there will be extreme ‘shortages’
I like (hate) the way you think.
Damn, literally the chris rock antigun strategy.
In character for the USA though. Freedom! (if you are rich).
Nothing will fundamentally change… again.
Agent Orange appointed three Supreme Court justices who rolled back women’s rights and made the President completely above the law. This is just one of the things that fundamentally changed. This time around I expect Thomas and Alito to retire so he can replace them with younger Christian fascists. If you have children, their children will be affected negatively by this court.
This is just one thing! So many things fundamentally changed. If you think nothing fundamentally changed for you then that’s your privilege showing.
Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin, and Jacky Rosen are all women who won senate races in states Kamala lost (WI, MI, NV). There’s also Ruben Gallego, a Hispanic man who’s winning in Arizona. So your “simplest explanation” is that these sexist, racist bigots were fine with voting for women (one of them a queer woman at that) and minorities for senate but not for president (for some reason) as opposed to the idea that Kamala Harris was just an unpopular candidate. That’s not the simplest explanation, it’s just the laziest.
You’re so consistently wrong that I’m starting to think you might be Will Stancil’s alt account.
Are we completely ignoring the right wing echo chamber on social media and cable news? I’ve encountered no shortage of people who have been completely sucked into that world and buy into the bullshit. Not all of them are innately evil, but their candidate of choice certainly is
Because that’s the simplest explanation
No, it’s even simpler than that. The majority don’t pay attention to anything past headlines. There are numerous reasons for this, time, effort, working 3 jobs to make ends meet, etc. And that’s something the Republicans excel at, they have spent the past 60 years developing an entire network of media to spread their propaganda masking it as factual “news”.
Because people aren’t looking past the headlines… if you break that down and simplify why that is , you get to the base of the average person having a hard time in the current economy. One party telling them that it is hard and they’ll change things, and the other party telling them it’s not actually that bad. If you’re having a hard time and one group keeps insisting that you’re really not, you’re probably going to pick the other side if those are the only options. It’s not rocket science, fuck, it’s not even political science, it’s just ignoring the issue and trying to convince someone being beaten to death by the system that they’re not actually getting beaten.
But actually committing to do something substantially FDRish for the working man isn’t an easy sell within high level Democrat party leadership. I don’t know why this is true exactly but I expect it has to do with money and power.
I expect it has to do with money and power.
I’m pretty sure Biden being in the race, and him stepping aside, were all determined by the DNC, not Biden himself.
The donor class decided that Biden need to step down, not leadership, not voters. He and the party were animate that he was staying in the race until the donor class said the money stops here.
The democrats eagerness to support genocide is obvious. Though unfortunately for them, support for genocide isn’t a key differentiator when it comes to winning elections.
Democrats certainly like the “America is racist” narrative because it gives them justification for chasing the racist vote next time.
Occam’s razor isn’t “the simplest, most reductive answer is usually right” it’s “entities must not be created beyond nessecity”. It argues that when you have two hypotheses which have equal explanatory power, you should usually choose the one that has fewer elements (assumptions, new rules). The classic example is a heliocentric solar system vs a geocentric one. Geocentric needs very complex laws of motion to get the sidereal motion correct, heliocentric doesn’t.
“everyone is racist” doesn’t have the same explanatory power as the detailed analysis you’re seeing journalists and your fellow lemmy users construct of Biden, Harris, and the Democratic establishments failure to recognize the need for loud populist messaging and unforced errors depressing voter enthusiasm, therefore we cannot apply Occam’s razor to the situation.
That’s the explanation that requires zero introspection and change on behalf of the Democratic party. Democrats need to learn something here. Democrats need to finally implement that change obama promised all those years ago.
Unless their purpose is to lose.
Donald Trump got approximately the same number of votes as he did in 2020. Harris, however, got about 11 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020.
And the other half is just as racist, sexist and bigoted. But they’re covert at it.
“Just as” is absurd, but I agree there is some. I was guilty of plenty of microaggressions before I knew of them. Change starts with the youth. The older you get, the longer it takes to get to you.
Democrats don’t have to say any slurs to uphold a racist/sexist system. Send out a memo condemning racism while increasing police funding and surveillance. Tokenize people in their cabinet with a smile and a hashtag while bombing, destabilizing, and plundering the global south. Our hierarchical and white supremacist systems are so embedded in our society, it’s assumed to be the natural order of things.
I don’t know, y’all can point fingers in every direction, but the fact is - those voters who didn’t show up to vote, voted 3rd party, or voted Republican knew who Trump is and what the outcome would be. Project 2025 was laid out in full right in front of us. We all saw his previous 4 years in office. We saw the repeal of Roe with a majority court. These (potential) voters just don’t care about progress or people and want to speed up the burning of Rome. US Presidential elections have been binary in everyone’s lifetime here.
There’s no excuse other than simply “I don’t care” regardless of which excuse you want to pick from the box. The House, Senate, and Supreme Court are all lost - they have absolute free reign to do whatever they want in the next 4 years. The best case scenario is that it’s not as bad as last time. The worst case scenario is the US becomes reclusive, regressive, and more corrupt akin to other dictator run countries. Just like those other dictator run countries, in the worst case scenario, there will be no revolution if/when things go “too far” because they hold the power and have the support to stomp down any opposition to dust.
It’s certainly a sad state of affairs, and in no sane world should DJT have won a 2nd term, but here we are, watching the circus erect their tents while we whisper in the stands.
That’s now how democracy works child. It’s the job of the party to present a platform that inspires people to vote.
I had no issue with Harris campaigning with Cheney. Cheney and I disagree on 99% of things, but we agreed that Trump is a corrupt piece of shit. Cheney and Kinzinger sacrificed the easy Republican win to go against Trump. As did Romney to a slightly lesser extent.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists. That your could vote for Harris and still be a capital R Republican.
I’ve met (e.g. was raised by) these people. I thought it was a large part of the voting population.
Clearly I was fucking wrong. Clearly this was a niche. But I understood the strategy. I see people complaining that Harris moved too far to the right but I can’t think of a single right wing policy she picked up. Sure she picked up/was always following neoliberal policy, which aligns with neocon policy, but that was a given. We already had Biden, Harris was an extra step towards progressive, but not a leap. In either case I was happy enough.
Suffice to say I don’t buy the argument that Cheney cost Harris any voters.
The DNC thought appealing to republicans and moderates instead of motivating the base to turn out would work. It didn’t. It never has, it didn’t work in 2016 or 2020 either. The entire DNC should be fired
Oh I agree the DNC fucked up, and have fucked up for so many years in a row. My assumption, which was wrong, is that the base was already covered. If we’re reaching out for Republicans it’s because the base is a given.
After seeing what looks like 10 million or so Democrats sit this election out (pending the full results and an investigation of those results) it’s clear Democrats didn’t have the base locked down.
Locked down like a prisoner?
Nah I have republican family, they didn’t see cheyney voting for kamala and say “oh wow I should do that too,” they said “that fucking turncoat, rot in hell!”
I mean, what would you think if you saw idk fucking AOC or Ilhan going “man I’m going trump over this gaza situation?” Bet you still wouldn’t have voted trump lol, it’s a “nice try” but it is also the dumbest most out of touch move tbh.
I mean if AOC/Ilhan said they were voting Trump I would pause and listen to the why. If someone does something that unexpected, I would pay attention.
It wouldn’t have got me to change my vote because from a policy standpoint, it just wouldn’t make sense.
However if we look at Bernie Sanders, look at his last minute plea to Democrats. I was already planning to vote for Harris, but if I was on the edge due to Gaza I would have taken his words to heart. He said yes, this sucks, but a vote for Harris is the best option. If he had come out and said the opposite (which wouldn’t have made sense), I would have again paused and taken a moment.
I saw AOC voting to protect the rail corporation from a union strike.
I had no issue with Harris campaigning with Cheney. Cheney and I disagree on 99% of things, but we agreed that Trump is a corrupt piece of shit.
We’re really doing the 99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler joke without a hint of sarcasm huh?
By “right-wing” you mean “American right-wing”, right? Because from outside the US most of what she said was center-right being generous.
To me campaigning with Cheney was a way to signal to dissatisfied Trump Republicans that an alternative exists.
You can facilitate the more moderate alternative by passing electoral reform in blue states.
This has already happened in Alaska, which has already implemented Ranked Choice voting. The voters picked a more moderate conservative over Sarah Palin.
Republicans are trying to repeal Ranked Choice voting in Alaska by the way. More proof that electoral reform is the way forward for our country.
Now all we have to do is convince democrats to support democracy in states they control. I guess step one would be beating into their heads that they are no longer allowed to fight the republicans alone.
Democrats must allow more political parties to participate in the electoral process. Given their flailing looking for something or someone to blame for their failures (again), I think they still are not willing to do so. I hope I’m wrong.
Sure, if you have years and election cycles worth of time, that’s a much better solution. If you have 90 days then “big tent” sounds reasonable to me.
Except they made the tent big enough for Liz Cheney, but not big enough to let a Palestinian-American speak at the Convention.
wouldn’t implementing ranked choice voting in blue states just further fracture them and weaken them against red states? I would think it would make sense to initiate ranked choice in red states first.
I don’t think Cheney cost Harris any voters because the vast majority of people who didn’t vote for Harris probably don’t know and don’t care who Cheney is. But celebrating the Cheney endorsement is a symptom of a campaign that is thoroughly unexciting and establishment. People who don’t follow politics aren’t word-of-mouth’d into being excited for something new and hopeful. Instead of democrats’ excitement about the promises of a new candidate, the only word on their lips was Trump, which won’t work a second time if the apolitical person’s world didn’t change negatively the last time trump was president.
Instead of democrats’ excitement about the promises of a new candidate, the only word on their lips was Trump
I agree. I think the early complaints about Harris not having a solid platform on her website were fair. On the one hand I think giving her a little bit of a break given the speed she had to put things together would be reasonable. On the other hand we only had a few months until the election and she needed to get on it and get on it FAST. Once it was up I was surprised how little focus it got.
For example take legalizing marijuana. She put out a proposal in mid October with little fanfare and has an Instagram post the day before the election. However in reading the article about a NH woman named Kamala Harris being unsure who to vote for she said, “Kamala supports abortion which I really like. Trump says that he supports weed which I really like.” This may be an anecdotal story but you CANT have people not know your message. Sure she got half the message, but Trump, who hasn’t said shit about marijuana, somehow got to be the marijuana guy?
Now part of this is a result of such a short campaign, but honestly our campaigns are long enough as it is. It’s clear Harris had issues getting her message out there. (And yes, we could blame the uneducated voter, but if you’re the candidate, that’s on you.)
