Dem Post Mortem

Why did she lose?

1) She’s a she, and an African American one at that.
2) Uninspiring leadership
3) Stuck to a script too much, not authentic
4) Biden stayed on too late - he never should have run to begin with
5). Bernie should have won 8 years ago. Stupid Dems nominate people who have no chance of winning.

Others?

Not enough people cared about stopping trump.

For sure, number 2, 3 & 4 plus more reasons not listed. Hillary Clinton, a woman, won the popular vote...she just didn't campaign in the right states. Had she done that, she probably would have won the EC and been POTUS. And Obama won handily in 2008 and 2012, despite being African American. So, I don't think gender and/or race are big factors in 2024. Black women are now, and have been for years, elected to high ranking postions in local, state and federal governments for years. For example, the two most prominent big cities in California (SF and LA) are headed by black female mayors (both elected to office), despite the fact that black women are less than 3% of the population in CA. I don't think Bernie is relevant, but yeah, Dems have had their blinders on regarding who they nominate. Isn't there a Dem out there who has moderate, mainstream views, is not too old and not too woke? Doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but apparently it is.

Sexism. it's obvious to me, that it's sexism. Too many Americans don't want a woman to lead them and all the crap that the Repugs said about a man voting for a woman isn't a real man.....Trump did a good job of bringing back hatred towards anyone who isn't a White Conservative Christian, which also played a part, and sadly I read the other day there were even large group of Black evangelicals who supported Trump. Poor little persecuted evangelicals. One cult rolled into another cult.

The Dems need to nominate real sons of bitches. Enough of this uniting crap. We want a fighter and a divider.

SLD said:

Why did she lose?

1) She’s a she, and an African American one at that.
2) Uninspiring leadership
3) Stuck to a script too much, not authentic
4) Biden stayed on too late - he never should have run to begin with
5). Bernie should have won 8 years ago. Stupid Dems nominate people who have no chance of winning.

Others?

Click to expand...

Biggest problem with Biden that I saw was he did some very poor messaging on accomplishments. Harris went into an election without much to tout and there were things to tout.

Economics are too complicated to sound bite.

Transgender. In Ohio, it was over half the ads, child sex change operations (with graphic photos), men in women sports. They hit the state over the head on that.

Immigration. Like one of the least problems we have, blossomed into another political anvil for the GOP to drop. They made such a big deal over it. Trump told the GOP not to vote on an immigration deal. Biden had done things to start working on the immigration "issue" by targeting investments in Central America, but that takes time and again... TLDR;.

In other words... the Biden Admin didn't brag enough and the people are easily swayed by bullshit.

southernhybrid said:

Sexism. it's obvious to me, that it's sexism. Too many Americans don't want a woman to lead them and all the crap that the Repugs said about a man voting for a woman isn't a real man.....Trump did a good job of bringing back hatred towards anyone who isn't a White Conservative Christian, which also played a part, and sadly I read the other day there were even large group of Black evangelicals who supported Trump. Poor little persecuted evangelicals. One cult rolled into another cult.

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Latino women in North Carolina flopped the most of anyone in that state... towards Trump.

I feel like I'm getting old. Those young whippersnappers don't know what they are talking about. We had our first brush with inflation in 40 years. People lost their mind. Didn't matter it occurred on the tail end of a global pandemic that caused the death of 1 million Americans. The younger voters also don't get Trump is a fraud. They see him as inspiring, a man that has accomplished much. They didn't live through all of his failures.

The question on sexism will be a curious one. Were black men switching from Biden to Trump because of Harris's gender or because Trump spoke to their darker id? Probably a mix of both.

I still think that Harris - Whitmer was the ticket. I know we'll have our resident Shapiro guy come in, but exit polls showed his approval was below 50% in PA. Going DEI with Walz might have been a mistake. We'll never know.

SLD said:

The Dems need to nominate real sons of bitches. Enough of this uniting crap. We want a fighter and a divider.

Click to expand...

I think this misses the point. Being a son of a bitch, fighter, and divider only works when there is a fundamental force in your favor. In this case, religion, social media, American oligarchs, mostly threw their support creating very loud propaganda in favor of Trump. It doesn't matter the character of the opposition, if people are loud as hell and buy into narratives about immigrants coming to get them and a failing economy, billionaires stop endorsements, and religious figures are bought off to the corruption.

AP has some visualisations showing how people voted:


A couple of things that stood out to me:

• Young voters were more evenly-divided between Trump and Harris than I expected.
• Voters considered immigration to be very important. It didn't seem that big to me from my distant perspective.

It's also becoming quite clear to me that I've been frequenting some left wing echo chambers, including this forum and Reddit.

• A lot of Americans don't care about Trump's lack of decency and honesty. They might even like it.
• Americans mostly don't care that Harris made a fool out of Trump at one debate. Her weak popular vote tally suggests they were not inspired by what Harris presented to them.
• I agree that "not enough people cared about stopping trump" and I'm guessing this is because a lot of Americans were never convinced that his second term would be an authoritarian, Christian Nationalist rampage.
• It's hard to get people to turn out to vote against the other candidate when a lot of media is providing cover for that candidate. Depending on one's media diet, you could either be saturated by Trump's misdeeds or completely sheltered from them.

Also looking like turnout was weak for Dems. She got 66 million votes as of now. Biden got 81. Trump’s numbers have also dropped a bit to 71 from 74. But he might still reach his old total. But in the end, she failed to motivate people to come out and vote. All that talk about record turnout was crap. So called women’s rights.

bigfield said:

AP has some visualisations showing how people voted:

AP VoteCast: A visual explainer of how key groups voted in 2024 | AP News

AP VoteCast interviewed more than 100,000 voters across the U.S. from October 28 to November 5, continuing until poll close.

apnews.com

A couple of things that stood out to me:

• Young voters were more evenly-divided between Trump and Harris than I expected.
• Voters considered immigration to be very important. It didn't seem that big to me from my distant perspective.

Click to expand...

In Ohio, the ads generally aimed at the House seat of Emilia Sykes (my district), they hit hard showing a couple videos of hordes running across a border (who knows where it actually was, or if even real). The fascist Portage County Sheriff had an ad too about the illegal aliens. Harris lost in part to a problem that really isn't that big. Certainly had no impact on inflation.

bigfield said:

It's also becoming quite clear to me that I've been frequenting some left wing echo chambers, including this forum and Reddit.

Click to expand...

Echo chamber, not here. There wasn't a ton of certainty about Harris winning here. No where near 2016 levels. The question in hand was what would women's impact be, and was Trump's harsh dark 19th century hate angle desperation or a strategic siphoning of minority votes. Seeing we don't have access to major polling systems, we needed to wait and see.

The results? Enough women care more about the economy than abortion, even though they say abortion matters. And yes, Trump successfully siphoned minority votes. The one thing not as expected, because we are older is that younger people don't understand Trump as well. They see him differently, and that hurt too.

bigfield said:

A lot of Americans don't care about Trump's lack of decency and honesty. They might even like it.

Click to expand...

Enough love it.

bigfield said:

Americans mostly don't care that Harris made a fool out of Trump at one debate. Her weak popular vote tally suggests they were not inspired by what Harris presented to them.

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Oh, we know that doesn't matter. It never did.

bigfield said:

I agree that "not enough people cared about stopping trump" and I'm guessing this is because a lot of Americans were never convinced that his second term would be an authoritarian, Christian Nationalist rampage.

Click to expand...

I think Project 2025 is the new ending of Roe v Wade. "It will never happen".

The trouble is Trump has normalized lying and creates fake facades that people get invested in. Trump lied his ass off on North Carolina hurricane aid. Over 40% of the country said their family is worse off today than four years ago. How in the hell can that be true? How do you contradict that? Yes, inflation... yes, the global pandemic. I didn't think the anti-immigrant stuff would catch on fire as much as it did.

And looking into Michigan, black men didn't swing much at all. It was "all other races" that went from Biden (+36) to Trump (+14). Looks like the Arabs were responsible for losing Michigan. Thank goodness that wasn't the deal breaker! I bet they are going to just love Trump's attitude on Palestine.

Minor nudges in Wisconsin. There was no older woman vote surge or woman vote surge at all.

In general, it seems 30 or so percent of Trump voters support abortion rights. They just apparently don't care about keeping them.

She was much too scripted, she should have had answers, not non answers. It was maddening.

starwater said:

She was much too scripted, she should have had answers, not non answers. It was maddening.

Click to expand...

What answers are there?

High prices? Gonna lower them? No.

Improve the economy? It is already doing alright, but the people don't believe it. The Fed didn't help by waiting a bit too long to lower rates.

Save America from the massive hordes invading the border? What hordes?!

Harris lost to a bunch of red herrings.

6. There was no feeling of public trust in either Kamala or her party, nor any clear reason for such trust.

Good luck putting their trust in the GOP then. I hope the muslims in Michigan like what they get.

SLD said:

The Dems need to nominate real sons of bitches. Enough of this uniting crap. We want a fighter and a divider.

Click to expand...

Here's the flaw, though:
% of Dems with 4 yr. college degree (or more): 48%
% of Repubs: 31%
You'd have to explain to me how my side would elect a foul-mouthed demagogue like Trump. We have been schooled by nitwits in this election. Born-agains who profess to love their God 'n' Bible, but who elected a cursing fornicator who assaults marginalized and defenseless groups with lies and hatred. Hyper-patriots who elected a man who explicitly said the Constitution should not apply to him when he has a grievance. Law and order partisans who consider the Capitol riot "legitimate political expression." I don't see a credible way to transform Democrats into a Trump-styled stew of vitriol and fantasy. I have no alternate answer -- no answer at all. Even if Trump fails miserably on economic numbers, he's the ultimate spin master and the guy who can change the subject of debate. 2016 was the forward edge of this calamity. It's on top of us now, and it's gonna be around.

Biden and Harris were tone deaf on the economy and the border.

Harris had did not cone across as having a clear economic plan. Inflation is down and jobs are credm but peole are having a hard time paying bills.

Harris kept invoking sympathy for illegals while people were fed up having to deal with illegals, even in progressive Seattle.

As pundits are saying people voted based on their pocketbooks, not who they liked.

steve_bank said:

Biden and Harris were tone deaf on the economy and the border.

Harris had did not cone across as having a clear economic plan. Inflation is down and jobs are credm but peole are having a hard time paying bills.

Harris kept invoking sympathy for illegals while people were fed up having to deal with illegals, even in progressive Seattle.

As pundits are saying people voted based on their pocketbooks, not who they liked.

Click to expand...

It's not that she was tone deaf on the economy and the border, it's that she never fought for the policies that have been in place for the last four years.

How bad is the fucking economy? It's not. It's fucking great and has been fucking great. Inflation is up, but so are wages so who gives a shit. That's what she should have said. She never fought. She tried to answer their questions. She should have called them morons for questioning the economy.

And the Border. What's fucking wrong with the border? How exactly is it impacting the average American that people want to come here. You know why people are coming, because Biden and Harris are doing a great job running the country. We need immigrants you fucking morons! The biggest economic problem we have is demographic aging and that is due to a lack of workers - especially in many low wage shit jobs. We need immigrants to come and pay into social security so we can continue the program. But she never said anything like that she should have defended herself instead of tried to make excuses. She should have called Brett Baier and donald trump idiots to their face. She should have done it in the debate. Instead she just gave smirks. It didn't work.

I don’t think much of a post mortem is needed. Harris was actually a pretty good candidate by historical standards, and clearly a decent and intelligent person. Trump is deeply stupid and deeply wicked, but those traits allowed him to correctly gauge that most Americans are just like him. So they voted for him.

I believe that’s the only relevant post mortem, with the added virtue of brevity.

Jimmy Higgins said:

Biden Admin didn't brag enough and STUPID people are easily swayed by bullshit.

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FIFY
We have epidemic stupidity in this shithole Country, carefully cultivated by power hungry conservotards. Now they will get rid of the Dept of Ed to preserve the stupidity, and help institute the perverse Ctian Taliban regime of which they’ve been dreaming.

At this point I consider Biden equally complicit with the halfwit.