Dem Post Mortem

[Shadowy Man]

Pretending that Kamala Harris was the bestest candidate who ran a great campaign will not help Dems win in the future.

I agree, but who is presenting that strawman?

There were several posts saying that she was a "good candidate" or "ran a good campaign".
Use of "bestest" was a rhetorical device of sorts. I did not suggest that this adjective was used verbatim. My point is that pretending that there was nothing wrong with Kamala as a candidate or with her campaign is counterproductive.

Is “nothing wrong” also a rhetorical device of sorts? To clear up your strawman you propose another strawman?

 

[pood]

View attachment 48429

Right on.

 

[Tigers!]

The only criteria for determining a good campaign is the result - win/lose. If you win it was a good campaign. If you lose it was not a good campaign. Simples.
Trump won so obviously Harris did not run a good campaign.

I disagree here somewhat. One can run a good campaign and still come short. Perhaps because the other guy ran a better one. Or because of circumstances beyond the candidate's and campaign's control.

If a candidate comes up short how do you know they ran a good campaign?
I like the analogy of the 100m race. You may run a good race but lose by 0.001 of a sec. The records will show you came second. They will not mention your good race.

I think Trump ran a bad campaign. So did Harris. She needed a very good campaign to overcome things not in her control - effects of recent high inflation, Biden's low approval ratings, her being the nominee for a short time (due to Biden's hubris), Arabs and Muslims being mad that Israel dared fight back when attacked from Gaza and Lebanon ...
Unfortunately, she did not deliver.

Yes indeed. I though both candidates had poor campaigns but Trumps was less poor, thus Trump's was better.

The Democrats should be very wary of using the last campaign as the template for the next.

"Generals always prepare to fight the last war, especially if they won it."

Very apt.

 

[Derec]

He does have to keep blue areas, but Minneapolis is one of those blue areas whose industry isn't as immediately useful to trump.

Are you seriously talking secession? Maybe Walz can appeal to King Charles to annex Minnesota to Canada or something.

There's a lot of difference between causing enough unrest to mangle the city (or half of it) and causing enough unrest to mangle the whole state.

Unrest by whom? Unrest/rioting in Minneapolis has been by the left-wing/#BLM types. Rioting in the name of Michael Brown, Jamar Clark, George Floyd, Jacob Blake (who didn't even die), Eddie Sole (who wasn't even killed by police but shot himself), Winston "Boogie" Smith ...

Finally, I'm not sure he cares about keeping the US solvent.

This is a thread about Democratic Party introspection in light of this loss. There are already threads up about what Trump is likely to do in his second term.

 

[Tigers!]

View attachment 48429

Right on.

But who decides who is intolerant? The tolerant or the intolerant? Popper never gave an empirical test IIRC.

 

[pood]

View attachment 48429

Right on.

But who decides who is intolerant? The tolerant or the intolerant?

It’s not that hard. If someone foments a violent coup against the government, as Trump did four years ago in an effort to stay in office after he lost an election, that person should be put in jail. Sadly, this was not done.

 

[Tigers!]

View attachment 48429

Right on.

But who decides who is intolerant? The tolerant or the intolerant?

It’s not that hard. If someone foments a violent coup against the government, as Trump did four years ago in an effort to stay in office after he lost an election, that person should be put in jail. Sadly, this was not done.

That is a good starting empirical test for some. It will get the intolernat whales but not the minnows.

 

[ZiprHead]

I should also add that is perfectly Constitutional for the Electoral College to name Harris president. I know they won’t do it, but they can.

According to the Supreme Court, Biden could have Trump arrested to protect society from all enemies, foreign or domestic.

 

[pood]

I should also add that is perfectly Constitutional for the Electoral College to name Harris president. I know they won’t do it, but they can.

According to the Supreme Court, Biden could have Trump arrested to protect society from all enemies, foreign or domestic.

Quote right. Unfortunately, he won’t do it.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

My daughter and son-in-law came around for tea last Wed (AEDT) and we were looking at the election results on the telly with a mixture of bemusement, astonishment and "what is going on over there?"
A couple of months earlier I had asked the wife and daughter to pay some attention to this election as they had never done so much beforehand.

I asked my son-in-law what he thought. "They are all galahs over there". Short, sharp and concise.

Daughter: (D) If you are a non-white person who identified as female and wished to have an abortion at some time in your life and had a uni debt and you knew someone who identifies as trans then the Democrats would look after you. Everbody else can go and get stuffed.
(R) if you are angry at somebody else vote for me.

Wife: (R) Ran an more effective campaign with mininal content level. Being shot at really helped him. A self-centred, self-absorbed clown with seemingly lots of money.
(D): Ran a poorer campaign than Trump (not a high hill to get over but still impossible for the D's). She asked who that balding, grey haired smiling fool who stood beside Harris was ans what was he doing? She thought he must be ballast to stop the stage from floating away. He added nothing, good or bad, to Harris. I asked her to summarise Harris' campaign into a slogan. "I'm not him" she said. That will not likely win a presidental election*. (For those who are unsure 'him' is Trump, not Biden)
She listened to a couple of Harris speeches and watched the very few interviews she did. She is not a Star Wars fan but listening to Harris reminded her of this scene.

*(Though it must be said that the Labour party won the last Aust. Commonwealth election in 2022 with the slogan "We are not Morrison")

And what kind of human future are you and they trying to build? How is your plan coming along, if you have a plan? How does the rest of humanity and everything else of Earth figure into your plan?

 

[bilby]

I would say Minnesota, but MN is an island,

Geography fail.
Minnesota is obviously chef's hat.

No, MN is an island, entire of itself.

Every MN is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be elected by the fools, America is the less.

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

(with abject apologies to John Donne).

 

[Emily Lake]

Then there are people who take him both seriously and literally... and those are the ones I worry about.

That's probably 99.99% of those who voted for him.

Nice to know that you think over 73 million people in the US fall into that category.

I Dems ever want to win another election, they and their supporters really need to acknowledge that the constant denigration and vilification of half the voting populace is a big part of the problem.

It is funny how Trumpistan’s constant denigration and vilification of half the populace seems okie-doke to you, though.

It's not okay with me. How about you point me to the hosts of posters here that are engaged in this behavior, so I can give them a stern lecture about it?

 

[Tigers!]

My daughter and son-in-law came around for tea last Wed (AEDT) and we were looking at the election results on the telly with a mixture of bemusement, astonishment and "what is going on over there?"
A couple of months earlier I had asked the wife and daughter to pay some attention to this election as they had never done so much beforehand.

I asked my son-in-law what he thought. "They are all galahs over there". Short, sharp and concise.

Daughter: (D) If you are a non-white person who identified as female and wished to have an abortion at some time in your life and had a uni debt and you knew someone who identifies as trans then the Democrats would look after you. Everbody else can go and get stuffed.
(R) if you are angry at somebody else vote for me.

Wife: (R) Ran an more effective campaign with mininal content level. Being shot at really helped him. A self-centred, self-absorbed clown with seemingly lots of money.
(D): Ran a poorer campaign than Trump (not a high hill to get over but still impossible for the D's). She asked who that balding, grey haired smiling fool who stood beside Harris was ans what was he doing? She thought he must be ballast to stop the stage from floating away. He added nothing, good or bad, to Harris. I asked her to summarise Harris' campaign into a slogan. "I'm not him" she said. That will not likely win a presidental election*. (For those who are unsure 'him' is Trump, not Biden)
She listened to a couple of Harris speeches and watched the very few interviews she did. She is not a Star Wars fan but listening to Harris reminded her of this scene.

*(Though it must be said that the Labour party won the last Aust. Commonwealth election in 2022 with the slogan "We are not Morrison")

And what kind of human future are you and they trying to build? How is your plan coming along, if you have a plan? How does the rest of humanity and everything else of Earth figure into your plan?

Pardon?

 

[Emily Lake]

What puzzles me most is that the turnout was so much lower than in 2020. I expected it to be higher. I can find nothing much to explain it on the web. It's not even mentioned or discussed very often. Who didn't vote and why?

I actually think this one is pretty straightforward, provided that you accept that most people are decent people.

Moderates and independents didn't vote. Moderate liberals who disliked Harris declined to vote for her - but there's no way in hell they would vote for Trump, because he's the absolute antithesis of their policy positions. Moderate conservatives who disliked Trump declined to vote for him - but wouldn't vote for Harris because she's the opposite of their views. Independents in many states didn't vote for either of them because they both suck, albeit in strikingly different ways.

There are, of course, several other potentially confounding factors as well. One that I think is being overlooked is that in 2020 a bunch of people voted *against* Trump. Biden won, not necessarily because Biden was wildly popular, but because Trump was very unpopular. But for many of those people, the last four years weren't an improvement over Trump, and Harris isn't really offering anything different from what Biden brought to the table. So at the end of the day... turns out that the giant douche isn't any better than the shit sandwich, so why bother?

 

[Emily Lake]

View attachment 48429

SMH. Y'all always fail to note that this paradox is literally a footnote within a body of work that spends a substantial amount of time singing the praises of tolerance.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

My daughter and son-in-law came around for tea last Wed (AEDT) and we were looking at the election results on the telly with a mixture of bemusement, astonishment and "what is going on over there?"
A couple of months earlier I had asked the wife and daughter to pay some attention to this election as they had never done so much beforehand.

I asked my son-in-law what he thought. "They are all galahs over there". Short, sharp and concise.

Daughter: (D) If you are a non-white person who identified as female and wished to have an abortion at some time in your life and had a uni debt and you knew someone who identifies as trans then the Democrats would look after you. Everbody else can go and get stuffed.
(R) if you are angry at somebody else vote for me.

Wife: (R) Ran an more effective campaign with mininal content level. Being shot at really helped him. A self-centred, self-absorbed clown with seemingly lots of money.
(D): Ran a poorer campaign than Trump (not a high hill to get over but still impossible for the D's). She asked who that balding, grey haired smiling fool who stood beside Harris was ans what was he doing? She thought he must be ballast to stop the stage from floating away. He added nothing, good or bad, to Harris. I asked her to summarise Harris' campaign into a slogan. "I'm not him" she said. That will not likely win a presidental election*. (For those who are unsure 'him' is Trump, not Biden)
She listened to a couple of Harris speeches and watched the very few interviews she did. She is not a Star Wars fan but listening to Harris reminded her of this scene.

*(Though it must be said that the Labour party won the last Aust. Commonwealth election in 2022 with the slogan "We are not Morrison")

And what kind of human future are you and they trying to build? How is your plan coming along, if you have a plan? How does the rest of humanity and everything else of Earth figure into your plan?

Pardon?

Really? You don't think about those things? Those are the questions that drive all my decisions.

I just thought maybe you and your family could help me understand a bit more about how you and they came to those conclusions by weighing them against what they are trying to do with their lives generally. They're not rocket science questions. They are as simple as any question can get. They're just asking what kind of world you want and how you plan to get there.

But if my questions are Greek to you then I understand your responses and your family's responses well enough.

 

[lostone]

What puzzles me most is that the turnout was so much lower than in 2020. I expected it to be higher. I can find nothing much to explain it on the web. It's not even mentioned or discussed very often. Who didn't vote and why?

I actually think this one is pretty straightforward, provided that you accept that most people are decent people.

Moderates and independents didn't vote. Moderate liberals who disliked Harris declined to vote for her - but there's no way in hell they would vote for Trump, because he's the absolute antithesis of their policy positions. Moderate conservatives who disliked Trump declined to vote for him - but wouldn't vote for Harris because she's the opposite of their views. Independents in many states didn't vote for either of them because they both suck, albeit in strikingly different ways.

There are, of course, several other potentially confounding factors as well. One that I think is being overlooked is that in 2020 a bunch of people voted *against* Trump. Biden won, not necessarily because Biden was wildly popular, but because Trump was very unpopular. But for many of those people, the last four years weren't an improvement over Trump, and Harris isn't really offering anything different from what Biden brought to the table. So at the end of the day... turns out that the giant douche isn't any better than the shit sandwich, so why bother?

...and you can only play the 'sky is falling if Trump wins' card once. Biden already played it, so now it has lost its punch? Even though it has not lost any of its punch at all, but even gotten more dangerous??

 

[BH]

im a white male and have suffered from some of the complaints these other white male voters have complained about. in fact i have been told on a few occassions i was not hired for good paying jobs because it was determined by the corprate hr they needed minorities or women to fill those roles

So you recognize that you have been subject to racist and sexist discrimination, and yet you are fine with it?

Go electing a dictator wannabee isnt going to help. if Trump actually tried to put white men back at the top like the 1950s and before we will have to just start all over again when the political winds change towards equal rights.

I support equal rights. But not hiring a white man because he is a white man is the opposite of equal rights. It's gaslighting to suggest that white men should just shut up and not mind being discriminated against and if we complain, it's because we must want to be "back at the top like the 1950s".

And in a fe years time the white men will be a minority and nay face some real repurcussions and payback.

As you showed in the first paragraph, real repurcussions[sic] are already here.

hi Derec. this is something everyone will just have to have differences of opinion over. i can only speak for myself. you obviously feel different.

 

[ZiprHead]

Hamas/Israel derail has been move to here.

 

[Elixir]

View attachment 48429

Right on.

But who decides who is intolerant? The tolerant or the intolerant?

It’s not that hard. If someone foments a violent coup against the government, as Trump did four years ago in an effort to stay in office after he lost an election, that person should be put in jail. Sadly, this was not done.

That is a good starting empirical test for some. It will get the intolernat whales but not the minnows.

Intolerant microbes represent the vast preponderance of all intolerant biomass.