Political Discussion and Commentary
A place to discuss politics and offer political commentary. Self posts are preferred, but links to current events and news are allowed. Opinion pieces are welcome on a case by case basis, and discussion of and disagreement about issues is encouraged!
The intent is for this community to be an area for open & respectful discussion on current political issues, news & events, and that means we all have a responsibility to be open, honest, and sincere. We place as much emphasis on good content as good behavior, but the latter is more important if we want to ensure this community remains healthy and vibrant.
Content Rules:
- Self posts preferred.
- Opinion pieces and editorials are allowed on a case by case basis.
- No spam or self promotion.
- Do not post grievances about other communities or their moderators.
Commentary Rules
- Don’t be a jerk or do anything to prevent honest discussion.
- Stay on topic.
- Don’t criticize the person, criticize the argument.
- Provide credible sources whenever possible.
- Report bad behavior, please don’t retaliate. Reciprocal bad behavior will reflect poorly on both parties.
- Seek rule enforcement clarification via private message, not in comment threads.
- Abide by Lemmy's terms of service (attacks on other users, privacy, discrimination, etc).
Please try to up/downvote based on contribution to discussion, not on whether you agree or disagree with the commenter.
Partnered Communities:
• Politics
view the rest of the comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
The final vote totals are not in yet, true, but I'm going off what information we have now.
Well, the good news is that you are completely wrong.
Harris lost for two very simple reasons. First, because she attached herself to a status quo that many people were dissatisfied with. Second, because she attempted your shitty strategy of shifting right to win over republicans, when republicans are perfectly satisfied with the party they've got.
You're operating on lots of false assumptions, like this idea that who people vote for just comes down to who's closer to them on the political compass or something. Honestly, Harris could've run to the right of Trump on every issue and Trump supporters still wouldn't vote for her. That's just how reality is, and your ideology is out of line with it.
Running a progressive campaign with progressive policy. Not punching left. Not supporting genocide. Not bragging about Dick Cheney being on your side.
Even just calling Republicans weird was actually working but she couldn't even stick with that because she was too concerned with winning over the mythical moderate republican vote.
Really?
Yep. So that happened very close to Biden dropping out, hence I think I missed it in all the noise about the change.
It's good to have source though. In this case it provided additional context - the comments were limited to the top two, unlike Clinton who insulted potential voters. (Actually let's not kid ourselves - these folks almost certainly voted against her in the end.)
That's not unreasonable, but I'd argue it's premature. If the results change, that could invalidate the conclusion.
The sources I referenced seem to disagree with you, but after all they may yet be proven to have jumped to conclusions too soon as well.
Like I said, it's premature to conclude this.
I'll grant you this - if the final numbers show that the GOP didn't get more than 2020, and Harris ended up getting a lot less than Biden did (on the order of tens of millions), then I'll concede and agree.
Though I'll through in an additional wrench - I'd want to see what happens with the popular vote in California specifically. To rule out things like Dem voters in Republican or battleground states getting their votes suppressed as being the cause of the GOP win.
But if the numbers say differently - that more people voted this year overall, for example, then I'd argue that supports my original (and deeply disappointing) case. (I'm not sure year if 2020 is the right comparison either due to the effects of the pandemic - that might have been an unrepeatable one off. I'd also want to compare to 2008 or 2012 after adjusting the numbers for population changes.
Agreed. I confess that why his core voters like him so much remains a bit of mystery to me - even the most extreme on the right haven't been able to displace this guy, a new york liberal who basically stole their playbook and used the bits he liked.
But this puzzles me less than a Clinton and Biden supporting Dem turning red this year.
Like Clinton did in 2016, as per the NBC source I referenced earlier? We know how that turned out.
Yup, agreed. I can see Palestine/Gaza indeed being a sticking point. I still will never understand those folks who voted GOP because they didn't like Biden/Harris on Gaza - which many claimed to do as per https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/14/hamtramck-donald-trump-arab-american-muslim - but I could easily understand them sitting out or voting third party. And with Dick Cheney's history, that might influence single issue voters negatively who might otherwise be primed to want to believe in the best of intentions from Harris.
Of course, Harris was between a rock and a hard place on this issue - but we don't need to rehash all of that. From what's coming out now, it's clear that Harris wasn't able to strike the necessary balance and win over this important voting bloc - such as https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-and-arab-voters-desert-democrats/7854995.html and https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/11/7/dont-dare-blame-arab-and-muslim-americans-for-trumps-victory - and I certainly can't rule out the possibility that your suggestion here might have been enough to swing things the other way.
If that's false - then how do people choose who to vote for? What else would be the measure that they use?
Well, they also tend to follow endorsements (hence why AOC and Sanders endorsed Harris), and do things like punish the incumbent if the economy feels really bad, etc. I'd agree that closeness isn't the sole thing.
Per your citation it was just the two folks who are heading to the White House, not Republicans generally.
Actually, she did - see https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/nx-s1-5170908/harris-argues-that-trump-poses-a-threat-to-democracy-in-the-final-days-of-the-race & https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/15/harris-slams-trump-in-pennsylvania-as-us-election-race-heats-up
Christ. If Hilary Clinton is your idea of a progressive candidate and going on SNL is your idea of mobilizing the base, then you are just on a wavelength that is so far removed from mine that frankly I don't think there's any real possibility of a productive conversation.
Seriously, come on. People have all sorts of reasons for chosing a candidate. This is so obvious that I shouldn't have to explain it.
For the record, Clinton wasn't progressive enough for me (but I would have indeed settled on her back in 2016) and I don't watch SNL (though considering how many do, I still think it's great outreach).
But I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Here's a great post - https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18340229 - describing how much and how well Dems turned out this year (with the estimate being that Dems will have actually beat their 2020 numbers once the popular vote count is finished). It's just that red voters turned out in even higher numbers this year.
Since the final popular vote tally is still unknown, it is speculative, but if it's right, then I think it's enough to disprove your contention (that Harris lost because turnout from Dems was low because they were turned off by the lack of progressive policies and Gaza and etc - this can't be the reason if turnout went up instead of down!).
That's still speculation, but whether it's more people voting Trump or fewer people voting Democrat is a moot point. If the Dems moving right led to the outcome that more people voted Trump, then it was still a losing strategy.
On that last point - I'm moving to the view that you're right - it is a losing strategy.
As another commenter in this thread pointed out, https://lemmy.world/comment/13326761 , it's the economy that was the biggest factor. That will always shift wins to the opposing party.
This tells me that a) 2024 might have just been unwinnable, as the economy really really sucked due to factors out of the control of anyone in the USA (Ukraine war still having devastating impacts on the US economy today).
But it also suggests that if we still have all the same elections that we expect to in 2026 and 2028, then Dems would be able to make a major comeback without changing much as this idiot trashes the economy. Alas, that feels like a really big if right now, and it shouldn't be.