Political Discussion and Commentary

I'm open to the idea that there were other mistakes made, but ideally the list of this should at least be spelled out.

I've been talking about the problems the whole time.

Well, 2020 was not a normal primary, with “electability” being too much of a concern

Kamala was the media's preferred candidate and was widely treated as a frontrunner but mismanaged her campaign to the point of dropping out before a single vote was cast. Voters weren't the problem here, as nobody ever got a chance to vote for her in the first place because of her bungled campaign.

the GOP won most of the battleground Senate races to take majority control over the Senate

There's a difference between taking majority control over the Senate and winning most of the battleground states. Republicans flipped four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana. West Virginia and Montana are both solidly red states, and it wasn't very realistic that the democrats would ever hold either with the shift towards political polarization. The Republicans really just won two battleground states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the PA race was extremely close. Democrats, meanwhile, won Michigan and Wisconsin, and are ahead in Arizona and Nevada. Democrats won most of the battleground senate races, it's just that the senate seats up for reelection were favorable to Republicans. Looking just at the senate races, it was a pretty respectable result for the democrats, it could have been a lot worse - this despite the fact that Kamala got the worst result of any Dem candidate since 20 years ago.

This is another puzzling point.

It's not puzzling at all. Many Latinos have conservative social values, but in the past they were willing to look past that because there was a substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats on the issue, and they could be convinced that Trump's focus on immigration was racist. When the democrats dropped that and adopted right-wing positions on immigration, that reason disappeared.

The problem is that you have these deep rooted lesser-evilist brainworms that don't actually reflect reality. Everything would make more sense if you ripped them out and stopped looking at things from that perspective and assuming everyone else sees things that way.

I mean we know some did, since they told us. Liz Cheney for example voted Harris.

That is literally one person. A person who does not in any way reflect a significant constituancy of voters. What a ridiculous argument.

Of course one of the most prominent issues was Gaza, but I’d argue that even here the concerns weren’t dismissed, not with Harris saying that she will not be silent on human suffering in Gaza as per https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-tailors-ad-messaging-on-gaza-israel-to-sway-michigan-pennsylvania-voters/ar-AA1toi71 - but this message simply was not strong enough.

That statement and a quarter will by you a piece of gum.

She was always very clear on supplying arms to Israel completely unconditionally. Nobody gives a shit about sweet talk, we wanted actual material action. It's like handing a mass shooter another clip while asking him politely to pretty please stop and saying that you disapprove of what he's doing and by the way there's more ammo where that came from if he'd like to keep going.

The message wasn't strong enough because it was bullshit.

But as VP Harris probably couldn’t have divorced herself from the economy.

I disagree. To some extent, sure, she's be associated with it, but she could have at least tried to distance herself from it. Hell, she could've said something like, "Look, the economy's not great, but that's because we were recovering from COVID. We had to make the best of a bad situation. But going forward, things will be different, before we were merely mitigating the damage, but now, with your support, we can begin building towards a future that will be brighter than ever. We are going to [policy X, Y, and Z]." Instead the messaging was more along the lines of, "The economy is great, actually, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sow discord and get Trump elected."

Democrats have this pathological inability to self-criticize, accept fault, or just awknowledge problems, and Kamala was a particularly bad example of this. It alienates people and speaks to a lack of confidence. What harm would there be in distancing herself, at least a little, from Joe Biden? Is it going to hurt Biden's future career prospects?

I think we are agreed on this point - had an actual primary taken place, that weakness would have been exposed, and someone other than Harris - who could more easily distance themselves from the most disliked parts and policies of the Biden-Harris administration - could have carried the torch, improving the odds of a win.

Yes, that is one point of agreement.