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.
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?”
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.
You’re right. Next election let’s nominate better voters. /s
This is the difference between progressives and shitlibs. Progressives want to identify the failures in order to fix them. Shitlibs want to find someone else to blame so they don’t have to change.
Sure is going to be more difficult to make progressive change in a fascist state. I’ve no doubt conservatives are going to be more open to change than their counterparts, but something tells me that those changes aren’t going to be anywhere near progressive.
Yeah, I do blame the voters who sat this election out or voted 3rd party. Absolute ignorance in the face of factual, tangible datapoints.
“Oh, the democrats should have campaigned harder! Oh, they should have been more progressive!” while conservatives just consistently lie through their teeth, skirt the law, and prey on the weak and ill-informed. While conservatives are open-faced about their regressive policies.
Change takes time, but yeah, let’s sit this one out. Real progressive. Nothing like watching the trolly going toward the wrong side of the track and saying “Oh, not my problem, I didn’t touch the lever! Whatever happens, it’s not my fault because I did nothing to help or hurt the situation! My hands are clean!”
I agree, it was a colossal mistake for Harris to try and win over GOPers. But Harris’s policies remained those I listed.
I’m really curious as to whose colossally dumb idea it was to campaign with Liz fucking Cheney?
The capital class. Kamala was up 10% with Tim Walz and their progressive platform, but then lobbyists and donors demanded that she adopt a more moderate platform. No one knows for sure what they said to her, but she immediately did a 180 and ran as a moderate Republican.
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.
The same progressives that didn’t show up to vote?
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.
They didn’t vote because Harris ran as a republican. Run as a progressive if you want those votes.
Harris did not lose because she didn’t pull left enough. Lefties had nowhere else to go. She lost because Trump lied better
She lost because Trump lied better
Harris lied?
Lefties had nowhere else to go
See, you’re working under the idea that everyone votes for the candidate that’s ideologically closest to them.
By that understanding, running against the furthest-right candidate possible, and triangulating yourself to be 1 inch to the left of them should get you the entire electorate, except for the tiny percent of people who are more rightwing than Donald Trump.
This is observably false, hence why democrats eat shit when they move to the right as they did in 2016 and 2024 (and in most midterms).
In reality, every time you compromise a position or means-test a policy, you lose votes. “New parents will get $5,000” will always perform better than “new parents who fill out a this form and are making less than $50K and whose SSN is a prime number may be eligible for a tax break up to $5,000”
Anybody who likes the idea of parents getting money will support the first, and anybody who opposes it will oppose both. But there’s a big chunk of people who will like the first, and won’t care about the second.
Same reason “Free healthcare” will always perform better than “subsidies for health insurance for pell grant recipients who open a business in an minority neighborhood that operates for at least 2 years”
So account for the people who didn’t show up. Harris lost because no one was enthusiastic about her enough to show up. Biden had millions more votes than Harris.
Republicans won. But now I know the lemmy.ml talking point
Republicans would have won regardless of which faction won. That’s the point. Harris was further Reich than w bush.
Hahahaha…oh wait you’re serious…BAHAHAHA. Harris didn’t run as a Republican and you know it. And no permutation close to it either. And either you know it or you didn’t actually pay any attention beyond “I saw her on the same stage as Liz Cheney so they must be pulling right”. If you had paid any attention you would see that those last minute inclusions of Republicans was around the threat Trump posed to the country. They got up on stage and literally said that they didn’t agree on most positions, but that the need to keep trump out of office overshadowed party alliance.
And given all that if you were actually progressive (and you know wanting to make progress) and being realistic you would look at the actual options and have seen which was as close as you could get to your preference and votes to move the needle in the right direction. Enough people didn’t do that (or didn’t agree with what I assume are our positions and preferences…very to the left of Trump for myself and presumably many others here) that we ended up with this mess.
There is plenty to learn but “HaRiS RaN As A RePuBlIcAn” is not one of them.
Maybe you were born yesterday, but I’ve been politically aware since the beginning of the neoliberal era. I remember Reagan & Thatcher, and I remember Bill Clinton’s triangulation and every rightward lurch the Democratic party has made since.
Scooby Doo style:
The boogeyman is a centrist who is neither left, nor right!Pull mask off
oh it was a right-winger all along.
I voted for her. I’m just dxing the problem, which is enthusiasm. Stop apologizing for their shitty campaign. They should have continued to attack Trump and co a weird. Keep Walz at the front of the campaign. And run on ending the Genocide and improving people’s lives.
I felt my enthusiasm drop for Harris every time she made it clear that she didn’t give a damn about progressives. I still voted, but it is obvious that the electorate didn’t buy her bipartisan and it in fact depresses the electorate. The results speak for themselves.
That’s the latest talking point fresh from lemmy.ml
Never mind us, she won, despite us warning that she might lose.
How does it feel knowing Lemmy.ml was right and .world was wrong?
Voters chose the right most option. Was lemmy.ml saying we needed to go further right?
Yes we said democrats need to unconditionally support a genocide. And yet somehow despite .world and the democrats being literal Nazis they still lost. We are astouded.
She fucked up. I thought oh shit she might be listening to Bernie when she picked Walz. Then she never looked left for another moment. She played center right and tried to, in the words of another comment, “scrape shit off a fascist’s boot”. I voted for her, harm reduction etc.
They fucking blew it. If we ever have a real presidential election again they better run progressive hard.
Can you believe her dad is a Marxist economist? I can’t imagine what Thanksgiving dinner would be like.
I imagine it would go like:
“Honey if you would have just…”
“I was vice president of the fucking country!”
“And even with that you fucked it up”.
No one knows the political lean of who didn’t vote.
They think saying the dnc went too far right is Russian propaganda…
No that’s pretty easy to know, more centrist or leftwing than the available options.
Tell that to OP for their comment:
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
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.
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
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.
DNC Leadership would rather lose with a neoliberal candidate than win with a progressive one.
That’s because they’re paid by big money donors to prevent any movement to the left while big money donors pay the GOP to move further right. This shifts the center (Overton Window) further and further right over time, causing the Democrats to ultimately move towards the right over time.
Obama said that if he was a politician in the 1980s, he would be considered a Republican, and he wasn’t wrong.
Has been the case since 1992. Blame Clinton and his triangation DLC Reagan-lite bullshit
Blame capitalism. Capitalism creates massive wealth disparity and since you can’t detangle wealth from political power, it creates massive power disparities. Those power disparities are used by the rich to slowly ratchet the government and society further and further to the right.
Oh, I do, but also we need major campaign finance reform as a constitutional amendment banning private money in politics so even the Republicans won’t be able to take big money.
Not enough. As long as massive wealth disparities exist, as long as billionaires exist, they will always find a way to use their wealth to ratchet the country further and further to the right
I think in addition to that, we should force all corporations to be worker-owned cooperatives in order to bring demcracy to the workplace.
“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.
I had that same revelation back in 2016
Bernie could have won.
in 2016, WOULD have
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.
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.)
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.
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 saw AOC voting to protect the rail corporation from a union strike.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The idea that democrats would abandon their base and try to flip republicans was idiotic beyond belief.
It is what the capital class ordered her to do. We will never get politicians who fight for us until we ban Super pacs, paid lobbying, and all the other ways that the 1% bribe and manipulate our politicians
Only way any of that could ever happen is if there was a fundamental change in a political system.
God I am so tired of the post-mortems already. everyone is so obsessed to find the one little things that they did wrong. What was the one weird trick that could have shown america the correct path.
This time it was beyond obvious. This country simply wanted a rapist, a criminal, they wanted a man who praises dictators and has proclaimed that he is going to be one (good luck with that 1 day thing). Enough Americans looked at the two choices and the majority of this country decided to give fascism a try.
This country simply wanted a rapist, a criminal, they wanted a man who praises dictators
Voter participation was around 50% and some 12 million fewer people came out to vote this election. Both parties lost millions of voters, but Democrats lost more because they sold out to the donor class.
Americans don’t like Trump, they have just lost faith in our broken two party system.
Right, so enough wanted the rapist, the rest were just ok with it. Lovely country, beautiful people.
When did this become rapist or not? The choice was between neloiberalism and populist reactionary conservativism.
I understand not making a choice let populist reactionary conservativism win. The established electoral system makes that the accepted narrative. I propose an equally valid choice is rejection of both political groups and the electoral system creating the duopoly of power.
I’m using it as shorthand for all the obvious criminality of the man. To elaborate, he’s a rapist, a 34 time convicted felon who steals from charity, cheats students, stiffs everyone he owes, a man who stole our national secrets, salutes and uplifts dictators, has expressed his desire to be one multiple times on the campaign trail, cages children and ran campaign focused solely on retribution and outright lies about immigrants, women and minorities.
This was an argument that could have been made during his first run; but this time, we all knew exactly what we were voting for.
Agreed. He is deplorable as an individual.
Or, an awful lot of Americans are angry, they see the world passing them by and they see a line of politicians that have all promised to do something and done nothing. So they are angry. They are pissed off at the establishment, at the status quo.
Donald Trump may be a liar and an asshole but he is definitely not establishment and definitely not status quo.
So they vote for him, hoping that maybe he will actually do a little bit of what he promises if only because when he speaks it doesn’t sound like a PR department is talking.If Democrats want to win, they need a real message. Obama had a real message. Hope, change, yes we can. That was a real message. And he was, by and large, an excellent president. I don’t regret my vote for him. But he made one big mistake. He ran on a platform of radical reform, and then delivered only moderate reform. Still a very successful president.
And who does the DNC put forward after him? Hillary. About as radical as soggy toast. And they shunt Bernie to the side, the one who actually could have won. Let’s not forget that before this election started and Biden dropped out, Harris was polling in the single digits among Democrats.
If you want to win elections, you need a stronger message than ‘I’m not Trump’. THAT is why Kamala lost. She did not have that strong message. To say otherwise is to deny reality and ensure that history repeats itself.
Glad you still have faith in the system. I don’t, doesn’t matter what the dems put forward, people are lazy and stupid and will not do any research. I mean, take a look at all the morons who are googling “what’s a tariff” now that he’s been elected.
Pissed is one thing, but we just did the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the head instead of taking a Tylenol for a headache.
People are stupid, lazy and selfish, they want the easy solutions, they want the one weird trick, they want the fix now instead of realizing that change is long and gradual. Well, we’re about to get drastic change, best of luck everyone. I’m not fan of dems, but we had the ability to pressure them, got Biden to drop out. Do you think for a second that trump will be able to be pressured into anything that isn’t his own self interest?
I was with you for the first election, but every last person who voted for him, or who felt like it wasn’t worth getting off the couch to prevent trump is responsible for this, full stop. I’m so goddamned tired of people acting like not a single person had any agency in this, like we had two equal but opposite choices. No, this one was easy and obvious and we just showed the world our true colors.
the real answer shines through when you step outside of US politics. The global recession had people in every country questioning the incumbent party. It doesn’t matter if it was left or right, conservative or liberal, whoever was in office was being blamed - because the public in general has no idea how the world works and has the collective memory of a goldfish. The US is performing better than most countries [1][2][3][4][5] in regards to the impact covid-19 had on the world, but Americans are too uneducated to realize they had it good, as the road to recovery is never easy.
With the public angry at the incumbent government (globally, not just in the US), the Trump/Putin hate machine decided to to stoke fear, uncertainty and doubt in Americans. This clearly worked as people’s views on the nations economy have been trending down [6], so now we’re left to deal with the Magagenda, which all seem to align with everything Putin ever hoped for.
You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.
Anyways, Trump took advantage of these economic hard times by stoking fear and hatred with claims that the incumbent party is to blame, that it’s all corrupt, and somehow immigrants and trans people are to blame.
In summary, we’ve got a known rapist/conman/cheater with a history of rape, conning, and cheating and we’re supposed to believe he won fair and square? I don’t buy it.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820
[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covid-19-in-international-comparison/
[4] https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-us-economy-in-global-context
[6] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the-nations-economy-may-2024/
friend, you and I are saying the same thing.
You would think people would learn that republicans tend to wreck the economy just for democrats to fix it, and republicans to shit all over any progress that’s been made again, but just like dogs aren’t smart enough to learn that a snake bite’s venomous bite could kill them an hour later, Americans can’t seem to grasp the concept of economic momentum and that changes made in one term may not be immediately fixed - especially if the previous guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom walls before he left. It’s understandable it will take some time to clean up.
I totally understand why it happened, and yeah, I agree it was economic issues, and inflation and so forth. And I even agree it’s not an America thing. This is just a human thing, and humans by and large are kinda awful.
this is because people want easy, quick answers that make them feel good. An old comment of mine from this site sums it up:
as I have climbed higher in the corporate world, this is becoming clearer and clearer. people respond far better to a confident idiot than they do a pensive expert.
God I am so tired of the post-mortems already
lol it was literally not even a week ago
This country simply wanted a rapist
lmao yup. That’s the issue that motivated voters
Enough were fine with it.