Vincent Oriedo, a biotechnology scientist, had just such a question. What lessons have been learned, he asked, from Harris’s defeat in this vital swing county in a crucial battleground state that voted for Joe Biden four years ago, and how are the Democrats applying them?
“They did not answer the question,” he said.
“It tells me that they haven’t learned the lessons and they have their inner state of denial. I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party. Their discussions have centred around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted.”
“We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticise the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”
The only lesson is that unreliable voters can be ignored.
People only ever emulate the winning individual, side, or group.
There is no “They lost so next time they will cater to me.” There is a “I didn’t vote, so next time they will ignore me.”
Edit: Don’t put words in my mouth. It makes uou sound stupider than your words do.
Honestly I think this article is completely wrong. I’m convinced modern elections are 100% based on vibes and so better messaging and a better candidate would have meant a great deal.
But to add to that - Trump and his idiot base had been messaging and memeing for four years starting with Covid and masks and then inflation and ‘I did that’ stickers of Biden at the gas pump. Biden had barely done any messaging even up until the point he dropped out which, in the social media era, should be obviously big fucking warning signs of a losing campaign.
EDIT - which is not to say I don’t think the Dems need to change in other ways because they absolutely do.
Yes, Biden lost because of stickers, not because the economy of the average voter is in shambles
Seriously those gas station “I did that” stickers were an actual grass roots movement, and it’s part of why Trump won.
A lot of people vote based on their wallets. If you’re worse off after 4 years, then why vote for the incumbent?
The Dems need to learn. Cheap food/gas/essentials, less outsourcing, less importing cheap labor, and lose the smugness. That’s what they need to do to win, and I don’t think that would mean abandoning much.
Less importing cheap labor means higher prices. Welcome to math. Americans expect no effort and lives of luxury because they’re at the center of an empire - except of course the ruling class increasingly reaps the rewards, and the money doesn’t recirculate into the economy due to how it’s structured, so we just slip into poverty. Neither major party will fix this, by design.
True, but the voters still want both low prices and good paying jobs, and the Dems promised neither. That’s my point.
SHE HAS A VAGINA. THAT’S ALL IT TOOK. DEMOCRATS DIDN’T MISS THE MARK. SHE JUST HAS A VAGINA AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC WONT PUT ANYONE WITH A VAGINA IN THE WHITEHOUSE.
Not really. Even Hillary won the popular vote (only didn’t become president due to the outdated electoral college), Harris just sucks.
I mean, Hillary also had a lot of baggage, decade of being attacked by the media, still won popular vote. The media didn’t really have a decade to trash Harris’ reputation, but she still did worse than Hillary.
Hillary did have the Clinton name. Whether that helped or hurt, we don’t know, but it was a factor
Every breakdown and postmortem i see make it pretty clear:
If you paid close attention and were well-informed, you voted for Kamala.
If you believe things aren’t true or didn’t pay close attention, you voted for Trump as a sort of totem for wealth and success, not because of a specific policy of his you like. He just represents making lots of money to you.
Any grappling with what went wrong or improvements needed within the DNC first needs to reckon with the reality that people aren’t seeing left-wing messaging and are instead exposed to a fake version of leftism pushed constantly by right-wing actors on social media.
I think a lot of people have problems with the Democratic Party being bought by the billionaires as well …and supporting genocidal regimes.
I voted for Harris but you boiled it down to a few lines and missed a lot of reasons why I think a significant amount of Americans didn’t vote at all.
Nobody cares about genocide, man. Nobody is even talking about it anymore. Trump wasn’t the “ANTI-GeNoCIdE” candidate, and anyone with half a brain knew that ensuring Trump’s candidacy was not going to stop GENOCIDAL REGIMES.
Now we have President Pump n Dump promoting a shitcoin for his inauguration, because the SCOTUS wrote Trump a blank check for corruption. Anyone idiot enough to believe Trump was gonna stop genocide should go long on his memecoin.
You’re missing the point. No one thought Trump was the “anti-genocide” candidate. The people who DO care about Palestine knew that Biden was arming and facilitating genocide, and they heard Harris when she promised more of the same. Trump also supporting the genocide clearly wasn’t enough to get lots of those people to vote against him. You can call them stupid, or short-sighted, or whatever names you want, but the reality is that it’s not enough to point at the GOP and say that they’re also pro-genocide.
No, you are missing the point. With the democrats, you had a chance of a better outcome. You have sympathetic representatives.
With the republicans, you will have better luck trying to convince a brick wall. Your logic is so faulty it’s bordering on trolling. Good luck with the Trump administration.
Not really, we all saw how the Dems handled and continue to handle things. It’s better than the GOP but far from acceptable. But, again, you are not responding to the point I made a month ago.
Regardless of whatever arguments you have that people should vote Democrat, many of which I would probably agree with, they are not. Whether or not it should be the case is irrelevant, as this most recent election shows that the Dems’ strategy isn’t working. Running a right-wing campaign trying to appeal to “moderate Republicans”, part of which was their approach to Gaza, failed miserably. If they don’t do things differently, they will continue to fail, even if people should understand that they are still the lesser evil.
Hear me out, what if they try running an even more genocidal candidate.
They just need to run an even older candidate, but it can’t be Bernie.
What you guys need is vintage candidates
Oh shit this might just work, GenoSanders when
To the Left, to the LEFT!
Pivot, PIVOT!
While that’s true, choosing to vote for Trump, a third-party, or not at all is like saying, “I don’t like this ham sandwich and I don’t like my sandwich choices… so I’m going to eat this dog-turds-and-radioactive-glass-shards sandwich instead!”
This country is fucked.
Edit: Rather than respond below to every comment, thought I’d clarify a few things here.
- I never said Democrats didn’t fuck up. They certainly did.
- But - and this is important - we can’t ignore the roles that racism, sexism, and above all misinformation played. To pretend there was none, and that vast swaths of the electorate didn’t fall for it, would be disingenuous.
Democrats have moved to the right, and hurt themselves doing so. That is true. But they are still objectively superior to Republicans in every conceivable way. People who voted Republican voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party because they were angry about Democrats being imperfect, and their faces will be eaten.
I think a lot of the core of the Kamala base is just as out of touch as the Democratic establishment. The fact that the establishment can’t understand this outcome just demonstrates their ineptitude.
People are hurting, a lot. Real wage growth has been stagnant, people are having trouble making ends meet, the wealthy are richer than ever leaving the working class with less and less.
What do the Democrats do to actually improve peoples material conditions? Absolutely nothing. The CHIPS act and IRA are great for longer term problems, but does nothing to put more food on people table. Kamala had the gall to ignore the problem all together. The economy is great, look at the stock market! And her big economic plan? Tax breaks for small businesses and your first home purchase. That’s it. That’s their fucking cornerstone economic policy. That’s not gonna help the vast majority of people.
Then on the other hand you have trump. He tells everyone it’s the brown peoples fault everything sucks, so we will get rid of them (and, by implication, your problems). It’s their fault egg prices are high, just get rid of them and things will go back to the way things were. Of course the rich are the real problem, not immigrants or trans people or any other conservative boogie man, but Trump acknowledged the pain many working class Americans are under.
Now you can think to yourself, how would anyone believe that? Think about someone who’s working two jobs to make ends meet, they’re surrounded by Fox news, all their family is Republican. They were raised in the public education system (half the country can’t read at a 6th grade level) and can’t parse the details of domestic economic policy, but Trump says it’s the brown peoples fault. Finally they felt seen and acknowledged. They remember the Trump stimulus checks. They remember the tax break (even if it’s temporary, they won’t look too closely and notice it’s permeant for the rich).
You know how Democrats win? By bringing back the party of FDR and really championing the working class. Thanks to citizens united we will never see that again, but it’s quite easy to understand their loss against trump. There’s only one issue, and thats class conflict. Until the Democrats stop serving their corporate donors they will never win again as it’s too easy for Republicans to acknowledge working class pain and scapegoat marginalized people.
Not reading all that. I’m apart of Kamala’s base of 75 million. I guess I’m out of touch and super wealthy according to you.
You’re certainly out of touch if you won’t even read the explanation as to why you lost.
But I expect little else from the Khive.
Cry more
You’re missing the lesson too, ironically.
The voters didn’t like what the Democrats were offering them, they wanted change, and they wanted it badly enough that they went ahead and ate that dog-turd-and-glass-sandwich.
You’re saying “they shouldn’t have eaten that, the sandwich the Democrats were offering was better.” Okay, well, they did it anyway. So you’re wrong. The Democrats were wrong. They’ve been wrong multiple times now. They’re doing the “Am I so out of touch? No. It’s the voters who are wrong.” Meme.
America’s a democracy. The voters aren’t wrong, as much as you might personally disagree with their choice. If you want a different government you have to offer them one that they’ll vote for. That may require some compromises, but that’s part of democracy.
I hope that they get it this time. This is the second time in recent memory that they’ve made this mistake. Even Biden’s election was closer than it should have been. I really hope that the DNC gets its head out of its ass and cleans house, but articles like this are disheartening.
My concern with statements like this is that I don’t think your considering the impact that misinformation had on this election.
There were massive disinformation campaigns that had sizable effects on the dialogue that people had with their friends and neighbors. I’m worried that we could have actually put someone like Bernie as our nominee and that we still would have lost because of exactly this misinformation.
The Democrat message wasn’t making it to people and I think that it really shows…
The Democrats message was literally “The Cheney’s like us!” and “ithe economy is fine, the GDP has never been higher!” while everyone’s lives are objectivly worse than they were 2 years ago. What messge do you think people wanted to here?
If you want to be completely reductionist, then sure. They were trying to show that Trump was so upsetting that people were crossing party lines to vote Democrat…not that Democrats have becomes so centrist that they attracted right-wingers. And the economy has been great, they’re not wrong. The Democrat platform was also fantastic: $6k child tax credit, $25k first time home buyer assistance, tax reforms replacing the corporate tax rate to 28%< and taxing the rich, capping medication costs, union support, pushing reproductive rights, climate action, immigration reform. They had a STRONG platform.
…but that wasn’t good enough. So they elected the billionaire conman that is putting up his billionaire cronies. That’s going to help the economy. Like…could the Democrat message have been better? Sure, but it wasn’t bad by any means.
But how are you supposed to argue with someone who doesn’t operate on facts?
Trump didn’t have many more voters this time around than 4 years ago. Democrats didn’t go out to vote because they don’t believe the in the message the DNC has been putting out for the last 8 years. I don’t know what it will take to get you to understand that. All those policies are shit the Republicans would have pushed for 20 years ago. People don’t want tax credits dor their children, they want access to healthcare and and affordable child care. They don’t want tax credits for first time home buyers, they want landlords tarred and feathered on the courthouse steps. People can’t afford their rent and food anymore but the DNC are so far up their own ass they can’t see that.
Democrats have moved to the right, and hurt themselves doing so. That is true. But they are still objectively superior to Republicans in every conceivable way. People who voted Republican voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party because they were angry about Democrats being imperfect, and their faces will be eaten.
The problem you (people blaming voters) don’t seem to understand is, the Democrats moving right DIRECTLY demotivated voters and they stayed home because they were going to get right wing policy either way. They literally had no choice in multiple different avenues of how the country would be run so they said “fuck it if I got no choice for x y AND z, why vote?” maybe they still had a choice for a-w but maybe those specific policies didn’t matter to them personally and wouldn’t have affected their life.
This is A) the problem with having a shitty party platform and B) the problem with hyper-individualism that our country loves.
See, this is where you’re wrong. By every measure, the Democratic party platform was objectively better for humans living on planet Earth. Its problems were in degree (not being nearly progressive enough), not in focus (such as screaming incoherently about trans people).
But people didn’t know, because of the aforementioned misinformation and disinformation. Seriously, did you know that the party platform contains an entire section on protecting LGBTQI+ people and rights? Most progressive voters who sat this one out never read it. Here, see for yourself.
But because the Democratic party wasn’t progressive enough (in some people’s eyes), they sat out the election, and someone who is a thousand times worse in every respect is going to be president tomorrow.
I take that personally. I have a trans son and a gay daughter, and their lives will be so much worse, starting tomorrow. And to protect them, I’m actively trying to figure out how to leave this country, because a lot of people didn’t care enough to protect my kids.
In 1930’s Germany, the Jewish people (and Gypsies, and - again - gay and trans people, and so on) who survived when that country descended into fascism are the ones who got the fuck out first. That is the reality that this purity bullshit has created for people like my kids.
not in focus (such as screaming incoherently about trans people)
why is “trans people” always the example the centrists bring up, like its some sort of totem. Trans peoples rights are not exactly on very many peoples top 10 list of concerns, and I doubt many people could even name the rights trans people are fighting for and dems are supposedly helping with. Trans people are 1% of the population. If thats all we have for a convincing argument we’re doing politics wrong.
Let’s see:
Democrat voter base is steadily more and more changing from the blue collar worker to the more educated, college/university citizen.
Problem: there are more blue collar workers than university/college educated citizens
Part of the democrat campaign zeitgeist is that if you don’t vote for them, then you are [EXPLETIVE].
Problem: most people don’t like to vote for the party with members that calls them slurs
Democrats think that Kamala lost because she is a woman
Problem: for the average voter, gender doesn’t matter in any of the key areas a president has to manage
For the collectivists, the average male voter is assumed to be privileged, racist, bigoted, homophobic, millionaire, uneducated, emotionally stunted, a rapist, a Nazi, not people, and so on
Problem: assuming this is true for every male voter in the sweeping criticism of the patriarchy has left the male voter disenchanted and being pushed into the only people who are listening to them and their problems of unemployment, lack of financial security, health issues, and so on.
There is much more but yeah you guys tried to PIVOT the entirety of your message from the key 4 years like 2 months before the end of the campaign and you couldn’t even do that correctly.
No such thing as a “Patriarchy” when you can falsely accuse a man & get them fired & especially when you have several welfare programs that are for women only
OH boy here come those downvoters (See, you leftists will never win like this)
Patriarchy is not a binary issue. Even at the height of Patriarchy, there will still be issues where women have the upper hand. In today’s world, Patriarchy has steadily been weakened by people’s efforts, but that doesn’t mean your system is no longer based on Patriarchy.
In order to uproot Patriarchy, you need to destroy the whole system and rebuild from the ground up, which is of course, impractical and clearly haven’t been done.
If you strongly believe you no longer have a Patriarchy in the US, please show me when did this over turning event that uprooted Patriarchy from your system occurred.
Oh There’s no need to “Believe”, that would imply there’s no factual evidence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve9ZZNfytns
This not just a US thing, it’s a global thing No such thing as a “Patriarchy” (If women are in power in a patriarchy then it isn’t much of a patriarchy now is it, also feminists demand men to be tied down to their gender roles while demanding women to be exempt from their, when they should be demanding to free both genders)
Gynocentrism on the other hand is very real
You think that there’s no patriarchy because some women have power? Damn, I know lemmy is full of morons but cmon
Ok then let’s look at the definition of Patriarchy, if women can get that much power then it isn’t a patriarchy, PERIOD Did any Jews get into positions of power under Nazism ? Nope
Yet again you ignore the material I provided & resort to gaslighting, Ok I wasn’t exactly an anti-feminist before, now I am (Thanks for the final push, I am being genuine here)
demorats coping hard
