The cause of Kamala Harris’s disastrous failure in the 2024 presidential election will forever be debated, but there are good reasons to believe the Israeli genocide in Gaza played a significant role.
  • Diva (she/her)English
    74·
    11 days ago

    The “I’m speaking” bit was really off-putting, like she couldn’t even pretend to want to restrain the occupation.

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    68·
    11 days ago

    Sure, a ton of Americans don’t really know or care about Palestine, but you know who does? The progressive liberal activists who form the vanguard of Dems’ ground game, and are following accounts that put pictures of massacred civilians on their social media feeds. The party’s ongoing efforts to completely excise the people who do the most to make sure they win seats is actually gonna fucking kill the party finally. In 12 years the only people who will still be voting for them will be CPUSA members.

    • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      42·
      11 days ago

      Seriously, the people who hold Precinct level roles in the party have a minimum age of 55. They physically can’t knock on all the doors. They NEED young people to be gung-ho enough to be shipped in as “Field Organizers” and worked 80 hours a week for sub-fast food wages* to campaign the way they want to.

      • At least I experienced that first hand in 2016. Hopefully wages have gotten better since then 👀
  • queermunist she/herEnglish
    50·
    11 days ago

    The fact that Harris might have lost because of foreign policy is actually somewhat unique in the US. Usually we only vote based on domestic issues and mostly ignore things that happen outside the country, especially when we don’t have any US soldiers involved. Vietnam was the last time foreign policy actually mattered in elections, and that was honestly mostly because of the draft.

    This is something new and really interesting. What if USAmericans are finally gaining a level of international consciousness?

    • AnarchoAnarchist [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      36·
      11 days ago

      The Dems lost like 15m voters between '20 and '24.

      I am sure a substantial number of those voters were lost because of Gaza, but we need to see polling or other evidence before we can begin to guess how many. It’s likely Michigan would have been much bluer without the ongoing genocide, but I am less sure it had a decisive impact in a state like Pennsylvania.

      Meanwhile, voter participation is still crazy low, and I find it very likely a big chunk of Kamala’s deficit was motivated by a sluggish economy people were tired of being gaslit about. Where foreign policy did motivate the average American voter, I would think it is couched in chauvinism “why are we giving billions to Ukraine or Israel, when we have a boarder crisis and my nephew is addicted to Fentanyl” type people.

      I wish this election foretold a shift in the American electorate, but I don’t see enough evidence to support that conclusion. At least not yet.

      • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        20·
        11 days ago

        In terms of messaging reality doesn’t matter at all. Just begin asserting it was due to being too right wing, including doing a genocide.

        The “why” of losing an election isn’t entirely knowable anyways. Most people didn’t vote at all. Every candidate that loses mostly loses because the majority of people see no value in it. The consistency of this should mean most reflection be about the illegitimacy of American “democracy”, but that is rarely the focus. Instead, all of the air in the room gets taken up by cynical party “strategists” trying to normslize even farther right views to placate donors and get their next gig on the next campaign, now defined as, “we are woke but are against trans people and latinos”.

        The “it’s because they’re right wing genociders” line is more correct than 90% of what anyine will otherwise hear. It is also in line with why there are so many non-voters. What is the meaning of being politically “engaged” in electoralism when you don’t see a material benefit to it, can’t really personally do anything about it except check a box for one of two Hitlers, and see correct popular will on important topics routinely ignored despite how the party suckups tell you it works?

        Smoosh that stuff together and take up more space!

  • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    11 days ago

    Gaza became a symbol for the lack of substance among the Democrats and their manifest policy failures. The Democrats’ response to the horror their own constituents have expressed at what we are doing in Gaza produced a revulsion that alienated many voters.

    Gaza was the most visible issue that created the frustration and disillusionment with the Democrats that suppressed turnout in support of Kamala Harris, but it was not the only one. Democrats’ draconian stance on immigration was another factor. The minimization of the struggles that people have making ends meet from month to month, where Democrats kept telling those people that they were too stupid to understand how good the economy really was and burying the reality that it was still very bad for the majority of Americans was likely the single biggest factor.

    Gaza became the symbol for all of these failures. In no regard was Harris’s unwillingness to listen to her own constituents clearer. The 77% of Democrats who want a ceasefire also know the United States can get one by demanding it from Israel on pain of stopping the arms flow. Harris’s gaslighting on this issue, claiming that they were “working for a ceasefire” when it is quite clear they are unwilling to take any substantive action toward one, highlighted her shallowness on other issues.

    Gaza, and the Palestinian cause in general, were like getting the sunglasses from “They Live” glasses-off glasses-on War nerds can tally up all the battle statistics we want, but Hamas’ campaign has completely upended the world order in Palestine’s favor and decisively against isntreal.

    Palestine threw every other campaign signal in sharp relief, and especially highlighted the disconnect between voters and party officials. While I agree with the article that Palestine wasn’t singularly the cause of the Democratic rout, it underestimates the symbolic nature that unifies and stitches so many other disparate symbols. The symbolic nature of Palestine competed with the Democrat’s own manufactured symbology, and the depth of the Palestine symbol’s network exposed the shallowness of, and thus undermined, the Democratic symbology. It’s hard to imagine such a unifying force that runs counter to the manufactured symbology.

    To put it concretely, the Democrats tried to pull a Baudrillard Disneyland. Democrats, as a Hyperreality, tried to make you believe they were Reality by comparing themselves to the Disneyland of Trumpism. But the Real of Palestine shattered this symbolic network (*sniff*) by precisely exposing both the Democrats’ Unreality and Equivalence with its supposed opposite in Trump (*sniff*) zizek

    • THEPH0NECOMPANY [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      11 days ago

      PA has closed primaries I imagine the uncommitted value would be even higher with open primaries and higher because of the genocide becoming worse and more people learning of it since than. Probably more than enough to make up that 14k difference

    • LigOleTiberal [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      41·
      11 days ago

      voters voted in the hate spewing facsist because they are genrally good people who are anti-war and see genocide as a red line.

      if you are the party of genocide, you will never be seen as the anti-war option.