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.”
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.
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.
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.
I live in a deep blue state. Family is all very blue. They have learned absolutely nothing. They all think what the Democrats did was perfect. Kamala was flawless. She didn’t get elected because America is racist AND sexist.
They genuinely believe that there was nothing they could have done to improve.
I think they are gonna have to learn this lesson a few more times before they pull their heads outta their ass finally. I hope.
This talking point is just so Democrats have an excuse to keep AOC out of the 2028 race in favor of some centrist turd barge.
What has AOC done that Kamala hasn’t?
Have positions to Biden’s left.
Your family is correct. America is racist and sexist. Asl yourself, after that debate and the several Trump fumbles on the campaign trail. Would you vote for him or Harris? Regardless if you thought she was perfect or not.
If you voted for Trump, you obviously didnt care about policy when every indication points to his being objectively worse. And I’m ready to argue that all day.
No. You’re showing the same fundamental misunderstanding the Democrats do.
If people are hurting, and one candidate says “I see you’re hurting, and I will do XYZ to help you” while another says “We’re all doing fine, nothing will change with me” - it’s no wonder people go with the former! Even if they are lying.
The blue bubble is as heard to burst as the red bubble. My mom lives on msnbc. There is not a moment that its not on just like my dad lives on fox. They are completely in their own different worlds made of fiction. Dad thought there was no way Trump could loose to Biden just as my mom thought there was no way Hillary/Harris could loose to Trump. Both had no moment of realisation, no moment of reflection just disbelief that they live in a bubble. Its always someone else’s fault. Dad blamed the Democrats and mom blames the left.
To me it’s obvious that Chomsky was right about manufacturing consent.
MSNBC is liberal Fox News. They both are the circuses while the public is clamoring for breadcrumbs.
Always has been.
It won’t happen. Every election in the last 25 years, including midterms, where the democrats tried to play to “moderate republicans”, they got wiped out.
So if Dems are never left enough for you. Wouldn’t that mean they’re moderate. Which means they won in 06, 08, 12, 18, 20 and 22 being “moderate”.
They won in 2020 on the wake of protests and low-information voters who thought they’d be freeing the immigrant camps, defunding the police, codifying roe, and getting free healthcare.
They got wiped out in 22 by being moderate and getting fuckall done by trying to compromise with republicans for 2 years.
In 06 and 08, they were finally coming about against the Iraq war and promising things, unlike in 2004 where they simply said they would do the war more competently.
You have to conclude that they’d rather chase after “moderate Republicans” and lose than chase after the left and win.
and they keep trying to dislodge “sane” republicans because they’d rather maintain centralized power than risk a grass roots movement distributing power to the masses. dyed in the wool democrats prefer fascism to meaningful reform
Obama was amazingly effective at the ballot box, but to the established Democratic power structure he was dangerous. Luckily for them he merged himself into their structure rather than maintaining his separate power base and taking on individual in-party resistors like Trump has, but it was a warning about what could happen and they took that lesson to heart. They do not want anything resembling another Obama.
Yep, that’s why Hillary was basically in control of the party via Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and how much the DNC effectively owed Clinton at that point.
People want to memory hole that aspect of it but it was 100% a response to the Obama presidency an attempt to grab a stranglehold on the party which she used to shut down Sanders and force her nomination. People often forget this is the same year the Republicans rejected Jeb Bush. America didn’t want Bush v. Clinton again, and Trump and Sanders were the only voices offering anything different. Democrats shut down their nascent progressive wing, and Trump just steamrolled the Republicans because he’s a fucking bully and those guys bend over and take it for bullies.
Typical leftist using the rigged theory just like MAGA.
Her fascist border plan, embrace of genocide, and her running mate Liz Cheney were all great in their opinion? Wow. I need to talk to some Dems sometime.
75 million votes
.world is here 24/7.
Well they don’t even have to decide they wanna eat a shit sandwich- they just have to not be motivated enough to go to the polls and say “I’d like the snot sandwich instead of the shit sandwich, please”. Which is what seems to have happened this election as best I’m aware
A lot of democratic voters weren’t motivated, and didn’t show up. And I agree with the statement made by the person quoted in the post, a huge part of that feels like it’s the democratic party’s complete unwillingness to criticize moneyed interests and figure out how to actually appeal to their constituency, and so they’re loosing people. And now we’re all stuck with that shit sandwich.
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…
Disagreeing with something doesnt make it disinformation. What were the big lies being spread about Kamala that affected the voter base? I’m not on social media, the only thing I watched was the live interview she did on fox, and she was rude and deceptive. Is an uncut interview disinformation?
Don’t deny voters their agency by saying they can’t make wrong choices. They can and did. They made a stupid choice for idiotic reasons, and will get nothing but suffering for it. There are situations in life where feeling deeply and unconditionally ashamed of your own idiocy is the correct course of action, and this is one of them.
Votes can’t be wrong by definition, they are opinions. But if you accepted that you would have to get off your pedestal wouldnt you, and thats no fun. Go ahead and puff up your chest and brag about how obviously stupid so many people are.
Voters have agency. Let’s tell them how they will be voting and do nothing to appeal to them.
If they were too insignificant to listen to, they are too insignificant to blame. Your party lost because your party is shit on purpose.
I voted for Harris and of course Trump is worse, so spare me the only talking point any of you have.
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.
At this point, I’d expect them to bring back Japanese internment camps and nothing else. I’d say redlining too, but that would involve having a housing program to be discriminatory with.
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.
The fact that you so proudly claimed to not want to read yet decided to respond anyway makes you pretty out of touch. That last bit is just icing on the cake since they never claimed that.
If only someone, or a group of like minded thinkers, had predicted this exact social course and offered another course that actually has ideological solutions for capital interests fucking over everything in their quest for more money and power!
Doesn’t matter anymore. I was gonna type “but genocide Joe” every time trump fucks over in some way the people who had a chance to vote for Kamala. But in the end, unity is far more important, division is how putin disarticulated his opposition.
That would be a great demonstration that you have learned nothing.