Kansas Crimson

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:52 am

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 7:39 am https://kamalaharris.com/issues/

"Healthcare! This one's huge."
5th one down.

"climate change."
10th one down.

"reproductive rights"
11th one down.

"also things like immigration, weed, voter rights, Citizens United, any number of anything for which an actual vision was an opportunity to have popular appeal more so than some status quo."

Read up.

Here is part of the problem. That wasn't on her website until long after she announced her candidacy. I wouldn't have expected it to be on her website right away but she and her campaign waited way too long.

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:05 am "Hey, Kamala could have campaigned on these issues."
Shows proof that she did.
"OK, but not the exact way I wanted her to campaign about those issues!"

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:29 am I think a new voice at the right time would have made a difference, no doubt in my mind.
Harris was attached to Biden and what many Trump voters associated with the problems they had.

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:54 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:44 am
It's semantics, right? Because in a (grim) manner of speaking, America worked.

If you worked, or succeeded, at doing something shitty it's still shitty.
To me, that's a failure.

If I intentionally chose all the wrong answers on a test, well that's pretty impressive, but you still get an F.

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:57 am

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:05 am "Hey, Kamala could have campaigned on these issues."
Shows proof that she did.
"OK, but not the exact way I wanted her to campaign about those issues!"

Problem is she didn't "campaign on these issues" to the extent she should have.
Yes, they were on her website but as Ousy alluded to, while people could have and should have, they didn't run to her website to read what was on it.

twocoach wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:34 am Democrats need to identify the straight, white male that they want to be their next candidate. Others need not apply because that is all this nation will put in the White House in my lifetime.

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 12:01 pm

twocoach wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:34 am Democrats need to identify the straight, white male that they want to be their next candidate. Others need not apply because that is all this nation will put in the White House in my lifetime.

You mean going forward. The Black guy with the middle name Hussein proved this nation could and would put someone other than a straight white male in the White House.

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 12:01 pm

RainbowsandUnicorns wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:57 am

pdub wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:05 am "Hey, Kamala could have campaigned on these issues."
Shows proof that she did.
"OK, but not the exact way I wanted her to campaign about those issues!"

Problem is she didn't "campaign on these issues" to the extent she should have.
Yes, they were on her website but as Ousy alluded to, while people could have and should have, they didn't run to her website to read what was on it.

I guess not?
She had several town halls where she talked about it.
She had a couple one on one interviews.
She was only afforded one debate because her opponent chickened out.

I dunno - she obviously didn't get her message fully across fast enough - but I also think it's largely that a certain demographic wasn't going to a woman in the first place and that other voters who might have voted for her associated her with the last four years ( because she was Bidens VP ).

twocoach wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:54 pm Did 20 million less people really vote in this election?

jfish26 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:59 pm

twocoach wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 1:54 pm Did 20 million less people really vote in this election?

I know what you're getting at. I've had the same thoughts.

I can't wrap myself up in it - if there is something of that magnitude that is wrong, we will know sooner rather than later. And so it's not something I'm gonna jump down rabbit holes today chasing.

It doesn't appear to have been close. Georgia flipped for Trump. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, too. The Blue Wall crumbled like Jericho's. Just about everywhere voted redder than in 2020. Young people went right. New York City went right. The polls said what they said, but then Americans went to the voting booth and said what they said, which is that they want four more years of Donald Trump. This feels worse than 2016. That was a squeaker, and you could convince yourself it was a fluke. The Comey letter. No Midwest Dem ground game. A uniquely unpopular candidate. Belief that maybe Trump wasn't being totally serious about the things he said, or might surround himself with smarter, better people. Maybe it was possible people were voting for Trump just to seize on an intrusive thought, a call of the void. You can't tell yourself these stories this time. Trump is a known quantity. We know what he would do as President, and we know all the things he'd promised to do as President a second time, and millions of Americans took all that into consideration and said, Yes, I want that.

What do you do in a place like this, with an electorate like that? You survive it, mostly, unless you don't. You will try to figure out how it got there, got so angry and stupid and cruel, so that you can nudge it somewhere else next time. You do this by seeing what went wrong this time. This seems like an impossible task this morning, because everything went wrong.

The temptation to recriminate is strong, and healthy when constructive, but feels more useless than usual right now, especially in these first few shell-shocked hours. Pick your own adventure, and go back as far as you like. Joe Biden could have dropped out earlier. Maybe Joe Biden shouldn't have run at all in 2020. They could have crammed in a sprint primary. Maybe Kamala Harris could have run as something other than an extension of an unpopular administration. Maybe she could have courted the right more. Maybe she could have courted the left at all. Maybe she could have been tougher on Israel, or maybe being even more deferential would have gained her some votes among the bloodthirsty. Maybe Liz Cheney was not the right person to make her most visible endorser. Maybe she should have chosen a more polished VP pick, or maybe she shouldn't have muzzled Tim Walz's seemingly popular early attacks. Maybe no plurality of Americans was ever going to elect a woman, or a black and Indian woman. Maybe the demographics are fundamentally Republican now: second-generation immigrants have gone rightward from four and eight years ago, as did younger voters. Maybe that side's threats of implicit or actual violence have given it an unsurmountable advantage at the ballot box. Maybe offering more policy specifics would have helped, or maybe they wouldn't have, given that so many voters cited a crime wave in a time of sharply decreasing crime and inflation at a point where inflation is nosediving. I have my opinions on all of these, as do you, but the point is that there is no "for want of a nail" in this election, no one thing that if addressed could have given Harris the edge. The margins were too wide, in too many places.

Anyway, just look at the other side. Ground game is supposed to be crucial, and the Trump campaign ground game was dogshit. He selected a deeply unpopular VP. He has personally offered zero in the way of policy specifics beyond raising the taxes of most of his base. He was visibly expiring at most of his rallies. He is a liar and a criminal and openly corrupt and none of it mattered. Everything we've always been told voters reject, they ignored, even embraced. Voters wanted Trump, in all his malice.

Even this morning's bleary eyes can't not see it clearly: This was a mandate for a nasty, venal person to keep being his nasty, venal self. You can't blame third-party voters, or hesitant lefties, or anyone but the many, many people who voted for him. He ran on a platform of punishing his enemies, and his voters' imagined enemies, and they turned out in droves to give him that power even at the expense of making their own lives worse. One cannot say broadly of Americans We're better than this, because we're not. A plurality of Americans hate women or people of color or immigrants or trans people enough for this to be the result. There's no Russian bogeyman this time, no Jill Stein stripping votes, to help concoct a different and more comforting narrative, one of a single fixable thing. There is no panacea for this. There is only President-Elect Donald Trump, and the scores of millions of people who wanted him in office again, but also the scores of millions for whom this is a nightmare brought back to life. If you are in the latter group, there will be future opportunities to organize, to vote in local elections, to mitigate some of the harm. But for the moment there's little to do, and no illusions left, just the struggle of figuring out how to live in this country, with these people.