U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

The he’s a fascist line doesn’t land because it’s not what people actually experience - the reactionary laws Republicans have passed are just… Republican laws. We still have regular elections and even Jan 6 didn’t impact the vast majority of lives.

Democrats have been calling Republicans the end of democracy for eight years but also finding Good Republicans and the need for a Strong Republican Party and Cabinet Secretary Republican.

If you’re going with Donald Trump is a fascist then your line should be the need to raze the GOP and salt the earth for the sake of humanity.

My friend who is very much of the Hill (and was at the Ellipse last week) has been mad at the DNC for years, and she is fairly representative of Beltway Dems. Maybe they will change the DNC as the Clintons age out of public life.

that was kinda the problem wasn't it? can't treat your opponent like an existential threat to this country, when the guy you're putting up there is suffering from obvious mental decline. they had to have known how bad Biden was before he stepped onto that debate stage. if Trump had refused the debates like he wanted to at first then we probably would've been stuck with him!

Given the outcome they should have kept Joe in the race for entertainment value.

They might have had an old man fistfight at a second debate.

Oh well. More power to Elon and Thiel. Well done. Noone will regret that.

I've seen many people out there blaming Kamala, but I still think she did a stellar campaign, even more with the cards she was dealt with. This race was unwinnable for her in retrospective, just too many fundamentals against her. Also not having a full campaign cycle definitely hurt her. While Hillary deserved it for running a terrible campaign, I don't think Kamala deserved such a blowout. Anyways... godspeed..

harris just ran the clinton 2016 campaign again and it still didn't work, that's a big part of why it was terrible. losing is hardly all her fault, it's biden's fault even more, but her campaign did absolutely nothing to help

It’s anecdotal but then again also repeats trends seen in the 2019 election here so behind a cut:

Talked to a young friend of mine earlier - solid blue always Dem voter who voted regardless of her problems with the ticket and Biden. During the course of us talking she said, almost as an aside:

“And social issues are important but the Dems have to move away from talking about trans stuff and immigration reform so much…”

It was a basically half formed thought but I’d seen it echoed five years ago and I didn’t like it. So I said, but I didn’t ever even see them talk about trans rights, like, at all? Maybe Walz but Harris really didn’t want to discuss it much during campaigning. And then I pointed out the problem with ceding this ground is twofold: you cede this and you have less to stand for, but equally importantly, polarisation does so much heavy lifting. Nothing needs to be true anymore; lies go viral before anyone thinks to fact-check and by then the damage is done.

I have no doubt that if the Democrats had ceded ground on those issues they still would have been painted as, whatever those ads said they were, baby killers who were funding sex change operations for illegal immigrants or whatever. It doesn’t have to be true to stick.

But yeah this happened with Labour post-2019 and they shifted far to the right and basically distanced themselves from a huge number of their voters - and won a majority because they profited off the woes of the Tories. But the policies and people in office they have now are pandering to the far right, who finished second to them in a number of constituency seats btw, and who are primed to make huge gains next election. They were supposed to have a Small Boats Week this week, for fuck’s sake.

And all of this is done by people who are as deeply ideological as anyone and the fault of the electorate is not having an appetite for “The same shit but in a different colour.” Liberals - and I mean this as “centre-left”/neoliberal in the European sense - would rather wag their tail at fascists than give anyone on the left the time of day, and the reckoning that’s coming - or has come - is going to be so very ugly.

I wish I knew what to say or do about any of it, but I don’t.

a local prop to convert the Great Highway along the ocean in SF to being a public park closed to motorists passed

Also not having a full campaign cycle definitely hurt her

but on this very thread, people were celebrating the brevity of her campaign and wishing all campaigns were this short

On the contrary: had she definitively and quickly parted ways with Joe Biden in July she might've had a chance.

okay maybe not a "stellar" campaign but at least she didn't have all the hubris Clinton had. She also had more challenges: Soaring inflation worst in a generation to deal. Housing policy. Oh and 3 months to turn it all around and try to rebrand the Democrats on these issues. Democrats are usually very bad at communicating how their political party could help. They spend too much time on social issues and the vast majority only cares about economic issues.

It's not like the other side have a good plan either, the proposed tariffs if implemented will likely make it worse. But Kamala's message was more in the line of "everything will be fine, we will be working together on it", Trump's message was "everything sucks and they are to blame". For many people that message resonated more. Americans want change. Well... here you go.

yup xp

budging a single inch on Palestine would have helped a lot

Just read this paragraph in Politico

And other calculations Harris made at least internally seemed even riskier — notably the refusal to separate from Biden, even after the president publicly offered her his permission to do so. Harris’ aides during the campaign stressed that this was a line she was unwilling to cross, offering that doing so would undermine a litany of public statements she’d made about the president and blow holes in her own record of accomplishments in the White House.

It definitely would've been a difficult needle to thread, but I also think it would've been a risk worth taking. But I've gotten the impression that Harris has always a risk-averse politician.

*always been

Soaring inflation worst in a generation to deal.

I do think that constant refrains of the Will Stancils of the world, that the economy is 'good actually' and that inflation didn't exist anymore, was a big fucking problem. people are still getting laid off left and right; white color jobs now, not just blue collar manufacturing jobs. I don't know why those people would think Trump would be more amenable to their needs but it doesn't help when the liberal party gaslights them.

I mean it's not possible for her to REALLY distance herself from the current administration. She's part of it.

Aid a dumb war, and if you run from the VP’s office, you become Hubert Humphrey.

People did not vote for Trump because they hate women and abortion (look at the abortion measures that passed in red states), and in most interviews with the bulk of his voters they openly talk about disliking his rhetoric, believe it's a lot of hyperbole, and don't think he's going to do half the shit he says (they're not entirely wrong, after all he never locked up Hillary). Dems and high propensity voters get caught up on how terrible Trump is (and he is) but the people who vote for him are voting for him as an act of protest against a very out of touch system that doesn't effective recognize their very valid economic problems. Trump says "shit is bad, let me fix it" and of course people lean towards that over a "i'll do more of the same" message.

voting for him as an act of protest against a very out of touch system

a coworker opined that Harris had too many Beyonces and Cardi B's up on stage and probably should found more Joe the Plummer-types

Moka otm

But her females

I'd also add racism and misogyny.

I think a lot of people who normally vote Dem decided to stay home or only vote on down-ticket.

Those people are fucking stupid

I dohave a friend, who is an immigrant from central america who is more socialist than anything else, who didn't vote for trump, but despises the democrats, and he's been laughing all day. he's on the accelerationist bent: "burn the dems to the ground". this is based on the assumption that people will revolt when things get bad enough I guess, but the problem is I don't believe they will do that.

At least we can say the election was relatively peaceful... a couple burnt ballot boxes, no (so far) nobody shitting on Pelosi's desk

a coworker opined that Harris had too many Beyonces and Cardi B's up on stage and probably should found more Joe the Plummer-types

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, November 6, 2024 7:23 PM (one minute ago)

this is an incorrect framing of what happened but it does highlight something interesting about the campaigns. trump openly campaigned w/ rappers and other musical celebs as much or more than kamala did, the notion that trump was centering the everyman is false. but kamala's celeb endorsers were mega famous A list people that only emphasized how out of touch she was w/ the constituents she needed to win over -- beyonce, lady gaga, katy perry, billie eilish etc. trump meanwhile campaigned w/ artists like Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow in NYC, puerto rican artists like Anuel AA and Nicky Jam. he had Kodak Black releasing tribute tracks. these are artists that resonate with people in voting blocs that trump targeted specifically all campaign and then rode, in part, to victory. kamala's celebs, like her campaign, were meant to appeal to everybody, which in this election meant they appealed to nobody. we all bemoan the democratic party's celeb worship, but it should be something they own -- instead trump even kicked their ass on that! the coal mine is so full of canaries that it looks like the sun down there, but trump outfoxing the dems fucking majorly on celeb endorsements is one of them

a coworker opined that Harris had too many Beyonces and Cardi B's up on stage and probably should found more Joe the Plummer-types

i blame dj cassidy personally get that guy outta here

seems like some Dem insiders are partially blaming Walz: who one operative said “ultimately offered next to nothing.”

I don't think that's fair, I think we was a good everyman foil to Harris' coastal 'elitism'... I'm not sure Shapiro or anyone else could have substantively made much difference in the final count

Walz was fine, they sidelined him if anything

yeah they just did nothing with walz - instead of offering any sort of vision like he's able to, they ran to the right, abandoned his "weird" attack, and generally de-emphasised him despite him being the most popular person on either ticket

They just need a scapegoat. The problem wasn’t the candidates.

i really seriously truly cannot believe that they had katy perry -- one of the most openly disliked pop stars in america, whose entire album cycle from earlier this year was defined by how much people do not like her and find her brand of feminism sorely outdated, and who ***played hillary's rally in pennsylvania in 2016 right before election nightt*** -- perform in pennsylvania again immediately before election night. it's actually completely stunning and yet says so much about the party's misread of its own base -- which again openly revolted against katy perry in a hugely public way less than 6 months ago -- to say nothing of other voters

At this point the dems represent the elite consensus and people want to throw a bomb into that — for reasons that are in some ways understandable and in other ways not.

i have seen the sentiment pop up that this all could have been stopped on jan 7 or whatever if we'd just arrested him, and i really wonder how people who think that cannot understand that he would have won the election from prison

i think at least that the failure of the dems & institutions to take jan 6 seriously and actually impose any real consequences meant that voters also didn't take it seriously

would have won the election from prison

and half the nation would've enthusiastically elected a fucking sea lion over Donald Trump, maybe we should run a sea lion next time if they're eligible

If anything the prosecutions helped him. I actually think they helped him dramatically.

People find him inspiring and relate to his childish habit of self-victimization. It’s hard to counter this with smart policy when, in our current historical moment, there aren’t easy answers for making life more affordable while protecting workers and the environment and also competently managing the empire.

actually impose any real consequences

a whole bunch of beardos went to jail

And reducing the deficit and inflation at the same time. And turning back the clock on automation

Trump offers fantasies because there isn’t a road back to the society people are nostalgic for. He is willing to lie about it and say he will fix it, dems won’t because they aren’t liars—not that kind of liars anyway

Trump says "shit is bad, let me fix it" and of course people lean towards that

That speaks to what seems like almost an unsolvable problem at this point — if ppl’s baloney detectors/street smarts are so hopelessly broken that they look at a PROVEN, obvious, shameless conman, compulsive liar, sociopath, and take what he says at face value, and trust him to improve their lives, then how do you even begin to remedy that? I guess you could say, “oh, we need to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy…” but when it’s seemingly just a fundamental blindness, psychological naïveté, lack of wisdom?? well, how do you go about fixing that?

Idk if they even believe it. Sometimes it’s fun to pretend to believe, like saying I love you to someone you just met at the bar

"he had Kodak Black releasing tribute tracks. these are artists that resonate with people in voting blocs that trump targeted specifically all campaign and then rode, in part, to victory."

That is insane, he didn't ride those voting blocks to victory. He appealed to racist and misogynist white people, both men and women, of which there are a shit-ton in this country apparently of all ages

and trust him to improve their lives,

it's not that they trust him necessarily, it's just that he's at least promising he will improve their lives, while the dems refuse to promise anything, or are unable to communicate anything positive they have promised, or have proven incapable of actually delivering on much while in power

That is insane, he didn't ride those voting blocks to victory.

he made significant gains among ethnic minorities, though it's not clear whether that's through improved persuasion or just dems alienating their own base who stayed home (i'd guess a bit of both)

ppl’s baloney detectors/street smarts are so hopelessly broken that they look at a PROVEN, obvious, shameless conman, compulsive liar, sociopath, and take what he says at face value, and trust him to improve their lives, then how do you even begin to remedy that?

because people, rightly in lots of cases, look at politicians as obvious, shameless conmen, compulsive liars, and sociopaths. and most of them aren't even rich. the democratic party's entire platform the last three elections has been Politician = Safety and that was just repudiated on a massive scale. you guys need to get this exasperated thinking out of your head. the answer is to run better candidates with more compelling and relatable messaging

Harris was talking grocery price controls, loans for first time home buyers, etc.. actual policies to help people

But I think there's a central part of the electorate that love the chaos that only Trump provides, the 'oh no he didn't say that!' shock stuff that they find entertaining... they actively like the craziness while they're lives were actually improved under dull old Uncle Joe