We can all list reasons why Kamala is un-electable. She's just not a good candidate which is why her presidential bid failed so spectacularly in 2000.

And it may be as simple as the economy and the border and girls bathrooms made the American public go another way.

But I still hold to my guns that the Democratic Party holds the blame for the sunk cost fallacy in the first place. They should have not looked at avoiding losing the money they currently had. They should have looked at who could be elected and figured out the money later. I mean my gosh, she raised a billion dollars and it still wasn't enough. Trump had a third of that money and won.

Any other candidate would have received more votes, and the Democrats may have won.

Realitybites said:

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All these are good observations...but without Joe Rogan, RFK, and Tulsi expanding the base you would be looking at President Harris right now.

Don't let the size of the electoral college win make you lose sight of just how close the vote was in the seven swing states that the winner had to have.

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I think those people expanding the base came over because of how bad Harris was. Once again, if they choose another candidate Trump doesn't enjoy the left base voting for him.

It would be like the Republicans putting Marjorie Taylor Greene out there as the candidate. Just too extreme to be elected.

The crossover votes will stay *if* the GOP does what they want them to...and what the GOP base wants and what the crossover vote wants is much more aligned than what GOPe wants.

If it is business as usual, they will lose the house and senate in the midterms, impeach Trump and remove him from office, and complete Obama's transformation of America.

Democrats have taken the air out of the ball the past two elections. They simply refused to campaign.

A lot of good observations, but there were ultimately 14 million fewer votes cast this election, and a few that voted for Biden voted for Trump this time around. Harris not only failed to motivate Democrats to vote who voted in 2020 for an old man with dementia, but her main strategy of appealing to independents seemed to be not being named Donald Trump, and backing off entirely on the stances and rhetoric that once got her named the most progressive politician in D.C.

And so she was left with nothing but empty platitudes. An inability to connect with working class America, because in order to be electable, she really had to pretend to be something she wasn't. And American saw right through it.

I still maintain that the race was always hers to lose. She had an incredible amount of built in support. She was running against one of the most hated American politicians ever. The media framed this as a battle of life v death, democracy v fascism. And yet she lost. This will be studied for a long time, because many won't be able to get their heads around Americans voting for women dying and fascism taking over. We can all think of many factors, but in the end, I think all we can say for sure, is Democrats didn't buy into her, and they showed that by not voting; and neither did independents/centrists, and they showed that by breaking out of demographics and class to vote for Trump.

In a good op-ed in today's NYT, Thomas Frank, the leftie who wrote What's The Matter With Kansas? ages ago, tries to talk sense into his fellow libs. Excerpts:

Quote:

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Everyone has a moment when they first realized that Donald Trump might well return, and here is mine. It was back in March, during a visit to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, when I happened to read the explanatory text beside an old painting. This note described the westward advance of the United States in the 19th century as "settler colonialism." I read it and I knew instantly where this nation was going.
My problem with this bit of academic jargon was not that it was wrong, per se, or that President Biden was somehow responsible for putting it there, but rather that it offered a glimpse of our poisoned class relations. Some curator at one of our most exalted institutions of public instruction had decided to use a currently fashionable, morally loaded academic keyword to address a visitor to the museum say, a family from the Midwest, doing the round of national shrines and teach them a lesson about American wickedness.

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Right. The people don't exist for the cultural elites except as subjects to be improved. (And when I say "cultural elites," I perfectly well know that I'm an elite by any realistic measure; I'm talking rather of that class of people who run the institutions and the leadership networks, and whose views dominate the discourse.)
More Frank, recalling his book:

Quote:

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My Kansas story was mainly about Republicans, but I also wrote about the way the Democrats were gradually turning away from working people and their concerns. Just think of all those ebullient Democratic proclamations in the '90s about trade and tech and globalization and financial innovation. What a vision they had: All those manifestoes about futurific "wired workers" or the "learning class" … all those speeches about how Democrats had to leave the worker-centric populism of the 1930s behind them … all those brilliant triangulations and reaching out to the right. When I was young, it felt like every rising leader in the Democratic Party was making those points. That was the way to win voters in what they called "the center," the well-educated suburbanites and computer-literate professionals whom everybody admired.

Well, those tech-minded Democrats got exactly what they set out to get, and now here we are. At the Republican convention in July, JD Vance described the ruination visited on his working-class town in Ohio by NAFTA and trade with China, both of which he blamed at least in part on Mr. Biden, and also the human toll taken by the Iraq War, which he also contrived to blame on Mr. Biden. Today Mr. Vance is the vice president-elect, and what I hope you will understand, what I want you to mull over and take to heart and remember for the rest of your life, is that he got there by mimicking the language that Americans used to associate with labor, with liberals, with Democrats.

By comparison, here is Barack Obama in 2016, describing to Bloomberg Businessweek his affinity for the private sector: "Just to bring things full circle about innovation the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying."

I hope Mr. Obama finds his silicon satisfaction. I hope the men of capital whose banks he bailed out during the financial crisis show a little gratitude and build him the biggest, most expensive, most innovative presidential library of them all. But his party is in ruins today, without a leader and without a purpose.

It would have been nice if the Democrats could have triangulated their way into the hearts of enough educated and affluent suburbanites to make up for the working class voters they've lost over the years, but somehow that strategy rarely works out. They could have gone from boasting about Dick Cheney's endorsement to becoming a version of Mr. Cheney themselves, and it still wouldn't have been enough. A party of the left that identifies with people like Mr. Cheney is a contradiction in terms, a walking corpse.

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A lot of people are having a hard time wrapping their head around women dying and fascism taking over?

I mean, I know that's (STILL) one of the talking points coming out of the mouths of a Democrat party that has gone into full defensive mode.

But last I checked, DT was president for four years, and women weren't dying, and fascism didn't take over.

That kind of "concern" and hyperbole was exactly what DIDN'T work in this election. But if the Dems keep playing that card, it will be tough times ahead. Because people weren't buying it.

People were too concerned with their own place in this world and how to make ends meet. And they saw that the last four years have't been good for them. Democrats have policies that make life more expensive for everyone. And the people who they pander to the most were among those who were having the toughest time. And those citizens are left with nothing but the thought that these people say they care about us, but then do nothing but pass legislation that makes my life tougher.

If DT can get things right, it will really make the Dems path tougher. DT needs to filter what he says a bit, and let his successes do the talking.

We've seen two recent elections where the opposing party didn't even have to focus on policy. They just let the media sit and wait for DT to say something controversial. This allowed them to NOT talk about their candidates policies (or lack thereof) and focus on the words of the other guy.

Reason #4458

We are reclaiming Veterans Day for our martyrs as we refuse to honor the US War Machine. Come read a martyr's story and plant a poppy in their memory. When the Zionist entity is working to destroy a people, to remember is to resist.


We must center the people who we are fighting for, and remember what we are pushing for: divestment at Columbia, and the total liberation of Palestinians.

https://instagr.am/p/DCKKOrLxiRM

Whiskey Pete said:

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Porteroso said:

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A lot of good observations, but there were ultimately 14 million fewer votes cast this election, and a few that voted for Biden voted for Trump this time around. Harris not only failed to motivate Democrats to vote who voted in 2020 for an old man with dementia, but her main strategy of appealing to independents seemed to be not being named Donald Trump, and backing off entirely on the stances and rhetoric that once got her named the most progressive politician in D.C.

And so she was left with nothing but empty platitudes. An inability to connect with working class America, because in order to be electable, she really had to pretend to be something she wasn't. And American saw right through it.

I still maintain that the race was always hers to lose. She had an incredible amount of built in support. She was running against one of the most hated American politicians ever. The media framed this as a battle of life v death, democracy v fascism. And yet she lost. This will be studied for a long time, because many won't be able to get their heads around Americans voting for women dying and fascism taking over. We can all think of many factors, but in the end, I think all we can say for sure, is Democrats didn't buy into her, and they showed that by not voting; and neither did independents/centrists, and they showed that by breaking out of demographics and class to vote for Trump.

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This election was never hers to lose.

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. dems be like..

4th and Inches said:

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Whiskey Pete said:

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Porteroso said:

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A lot of good observations, but there were ultimately 14 million fewer votes cast this election, and a few that voted for Biden voted for Trump this time around. Harris not only failed to motivate Democrats to vote who voted in 2020 for an old man with dementia, but her main strategy of appealing to independents seemed to be not being named Donald Trump, and backing off entirely on the stances and rhetoric that once got her named the most progressive politician in D.C.

And so she was left with nothing but empty platitudes. An inability to connect with working class America, because in order to be electable, she really had to pretend to be something she wasn't. And American saw right through it.

I still maintain that the race was always hers to lose. She had an incredible amount of built in support. She was running against one of the most hated American politicians ever. The media framed this as a battle of life v death, democracy v fascism. And yet she lost. This will be studied for a long time, because many won't be able to get their heads around Americans voting for women dying and fascism taking over. We can all think of many factors, but in the end, I think all we can say for sure, is Democrats didn't buy into her, and they showed that by not voting; and neither did independents/centrists, and they showed that by breaking out of demographics and class to vote for Trump.

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This election was never hers to lose.

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. dems be like..

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LOL! Yep, it's like they think they have a 10 second car when in reality it's just a stock 1976 Ford Pinto with after market glass packs

Matt Taibbi on how Dems lost Joe Rogan: pic.twitter.com/JP403DQoZv

— Coddled affluent professional (@feelsdesperate) November 11, 2024

Fascinating read from @NateSilver538 on psychological profiles between Rs and Ds and response to disagreement. It's consistent with public opinion data about speech and social media behavior pic.twitter.com/RtGW0RiY6p

— Emily Ekins (@emilyekins) November 12, 2024