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Harris' Messaging problem
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Great. Glad to see that we're learning nothing here. If I wasn't pushed into despair by the election results, seeing progressives respond this way to the loss might push me over the edge.
We are a bigoted country, no doubt. But, our working class is struggling. People are inherently good, inherently bad, brilliant, dumb, and all sorts of combinations of those. Material conditions, messaging, and framing all work together in bringing out these different sides of ourselves both at the societal and individual level.
Responding to this loss with "the only way to win is to be racist" is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right. If we decide to roll over and die because we're too chickenshit to fight, too cynical to have any imagination, and too self-pitying to even lift a finger, the most vulnerable of us (which includes me) will perish.
We HAVE to be better than this.
These aren't progressives. These are liberals. These are the same people who, when they were told 8 years ago that economic anxiety made voters turn to Trump, mocked them, saying, "Oh, I guess the economy made them racist!"
Yeah, racism and misogyny played a huge role in this election, but people don't vote for a guy who promises to burn everything down when they're doing well. I'd have thought this time, given that the Democrats lost ground with both black and Latino voters, they might finally have to acknowledge that their failures are due to more than just bigotry. I'm starting to doubt that, though...
I’m can only follow this logic so far though. The problem is they are better off, the economy is better, but how do you get people to see it, believe it?
The obvious example is inflation, not that President really has much control over it. We’ve gone through a wave of inflation, triggered by causes during the previous president’s term. It generally trended down during Biden’s term and is now close to what we’d normally expect.
many people see the accumulated inflation of four years during Biden term and are frustrated by how much more expensive everything is
another perspective is inflation was triggered in Trump’s term, it took four years to get under control, now people voted to do it all over again rather than stay the course that got it under control. Staying the course is boring
Analyzing the economy is a measure of how well the capitalist engine is running. Is the supply being met by demand (perpetually rising GDP)? Is everyone contributing to growth (low unemployment, growing market caps)? To focus on these points is capitalism, what the corporations want. This is necessarily paired with trickle-down economics to explain why you should give a shit about stocks you don't own going up.
You won't ever see measures of the economy focusing on people. Are the workers able to pay rent and bills and contribute to savings? Are workers going hungry? Does the minimum wage provide an acceptable minimum standard of living? Are wages keeping up with inflation? Are workers accumulating their own wealth? To focus on these points is populism, what the people want.
The economy is doing great! Corporations are posting record profits every quarter. But workers are getting fucked harder every year. People are mad because their life isn't easy and they can't afford a stable existence. When lots of people are unhappy, they want drastic action. 20k on a 500k house and a child care credit ain't it. Deporting 20,000,000 people and "draining the swamp" is drastic. It's objectively stupid, but at least it's action and people are thirsty for anything because what we're currently doing isn't working.
If anyone wants to win the next election, all they need is a populist platform. For Dems, that's progressivism and an infatuation with unions. It's us (the people) against them (the corporations). For Rs, it's a straightforward culture war. It's us (the true patriots) against them (the social outgroups).
Some of the most important measures of the economy are focussed on people. There’s a huge industry to measuring inflation as literally the costs that people bear, and yes there are various measures of income, typical families, job trends. How can anyone miss the concern over the last decade or so about the growth of low paying service jobs over better paying more specialized jobs?
“Draining the swamp” is surely one of the catchiest of many catchy slogans coined by Trump. We’re all frustrated about how much of our income disappears into government especially when we don’t understand where it goes. But the goal people think they’re voting for is entirely inconsistent with gutting agencies that help them, with the rampant cronyism, corruption, corporatism. Essentially every fact and four years of experience show the reality as entirely the opposite to the myth.
But yeah, I see the need for populism. Clinton had it, Obama had it, but so many Democrats can’t get across the finish line without it, regardless of intentions or capability. I had a lot of hope for Harris and Walz as campaigns built their popular images, but then it fizzled
The thing is they're not. Yes, inflation is down, but that doesn't mean that prices are going down. It means that the rate increase goes down. So if you were living paycheck to paycheck in 2019, you are doing objectively worse in 2024.
This isn't new either. Over the last 30 years, the middle class has collapsed, the cost of living has gone up, the bottom of the manufacturing industry has fallen out, and wages have remained stagnant. Sometimes when Democrats have power, things get marginally better, but it's more accurate to say that things get worse more slowly. Donald Trump promises radical change, and the Democrats don't. They can no longer survive on this impotent half-measures like subsidies for small business loans. They need something radical, like a New Deal, if they ever want to win again.
I understand simmering frustration, but yes: we had gradual change happening, but fell for the emotional outrage, the promise of radical change. And this is despite all evidence of how much is false or inconsistent, how much will be completely ignored, and above all else how much will make things worse for most of us. Potentially much worse
Yeah, to be absolutely clear, Trump's change is a lie and he will be objectively worse for everyone on everything (unless you are very, very wealthy). I also think things would start to improve for the working class gradually if the voters had given Harris another four years. But the losses to the working class have been huge, and the recovery is always anemic, so things are usually a net loss for people.
Look at the Obama administration; he decided to bail out banks instead of homeowners after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. People argue over whether or not that was the right move (and for the record, I think that was a really fucking bad move), but pretty much everyone agrees that the recovery that he created was pretty slow. The economy did recover though, and by the end of his term, it was actually very strong. Now, if you were someone who weathered the crisis alright, great, you're 401K got better! But if you lost your home in the mortgage crisis, got laid off, lost your life savings...that slow recovery killed you, and when Democrats start telling you that the economy is good, you're gonna wonder what the fuck they're talking about.
By making sure they can buy groceries.
The economy is not better off in the lower half.
And the joke is that Dems will still lose on these terms, because they are already branded the Woke party. Might as well try and out-racist the KKK as the GOP. It's not a race Dems are in a position to win. All they can do is shed even more of their base to Jill Stein and Uncommitted.
What's hilarious is the Dems are branded as woke not because of their politicians but because of their average voters are. You can convince a conservative voter that a (D) politician is not woke but they still won't vote for him because only woke people vote (D). Dems would have to purge some of their most fanatical supporters to win those conservative votes.
Imagine suggesting the Democrats tell people with the "In this house we believe..." signs to take those signs down. For some reason people are taking this suggestion seriously instead of immediately dismissing it as either inane babbling or deliberate sabotage.
That appears to be exactly what they did, as of last week
The response by so many people has been pathetic. Liberals are learning nothing.
But they picked up the coveted Cheney bloc!
They actually performed worse with republicans than in 2020 lol.
The liberals in control are paid not too.
If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men
Older white men were the demographic that stayed home because they didn't want to vote for a woman who had identical policies to the man they previously voted for.
Pretending like white men sat out exclusively because of "inflation" while no other demographic did is probably not the takeaway
That being said we absolutely need to kill the Duopoly, hopefully a third progressive party can exist with the Dems sucking corporate cock
I keep telling myself I won't comment on political posts, and yet here I go again.
If we stop looking at non-voters, and start actually looking at voters, you'll see that Trump gained support among both women and non-white voters. Why is nobody asking about that? I would rather they have stayed home than given Trump the extra vote, but all you hear about now is low turn out in white men. She lost in almost every bloc because she didn't inspire any of the dem base. High turnout skews dem and she was just not an inspiring candidate.
Kamala had no time to campaign, was an unknown to voters despite being the VP, made no strides to distance herself from Biden, and failed to run a cohesive strategy. People just were not excited to vote for her. Do I think a popularity contest is the best way to elect the president, no, but that doesn't change the system that we have.
The race was extremely close, and the fact that Trump GAINED in POC and women blocs probably speaks more to the campaign that was run rather than America's inherent sexism or racism. Just to be clear, America is sexist and racist, and people can be self hating or whatever, but she GAINED points in the white male category and lost in the black male category. Sure, white men should have shown up, but it's very easy to cry "racism/sexism" if you ignore all the other people who didn't show up or the people who DID show up and voted trump. She might've run as well as she could have, but it was a bad campaign.
There was a 5% loss in young voters. I wonder how energized they would have been not just to vote but to donate and volunteer had she run a different campaign. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback, but Joe ruined the chances of a dem winning this year.
If dems still want to blame racism/sexism, then I don't want to see any dems support POC/women in primaries. Dems should only run white males and if I see a POC/woman being pushed again I will assume they want to sabotage that year. I expect "I'm not voting for a POC/woman candidate" to be a well regarded and widespread dem opinion for practicality sake. Either stop running them ever, or admit they can win with better campaign strategies. You can't have it both ways.
Going off these numbers: https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turnout-election-demographics-trump-harris/3762138/
There was also a significant portion of black men who voted Trump because they were misogynists. It's just a fact.
But that's still not discounting the fact that someone with Bernie's message and goals would have won in a landslide.
I can't speak to the misogyny, but to your second point, I try so hard to not mention him because your opinion gets disregarded in dem spaces as soon as you bring him up. He did everything right and dems would rather lose than actually be progressive.
Jill Stein won 22% of the vote in the fiercely contested city of Dearborn, Michigan, according to a projection from NBC.
Kamala Harris won 28%, while Donald Trump won 47%, according to unofficial results from the city clerk, reported by the network.
Metro Detroit is home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large proportion of them living in Dearborn. The city—which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin in 2020—has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Third party canidates did not receive enough votes to sway anything this election.
If every third party voter voted dem nothing would be different
The biggest spike was in non-voters. Around 16M - overwhelmingly Dems - stayed home between 2020 and 2024.
Dems were successful in scaring voters off the Green Party. Greens got 1.4M voters in 2016 and a mere 636k voters in 2024.
But that was just a tiny slice of the overall atrophy of progressive support.
Socialism or Barbarism... We're making a choice
Sorry, can I have a source for this? How could they determine the gender of non-voters?
Who you voted for is secret but that you voted is public information. I haven't heard if it was predominantly white men who sat it out, but that wouldn't be hard data to gather.
I’ve been searching, and can only find that non-voters are racially diverse.
Older white man here. I stayed home because of Gaza. I have 3 progressive friends who say the exact same thing. None of us are Muslim, and we're all white and older.
By the way:
Democrats had bet on women showing up in force. They didn’t https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e8z53qyd5o
Well all the Palestinians are dead for sure now
Good job idiot
I disagree with your sides talking point that Biden and Harris were doing anything for Palestinians or were about to. And Harris could have stopped the weapons shipments in the last few days of the election and gotten the progressive votes she needed. She opted not to and chose defeat.
Whatever you need to tell yourself.
They're all dead now
Its this sort of fantasy nonsense that lost the election. It obviously doesnt work, and you should stop.
Nobody is saying that.
I mean... it's hard to interpret "the problem is her messaging is she didnt come across as a white man with grievances..." as anything but claiming sexism and racism. There's hyperbole there, but blaming the loss on those factors assumes that people couldn't have possibly abstained from voting, or voted against her without those factors. I don't believe that's the case.
Too frequently we call people these things and basically lock them out of discussion. For example, if you called me a racist, I'd no longer trust anything else you said to me because I know myself and clearly you like telling people things you know nothing about. I think that exchange happened with a bunch of people, which is why there were so many people who just assumed many of the things said about Trump were just political lies made to discredit him. After they experienced the same hyperbole themselves.
That said... theres alot of bigots out there too.
I think you're right.
To be fair, you and the other commenter just did.
It is clearly a joke aimed at the futility of trying to capitulate to reactionaries by becoming reactionary