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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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I'm skeptical she would have done anything differently than Biden in terms of Gaza. There was plenty of polling out saying that voters, especially potential Democratic voters, overwhelmingly would favor her more if she differentiated herself on Gaza. Once she got the nomination locked, there was nothing really stopping her from making some changes. Yeah, Biden would not have liked it, but what was he going to do, endorse Trump? Plus, he didn't actually spend that much time campaigning. And as unpopular as Biden was, his endorsement really didn't mean much.
My point is that Kamala had everything to gain and nothing to lose by changing her Gaza stance. She chose not to because she didn't want to offend some very wealthy conservative donors. In the end, it didn't matter. She still massively outspent Trump, just like Hillary did. What Democrats can't realize is that fundraising dollars are less important than actual appeals to voters. Yes, fundraising is critical. But passed a certain point, ads lose their effectiveness. Once you've already spent a billion dollars, everyone has already made up their mind. At that point, it's more about getting out your base. And the problem for Democrats is that the same policies that will make them very popular to wealthy donors also make them unpopular to the voters they actually need to win over to win at the national level.
Democrats should just focus on appealing to actual voters and forget the donor class entirely. They have proven that they can raise more than enough money in small-dollar donations to produce all the messaging they need.
Kamala wouldn't have changed Biden's positions because the only logical time to change your policies to appeal to voters is when you actually need to appeal to voters. I could see Kamala telling voters she'll confront Israel, then turning her back on that plan after the election to appease donors, but there's no reason she would change her policies after the point such a policy shift could actually help her. Donor dollars can come in at any time, but voters are only important during the campaign season.
trump: "I'm going to fix everything for you and lower all you costs without any knock on consequences to you of the working class."
DNC: "It is not nearly that simply, but I'm going to do what I can to improve your lives"
A GOP lie is cheaper than a DNC truth.
Then you run on:
"I'm going to establish national single-payer healthcare!"
"I'm going to break up the big grocery stores that are responsible for all the inflation!"
"I'm going to reign in and break up big tech!"
"My opponent wants to exterminate the Palestinians, and I will save them!"
"My opponent is a trans porn addict and is obsessed with them because of this. That's why he's always talking about trans people! It's weird as fuck!"
As a politician, exaggeration and making promises you know are a stretch are fine. You are a politician, not a journalist. It's OK to claim things that are aspirational.
This is what's killing modern democrats. Trump is not afraid to state his ideal vision for the world and promise to fight for it, knowing full well he won't even achieve half of it. Meanwhile, Democrats come up with these convoluted, slimy, meek programs that are dense tomes of policy papers only a few beltway consultants know or understand.
trump presented no concrete approaches except "tariffs". Its easy to promise when there's few to offend.
And now you've alienated the powerful healthcare lobby
And now you've alienated the powerful agribusiness
And now you've alienated the powerful tech companies
And now you've alienated the powerful Pro-Israel groups
You could do all of this if you run as a powerful populist with a very engaged electorate. This last election showed that the electorate wasn't engaged.
This is surrendering before the fight has even begun. And that surrendering is why centrist democrats lose. Those powerful interests can bitch all they want. Will it cost you donors? Sure. But Kamala and Hillary both massively outraised Trump, and look at what good it did them.
What centrist muppets fail to recognize is that fundraising isn't everything, especially on national races. Or more precisely, there is such a thing as marketing saturation. At some point, you've convinced everyone that can be convinced, reached everyone that can be reached. And the level of fundraising necessary to achieve that saturation is a level that can be achieved with small dollar individual donations.
Trump ran on, and won on, a promise to deport 20 million people. You think the businesses that profit from illegal immigration might put up some resistance to that? Take a look at Trump's platform
That would doubtlessly anger the industries that depend on migrant labor.
See above.
That would require price controls or anti-monopoly actions, which big retailers would oppose.
The electric car and renewable power companies aren't going to like that at all.
Those jobs were outsourced in order to make high profits; the companies doing the outsourcing will oppose this.
Why give dollars to workers, when you could give them to wealthy and powerful interests? This is going to make some wealthy people mad.
I could go on. Trump ran on the message of a populist, and he won. He ran on things that would anger a large number of very wealthy people and corporations if implemented. His number one issue, illegal immigration? Aside from a the Border Patrol union, what powerful interest will actually benefit from mass deportation? Maybe the private prison companies will make some cash, but there are far more wealthy donors who benefit from illegal immigration than would benefit by mass deportation.
Trump promised all sorts of things. He promised things that his base wanted and that many corporations oppose. They're things that I find abominable, but it's what his base wants. And that is ultimately why he won.
Weren't both Obama and Biden both Centrist democrats? If they lose how do you account for 12 years of the presidency. Even if we count the new trump presidency, that still means 66% of the last 24 years (counting until 2028 now) has been Centrist Democrats. If anything, your logic says that Centrist democrats win more often than not using this method.
Worldwide, we're seeing electorates that are rejecting establishment candidates. It's been that way since at least 2016, and really since the start of and response to the Great Recession. Obama ran as an outsider. He governed as a centrist, but he didn't really run as one initially. And Biden only won because of the pandemic. If it weren't for the pandemic, Trump would have won in 2020.
Agreed. Bidens history as a legislator is actually pretty loathsome. Its some sort of miracle that he was elected the first time.
Obama campaigned on a platform of change. He promised healthcare and (very importantly at that time) to pull troops from Iraq/Afghanistan. His campaign was very aspirational, even if his first term in office was not. That campaign won in Indiana and Ohio, to give an idea of the popularity of these ideas. Biden won by a very small nr of voters in the swing states running against a (at that time) very unpopular president.
I find your fear of alienating monied groups to be troubling considering the outcome of standing with them was losing the election and the electorate longer term.
Also some of those groups like the "powerful Pro-Israel groups" are ethically indefensible, and standing with them should have been a no-go from the first milisecond based on principle.
If you think the DNC is doing what it can to improve people's lives then you either live in a different universe or haven't been keeping up with politics the last few decades.
The ACA, IRA, the largest gun control bill in 30 years, DACA, CARD act, Fair Pay act, repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, Juneteenth Nationally Act, Honoring out Pact Act, Respect for Marriage Act, Student Loan relief
All of these in the last 2 decades by DNC. Which one of those are you saying shouldn't have been passed?
thats a pretty meager list for 20 years. They also Lost abortion, lost the courts, lost on progressive taxation, committed war crimes, expanded the police state, and faild to improve the minimum wage, and expanded the number of working poor.
That's not an exhaustive list, just long enough to show that "Dems never improve anyone's life" is just nonsense. And further, most of the things you go on to complain about them not doing are things they tried to do that got blocked by obstructionist Republicans.
Likewise, but I also think there is a reason why we are seeing Israeli politicians talking about potentially annexing North Gaza and the West Bank now, after the election, and not 6 months ago.
Despite the multiple "lines in the sand" that have been crossed, I feel like Harris and Biden still had a breaking point with Israel, and maybe that breaking point could be moved closer to reason with continued pressure. I don't know, I hate working in maybes.
But there aren't even any maybes with Trump. He simply couldn't care less what Netanyahu wants to do. Had he not been elected, and had Israel felt their ongoing support was a bit more conditional, I'm not sure we'd have these same sorts of plans being made by them. At least not so overtly
The timing of all this, as well as multiple conversations with Trump right after the election, can't be coincidence. It suggests a green light was given, which would mean there was still caution while it was uncertain who would be in office.
We'll never know now.
But they were openly talking about annexing North Gaza and the West Bank 6 months ago
Except publicly undermining foreign diplomacy and presenting a national security risk by contradicting the President while secret negotiations are taking place. Which isn't nothing.
By that logic nobody would be allowed to run on foreign policy.
Nobody in the administration who's actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations during wartime, no.
I didnt say she couldn't discuss foreign policy. She just can't publicly condemn her boss while his surrogates are negotiating to end a conflict.
They really aren't negotiating an end to the conflict though. That's the problem. Biden wasn't seriously trying to end the conflict, as he isn't using to use a single ounce of US leverage to force Israel to the table. The Gazans are being massacred; they have plenty of incentive to come to the table and negotiate in good faith. The Israelis currently have zero incentive. Their territory is expanding while their adversaries are being exterminated; they're doing great by this conflict. Israel has zero reason to come to the table, and the talks are just stall tactics and charades.
You state things unequivocally that you cannot possibly know and have no evidence to support, so it would be futile to try to evidence you out of that opinion. If you know everything about what's happening in secret, then your powers are truly impressive.
I'm not claiming things I have no evidence for. The Biden administration has repeatedly and explicitly refused to make any US aid to Israel contingent on any improvement on the situation in Gaza.
The Biden administration has openly refused calls to use US aid as leverage against Israel, and all you can do is wave your hands and say, "hrr, umm, actually, you can't know what went on behind the scenes, so maybe Biden did do that, but we just have no evidence of that."
You are asking me to prove a negative. You are demanding that I prove that Biden HASN'T secretly used US leverage to rein in Israel. That is not how this works. If you want to claim that the US actually has tried to put the screws on Israel, YOU need to produce some evidence of that claim. So far, a least according to everything publicly available from all sources, Biden has given Israel a complete blank check. If you want to claim something contrary to all evidence, then you need to supply that evidence.
After all, it's also possible that the Gazans aren't being killed by Israel at all. Maybe the Martians are just coming and abducting all the Palestinians to Mars. And we don't see the Martians, because they're invisible. You have no evidence that there AREN'T Martians killing all the Gazans, so I guess it would be foolish to write off the idea.
She didn't have to condemn him, she could have just said "I feel we should be doing more and take a firmer stance saying that genocide is not ok". Something as simple as that would have rallied a lot of the Arabs to her side.
I read this as almost exactly the same thing:
Something as simple as that obviously didn't work. I'm skeptical that your version would have moved the needle, and I'm sure she's under strict orders not to call it a "genocide", which is still and order from her boss, even if it's wrong.
The problem with it is that it was more or less the same thing Biden said and it's been abundantly clear Biden does not care for a ceasefire. The Arabs wanted more than that. They wanted her to admit that what Israel was doing in Gaza and Lebanon was wrong. They wanted her to say that she would take a firmer stance than Biden would on Israel. They didnt want her to say that she supports Israels right to defend itself, or for Tim Walz to say he supports Israels right to expand its borders, or even to campaign with Liz Cheney. The icing on the cake was Bill Clintons very stupid attempt to justify Israels killing of civilians a day or two before the election. What she said clearly wasn't enough and she repeatedly ignored them as well as the DNC actively trying to silence them.
I believe she did end up taking a slightly firmer stance a few days before the election, which is likely due to her not polling so well. I'm not sure if your quote is from that time or from before. But I think a lot of Arabs saw it as "too little, too late" kind of thing.
You'll get no argument from me there. She tried to thread the needle and wound up pissing off both sides she was trying to court, albeit for very different reasons. Given the dynamic, I'm not sure there's a message she could have put out that would have satisfied everyone, but I firmly believe she said as much as she could possibly say, and as delicately as she could possibly say it, to telegraph that she'd take a different approach once she was sworn in. It wasn't convincing to a huge swath of voters who've made clear they prefer Trump, but coming from someone whose job requires a lot of delicate public diplomacy even when I'm talking about something I disagree with to people I don't support, I saw the subtext very clearly. I'm sure she sees it the same way, but until we read her memoirs many years from now, I guess we'll never know.
I thought the same as well, for a time at least. I'm not sure if it was just me being hopeful or what. I got the impression that she was slightly more sympathetic to the whole situation than Biden was for sure though. That being said, I definitely think her stance hurt her more than helped her. There's polls saying she would have won a lot of votes in several swing states if she changed her stance. And we know that the war was unpopular with majority of Americans, especially Democrats. My guess is that lobbying money seemed to good to pass up. It's shitty that the world has to deal with a fascist wanna-be dictator because of these kinds of stupid situations and decisions.
I saw that data as well. I'm skeptical because the people clamoring for the pivot only ever wanted to talk about the votes she'd gain, but not the ones she'd lose by changing positions. Given the way a significant portion of the country shifted rapidly into defense mode after the pro-Palestine protests, and given how they recoiled en masse at the mere hint of antisemitism on University campuses, and given that Jewish swing state voters were already reeling about sanctions waivers for Iran, that pivot would most certainly have turned "reluctant Trump voters" into enthusiastic Trump voters, and likely pulled a few more undecideds across the fence. So in that case I find the "lobbying money" angle less salient than the voting bloc trade-offs that were probably flashing red lights for the campaign.
You bring up a good point regarding the Jewish voters but there's still strong evidence that claims she would have gained more than she would have lost. There's a lot of hypotheticals regarding this situation and some factors that don't come into play like the lobbying money that the Harris campaign would have lost and the crap Trump would have said (other than what he already did). So I'm sure we can talk about this topic for a very long time.
Aside from that, I just wanted to say that I remember you and I had a brief conversation in the Political Discussion community a few weeks back and you mentioned how much Trump and MAGA had affected your personal life. I just wanted to say I'm sorry you're going through this again and wish you the best, for whatever it's worth. Neither of us wanted another Trump presidency (and I'm not even American), and I hope the next 4 years are good to you.
It is worth noting that's only one survey by the Arab American Institute. I'm not saying they're biased, per se, but if I'm going to make a tectonic shift in my platform I'm going to do it based on multiple corroborating lines of evidence. Most of the times I saw that claim being made on Lemmy, all linked sources inevitably pointed back to that single survey, which makes drawing a firm conclusion more challenging. I'm more inclined to believe she was wedged between diametrically opposed constituencies and Netanyahu knowingly put her and Biden in checkmate because he knew they'd have to pick a side, and then lose to Trump.
In any case, hindsight is 20/20 and we'll never really get to test their theory. The AAI survey very well may have been correct, and the campaign misstep might go down as one of America's historic blunders.
Thank you. I have already started applying for remote jobs and making household preparations. Here's hoping I'm just being irrational and everything will be fine.
This is complete nonsense. The vice president isn't duty bound to never contradict the president, especially when running to succeed him. When a boss orders you to do something that's wrong, you can say no, particularly when you don't need the job anymore and are already applying for a better one.
Harris didn't say more on Gaza because she didn't want to, whether due to personal beliefs or because she for some reason thought it was a better electoral stance, not because of all-powerful orders from Joe Biden.
I love the world you guys have concocted in your heads where everything's made up and the points don't matter, so the VP can go rogue. This is a fascinating view into the civic literacy of the average American.
Deeply ironic post by someone who doesn't know the civics of the VP's office.
wishful thinking on your part.
I wonder if it would have been better for her to step down as VP when accepting the nomination. As a VP she couldn’t distinguish herself at all.
Sure she could have. VP cant be fired by the president and has no official duties beyond tie breaking in the senate. She didnt need to follow Bidens directions at all. Worst thing that could happen is that Biden could mean-girl it and ask some of his donors not to fund her. Thats about it.
You can be skeptical all you want, the votes speak for themselves and are all publicly available for you to look at. Biden was an anomaly going against his party.
What do you mean? Biden was an anomaly in his party by supporting a genocide. Harris was the same anomaly, as she stated she would continue Biden's policies with no changes whatsoever.
No she didn't? I do love me some revisionist history, though I think it's a bit soon for that.
What planet are you living on? This is the entire reason she lost. When asked what she would do differently from Biden, she responded:
https://www.cnn.com/politics/harris-2024-campaign-biden/index.html
She didn't want to change any of Biden's policies when it came to Israel. Do you have any evidence that she intended to? Because she certainly never stated as such as far as I'm aware.
In March 2024, she called for an immediate ceasefire, citing the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians and urging increased humanitarian aid to the region. Whitehouse.gov
Harris has also advocated for a two-state solution, envisioning a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, with Palestinian voices central to the peace process. She outlined five guiding principles for post-conflict Gaza: no forcible displacement, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism.
She also called for an immediate ceasefire and hostage deal on Colbert Vanity Fair and in Vogue.
What of those are actually new policies? Has Biden ever come out in favor of Israel annexing the West Bank, or in favor of forced displacement? Of course not. They're liberals, not Republicans. Centrist liberals like Biden and Harris want to talk, but that's all they want to do. There is nothing you cited there that hasn't been happily endorsed by liberals for decades, all while Israel tightens the screws on the Palestinians ever-tighter.
It's all meaningless words and platitudes. While she's SAID things that would be great to do, she has refused to actually use US leverage to DO any of those things. The Biden administration also talks about endorsing a two-state solution and all the things you mention. Again, Biden talks in fluffy glittering generalities when it comes to saving the Gazan people, but he refuses to actually back those words with actions.
What precisely, did Harris propose to actually achieve any of those things she's laid out? What leverage would she use to force Israel to accept these?