My point is that calling for peace doesn't necessarily mean very much unless there's terms and/or a plan for how to bring people to the table if they don't want to cooperate.
Objection
joined 6 months ago
Quick question, how do you feel about Trump talking about immediately ending the war in Ukraine?
Words and speeches are completely meaningless unless that is addressed
But your proposal above, for Harris, is just more mere words: “Harris could have said”
That's why I used the word, "unless." If the words are addressing that point, then they're meaningful, but as long as they aren't, they are not.
On here we completely disagree. “I will stop the Gaza war by any means necessary.” seems like a pretty big indication.
Does it now? There are lots of ways to stop a war, for example, by destroying the other side's willingness or capability to keep fighting. You know, like Trump said, "finish the job," and then there won't be any more fighting because one side would all be dead. You're choosing to interpret it to mean what you want it to mean, and a supporter of Israel would interpret it to mean what they want it to mean, typical equivocation with no indication of what it actually means in practical terms.
What you don't understand is that politicians are most responsive to voters in the lead-up to an election. After they get elected, then they've already gotten the votes they needed, so they can focus more on lobbyists and corporate donors. That's why there is zero chance that she would've become more pro-Palestinian when in office, because the voters are far more favorable to Palestine than the donors and lobbyists are.
Yes, Clinton got fewer total votes in a lower turnout election, but by every other metric the election was less bad than this one was for Harris, whether we look at the EC or votes compared to the other side.
As for Gaza, there is one very simple and straightforward action that Biden could have taken (or still could actually) or that Harris could have said she'll do: place conditions on arms shipments to Israel (or even just stop them entirely). Refusing to do that is a complete endorsement of Israel's actions. Like I said, it's like saying that you disapprove of a mass shooter's actions while handing him another clip. Words and speeches are completely meaningless unless that is addressed, all she ever said was essentially, "Wouldn't it be nice if they could resolve their differences without fighting? But of course I fully support Israel's right to defend itself and will keep arming them unconditionally." There is no indication that she would've been at all willing to take meaningful action.
It used to be the case that politicians would promise to do good things, and then maybe sometimes they'd actually keep their promises. Nowadays they don't even promise anything and people just convince themselves they'll do what they want regardless. Like, even if she had said that she'd stop shipments, sure I would support her, but it would not be entirely unreasonable to question whether she'd follow through. But in the case where she couldn't even say it, the chances of her doing it are basically zero.
You’ll have to explain this. Based on the other speculative posted I referenced earlier, in terms of the popular vote it seems like Harris will have more than Clinton did in 2016 and only be short by a few million compared to Biden. If you look at EC numbers, Harris had more than Clinton, and the 2016 winner and the 2020 winner won by more than 300, while this year the number fell short of that.
No, the number did not fall short of that, it's just that Arizona and Nevada have not been called for Trump yet, but they will be soon. At that point, the electoral map will look exactly the same as 2016 except that Clinton won Nevada, which Kamala is losing. And Clinton won the popular vote while Kamala lost it. So yes, it is pretty objectively a worse result than 2016.
The only thing I was wrong about was that it wasn't just 20 years. We actually have to go all the way back to 1988 to see a result this bad for the democrats, an election where George H.W. Bush won California.
I can give you a longer list if you like, of all the former Republican politicians who have gone on the record for supporting Harris. It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s fair to say it wasn’t enough, but it’s more ridiculous to say it was just one person when we know the real number is at least more than an order of magnitude greater.
An order of magnitude greater than 1 is 10. That's still completely insignificant, obviously. Individual politicians don't matter unless they draw in constituencies (and don't alienate other constituencies), which did not materialize.
I have nothing to back this up, but I had a feeling that once Harris was elected, actual action would eventually have been taken. She just couldn’t say anything but empty words prior to election day to avoid losing the Jewish bloc - but based on what we now know of the overall vote, it seems like that was a risk she should have taken.
This is essentially a conspiracy theory. It's no different from QAnon people explaining away anything Trump does that they don't like by saying that he had to say it to appease the deep state and get elected, TRUST THE PLAN. It's completely baseless cope and every piece of actual evidence clearly contradicts it.
But even if it were true it doesn't matter in the context of assessing why she lost, because there was no possible way for voters alienated by her public stance to know that she was lying and secretly on their side.
That’s exactly what Harris tried to do
No no no. You cut off major parts of what I said. The only similarity is, "We're going to make the economy better going forward" which every politician ever is going to say.
You do acknowledge the main point afterward though. I think we're in agreement on it being a mistake for her to not distance herself from Biden and not sufficiently acknowledge people's economic problems.
I would love nothing more than for this to be true and to hit that one RFK fan we have on lemmy with it, but the article doesn't really give much evidence to support the title.
I'm open to the idea that there were other mistakes made, but ideally the list of this should at least be spelled out.
I've been talking about the problems the whole time.
Well, 2020 was not a normal primary, with “electability” being too much of a concern
Kamala was the media's preferred candidate and was widely treated as a frontrunner but mismanaged her campaign to the point of dropping out before a single vote was cast. Voters weren't the problem here, as nobody ever got a chance to vote for her in the first place because of her bungled campaign.
the GOP won most of the battleground Senate races to take majority control over the Senate
There's a difference between taking majority control over the Senate and winning most of the battleground states. Republicans flipped four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana. West Virginia and Montana are both solidly red states, and it wasn't very realistic that the democrats would ever hold either with the shift towards political polarization. The Republicans really just won two battleground states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the PA race was extremely close. Democrats, meanwhile, won Michigan and Wisconsin, and are ahead in Arizona and Nevada. Democrats won most of the battleground senate races, it's just that the senate seats up for reelection were favorable to Republicans. Looking just at the senate races, it was a pretty respectable result for the democrats, it could have been a lot worse - this despite the fact that Kamala got the worst result of any Dem candidate since 20 years ago.
This is another puzzling point.
It's not puzzling at all. Many Latinos have conservative social values, but in the past they were willing to look past that because there was a substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats on the issue, and they could be convinced that Trump's focus on immigration was racist. When the democrats dropped that and adopted right-wing positions on immigration, that reason disappeared.
The problem is that you have these deep rooted lesser-evilist brainworms that don't actually reflect reality. Everything would make more sense if you ripped them out and stopped looking at things from that perspective and assuming everyone else sees things that way.
I mean we know some did, since they told us. Liz Cheney for example voted Harris.
That is literally one person. A person who does not in any way reflect a significant constituancy of voters. What a ridiculous argument.
Of course one of the most prominent issues was Gaza, but I’d argue that even here the concerns weren’t dismissed, not with Harris saying that she will not be silent on human suffering in Gaza as per https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-tailors-ad-messaging-on-gaza-israel-to-sway-michigan-pennsylvania-voters/ar-AA1toi71 - but this message simply was not strong enough.
That statement and a quarter will by you a piece of gum.
She was always very clear on supplying arms to Israel completely unconditionally. Nobody gives a shit about sweet talk, we wanted actual material action. It's like handing a mass shooter another clip while asking him politely to pretty please stop and saying that you disapprove of what he's doing and by the way there's more ammo where that came from if he'd like to keep going.
The message wasn't strong enough because it was bullshit.
But as VP Harris probably couldn’t have divorced herself from the economy.
I disagree. To some extent, sure, she's be associated with it, but she could have at least tried to distance herself from it. Hell, she could've said something like, "Look, the economy's not great, but that's because we were recovering from COVID. We had to make the best of a bad situation. But going forward, things will be different, before we were merely mitigating the damage, but now, with your support, we can begin building towards a future that will be brighter than ever. We are going to [policy X, Y, and Z]." Instead the messaging was more along the lines of, "The economy is great, actually, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sow discord and get Trump elected."
Democrats have this pathological inability to self-criticize, accept fault, or just awknowledge problems, and Kamala was a particularly bad example of this. It alienates people and speaks to a lack of confidence. What harm would there be in distancing herself, at least a little, from Joe Biden? Is it going to hurt Biden's future career prospects?
I think we are agreed on this point - had an actual primary taken place, that weakness would have been exposed, and someone other than Harris - who could more easily distance themselves from the most disliked parts and policies of the Biden-Harris administration - could have carried the torch, improving the odds of a win.
Yes, that is one point of agreement.
Yeah pretty much. 2016 was crazier than this one for sure. This one didn't have a competitive primary on either side, and it was predicted as a toss-up whereas in 2016 every poll and media outlet was saying it was impossible for Trump to win, and there was no precedent to predict what would happen when he was in office. This is like, after people have had eight years to come to terms with Trump being a thing in whatever form that looks like. The general trend though is that things are getting crazier, and that trend is likely to continue.
That's exactly what you said and nobody is playing the victim here.
This mentality is what the Dems keep applying and it doesn't work. Trying to shame people into voting isn't an effective message. You can argue that it should be, but what matters is how things actually are and how a party can act most effectively based on that. It's either adapt or keep railing against reality and lose.