| sc94597 said: It isn't clear to me that policies are the issue and reason why Democrats lost. For the following reasons: 1. When doing blind studies Americans preferred Harris's policies. 2. In certain states, like Colorado, where the same or even more left-wing policies were messaged differently (framed as saving Americans money overall) Democrats over-performed. 3. We are seeing an anti-incumbency wave globally caused by inflation. Democrats were fighting an up-hill battle to win this election, being the incumbent party. They actually fared better than other incumbent parties globally, containing a lot of their losses. We already know that many working class people voted only on the presidential ticket for Trump for this single reason. That's why Democrats did relatively better in some of the down-ballot races than they did for the presidential election. See: Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and maybe even Pennsylvania (depending on how the last few counts and recount goes.)
4. In many states that rejected Democrats, progressive referendum showed majority support for their policies. For example, in Missouri a minimum wage of 15 dollars and an abortion protection amendment passed. In Florida a majority voted to legalize recreational marijuana and for a pro-abortion amendment, it didn't pass because the state requires 60% of the vote and the votes were in the low and high 50% respectively. In Arizona a pro-abortion amendment passed. 5. This election wasn't even about policy. Mid-term elections are the policy elections and Democrats have been doing much better in those lately. Neither candidate really talked too much about their policies, and the popular ones were adopted by both. Trump probably won this election for three main reasons: 1. inflation and the anti-incumbency wave across the globe caused by it, 2. he is charismatic and does better than the average GOP, people like his authoritarian brashness and anti-establishment pose, and 3. Harris focused too much on trying to secure the vote of a group that doesn't exist anymore (Bush Republicans/Neocons) rather than activating her base. She didn't lose because she is a woman or because she is a person of color either. Many women and people of color in the swing states out-performed her. Yes that is another thing that limits her ability to gather votes, but if #1, #2, and #3 didn't exist she probably would have won despite this. |
I have the "benefit" of participating in discussions in both fields, which allows me to have some kind of insight on what both sides think. My ignorant and non scientific view would be:
1) Inflation, Inflation, Inflation. I won't go into specifics as it would require a book instead of a post, but people cannot correlate the increase in GDP and low unemployment with the absurd loss of purchase power the average Joe suffered. A lot of economic growth has come from huge government spending and debt (since Obama 2 but it got much worse under Trump 1 and Biden) which creates inflation. Due to several factors, this does not necessarily reflects on the official government numbers, so Joe Doe looks at "official" inflation rates of 3% but his rent, food, gas, mortgage, everything is WAY more expensive than a few years ago, when Trump was in power. Saying "we have the strongest economy" or "USA GDP is really growing" says nothing to Joe Doe if now he needs to go into credit card debt to pay for everyday stuff.
2) Kamala is just absolutely horrible as a candidate, the worst in a LONG time from the democrat side, I seriously question how they could choose her. Probably identity politics but seriously, she is horrible.
3) Trump's drive, courage and charisma are just magnetic to a lot of voters which makes it almost impossible someone that voted trump in the past to change its vote. Love or hate the guy (I hate him), it is impressive what he's been through and still show such energy.
4) The left needs to stop saying 50% of the country is fascist (people dont even know what that means), neo-nazi, garbage people, or think they have possession over certain demographics. How can you make someone change their vote when you call them nazi, maybe the worst thing you can say about someone? It will be very difficult to win votes from the other side treating half the population this way. Because, in the end, you DO need to conquer part of the people on the other side.
