Chrkeller said:
Surveys, having done a bunch myself, depend on how the question is asked and how well the sample distribution represents population distribution. Not something I would hang my hat on. Plus gross over interpretation. If 53% voted favorable, the means 47%, at best are neutral (e.g. not a selling point). Last I checked 47% is a huge percentage. Also I'm talking about feelings in middle America, not general America. Middle America is where most swing states are. But fine. For the sake of argument. 1) great platform that the majority love 2) great job of talking to the people and cascading messages Yet lost on ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT. LOST THE POPULAR VOTE. DID NOT WIN A SINGLE SWING STATE. Please explain how this is rational thinking. And people got dumber from 2020 to 2024 is an asinine position. I would love for someone to actually try to address the points above. I've mentioned it many times and nothing but crickets. Which tells me everything I need to know. You all don't have an explanation and refuse to do any reasonable analysis because of herd mentality. Edit I'm not being entirely fair. Machiavellian and Zorg have provided additional rationale, so credit to them. |
You’re right that “people are dumb” is a lazy answer but so is your rebuttal that Dems lost because their policies/platform are unpopular. If that were the case then Dems wouldn’t have done as well as they did in 2018/2020/2022.
Republicans had a trifecta then in 2018 Dems had a blue wave midterm where they picked up over 40 House, in 2020 they won the presidency while picking up Senate seats and retaining the House then in 2022 they had one of the best midterm performances for an incumbent party in modern history. Also, while Harris lost all of the swing states, Dems won 6 of the 7 swing state Senate races.
So just like people didn’t all of a sudden get dumber from 2020 to 2024, they also didn’t go from loving the dem platform in 2018-2022 to all of a sudden hating it in 2024. The reason Dems did poorly is going to be a lot more nuanced than either of those things and voters aren’t a monolith so the reason why someone switched parties or sat out entirely is going to vary from person to person.
-Some put a line in the sand over Gaza and refused to vote for anyone that would continue to enable Netanyahu.
-Some felt betrayed at the party over the perceived coverup of Biden’s declining health, Harris being his VP was considered complicit in this.
-By the time he dropped out, Biden was historically unpopular and some felt Harris didn’t do enough to differentiate herself from him.
-Some didn’t like her campaigning alongside Liz Cheney and felt she was doing too much to appeal to Republicans rather than exciting the Dem base.
-Some fell for the Republican propaganda about Democrats caring more about illegal immigrants and transgender people than the struggles of average working class people.
-High inflation in 2022/2023 put a large economic burden on working/middle class Americans and while things had steadily improved in the year leading up to the election, it was too little too late. As we talked about with people being uninformed, most people didn’t know or care what caused inflation, Dems were in charge when it happened, therefore they were seen as responsible.
-One thing I feel that gets overlooked is that a bunch of Covid relief programs expired in 2022/2023 and to the uninformed voter, this was seen as Biden cutting support for them. Some examples are student loans payments restarting, expanded monthly child tax credit expiring, expanded SNAP benefits expiring, people getting kicked off Medicaid once the National Health Emergency expired. Losing benefits at the same time as high inflation was a double whammy of economic hardship.
-Trump cozied up to and was supported by tech bros/crypto bros/manosphere influencers which caused young men in particular to shift to the right.
-Dems stick too close to traditional news media like cable (CNN/MSNBC), broadcast (ABC/NBC/CBS) & print media (NYT/WaPo) and these are all in decline which has caused Dems to struggle in getting their message out to people who don’t follow politics.
-The surge of asylum seekers did legitimately cause a strain on communities and Dems were slow to react, even among people who aren’t anti-immigrant, they were seen as being too lax on border enforcement.
That is 10 potential reasons that explain why Dems lost in 2024 that aren’t “people are dumb” or “people don’t like Dem policies”.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
