It's literally 2016 but worse somehow.
One source close to the Harris campaign tells Rolling Stone they reached out to several staffers in and around the campaign to voice concerns about the candidate embracing Dick and Liz Cheney.
“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” says the source, speaking about Dick Cheney. They say a Harris staffer responded that it was not the staff’s role to challenge the campaign’s decisions.
A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney — and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris — was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign.
Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.
Let’s see, so we’re blaming Biden for stepping aside too late, his advisors for not encouraging him to step aside, the DNC for not holding a second primary, and Harris for trying to get voters by reaching across the aisle.
Let’s for once try Occam’s Razor.
Can we just accept that more than half the ~~nation is~~ voters are racist, sexist, and bigoted, or at a minimum comfortable supporting racism, sexism, and bigotry? Because that’s the simplest explanation.
It certainly played a part, but no; half the nation isn't racist/sexist. A little over half the country voted. Of that, some portion of the people wanted Trump for non-sexist/racist reasons. They still might not be good reasons, just not that always. It's way less than half of the nation who voted for Trump, and significantly fewer who did it for racist/sexist reasons.
We have to deal with that issue in the US, and many others, but boiling it down to just that is wrong. It also pushes a narrative that we must not run people of color or women in the future, which I believe to be wrong.
We need to inspire people. That's where this campaign failed. It was almost entirely based on fear. This works much better for Republicans than Democrats. The Democrats thought they could win playing the Republican's game. They should have played their own.
We need to inspire people.
This. Exactly this. Non-conservatives haven't had anyone to vote for for years, only people to vote against. Biden was anyone other than Trump. They thought that would work for Kamala, but here we are.
Related, when I tried to volunteer for the dems, all they wanted to do was have me make phone calls. I think in got an invite to knock doors like 2 days before the election. I tried to contact people several times to see how I could help energize the base or make sure people were registered and ready to vote. They kept asking me to make calls and send money. Now people like me are going to be directly hurt by these policies, the only question is how much.