175

Summary

Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, with many voters—often women—expressing doubts about whether “America is ready for a female president.”

Some said they “couldn’t see her in the chair,” or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, “you don’t see women building skyscrapers.” Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line.

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Biden’s administration.

Ultimately, Hall believes that Trump’s unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harris’s campaign efforts.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 44 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I just want to say this to all the people who are making up the most hare-brained excuses for why Harris lost.

Kamala Harris cobbled together a campaign in days that took a campaign that was going R+5 and counting and turned it into a toss-up. She had 107 days. From day one, she was held to an infinitely higher standard than Trump. Trump held a debate where he famously said "They're eating the dogs!" and "I have concepts of a plan!.", and Americans were just fine with it. But Harris wasn't perfectly articulate with details over some economic plan or another and apparently this makes her unfit for President. She put up a near-flawless campaign, especially given how stuck behind the 8-ball she was. It ultimately just didn't matter.

Arab-Americans were outraged over Harris' support for Israel because of the genocide in Gaza. So to protest this, they voted for a man who has vowed even more support for israel and to genocide even harder, and also try to kick them out of the country in the process.

Latino men opted to vote for a man who made it a focal point of his campaign to round up and deport Latinos en-masse because the alternative was voting for a former prosecutor who also happens to be a woman.

White people decided that they want someone who's going to fix the economy, so they decided to vote for a guy who campaigned on raising the cost of living by an average of about $400 a month while promising to appoint a budget czar who already said he actively plans on imposing "hardships" on poor people.

Well, it's either that, or tens of millions of people in a country with a long-established history of racism and misogyny refused to vote for a black female president and just used these niche issues as excuses.

I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, and I know what I'm about to say sounds racist as hell. But Obama was a fluke and America in general is just not willing to elect a minority again. That's just all there is to it. The rise of Trump, the rise of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, and the 2024 election are proof of that. Democrat initiatives did relatively fine. The senate went GOP, but that was predicted with the loss of Manchin and Tester. Democrats in the House did fine. Kamala Harris did not.

And for those who believed that embracing centrist policies is what cost us the election, or we weren't left enough, or we should have listened to people like Bernie and AOC: People like Bernie and AOC are wildly popular in their districts and with the far-left coalition of the voting base. But they are wildly unpopular outside of that. And keep in mind......I love both of them and would gladly vote for a future AOC as president. But given the current political makeup of the country, putting someone like Bernie or AOC on the ballot would have made the ass kicking Harris just got seem tame. Sure, they'd have won states like California and Massachusetts by gigantic margins. But they'd do little to nothing to flip red or purple states.

The fact of the matter is that the 2024 results prove that Americans like what the Democrats were selling. They just don't want her to be the one selling it, as evidenced by the fact that only she underperformed so spectacularly. People were so unwilling to vote for a black, female President that over 10 million of them opted to stay home knowing full well that they were essentially voting for Trump.

A majority of this country is white. A majority of this country will not vote for a minority president again in this political climate. And if the Democrats put up another minority candidate in 2028 (assuming we even have elections), they will lose again. That's just all there is to it. It's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the truth. It's not right, but it's the truth. You know how black people across the south have been fighting gerrymandering so they can have majority-black districts and vote for black candidates? Or for that matter, how minority candidates do better in minority districts when championing minority initiatives? White people are doing the same thing. And there's a lot more of them. And they just proved that they absolutely will vote against their best interests vs. voting for a black woman.

[-] lemmingthelemmers@lemmy.world -5 points 5 days ago

They lost because they lost touch with America.

You can blame everyone you did in your post because you fail to see the bigger picture.

The democrats did not let you take place in democracy. There was no primary. Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite. She would never have been elected by voters because she is a hollow shell of catchphrases and memorized talking points.

She is unrelatable and therefore unelectable. She had no platform except that she was going to keep doing the Genocide Joe walk.

The only tears that you should be crying was that they were able to get you to vote for them while genociding kids Gaza, effectively saying "yeah I don't care."

[-] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

The incumbent President was the nominee. Generally, the incumbents don't hold primaries because the outcome is all but certain, and party leadership has never forced an incumbent to step aside before. By the time Biden dropped out, there was no time for a primary. If we'd have tried dumping Biden, holding a primary in a country of 350 million people, and running a general election campaign in barely 3 months, we'd have been a laughing stock. We'd be infighting for months while Trump was running a general election campaign unopposed. The RNC would be saying "We're firmly behind Trump. Biden is so bad that the DNC forced him out of the race and all of the other options are so bad that they can't settle on one." If you think that the election was a slaughter, that scenario would have made everything exponentially worse.

[-] lemmingthelemmers@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Makes you wonder why it was allowed it to happen at all. It's not as if Biden wasn't showing signs of aging the limited times he was seen in public on the first go-round. He should have been primaried again, but it was worth it for them to lose the Whitehouse to Trump 2x. This should be a layup for a major political party to be in opposition of, but old Bernie was too extreme for the corporate warhawk democrats because he wanted to tax the rich.

Here's the truth: the democrats don't give a shit about democracy and they sure as hell don't give a shit about you.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
175 points (86.9% liked)

politics

19088 readers
1976 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS