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.

hard disagree, progressive policies up for vote were adopted even in deep red states unlike the fake progressive party.

Which is why I said the policies weren't the problem. She was. The voting base did not want to vote for a black woman. The rest of the election went pretty much as predicted.

“held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”

Tell me which one of these is wrong.

Is it the one where Trump got no criticism for "They're eating the dogs!", while Kamala Harris was criticized for not being perfectly articulate?

Is it the one where people criticized Harris for supporting Israel, then voted for someone who was going to ....... give even more weapons and support to Israel?

Or it is the one where the only two women were both beat by Trump after a smear campaign from the mainstream media?

Or the one where Trump has vowed to increase prices on goods by slapping tarrifs on everything? Or the one where Musk already said he was gong to impose hardships on people?

Or the fact that the country as a whole has been leaning hard into the racism since Obama was in office?

And as for bernie, the entire Democrat base had been saying that they didn't want Biden because he was "too old". And here you are offering someone older. Which means his age was never really the problem, was it? Because half the country just voted for a dementia patient , and the other half are now saying we should've put up someone older.

And try getting AOC over in independent or right-leaning areas she'd need to pick up a win. Good luck with that.

outside the bubble of .world and reddit, the above statements are seen as nothing but dogshhit gaslighting.

Prove me wrong.

people understand that trump is stupid, incompetent and repulsive but they also correctly see that dnc are double dealing scammers who have no problem mass murdering kids for few million in campaign donations.

So the answer is to vote for someone who's going to mass murder even more people? Remember, last time Trump interfered in the middle east, he moved the embassy to Jerusalem which pissed off just about everybody and sent Jared Kushner over there, who did exactly nothing outside of collecting $2 billion from the Saudis which they still refuse to explain.

But sure, the dnc are the scammers.......

for how many brown women murdered in gaza and now lebanon did harris opened her mouth full of aipac money. her career is full of oppressing poor and blacks and including single mothers, and at the same time sucking up to the rich including trump. she has shamelessly flip-flopped on issues wherever she had seen more votes. why the hell someone would vote for a smug power tripping hack like this in name of democracy and lesser evil. she would have absolutely nuked gaza, lebanon & iran to get funding from aipac and min for a 2nd term, while inflation and corporate greed would have remained unckecked same as trump.

And tell me how voting for Trump was somehow better in any possible way. And if you abstained from voting knowing all of that full well, you essentially voted for Trump.

and if not for trump and dnc’s over the top fear mongering, she would have likely lost many deep blue state. she lost like hillary because they were planted by the megadonors to create a win-win situation for them for that they sabotaged sanders in 2016 and warren in 2020.

Ah yes, it was all a Democrat conspiracy to......hand the Presidency to Trump. Oooooooookay.........

the same people wishing more genocide

voted for Trump.

and mocking egg prices

Which is the result of bird flu.

were dismissing any criticism of biden & harris as russian troll. and now they are surprised that many of them sat out for not wanting to do anything with this farce of an election where you loose against the oligarchy not matter who you vote.

So voting to lose harder was your solution?

This one, I don’t think I agree that it was a fluke.

Fluke probably wasn't the right word in hindsight. He won and got re-elected decisively. Maybe they consider it a "mistake". I don't know what the right word for it is. However you want to call it, they just will not allow it to happen again.

Democrats are continuing to let the loudest crybabies take over the room. And then compromise.

That is a decades-long flaw in the Democrat party that had little bearing on this election.

Conservatives are right on one thing: the message that Kamala put out to their people was, “You don’t want to vote for a fascist.” Which doesn’t resonate with them.

Actually, many of them were on social media actively advocating for him because of the authoritarianism. They were pretty open about voting for a convict/dictator/rapist over a ~~nig..uh..blackperson..uh~~ "Democrat".

What they instead was a person who was going to keep things the same.

Here's the problem. When 51% of your voting base is giving very strong signals they don't want a minority as President and telling you they want things to remain the same, offering up a minority candidate who wants to change everything is not going to win you elections. Doesn't matter how benevolent their ideas are. The American voters just said they are willing to vote against policies they like simply because they don't like the person selling it.

In the past 3 Presidential elections, the GOP put up the literal worst candidate in history. In two of those 3 elections, the Democrats put up women. Trump won. The only time he lost was when they put up an old white guy. Then they complained about him being an old white guy. Then, rather than vote for the black woman, they voted for another old white guy. And a whole bunch of people are here saying that we would've won if we just put up an even older white guy with the same policies.

Which is basically the Democrat party as a whole saying that they may not want an old white guy as President, but they'll sure as hell put a white guy in the White House before a they put a woman there, and certainly not a black one. They tried twice, and voters stayed home. And they stayed home knowing full well what that meant. What does that tell you?

Can a minority run again? Absolutely.

Assuming we have elections again, a minority will not sit in the Oval Office in my lifetime. And if they put one up in 2028, they're going to lose just as hard. The American public -- from both parties -- have sent a loud and clear message that they will not put a woman in charge of the US, certainly not a black one. And if you think, especially after 4 more years of the Trump Hate Machine blasting propaganda 24/7, that a minority is going to have a snowball's chance in hell, I've got beachfront property on Mars you may be interested in.

But only stop catering to the status quo and bowing down to companies. Do Bernie Sanders shit.

Then wonder why you lose again. Outside of his voters and the far left, people don't want Bernie Sanders shit. We may disagree with them, but there's more of them then there are of us.

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.

Give it 6 months before someone is arguing before the Supreme Court that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is an absolute statement and any gun control legislation is unconstitutional.

And the Supreme Court will buy it.

Great. We're barely 4 days out and we've got this guy out there threatening to start WW3 over Twitter.

Because that'll work in a Republican controlled House and Senate. I'm sure they'll get right on drawing up articles of impeachment.

Oh, I'm not saying it would be a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. Secessions would be the least we'd have to worry about.

I'm just saying that in a world where Trump has seriously and repeatedly suggested it, his voting base has actively said they're OK with it, and all 3 branches are firmly and securely in his pocket, Trump going so far as to actually suspending the Constitution is a very, very real possibility. Especially if he's being advised by an administration stacked from top to bottom with Trump yes-men and crazies that make Qanon conspiracy theorists seem sane.

No they won't.

Trump just said that he's going to impose tariffs that are going to increase the cost of living by about $400 a month per family. Elon Musk just said he plans on imposing "hardship" on the country for a few years. And Americans voted ovewhelmingly in favor of that. The economy will tank, yes. But they'll just blame Democrats and the voters will eat it up.

Don't believe me? gestures at Tuesday.

That's assuming we have another election at all. Trump -- A man, remember, that has repeatedly said that terminating the Constitution was on the table -- now has the White House, both branches of government, a supreme court largely appointed by him, and several state governments. Moderate republicans have been successfully rooted out or marginalized. Trump could very well follow through on that promise, backdropped by the thunderous applause of the other two branches of government.

"Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda," Walsh wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In other words "Damn right we lied to everybody! Thanks, suckers!"

I guess there's no need to even bother wearing the masks any more. Racism, misogyny and bigotry won the day. Handily. Republicans turned out in droves to sign up for more of it, and Democrats have said they're willing to accept it rather than elect a black woman. At that point, why even bother hiding it. Everybody knows what it is, and last night they said in pretty decisive fashion that they either actively want it or are at least willing to accept it.

We did this to ourselves. Trump made some small gains, but Harris underperformed Biden by roughly 10% or so. That means millions of Democrats sat home instead of voting for Harris, which also cost the Democrats some House and Senate seats downballot due to the lower turnout. There was no election fraud. This was a free and fair election. Trump won the popular vote. There are no excuses this time. We. Voted. For. This.

8-10 million Democrats stayed home. I don't care if you're "protesting Gaza", or if you're a closeted bigot who would rather sit out than vote for a black woman. Or whatever. If you stayed home rather than vote for Harris, you voted for this. In the words of Rush, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". And you made that choice knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.

The GOP had a damn good night last night. And they couldn't even wait 24 hours before cramming it right down our throats. They couldn't even wait 24 hours to take the mask off. Give it a couple of days and I figure the national abortion ban will be the next thing they don't bother trying to lie about any more. Why bother trying to hide it? We already said we're cool with it.

We can no longer hide behind the excuse of "the electoral college". We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said "Yes. We want more of that."

We are not better than this.

Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I'm talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.

Here's the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from "Hey, this game ain't so bad" to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.

That's where we're at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn't want to make it to level 3 because he knows he'll never beat level 3. He's looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.

But he can't. So he's essentially stopped playing the game. He's telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick's broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he's getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren't listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn't even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.