Top 5 Reasons the Democrats Lost the Election

[Donal]

He comes off as a smarmy coastal elite, which I have been told over and over is why people hate Democrats.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Bill Maher is a smug moron who thinks he knows everything and if you don't agree with what he knows you're an idiot. He believe in all kinds of woo as well.

 

[Tero]

Bill Maher. Don't get me started. He is like Trump if Trump had decided to play Democrat instead.

 

[theprestige]

Bill Maher. Don't get me started. He is like Trump if Trump had decided to play Democrat instead.

I can't tell if you're saying that Bill Maher is literally Hitler, or that Donald Trump is literally Bill Maher.

 

[Tero]

I can't tell if you're saying that Bill Maher is literally Hitler, or that Donald Trump is literally Bill Maher.

Both can happen but more the latter. Bill Maher used to sit on tv shows with his black porn star girl friend once upon a time. That sounds liberal, but not really.

 

[theprestige]

Both can happen but more the latter. Bill Maher used to sit on tv shows with his black porn star girl friend once upon a time. That sounds liberal, but not really.

My headcanon is this is one of the top five reasons the Democrats lost the election.

 

[TomB]

I read this on David Lowery's blog yesterday and thought of this thread. (Singer/guitarist for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker)
It's a post that I think is over ten years old where he is talking about writing the Cracker song Hey Brett (you Know What Time it is).
It contains this little blurb:

I’ve never really asked Brett Netson about his politics, but I assume he is generally on the left. Most people in rock bands are-with the apparent exception of Ted Nugent. But i would like to point out that once i got into the songwriting i dispensed with the real brett netson and began to create a fictional character and narrative. In the song the protagonist is a 4th generation Boise Idahoan. A veteran, hard working in his own way: “trying to make a living playing on my SG Gibson tending bar and sometimes selling herb.” But not getting his due. “we live like serfs in this new feudal land we pay the bills we fight the wars”. He’s rightfully angry.

But heres the twist. I wanted to use the language of the right.
Because the right is oftentimes better at distilling and identifying many of the injustices and problems in our country than is the left. The left may have a good point but it’s often so convoluted and nuanced it doesn’t have the same emotional impact. They don’t work as well in song lyrics. This was not always the case, think Woody Guthrie.

David Lowery Music

I think it's relevant to the elections in both 2016 and 2024. It also fits in with what Bill Maher said above, I think.

Trump manages to capture people's anger and promise action. The Democrats seemed to largely say "get over it, you are bad/stupid/wrong for having that perception of your world" instead of acknowledging and addressing those concerns.

 

[mikegriffith1]

If there were any undecideds, the message from harris did not reach them well. TV ads maybe.
but propaganda won.

Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right? Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes. Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.

After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.

 

[jt512]

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.

Especially when you consider that she passed on Josh Shapiro, who would have delivered her the most important swing state as well as Jewish votes nationwide, and this she did to avoid losing Arabic voters, whom she lost anyway.

 

[Donal]

Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right?

Hey, you said it

Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes.

Literally the oppoisite of what they did. They voted for the dimwit whose action and lack of action directly led to the outrageous inflation the Biden admin did a reasonbly good job of getting under control.

Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.

True. she should ahve said she would have pushed harder with their agenda instead of tripping over the great and holy Compromise.

After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.

Ya, cuz your weak daddy wasn't getting billionaire donations. Does that number include PAC spending?

Although, I've said one of the main lessons from 2016 should have been that campaign spending has a point of diminishing returns

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028.

He probably won't want to do it.

He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.

He was actually really popular and brought a lot of energy. The problem is they needed more Tim Walz and a lot less, like none at all, Liz Cheney.

 

[Tero]

Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right? Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes. Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.

After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.

No.

Yes. In the following days, Governor Walz deployed the - what turned out to be the largest Minnesota National Guard presence since World War II, and the state patrol, which Walz also oversees, was directed to help Minneapolis police respond to further protests. However, Walz and officials with the state's Department of Public Safety wound up being heavily criticized after state patrol troopers arrested hundreds of people that were demonstrating on an interstate highway. And that action resulted in sharp rebukes from activists and at least one Minneapolis City Council member.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/13/nx-s1-5069752/how-tim-walz-handled-the-george-floyd-protests-as-the-governor-of-minnesota

 

[thaiboxerken]

Even after they win, people who support The Party are still lying about the people they ran against. I think this is a big part of the Dems losing, they had to deal with all the lies and spend so much time dealing with the lies that they couldn't get their message out.
Next time, Dems should be absolutely shameless and make up all kinds of lies about what the GOP is doing. I mean, the truth is bad, but not bad enough for the average voter.

 

[Tero]

I think these are the top five reasons the Democrats lost the election:

1. Biden should not have immediately endorsed his far-left vice president when he dropped out but should have allowed more-viable candidates to have a chance to contend. Nancy Pelosi recently made the same point. In reality, Biden never should have run for reelection in the first place. This would have enabled the party to have a real primary.

2. Harris should have taken the border crisis seriously, both as an economic threat and a national security threat. She should have apologized for dropping the ball as the border czar. Then, she should have pledged to seal the border and to stop the disastrous catch-and-release policy. And, she should not have used the dishonest argument that Trump is "anti-immigration" and "anti-immigrant." Most people understand that opposition to illegal immigration is not "anti-immigrant."

3. Harris should have ditched the transgender agenda. Even many Democrats, arguably the majority of them, do not agree with allowing biological males to compete in female sports, and do not support allowing teens to start taking puberty blockers, much less allowing teens to get irreversible transgender surgery. Republicans hammered her on the transgender issue because their own polling showed that most Americans disagree with the transgender agenda.

4. Picking Tim Walz was an odd and inexcusable blunder. Walz, an unknown woke leftist, gave her nothing she did not already have. He gave her no new voters, and he came from a very safe blue state. Plus, he comes across as unserious and flaky. Governor Josh Shapiro, a confirmed centrist and a person with solid gravitas, was the obvious pick.

5. Harris should have frankly acknowledged that a solid majority of Americans are worse off now than they were four years ago. Exit polling shows that Trump won an astonishing 81% of the vote of voters who said they are worse off now than they were when Biden took office. Note: Only 24% of those polled said they are better off now than they were four years ago.

MAGA voters were conned. That is all. Plus they all have been brainwashed. They cannot be reached. Only after years of Trump failure...

 

[Pixel42]

Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes.

What policies were those? And what caused the steep cost-of-living hikes that occurred at the same time in countries run by right wing politicians with very different policies?

 

[arthwollipot]

On the contrary, "trans issues" were, arguably, the decisive factor in the election. According to a post-election survey of voters conducted by a Democratic polling firm, the statement "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class" was ranked the most important reason for rejecting Harris among swing voters who voted for Trump.

I notice that your chart is entirely unsourced.

I guess I have heard nothing of it. Please provide examples.

I also notice the lack of examples so far provided.

 

[Samson]

A slightly smaller percentage. But there was only a percent difference in Harris' share of women's votes and Hillary's share of women's votes (Biden actually received a slightly larger share of women's votes than Hillary did). Given that there were larger shifts in other demographic groups, I don't see the slight drop in Harris' votes from women as proving that women were fearful for their safety because of Democratic support for transgender rights.

Check the forbidden thread where this is argued in granular detail.
It is an agreed statistical fact that the issue was sufficient, if not necessary, to lose the democrats control of everything.
In other words, if the democrats, starting with Obama, had not falsified the science of evolution, they could well have run right through from 2008.
This is an unforced error of galactic scale.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh, so now Bill Maher is not a liberal!!! Wow, you gotta be bonkers woke to say such a thing. Let's see: Maher endorsed and voted for Harris. He still says Trump should have been removed from office. He endorsed and voted for Hillary in 2016, for Obama in 2008 and 2012, etc., etc. He actually stumped for Obama in 2012.

Bill Maher is certainly a liberal. He's just not woke liberal. He's a liberal who is patriotic, who thinks America's founding was a noble and positive thing. He doesn't buy into the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas insanity and obscenity. He doesn't buy into the extreme transgender agenda, and he's in good company with many other mainstream liberals and moderate Democrats.

So if you see some leftist claim that Bill Maher is not a liberal, you know that that leftist is a woke extremist, a radical liberal on the fringe of the political spectrum.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

you are assuming that being a liberal in the contemporary sense is a good thing.

What it means is that someone is a middle-of-the-road, move with the Overton Window to stay in the Center person who thinks the West Wing had all the answers.

 

[3point14]

Even after they win, people who support The Party are still lying about the people they ran against. I think this is a big part of the Dems losing, they had to deal with all the lies and spend so much time dealing with the lies that they couldn't get their message out.
Next time, Dems should be absolutely shameless and make up all kinds of lies about what the GOP is doing. I mean, the truth is bad, but not bad enough for the average voter.

But how do you get those lies out?

The media are perfectly happy to propagate the lies of the 'right'. Less so to broadcast, oh, I don't know, facts and useful information.

This entire thread is predicated on the US election having been a level playing field, when any reasonable, unbiased election coverage would never have seen Trump anywhere near the presidency. The Democrats lost the election because the billionaires who own the media wanted them to. It's as simple as that.

Propaganda wins elections.

 

[Tero]

Democrats lost because Trump never stopped campaigning. He still is.
He campaigns and takes credit continuously. Biden did none of that, a few speeches here and there. But he was so in the back ground, so presidential, that in this social media world it looks like he did nothing.