What did Democrats do wrong?

[mumblethrax]

Yes, others. This thread has suggested any number of others.

Even if one accepts that Democratic losses were inevitable, it does not follow that the DNC did nothing wrong, and it still behooves one to figure out what they might do better next time.

Unranked teams that get stomped by Oregon should still study the game film afterward.

They can and should (we don't particularly need to), but I wonder how much good it does. Many Democrats were convinced that Trump's attacks on trade policy significantly cost them in 2016, adopted Trump-like trade policies in 2020, and it did absolutely nothing for them.

One thing I keep thinking about is Colin Quinn's joke about 2016. "People come up to me, 'How could Christians vote for this guy?!?' Oh, you mean the people you've been saying 'Vote for us, you superstitious dummies!' to for the past few decades?" Not entirely accurate, of course, but isn't it strange how it doesn't occur to people on a forum dominated by atheists that leaning into religion, or ceding a few points to religious people might be something worth doing?

The whole exercise whiffs strongly of confirmation bias. The thing that Democrats do wrong is precisely the thing that I didn't want Democrats to do in the first place.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

The 'voters are stupid and evil' narrative, ladies and gentlemen! Speaking of things the Democrats are doing wrong...

I'll do you one better and mention a narrative I really hope Democrats *do* keep in mind: Voters are liars.

If you ask somebody why they did something, as often as not, they won't give you the real reason; they will instead give a reason they think makes them look good. Like all those gamer-gaters who are genuinely, sincerely, deeply concerned about integrity in gaming journalism.

Some folks here have tried to figure out, for example, how Republican voters can actually think Biden hasn't done anything about inflation and prices, or that Trump would do better. I suspect that a lot of them don't. It's just a plausible, respectable-sounding talking point that doesn't make them sound like a racist POS.

Yes, of course, Democrats need to listen to voters, including those who haven't historically supported them, if they want to win elections. But I hope that they will eventually have the sense to dig a little deeper than the facile responses given to exit pollsters.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Not entirely accurate, of course, but isn't it strange how it doesn't occur to people on a forum dominated by atheists that leaning into religion, or ceding a few points to religious people might be something worth doing?

Which points should we cede? Banning gay marriage? Banning abortion? Banning any sex education that isn't abstinence-only? Banning women from running for President because 1 Timothy 2:12? Abandoning environmental and sustainability policies because the end times are near? Roundfiling the 1st Amendment? No, I don't think those are things worth doing.

Colin Quinn's conceit notwithstanding, Trump's appeal to evangelicals (which is what we really mean when we talk about "Christians" in an American political context) was neither a surprise nor a mystery to anybody paying attention. I hear "How can Christians vote for Trump?" as less a genuine expression of bafflement than a rhetorical question intended to call out the hypocrisy of those who profess moral values that their favorite candidate manifestly does *not* embody.

You mention elsewhere that Democrats tried to ape Trump's trade policies in 2020 and it got them nothing. Ceding anything significant to evangelicals will most likely yield Democrats even less.

The point of my game film analogy wasn't to suggest that unranked teams should try to ape Oregon's offensive schemes.

 

[LondonJohn]

To address the OP question/poll, my response would be (in no particular order):

1) Biden should have withdrawn much much sooner (whether he might have been convinced to do so, or whether there was an internal Dem coup against his candidacy)
It's been abundantly and embarrassingly clear for at least the past couple of years that Biden was not cognitively or energetically up to the job of POTUS. The disastrous debate performance didn't signal any sort of sea change in this matter (though it was a particularly grim example of his decline). There should have been a fair primary (and pre-primary) contest between at least half-decent candidates who could at least half-promise genuine change from the Biden administration, because......

2) Harris was a disaster as Dem candidate
Not only does she present and speak poorly, she also comes across as fuzzy-brained (eg all those horrible word-salad pronouncements as VP). And of course she was intimately and irrefutably connected with the Biden administration - which obviously she didn't help with her "wouldn't change a thing" quote late in the campaign. And.....

3) Voters were harmed by the economic blowback from Covid plus certain Biden administration errors
No administration - of any colour, led by anyone - could have escaped the inevitable negative economic (and, to a degree, socio-political) consequences of the pandemic. Governments all over the industrialised world have been suffering reversals that have been significantly influenced by this factor. And Harris was obviously going to suffer on this account, even more so than a Dem candidate from Congress or a State Governorship.

4) People are simply attracted by the prospect of "change"
Candidates from the non-incumbent party almost always have a natural inbuilt factor of advantage because the incumbent party is usually judged on its record of administration, while the non-incumbent party candidate can make attractive-sounding promises of positive change without the need to prove efficacy in fulfilling those promises. Obviously in this particular election, Trump did have a prior record in office - but voters have notoriously short memories, and they're notoriously susceptible to seduction.

 

[Darat]

And not realising that being a rapist is not an impediment to success in the political arena if you are a rich, white, male, heterosexual.

 

[LondonJohn]

And not realising that being a rapist is not an impediment to success in the political arena if you are a rich, white, male, heterosexual.

Well yes. But....

....I suspect it might have been more nuanced than that (regrettably). I suspect that many of those floating voters* who switched to Trump might have found his criminal and civil convictions distasteful at best and disgusting at worst, but held their noses and voted for him because they felt he was better placed than Harris to "fix" the USA.

I don't think anyone should underestimate the compelling subliminal (and overt, for that matter) value of Trump's MAGA slogan. Human psychology tends to view the more distant past through the proverbial "rose-tinted spectacles", while people view the more recent past through a far more critical lens. So the notion of Making America Great Again cleverly plays on that psychology: the distant past was mainly great wasn't it; the recent past was pretty rubbish, wasn't it; I (Trump) will revive that great distant past that you all remember and pine for.

I think also that many floating voters might have thought that Trump appeared much more statesmanlike and "presidential" than Harris (who was/is prone to childish giggles, embarrassing over-laughter, and freestyle gobbledegook). And psephologists already know the intangible value many people place on their leader actually looking and acting like a leader, both on the domestic and international stage.


* I suspect that pretty much all the voters who forgave or totally overlooked Trumps criminal/civil wrongdoings were staunch Republicans anyhow, and wouldn't therefore have had any effect on the election outcome.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

2) Harris was a disaster as Dem candidate
Not only does she present and speak poorly, she also comes across as fuzzy-brained (eg all those horrible word-salad pronouncements as VP). And of course she was intimately and irrefutably connected with the Biden administration - which obviously she didn't help with her "wouldn't change a thing" quote late in the campaign. And.....

How did that hurt the Dems, though? Serious question. It's not like I imagine potential Democrat voters going 'okay, the D candidate comes across as insecure in front of the cameras and doesn't always speak coherently, so I'll instead vote for the guy who sounds like an mid-stage dementia patient with schizophrenia in how he can't finish more than a sentence or two before veering off onto steadily more incoherent tangents.' I've seen clips of so-called 'Harris word salads' on YouTube, and I've never seen anything come close to Dump's confused... I don't even know what to call them.

Though granted, a lot of Dump voters are probably in echo chambers where they perceive Dear Leader as faultless, since they only get to watch carefully curated clips of him speaking with all the energy and gusto of Hitler at his rallies.

 

[mumblethrax]

Which points should we cede? Banning gay marriage? Banning abortion? Banning any sex education that isn't abstinence-only? Banning women from running for President because 1 Timothy 2:12? Abandoning environmental and sustainability policies because the end times are near? Roundfiling the 1st Amendment? No, I don't think those are things worth doing.

How about devolving decisions about placing the ten commandments in classrooms to local authorities? Pretty low consequence stuff, particularly if it will just get struck down by the Supreme Court. It's lousy posturing, but that's nothing unfamiliar in politics..

Or just finding a charismatic (in either sense) religious Democrat from the middle of the country to run.

Colin Quinn's conceit notwithstanding, Trump's appeal to evangelicals (which is what we really mean when we talk about "Christians" in an American political context) was neither a surprise nor a mystery to anybody paying attention. I hear "How can Christians vote for Trump?" as less a genuine expression of bafflement than a rhetorical question intended to call out the hypocrisy of those who profess moral values that their favorite candidate manifestly does *not* embody.

Sure, but accusations of hypocrisy also fail to understand MAGA for what it is: a grievance movement against what they perceive as condescending liberal elites.

And I don't agree that this is just about appeal to evangelicals. The perception of liberals as being contemptuous towards religion is broader than that, and extends well into the "spiritual, but not religious" crowd. I've had plenty of (non-evangelical) religious people ask me "But don't you think there's something greater than us?" and there's just no good answer to that question. If I say "No" I'm arrogant, if I ask "What exactly do you mean?" I get "You know what I mean." If I say anything else I'm dissembling. When I google "woke atheism", one of the first hits is this quote: "People that call themselves atheists subscribe to the religion of woke." That's not from Pastor Steve down at the First Church of Christ on a Cracker, it's from Joe Rogan, someone I don't think of as overtly religious at all. Sure, he's an idiot, but he does seem to have tapped into something.

You mention elsewhere that Democrats tried to ape Trump's trade policies in 2020 and it got them nothing. Ceding anything significant to evangelicals will most likely yield Democrats even less.

I'm not suggesting that it would work, or that Democrats ought to do it. We're never going to have the kind of empirical support where we can say "This will work." This is mostly Lucy and the football stuff as far as I can tell. We have South Park centrists who told us Trump and Biden were equally bad, because Trump is a goon and Biden is in cognitive freefall. When Biden dropped out, did they say "Great, clear improvement, now I know who to vote for"? No, because "both sides bad" is just an article of faith for that crowd. They just find different reasons why Harris is equally bad. You mentioned that voters are liars; I think it's worse than that. One of the most enduring insights from the behavioral sciences--most of the time, people don't really understand what is motivating them.

I'm just pointing out that among the "cultural issues (like transgenderism)" that some Americans see as tainting the Democratic brand is a perceived lack of religiosity. The next congress will have one more openly trans representative than it has open atheists. And few here are likely to advise Democrats to strive to be seen as friendlier towards religion, because few here particularly want them to be.

 

[LondonJohn]

How did that hurt the Dems, though? Serious question. It's not like I imagine potential Democrat voters going 'okay, the D candidate comes across as insecure in front of the cameras and doesn't always speak coherently, so I'll instead vote for the guy who sounds like an mid-stage dementia patient with schizophrenia in how he can't finish more than a sentence or two before veering off onto steadily more incoherent tangents.' I've seen clips of so-called 'Harris word salads' on YouTube, and I've never seen anything come close to Dump's confused... I don't even know what to call them.

Though granted, a lot of Dump voters are probably in echo chambers where they perceive Dear Leader as faultless, since they only get to watch carefully curated clips of him speaking with all the energy and gusto of Hitler at his rallies.

I get your point. But I'd argue that the only voters who mattered were the relatively tiny number of floating voters (more correctly, the even tinier number of voters who were floating voters in swing states), so by definition these people didn't need too much persuasion to switch from Biden 20 to Trump 24 (and away from Harris 24). I'd argue that there were a number of potential Democratic 24 candidates who'd have persuaded many more of those floating voters to vote Dem again rather than switching to Trump. And it's in this sense that I say Harris was a disastrous choice for the party.

As you say though, not fancying Harris for president is one thing, but actually voting for Trump is another thing. And to this I'd argue that my second post on the subject might have been the reason.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

How about devolving decisions about placing the ten commandments in classrooms to local authorities?

No.

I don't feel like responding to the rest of your post right now. I might do it later.

 

[mumblethrax]

No.

I'm not proposing we do it. I don't want to do it.

I'm asking whether being (generally speaking) the party of secularism hurts Democrats, and why there's been no discussion of that among the myriad reasons why Harris lost.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I'm not proposing we do it. I don't want to do it.

I'm asking whether being (generally speaking) the party of secularism hurts Democrats,

Of course it does, just like being the party of gay rights "hurts Democrats". Just like being the party of civil rights "hurts Democrats". Just like being the party of reproductive rights "hurts Democrats". Taking a stand for *anything* "hurts Democrats".

That Democrats need to take even fewer risks and buy into even more Repub-lite positions is exactly the wrong lesson to take home, IMO.

 

[ahhell]

They can and should (we don't particularly need to), but I wonder how much good it does. Many Democrats were convinced that Trump's attacks on trade policy significantly cost them in 2016, adopted Trump-like trade policies in 2020, and it did absolutely nothing for them.

One thing I keep thinking about is Colin Quinn's joke about 2016. "People come up to me, 'How could Christians vote for this guy?!?' Oh, you mean the people you've been saying 'Vote for us, you superstitious dummies!' to for the past few decades?" Not entirely accurate, of course, but isn't it strange how it doesn't occur to people on a forum dominated by atheists that leaning into religion, or ceding a few points to religious people might be something worth doing?

The whole exercise whiffs strongly of confirmation bias. The thing that Democrats do wrong is precisely the thing that I didn't want Democrats to do in the first place.

One of my podcast did a segement before the election. What will lefties say if harris looses, now what will righties say if trump looses. IIRC, a lot of it was spot on. I have to admit, my belief that it was mostly Biden running rather than dropping out has a little confirmation bias too.

I think, the Dems still need to do it but like you say, it will be rife with confirmation bias. Does anyone remember the GOP post mortem after Romney's loss, the conclusion was basically, "be nicer to immigrants and minorities. Trump did the opposite and won.

ETA: The notion that the Dems are the party of secularism is....questionable. More like the party of multi-secularism. They accept any faith as long as they are liberal.

 

[mumblethrax]

Taking a stand for *anything* "hurts Democrats".

I don't think that's true. There are issues that are clear winners for Democrats (although they don't always translate into success for candidates). That is, where it clearly helps more than it hurts. Giving up on abortion rights would be a huge mistake, for example. I'm confident that turning on gay marriage would also be a bad move at this point, and would be viewed as an unacceptable betrayal by much of the base.

That Democrats need to take even fewer risks and buy into even more Repub-lite positions is exactly the wrong lesson to take home, IMO.

If we're talking about issues (rather than how to sell a policy, or outreach), I guess I think it's going to be rare that there's any option other than to tack right or just stop talking about it. I also don't want a Republican-lite party--I don't see the point of voting against my values just so I can say my side won.

ETA: The notion that the Dems are the party of secularism is....questionable. More like the party of multi-secularism. They accept any faith as long as they are liberal.

If you look at the five religious-affiliations/positions that are most likely to vote for Democrats, one is atheism, one is Unitarianism, and the other three are black churches. My experience with black churches: if you think they're liberal, prepare for a rude awakening. They're part of the Democratic coalition primarily due to Democrats' support for civil rights.

 

[I Am The Scum]

How about devolving decisions about placing the ten commandments in classrooms to local authorities? Pretty low consequence stuff, particularly if it will just get struck down by the Supreme Court. It's lousy posturing, but that's nothing unfamiliar in politics..

Giving up the religious freedom granted by the first amendment is not "low consequence."

 

[mumblethrax]

Giving up the religious freedom granted by the first amendment is not "low consequence."

I think it is, since it would just get struck down.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I think it is, since it would just get struck down.

By who? The SCOTUS in there now? The SCOTUS where Trump gets to appoint even more justices?

 

[I Am The Scum]

I think it is, since it would just get struck down.

By this Supreme Court?

 

[mumblethrax]

By who? The SCOTUS in there now? The SCOTUS where Trump gets to appoint even more justices?

Yes.

Even if they don't strike it down, it doesn't entail giving up on religious freedom. If a flag-burning amendment were to be passed tomorrow, it would not be accurate to say we no longer have free speech rights.

Let me put it to you this way: if a genie had proposed a deal to me whereby any school district that wanted to post the ten commandments could do so, and there were no other changes to the arrangement between church and state, and this would guarantee that Trump would not be elected, I'd take that deal in a heartbeat. He's the reason we have this Supreme Court, and why it's going to get worse.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Let me put it to you this way: if a genie had proposed a deal to me whereby any school district that wanted to post the ten commandments could do so, and there were no other changes to the arrangement between church and state, and this would guarantee that Trump would not be elected, I'd take that deal in a heartbeat. He's the reason we have this Supreme Court, and why it's going to get worse.

I don't know why you think the tradeoff would work this way. It's more likely it would be detrimental. The left giving up on religious freedom would not be viewed by the right as a sign of "Maybe they aren't so bad after all." Rather, it would be seen as "We beat them! Now let's beat them again!"

Compromising with fascists is not a reliable strategy.