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> that in time it might develop into zealous communities of samethink yeah, this is reddit in a nutshell. Anyone that pointed out that Harris is going to lose

> that in time it might develop into zealous communities of samethink yeah, this is reddit in a nutshell. Anyone that pointed out that Harris is going to lose the election because of x reasons was ridiculed. Among other things.

astrange 2y ago
Don't read too much into something happening. That was about the narrowest possible loss and it doesn't validate most reasons it could've happened.
- lolinder 2y ago
  He carried all 7 swing states, 5 of them with what looks like it will be a 2% margin or more (and those five would be enough for a victory even without the other two). We lost both houses of Congress. It was a closer election than, say, 2008, but this was a resounding defeat. Saying otherwise is just sticking your head in the sand. The DNC needs to do some serious introspection.
  - astrange 2y ago
    The DNC barely exists and doesn't do anything. (Same for the RNC.) In a presidential year it's basically all geography and coattails from the presidential campaign. This one followed the post-inflation trend from every other country, if you need a single explanation for it.
    - floobertoober 2y ago
      I disagree - IMO the idea of having superdelegates is terrible. Any way of picking your party's candidate that deviates from how the candidate is selected in the general is setting yourself up for failure. IMO this is part of why the party has lost steam and alignment with their base. That does fall on the DNC, I think
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        This isn't an opinion up for debate unless you study foreign policy: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/voters-plague-incumbents-labour-trump-election-win https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/voters... we can talk about super delegates if we want, but this is a worlwide phenomenon and goes past advertising and faux represenation. People are frustrated and want change. Any change. They are afraid and fearful people don't make rational choices.
        tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        The reason people want change is not because they are “irrational” or “fearful”, it is because the people in power have demonstrated their inability to lead in every capacity. In Germany the government has literally collapsed due to the former coalition’s ineptitude. Prices in America have skyrocketed in the past 4 years, and pay hasn’t even started to catch up. In England innocents are being murdered and the government instead focuses on the people upset about the murders, calling them “terrorists”. If I fail at my job I am fired, that is a logical outcome. Why do you feel that politicians should be treated differently?
        astrange 2y ago
        > Prices in America have skyrocketed in the past 4 years, and pay hasn’t even started to catch up. No, it's about the same as 2019: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N Inflation is over and done with. We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 In fact, every single economic indicator is currently better than 2019. One thing you can say that may be true is that voters are upset because they remember inflation from 2021-22 and are still reacting to it. Or that they don't like high interest rates. And housing prices are bad in blue states and that is the local governments' fault. But one thing we see from US voters is that R voters claim the economy is bad under a D president and immediately switch to claiming it's good under an R president. So I think you should consider those people are lying.
    - ihsw 2y ago
      [dead]
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Yeah, the introspection is "get people to vote". Apathy has always been the biggest detractor from progress. The distractions of "listen to what (white) men are saying" and "fix the economy" are just distractions from the real reasons D turnout lowered.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    We live in a weird world where a 2% margin in a handful of states counts as a "resounding defeat". Losing the Senate was expected. The House was perhaps less of a toss up than the presidential election itself, but this outcome isn't really a surprise.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      She also lost the popular vote by nearly 3M - more than the entire population of 19 different European countries - and he carried more states than his opponent 4 years ago, and more than Bush did in both 2000 & 2004. It is by all conventional and accepted definitions a resounding defeat.
      - astrange 2y ago
        It doesn't matter who wins the popular vote. Since you don't get anything for it, the campaigns don't try to increase it. I'm not getting rallies or ads in California.
        astrange 2y ago
        Hmm, people are telling me they got YouTube ads. Maybe I'm a disconnected elite by paying for premium.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  “Narrowest possible lost”, sure, minus the fact that despite raising over $1B the Harris campaign still ended up $20M in debt, Republicans are majority in every section of elected government with plans to reinforce that, millions of Americans are becoming disillusioned with Democratic ideology, and you even have the president and his wife casting aside his own VP in favor of Trump by refusing to attend her election night party, but instead meeting with the very same man who did not give him the same courtesy in 2020. Yeah, aside from all that it was the “narrowest possible loss”.
  - astrange 2y ago
    > minus the fact that despite raising over $1B the Harris campaign still ended up $20M in debt Why do you think this is worth bringing up? Because it has numbers in it? I don't know what happens to the debt of a campaign after it's over, but I do know it's neither of our problems. It sounds like they've already covered it through late donations though. Her campaign was swing state-focused and it does seem like it worked in those states (based on relative swings), but it had an unusually short length of time to run. It likely would've just worked if it was a normal length campaign, or if she'd gone on Rogan. > Republicans are majority in every section of elected government with plans to reinforce that More like plans to lose it. Enough cabinet members have been pulled from R House members that they're going to have a 2-3 person majority for months. Starting a presidential year with a trifecta isn't rare, but even more common is that they lose it in the midterms. US voters have no consistent opinions, but their most consistent opinion is "thermostatic swing" - in a midterm year they always vote against whoever is president. Basically they're just haters. > millions of Americans are becoming disillusioned with Democratic ideology Eh. I think any theory which assumes voters are actually paying attention or have coherent ideologies is wrong. They have better things to do than that. In particular, Trump and Obama are very similar here - they're both popular with all kinds of people, because everyone just kind of imagines he agrees with them. (Also, neither of them have successors, which the rest of their party should be worried about.)
    - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
      Losing over $1.5B of donor (or more accurately, investor) capital does not reflect well when the Trump campaign didn’t even use all of $1B, ran for longer, and won the presidency. Major DNC donors know this and will be less likely to fund future campaigns that include the people who worked on this, especially Harris and Walz. > I think any theory which assumes voters are actually paying attention or have coherent ideologies is wrong. Then you’d be wrong. Many voters don’t have coherent ideas on say international policy, however many have specific ideologies regarding more local, important issues, such as food accessibility, welfare, immigration status, body autonomy, etc. Perhaps not across the board, but this belief that people are gormless masses to be controlled is probably a major reason your party has been losing steam. Obama doesn’t have a successor. Trump has Jr and JD who can and probably will run next cycle (most likely Trump funding, Jr organizing, with JD running) while Barron may in the further future. Whether these are strong enough though, time will tell.

astrange 2y ago

Don't read too much into something happening. That was about the narrowest possible loss and it doesn't validate most reasons it could've happened.

lolinder 2y ago
He carried all 7 swing states, 5 of them with what looks like it will be a 2% margin or more (and those five would be enough for a victory even without the other two). We lost both houses of Congress. It was a closer election than, say, 2008, but this was a resounding defeat. Saying otherwise is just sticking your head in the sand. The DNC needs to do some serious introspection.
- astrange 2y ago
  The DNC barely exists and doesn't do anything. (Same for the RNC.) In a presidential year it's basically all geography and coattails from the presidential campaign. This one followed the post-inflation trend from every other country, if you need a single explanation for it.
  - floobertoober 2y ago
    I disagree - IMO the idea of having superdelegates is terrible. Any way of picking your party's candidate that deviates from how the candidate is selected in the general is setting yourself up for failure. IMO this is part of why the party has lost steam and alignment with their base. That does fall on the DNC, I think
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      This isn't an opinion up for debate unless you study foreign policy: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/voters-plague-incumbents-labour-trump-election-win https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/voters... we can talk about super delegates if we want, but this is a worlwide phenomenon and goes past advertising and faux represenation. People are frustrated and want change. Any change. They are afraid and fearful people don't make rational choices.
      - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
        The reason people want change is not because they are “irrational” or “fearful”, it is because the people in power have demonstrated their inability to lead in every capacity. In Germany the government has literally collapsed due to the former coalition’s ineptitude. Prices in America have skyrocketed in the past 4 years, and pay hasn’t even started to catch up. In England innocents are being murdered and the government instead focuses on the people upset about the murders, calling them “terrorists”. If I fail at my job I am fired, that is a logical outcome. Why do you feel that politicians should be treated differently?
        astrange 2y ago
        > Prices in America have skyrocketed in the past 4 years, and pay hasn’t even started to catch up. No, it's about the same as 2019: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N Inflation is over and done with. We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 In fact, every single economic indicator is currently better than 2019. One thing you can say that may be true is that voters are upset because they remember inflation from 2021-22 and are still reacting to it. Or that they don't like high interest rates. And housing prices are bad in blue states and that is the local governments' fault. But one thing we see from US voters is that R voters claim the economy is bad under a D president and immediately switch to claiming it's good under an R president. So I think you should consider those people are lying.
  - ihsw 2y ago
    [dead]
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Yeah, the introspection is "get people to vote". Apathy has always been the biggest detractor from progress. The distractions of "listen to what (white) men are saying" and "fix the economy" are just distractions from the real reasons D turnout lowered.
- kelnos 2y ago
  We live in a weird world where a 2% margin in a handful of states counts as a "resounding defeat". Losing the Senate was expected. The House was perhaps less of a toss up than the presidential election itself, but this outcome isn't really a surprise.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    She also lost the popular vote by nearly 3M - more than the entire population of 19 different European countries - and he carried more states than his opponent 4 years ago, and more than Bush did in both 2000 & 2004. It is by all conventional and accepted definitions a resounding defeat.
    - astrange 2y ago
      It doesn't matter who wins the popular vote. Since you don't get anything for it, the campaigns don't try to increase it. I'm not getting rallies or ads in California.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Hmm, people are telling me they got YouTube ads. Maybe I'm a disconnected elite by paying for premium.
tourmalinetaco 2y ago
“Narrowest possible lost”, sure, minus the fact that despite raising over $1B the Harris campaign still ended up $20M in debt, Republicans are majority in every section of elected government with plans to reinforce that, millions of Americans are becoming disillusioned with Democratic ideology, and you even have the president and his wife casting aside his own VP in favor of Trump by refusing to attend her election night party, but instead meeting with the very same man who did not give him the same courtesy in 2020. Yeah, aside from all that it was the “narrowest possible loss”.
- astrange 2y ago
  > minus the fact that despite raising over $1B the Harris campaign still ended up $20M in debt Why do you think this is worth bringing up? Because it has numbers in it? I don't know what happens to the debt of a campaign after it's over, but I do know it's neither of our problems. It sounds like they've already covered it through late donations though. Her campaign was swing state-focused and it does seem like it worked in those states (based on relative swings), but it had an unusually short length of time to run. It likely would've just worked if it was a normal length campaign, or if she'd gone on Rogan. > Republicans are majority in every section of elected government with plans to reinforce that More like plans to lose it. Enough cabinet members have been pulled from R House members that they're going to have a 2-3 person majority for months. Starting a presidential year with a trifecta isn't rare, but even more common is that they lose it in the midterms. US voters have no consistent opinions, but their most consistent opinion is "thermostatic swing" - in a midterm year they always vote against whoever is president. Basically they're just haters. > millions of Americans are becoming disillusioned with Democratic ideology Eh. I think any theory which assumes voters are actually paying attention or have coherent ideologies is wrong. They have better things to do than that. In particular, Trump and Obama are very similar here - they're both popular with all kinds of people, because everyone just kind of imagines he agrees with them. (Also, neither of them have successors, which the rest of their party should be worried about.)
  - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
    Losing over $1.5B of donor (or more accurately, investor) capital does not reflect well when the Trump campaign didn’t even use all of $1B, ran for longer, and won the presidency. Major DNC donors know this and will be less likely to fund future campaigns that include the people who worked on this, especially Harris and Walz. > I think any theory which assumes voters are actually paying attention or have coherent ideologies is wrong. Then you’d be wrong. Many voters don’t have coherent ideas on say international policy, however many have specific ideologies regarding more local, important issues, such as food accessibility, welfare, immigration status, body autonomy, etc. Perhaps not across the board, but this belief that people are gormless masses to be controlled is probably a major reason your party has been losing steam. Obama doesn’t have a successor. Trump has Jr and JD who can and probably will run next cycle (most likely Trump funding, Jr organizing, with JD running) while Barron may in the further future. Whether these are strong enough though, time will tell.