4 ms·

Your assumptions are wrong. Kamala lost because of inflation during the Biden admin and some related missteps. Also her gender and skin color likely worked agai

Your assumptions are wrong. Kamala lost because of inflation during the Biden admin and some related missteps. Also her gender and skin color likely worked against her. Also you're misreading my point, campaigning on these things isn't a panacea, but delivering on them just might be.

ReptileMan 2y ago
> Also her gender and skin color likely worked against her. She had less charisma than Hilary. Probably even less than Al Gore or Zuckeberg before his new software update was installed. And she had a history of bending the knee to the progressives.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  … and donors too. Mainstream Democrats are seen as disingenuous in that they direct cheap talk at progressives but somehow beat Republicans at the fundraising game almost every time.
- rayiner 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - leptons 2y ago
    >"Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law." So dumb.. she has a degree in law and was a very successful prosecutor. >"Harris was elected attorney general of California in 2010, becoming the first woman, African American, and South Asian American to hold the office in the state's history.[56] She took office on January 3, 2011, and was reelected in 2014.[57] She served until resigning on January 3, 2017, to take her seat in the United States Senate." Doesn't sound dumb at all. Your comment is sounding pretty dumb though.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      Dan Quayle also had a law degree, but he was also dumb. And he passed the bar the first try, unlike Harris.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - dctoedt 2y ago
        > And he [Dan Quayle] passed the bar the first try, unlike [Kamala] Harris. Harris took the California bar exam. It's notoriously difficult. AFAICT, Quayle took the Indiana bar exam.
        pcwalton 2y ago
        Huh, California's bar exam has a 54% pass rate, while Indiana's has a 73% pass rate. TIL!
Gerardo1 2y ago
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. No one cared. One of the better things a president has done for the country in quite a while, and no one cared, and no one remembers.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  People don't believe it was anything but a huge load of pork to corporate interest with nothing to show.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  The problem is it's not enough to give. You have to show that you're taking from the people who caused the problem.
  - Braxton1980 2y ago
    Covid?
PaulHoule 2y ago
People assume a female candidate is to the left of where they actually are. Worked great for Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel who both represented center-right parties and took their nations rightward and whose favorite slogan was “there is no alternative” but not for center-right Hillary Clinton who headed what is allegedly a center-left party. [1] If the Democrats have a fight between an abundance agenda and populist leftists who are really inclusive like Bernie Sanders I think that will be great. [1] Clinton was always as far to the right as she could get away with, probably to compensate for being a woman, but paid the price for her mindless hawkish in 2008 when she lost the primaries to Barack Obama
rayiner 2y ago
It probably wasn’t either inflation or Harris’s race, because the rightward swing was heavily skewed by race. Compared to 2016, all of Trump’s gain came from non-whites: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-shor-slide/18eks-shor-slide-articleLarge-v3.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-sho.... Whites didn’t shift at all from 2016 to 2024. Latino moderates shifted 23 points to the right, and Asian moderates shifted 11 points to the right. It’s hard to explain how inflation would cause a racially unbalanced shift like that. The 2016 election was a pretty neutral baseline—the economy was fine and had been for years. So if inflation was the cause, why didn’t white voters shift right compared to 2016? It doesn’t make sense that inflation would only cause hispanics and asians to shift right. Likewise, if race was the reason, why didn’t white voters shift right, compared to 2016 when the candidate was a white woman? And why did black conservatives (a bloc about the same size as black liberals) shift 8 points to the right?
- notahacker 2y ago
  Doesn't seem so hard to believe that Latino moderates were worried about Trump in 2016 and somewhat less worried about him and more worried about inflation in 2024...
  - rayiner 2y ago
    That doesn’t explain the lack of movement among whites though. Moderate whites were 52% Clinton, 55% Biden, and 52% Harris. 2016 was a good economy and Obama was relatively popular. So among moderate whites, Harris didn’t do any worse than Clinton did despite the inflation under Biden. The 3 point swing from Biden could easily be explained by the fact that Biden had a long track record as being moderate, while Harris always has been liberal. The bigger signal here is racial depolarization. Historically, moderate to conservative minorities tend to vote Democrat anyway, which leaves them as disproportionately the more conservative wing of the party. What you saw from 2016 to 2024 was significant racial depolarization—moderate to conservative blacks, hispanics, and asians voting more their ideology and less their race.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago

ReptileMan 2y ago

> Also her gender and skin color likely worked against her. She had less charisma than Hilary. Probably even less than Al Gore or Zuckeberg before his new software update was installed. And she had a history of bending the knee to the progressives.

PaulHoule 2y ago
… and donors too. Mainstream Democrats are seen as disingenuous in that they direct cheap talk at progressives but somehow beat Republicans at the fundraising game almost every time.
rayiner 2y ago
[flagged]
- leptons 2y ago
  >"Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law." So dumb.. she has a degree in law and was a very successful prosecutor. >"Harris was elected attorney general of California in 2010, becoming the first woman, African American, and South Asian American to hold the office in the state's history.[56] She took office on January 3, 2011, and was reelected in 2014.[57] She served until resigning on January 3, 2017, to take her seat in the United States Senate." Doesn't sound dumb at all. Your comment is sounding pretty dumb though.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Dan Quayle also had a law degree, but he was also dumb. And he passed the bar the first try, unlike Harris.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - dctoedt 2y ago
      > And he [Dan Quayle] passed the bar the first try, unlike [Kamala] Harris. Harris took the California bar exam. It's notoriously difficult. AFAICT, Quayle took the Indiana bar exam.
      - pcwalton 2y ago
        Huh, California's bar exam has a 54% pass rate, while Indiana's has a 73% pass rate. TIL!

Gerardo1 2y ago

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. No one cared. One of the better things a president has done for the country in quite a while, and no one cared, and no one remembers.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
People don't believe it was anything but a huge load of pork to corporate interest with nothing to show.
BrenBarn 2y ago
The problem is it's not enough to give. You have to show that you're taking from the people who caused the problem.
- Braxton1980 2y ago
  Covid?

PaulHoule 2y ago

People assume a female candidate is to the left of where they actually are. Worked great for Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel who both represented center-right parties and took their nations rightward and whose favorite slogan was “there is no alternative” but not for center-right Hillary Clinton who headed what is allegedly a center-left party. [1] If the Democrats have a fight between an abundance agenda and populist leftists who are really inclusive like Bernie Sanders I think that will be great. [1] Clinton was always as far to the right as she could get away with, probably to compensate for being a woman, but paid the price for her mindless hawkish in 2008 when she lost the primaries to Barack Obama

rayiner 2y ago

It probably wasn’t either inflation or Harris’s race, because the rightward swing was heavily skewed by race. Compared to 2016, all of Trump’s gain came from non-whites: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-shor-slide/18eks-shor-slide-articleLarge-v3.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-sho.... Whites didn’t shift at all from 2016 to 2024. Latino moderates shifted 23 points to the right, and Asian moderates shifted 11 points to the right. It’s hard to explain how inflation would cause a racially unbalanced shift like that. The 2016 election was a pretty neutral baseline—the economy was fine and had been for years. So if inflation was the cause, why didn’t white voters shift right compared to 2016? It doesn’t make sense that inflation would only cause hispanics and asians to shift right. Likewise, if race was the reason, why didn’t white voters shift right, compared to 2016 when the candidate was a white woman? And why did black conservatives (a bloc about the same size as black liberals) shift 8 points to the right?

notahacker 2y ago
Doesn't seem so hard to believe that Latino moderates were worried about Trump in 2016 and somewhat less worried about him and more worried about inflation in 2024...
- rayiner 2y ago
  That doesn’t explain the lack of movement among whites though. Moderate whites were 52% Clinton, 55% Biden, and 52% Harris. 2016 was a good economy and Obama was relatively popular. So among moderate whites, Harris didn’t do any worse than Clinton did despite the inflation under Biden. The 3 point swing from Biden could easily be explained by the fact that Biden had a long track record as being moderate, while Harris always has been liberal. The bigger signal here is racial depolarization. Historically, moderate to conservative minorities tend to vote Democrat anyway, which leaves them as disproportionately the more conservative wing of the party. What you saw from 2016 to 2024 was significant racial depolarization—moderate to conservative blacks, hispanics, and asians voting more their ideology and less their race.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago