How many emails will it take to get "Russia!"... three
We don't know yet but fraud is on the table. There was so much Russian interference and free-fall for them on X and then with America PAC, which should have been a GOTV campaign but turned into a paying people off for votes until (?) the justice department warned Musk. But they went undercover or just stopped?
Voters made a statement but until we have a full security overview of this election, we won't know if it's the people's will or the will of foreign adversaries.
There's some sanity in the thread:
I would caution against the message or notion that there was a material impact of foreign efforts until more is known. It robs Trump voters of their agency, ignores their real fears about cost of living and social issues, and wasn't an effective message last time.
There was a great quote I read from post 2016 done by some deep research, I can't remember who wrote it and I'm paraphrasing as I heard it at a lecture in 2017: "Trump voters have a sense they've been waiting in line their entire lives for a slice of the American dream, and they're not where they thought they'd be in life. They feel like they're working hard, playing by the rules, and they're owed something by society. They see progressive policies as giving benefits to other people, which effectively is allowing them to cut in line, and get access to the American dream they don't have. They want those policies to stop, and they're willing to blow up the system to make it happen."
Lots of women in the thread think it all boils down to sexism. "Kamala lost because she's a woman."
CW: SA
spoiler
Bingo — men secretly, and not so secretly, hate women being in ANY kind of leadership position or exercising ANY kind of autonomy. It’s threatening — fires up the lizard brain. And lizard brain is where bad shit happens.
This hate either manifests itself overtly, for example, via the emails I received as a Kamala staffer: “FUCK YOU YOU STUPID WHORE I HOPE YOU GETremovedD WITH KNIVES YOU FUCKING CUM BUCKET BITCH” — I got so many of these, and sent from real email accounts — WORK EMAIL ACCOUNTS — at SCHOOLS!
Or, the more sinister manifestation: “I just don’t know her policies” “Have you googled to find them or gone to the website?” “No.” If Kamala were a man, he would have automatically been granted a minimal respect just for being a dude. A confident woman? Hmm, something’s not right here.
Then there's stuff like this:
Early exit polling data suggests that Joe Biden received a higher share of the women’s vote than both Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton did in their respective presidential runs, by at least 3 percentage points.
More broadly, the party’s persistent push to shift rightward has not proven to be a winning strategy. The Democratic base is energized by BOLD, progressive policies, not by chasing endorsements from neocon, right-wing, warhawks like Dick Cheney. This drive to appeal to a “center” often ignores that many independent voters aren’t inherently centrists. They’re driven by issues that demand clear positions, not ideological compromise.
This was a challenging election cycle for Democrats, partly because they didn’t hold a primary to choose the strongest candidate. The Democratic Party needs to return to its principles and embrace a true primary process, so that the most popular candidates emerge, rather than consolidating against enormously popular candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
Are the libs learning? Welcome to another look inside Lib Land. Anything specific you want me to share?
(Some of) the Libs are alright
I don't think calling out Hillary staffers for losing 3 times BADLY is a problem. Us losing is the problem, and they need to recognize what is going on. It is literally the genocide, no Natives voted for her, no Black men, less Latinos - what does that say to you? We can blame the voters all we want, (don't do that) but we have had terrible candidates and the last few cycles, that's on the party. Shoddy.
This take is pretty good. Gonna have to chew on this one:
I think Democrats should have a populist platform, but if they need a populist platform then how did Biden win in 2020? When is the last time we've had a Democratic presidential candidate who won on a truly ideal populist platform? I mean, do we actually have any data that shows there were swaths of the youth vote that stayed home over, say, Gaza, that didn't stay home for Biden in 2020?
It feels like people have been promising that with the perfect candidate and the perfect platform with the perfect populist policies we would see a sea change towards Democrats. It's true, a lot of progressive policies poll extremely well across the board! **But people don't vote based on policies. **Trump is proof of that. He openly pushed for anti-populist policies while in office, his campaign was all about transphobia and xenophobia and sexism and nothing about the policies that people say they like, any voter who actually gave a shit about policies enough to research them knew he wasn't going to enact any of those policies that we're promised will swing elections if we just presented them in the right way. Why do we think that the the perfect platform and campaign will work for Democrats when an absolutely batshit platform and campaign didn't stop Trump? That's just another version of the double-standard the media applies to Democrats versus Republicans and it misses the forest for the trees.
All the research done about how people form opinions and change them and choose political parties shows it has nothing to do with facts (like who has what policy) and everything to do with identity. Who is like you? Who do you think vibes with your social group? Who are your friends and family supporting? When you say "I am a Republican" or "I am a Democrat" you are not identifying with a series of policies, you are identifying yourself with group culture and history as surely as you do when you say "I am Christian" or "I am Black" or "I am an Eagles fan". Saying "Your candidate believes this" or "But the other party has this policy" when it challenges the pre-existing beliefs that are part of their group identity isn't just asking them to take in new information, it's asking them to change who they are. It's asking them to disengage with their social group. This sounds very dramatic when you just want someone to believe extremely obvious things like yes, Republicans literally tried to take away the law that forced insurance companies to accept pre-existing conditions, but that's how the human lizard brain works. It has gotten even worse as the country's become more politically polarized because people cling even harder to these identities and their social groups become even more siloed.
(if you really want to believe it's facts and policies--the closer people follow politics and the more informed they are, the less likely they are to change their minds because they become better at coming up with reasons to discount every challenge thrown at them)
Is no one mentioning the genocide that the Democrats enacted? As soon as it started in October last year, I started doing the numbers and it kept getting worse and worse as the genocide kept on. The north of Gaza is exterminated. The south of Lebanon has been exterminated and exiled. My numbers showed that if we had stopped sending weapons to Israel, we would have won easily.
This thread is maddening. You all are in DC or wherever you are, have you canvassed lately? Have you made phone calls? Have you talked to your neighbors? We are in a completely different world and we are all acting like Dems in 2016. We can intellectualize the polls or whatever we think is happening, but it seems like you all don't know what's happening in Idaho, or Alaska or Iowa or South Carolina. Y'all, this is why we lose. Consultants and political people who think they know but never talk to the people. I really want you to talk to your neighbors, and then get back to me. Not rich neighbors, real people. This is why we lose - Gen Z is not having the Democratic Party and I don't blame them. This isn't a hard conversation, it's really simple. Have a better candidate, we win. I want to win, and the people we put up lately are bad. That's simply it. We need to get back to talking about what we can do for regular people, and not the most lethal military in the world.
Yes, the people who are telling you to your face that the rent is too damn high are all secretly racist and sexist:
I can’t say that I have any answers either, but I will offer that I work for an organization that has been on the ground in the 4 most competitive states since 2018, and has never left. We ask people every single day their top issue. I assumed when we ramped up this year, we’d hear Gaza. That as we got closer to the election, it would be abortion or the September Court, or LGBTQ+ rights.
But consistently, across all our states, by a large margin, it was the economy. I think there is a ton of research that can be done into why people think the economy is worse than it is, ways the Dems should restructure their approach to economic issues, **and whether or not people say “the economy” because it’s a lot more palatable than “great replacement theory” or “I’m not letting a woman lead me”. **
This person is willing to consider that "the economy" means "great replacement theory" but not that it means "the rent and grocery prices are too damn high"