So why did they win?
So why did they win?
The majority of Americans who voted, at least in the swing states, have voted for the republicans. Why? Do the republican policies reflect popular opinion? Or is it that their vibes are more aligned with the public? Or maybe people are worse off now than they were 4 years ago and are hoping to turn back time? As a non-american I don't quite get it. People must think their lives will materially improve under the republicans, but why?
Look at the vote totals, (as of right now) Harris 66 mi vs Trump's 71, compare this to 2020, 81 Biden vs 74 Trump.There is also this Pew article which shows the breakdown of non-voters
The simple conclusion is that the singularly most important thing a politician can do is excite and move their base. For how awful/low energy his campaign was this year, trump still excites and moves a base, while kamala was confused about what base to cater to- first calling Republicans weird then copying their platform and getting the dick Cheney approval.
This all could have been avoided if the Dems actually had a primary this year, but I think the DNC is actually afraid of progressives taking the party back over
Democrats had nothing to offer beyond not being Donald Trump. They copied his policies, celebrated endorsements from hardcore republicans, and bragged about wanting to put republicans in positions of power in Harris' cabinet. Every vote for Harris was a vote for Trump. Trump has been the center of the democratic party since he won the 2016 primary. The two cornerstones of democrats strategy have been that they are not the person Donald Trump and that any criticism of the democratic party is Russian propaganda. It works better than it should because most Americans have the memory and political literacy (and sometimes even the literal literacy) of a goldfish, but it doesn't work well enough to win elections unless their opponents do an even worse job campaigning.
The democrats' main pitch was: We are doing a shitty job, but the other team will be worse.
The republicans' main pitch was: They are doing a shitty job, we wont.Democrats main offer was doing what the republicans did. Why go for a cheap knockoff that's only in it for the votes, when you can get genuine homemade rabid racism? The democrats have nothing to offer and they're not even willing to admit shit is fucked. Republicans have lots of stuff to offer: Fascism and they are willing to admit shit is fucked (because of immigrants, not the rich)
If you're an average voter and your choice is between someone offering to do genocide while denying it and someone offering to do genocide while enjoying it, then the average voter (who is a fascist) will go for the ones who are open about it.On top of that the democrats method of campaigning via smug condescention and veiled threats does not do them any favours. Pointing at a graph and saying "you don't get it, inflation is going down!" (which just means it's going up slower) to a person who has to choose between paying utilities or eating every day, isn't a good idea if you want that person to vote for you.
It also doesn't help that democrats do anything they can to kneecap their own strong grassroots movements (See: Bernie Sanders being fucked over in the primaries two elections in a row, the dems turning on #metoo, the dems marginalising the BLM activists that won them georgia in 2020)
Because the democrats have done nothing but piss on people and tell them it's golden rain for 4 years, then campaign on "that guy will piss on you harder" while actively courting that guy's main supporters instead of getting votes from people who don't want to be pissed on
This is just what happens in a declining country with an enforced two party system: people blame the decline on the incumbent party and vote for the other party in a desperate attempt to right the ship. But the decline continues and people blame the decline on the new incumbent party and vote for the old incumbent party back in a desperate attempt to right the ship.
At the end of the day, Harris couldn't distance herself from the Biden administration by virtue of being part of it. Her not invoking the 25th amendment meant that she either cosigns to everything the Biden administration has done, including genocide in Palestine, or lacks the leadership qualities to make decisive decisions. Factor in her being a terrible candidate in general and the (truthful) perception that she didn't earn her spot as the presidential candidate (ie she lost the only primary she participated in and was only handpicked at the last minute) and it shouldn't be that surprising that she got BTFO.
I honestly think any Democratic candidate that isn't working directly for the Biden administration like Gruesome Newsome would beat Trump because Trump is also a known quality and a shadow of his former 2016 self, but it goes back to what I said in the first paragraph. The US is going to be worse off in 2028 than in 2024, people will blame it on the GOP, and whoever is the Democratic candidate would BTFO their Republican rival. The smarter political operatives like Gruesome Newsome understand this and are setting themselves up to run in 2028. He's probably going to push some ghoulish "liquidate the homeless" initiative in California to show how he's "tough on crime." I guess this also shows Harris's poor political instincts. In a way, the DNC pretty much set her up for failure whether they realized it or not.
The ‘economy’ is a big thing. That doesn’t mean GDP in this case, but that there is inflation and no rise in wages that follows. When the message from the incumbent side is that things are great actually and you’re wrong if you don’t think so the viability of the policies from the other side stops mattering as much. The big problem is that history didn’t end and neoliberal policy is failing right left and centre all over the world.
Also that Kamala is a historically shit candidate, there is a reason she immediately ate shit in the 2020 primaries.
The only reason Brandon ever won was because of covid. If 2020 had been a "normal" year, this would have been how 2020's electoral map looked.
Because yeah, as others have said, the Dems just have nothing to offer. It's the same as 2016 - Trump does represent an alternative, it just happens to be barbarism.
I think it's two things:
Firstly, identity politics is a hell of a drug and Trump has put the blame for the current miserable situation on the "Wokes".
Secondly, America is a country where you have beaten into you from a young age that voting every 2 years is how political action is done. Protest are constantly put down as childish inconvenience at best and actively criminal at worst. With that in mind how as an American do you voice your frustration with the incumbent? You vote for the challenger.
there are 50 reasons and all of them boil down to the democratic party's refusal to be popular. at this point the party is run by committed neocons and centrists who despite knowing that progressive policy is popular (let alone morally correct) will never campaign on it. whatever organized left exists in this country must break with the democrats if there is any hope for the future
Somewhere between forty and seventy percent of American adults do not demonstrate comprehensive English literacy meaning they can technically read and write but the ability to recall, analyze, reference, or think critically about text is at or below the level we expect twelve year olds to read at. This is not a matter of them being able to read words on a page, it's a matter of them being able to think. America makes a lot more sense when you realize this.
Final tallies aren't in but it seems like significantly over half the population also did not participate in this election.
In reality I think there's probably not just one reason you can point to. Inflation, refusal to do a primary, abysmal campaigning, et al. All of it is probably a factor to one extent or another.
End of the day the one thing I do hope all of us on this site can agree to is that whatever the actual material reasons for it: the Democrats absolutely unquestionably deserved this loss.
Sounds like historically low turnouts. It's entirely possible that the Democrats' behavior the last four years was so demoralizing and dispiriting that a couple million of their voters didn't bother.
The real story here is that Trump won the popular vote. That signals an enormous shift in sentiment and culture, and should be the subject of any serious analysis here. This is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of the liberal project and liberal vision--a total implosion of the do-nothing "centrist" political consensus. Democrats have shown over and over and over again that they have nothing to offer the majority of Americans. The Harris campaign was just the apotheosis of the trend: courting capital and neo-conservative ghouls while jettisoning any talk of policies that might help people. This is not a winning election strategy. That should be screamingly obvious now. People are angry, hurting, and looking for anyone that even suggests they understand that pain and might do something about it, even when the suggested solutions make no sense. The only sane response to this result is a SWEEPING reexamination of the neo-liberal consensus. Liberalism in its current form has failed most people, and the Democrats have failed to articulate any message or position that appreciates that. Until someone in the United States starts articulating a positive vision with policies to engender some hope for the future--healthcare for everyone, housing as a human right, SERIOUS action on climate change--the far right will keep winning. They're the only ones with ideas.
The tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
I mean, yeah, it looks like Kamala didn’t get the dem base out to vote for her because no one wants “more of the same” when following an incredibly unpopular president. Kamala was very openly telling the base to fuck off, and made her race singularly about attracting white, upper middle class suburban women at the cost of everyone else.
But that’s the micro view. In the macro view, Michael Roberts’ analysis of rates of profit shows it’s been falling for a while now. Capitalism was in crisis during the Great Depression, only to be “saved” by WW2. The reconstruction of the industrial world led to good times for a couple decades until there was a profitability crisis in the 1970s. Capital’s response starting the 80s was offshoring, privatization, and financialization - neoliberalism in other words. But the gains from that was only able to keep things going until 2009 or so. Since then profitability has been shit. Capital has no answers beyond just tightening the screws (austerity at home and imperialism abroad). Just increasing misery in order to slow the decline of the rate of profit.
The US needs that surplus value extracted primarily from the global south to keep running. That surplus value is how capital is able to buy off the domestic working class. But that slice of the pie keeps shrinking, i.e. material conditions keep worsening. Things are getting worse as every year goes by and everyone knows it, even if they don’t understand it. That’s why we keep bouncing between parties every four years instead of the steady 2 term presidents we had in the era of neoliberalism. Most people are not doing in depth political analysis. They are just seeing their situation get worse and blaming whoever is in charge.
Of course the economy won’t recover under Trump. It will almost certainly get worse, and I happen to think the odds of a major economic crisis are pretty high. I would bet everything we get a dem president in 2028. Things just get worse and people are fumbling around for a solution.
And that’s where we come in. WE HAVE THE ANSWERS. It’s our job to bring the light of Marxism to the world. I’m not even gonna pretend we can make much of a dent in 4 years but this is a multi-generational project.
- Really hard to run an attack campaign when you're the incumbent party. If your messaging is just "im a bit better than the other guy" people are just gonna point to the shit job you're doing right now. Historical levels of unpopularity is real hard to come back from, bush needed 9/11.
- The whole Biden debacle was disastrous, probably ended any chance of scooping up the moderate vote they were desperately pining for.
- Gaza, immigration, and generally running to the right put a bullet in any chance of bringing this campaign back. They tried really desperately with the weed stuff at the last minute, but the damage was done.
- Democratic party reeks of putrescene
Honestly this is why.
"Things were cheaper under trump" which is sort of true.
Sure there are the extremities of the republican party who are deadset on abortions or trans people or whatever but I promise the majority that vote republican do so because things were cheaper under trump.
Political discussion in America is not very nuanced
dems look like a party of over-educated weirdos who failed to message on the economy -- the Important Thing. losing 2nd and 3rd income quartiles, only 10 point margin for union families, trounced with first time voters and those who think the economy is Not So Good or Poor, and those who are Dissatisfied and Angry. lost latino men and those without any college. Few voted chiefly on foreign policy and those who did swung for Republicans (no one gives a fuck about Gaza, obviously). And abortion wasn't salient-- nearly half of those who though abortion should be legal in nearly all cases still voted GOP.
More upshots: Harris may have reduced the number of "double haters" but the remaining haters swung clearly to Trump. Vance salvaged his favorable/unfavorables and appears at par w/Walz. Those who decided late (within the last week) broke clearly to Trump (RIP squirrel).
Honestly, it's difficult for me to mind meld into a republican. Their messaging always sounds to me like "shit sucks and it's supposed to suck. I want you to go fuck yourself and live a life full of toil as I tighten the screws because I want to profit off of it! I do not want to know what other cultures are like." And then they all start cheering wildly. Their boogeymen make my skin crawl. I don't see a lot of trans people and blue haired feminists causing civil unrest. I think generally messaging and education enable people to say that feminists want a choice and a fair shot. Not that you should even endeavor to be seen as acceptable through their lens; in my experience that's an intractable fool's game that becomes a barrier to living a life full of that which you find important. In addition I am simply stupified that the Dems can take the torch for the border wall and take the project higher and still the Republicans call Dems the party of illegal immigrants. That should be your crown jewel as a country of ashes and cruelty. Then of course you have your firm base of racism and sexism - they'd codify men and women can't be friends + you were assigned one at birth" on day 1 if they could.
But what I do know is how to fucking hate liberals. You can build a house on that shit. I can even conceive of the right wing attack as well. You get all the WEF "eat ze bugs" rhetoric where they're trying to put you in cages and allow you to scream in the Amazon mindfulness cubes. They think you're the party of HR and big tech (spiderman pointing at spiderman). They think you're the warhawk who wants to babysit the middle east (sometimes, other times they also want to). You'd hate how INCREDIBLY corrupt they are; their messaging is like a sponsorship from a big company that you hate (spiderman pointing at spiderman). They siphon everything nice for themselves and they (spidey senses) cheat at the stock market. I bet all sorts of foul shit happened in Ukraine. I bet all sorts of shit happened with Diddy and Epstein. I bet foul shit of both types is still happening.
So I could comprehend doing a harm reduction by being a republican if I never knew about socialism and still hated the libs. I could never imagine in a million years being excited because my boss is going to save so much money by dumping shit into rivers.
Same as it always was, the answer is material interests
All good points but something that I don't see talked about more is how many Reps voted Early/Absentee this election. In 2020, early voting was 44% Dem with 30% Rep . In 2024, the percentages were almost dead even. I think Democrats saw the early voting results and wrongly assumed that they'd overwhelming go Dem because they did in the past. Because of this, Democrats were expecting a blue surge at the end to help balance out red votes early in the night. This did not materialize.
Other than that, it's a million small things that any competent campaign could've avoided. Don't alienate the Muslim community, hammer actual policy positions in your questions, have an actual primary instead of a rigged process, etc etc.
SQUIRREL
When you run on the status quo, and the status quo sucks, people are gonna turn to whoever manages to present themselves as an alternative.
When you run to the right on stuff like immigration and the military, and the people who like right-wing policies already have a party waiting on them hand-and-foot, they're not gonna switch over to you, and you're just going to alienate the parts of your base/coalition that are affected by those policies.
People are gonna blame the left or say it's because she's a woman of color. But Tammy Baldwin, a queer woman, looks set to win Wisconsin, and Elissa Slotkin is ahead by a hair in Michigan, so that narrative is dead in the water.
At least in PA, a more important swing state, people are so fucking racist and xenophobic, think trump will save them money, and are still annoyed there were minor precautions against covid
Some voted third party or not at all because of the genocide but I don't think that alone is enough to explain why he won
Because left-of-center people -- not even "leftists" mind you, just people who broadly want to Improve Society Somewhat -- were told loud and clear by the Harris campaign that their support wasn't needed, so they stayed home. It's still too early to show this definitively, but I believe the final results will bear this out.
As a non-american I don't quite get it. People must think their lives will materially improve under the republicans, but why?
the american people are unintellectual. we laugh at trump's conception of tariffs but his silly economic rhetoric and proposed policies sound good and correct to a lot of fools.
people want their pre covid life back
Dems didn’t learn a thing from 2016 and still believe shaming and belittling poor people is acceptable. Incidentally, a majority of US citizens are poor, and poor people are very sensitive to bullshit, which the democrats peddle on a near daily basis. The real problem is that while the Republicans do the exact same thing and have nearly the same exact policies and stances on things, they have a much more aggressive and, let’s admit it, sometimes funny way of doing (trump tweets are fantastically so out there you can’t help but laugh). Meanwhile the dems are boring, smug nerds that call you a child when you dare question party policies and results, and engage in insufferable semantics. So naturally the poor people who feel misled will side with those that don’t act arrogant and smug, even though material conditions might (well, will) worsen.
why not? it is not about the name of the side label, it means nothing, it is the idea and moral values that get votes
