Trump Didn’t Win Pennsylvania. Kamala Harris Lost It.
Trump Didn’t Win Pennsylvania. Kamala Harris Lost It.
The problem isn’t that cities like Reading are now Trump strongholds, but that Harris’s campaign gave few reasons for enthusiasm.
This is a good article calling out the true problems with the campaign.
I keep seeing people blame voters, but the only group to blame is the Democratic Party. Parties exist to serve and represent voters, not the other way round.
The Dems failed to address the genuine concerns of their traditional base - primarily the economy - and that left the race open for the Repulicans.
The Democrat message on the economy seemed to basically be "things are not as bad as you think and we've already done what was needed". Instead they focused on abortion and a threat to democracy as the main issues of the election.
Yet for many lower income households, they rent and have been hit doubly hard by inflation. Home owners have been shielded from the rent portion of the cost of living crisis, and experienced less hardship. The dems did not seem to understand that and effectively left the field open for the republicans.
Looking at the numbers, Trump hasn't significantly grown the Republican vote or if so, it's a relatively small increase. Yet the Democrat vote is way down on where it was in 2020.
There are lots of other failures on the part of the Dems - allowing Biden to run essentially unchallenged, the leadership aggressively pushing back against concerns about his suitability, Biden waiting until very late to step back and Harris being coronated and having to use Bidens existing campaign. Harris was a decent enough candidate but she was given an impossible task thanks to an out of touch and poorly led party.
The Dems lost this election, rather than Trump winning it.
No, Trump won it. He got votes and those votes were from people who cast them. Yes, democratic party has problems, but the far bigger problem is that enough people voted for Trump when given other options.
Trump won the election because he won the election is a tautological argument. It’s not false, but it elucidates nothing.
It's wild to me how many excuses people are willing to make for the tens of millions of Americans that actively choose Trump.
About 16 million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than voted for Harris in 2024. The Democrats found a way to take 16 million people who cared enough to vote last time and get them not to vote this time.
Shit, Trump lost 2 million voters from 2020, too. This should have been a layup.
If you choose not to decide (or vote) you still have made a choice. Biden voters who refused to vote Harris chose to let the rest of the country decide for them. They will be worse off for it. Hopefully they learn from this but I doubt it.
They weighed their experience under trump, and under Biden, and realized at worse they were the same. Trump objectively wasn't as bad as your cult implied for a lot of Americans, and Biden was far worse than the Harris campaign acknowledged for a lot of Americans.
Between these two facts lies the failure of democrats, Harris offered nothing different, at all, during her campaign, where as Trump at least acknowledged the problems people are facing and offered different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs
Well we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem, they're killing time
Filling out forms, standing in lineWell we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard, if we behavedEvery child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our faceWell I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up todayThat was over forty years ago, and ever since Bill Clinton’s triangulation, the Democratic party has only further abandoned the working class. Gore, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris are all of this unbroken neoliberal Clintonian dynasty.
Have you seen this clip? Michael Moore on the Democratic party: https://youtu.be/MVnIatb7iVI
Remember when people said they'd take "Any functional adult" over Trump? Well... That's why I still blame the voters here. They had their functional adult and didn't seize the opportunity
I completely understand your frustration. It sucks knowing that things are going to get worse and it could have been much better if those who didn’t vote, voted for Kamala. And we’re all definitely going to need time to fully process this.
In my opinion though, and I’m not saying that I’m definitely correct - but the feeling I get the reason that the democrats lost is because lots of people felt completely disillusioned with the democratic party. I want to be really clear: Fuck Trump, he’s a fascist in a party of fascists doing fascist things. they will undoubtedly cause death and harm. If there was any justice in this world they’d be on trial for crimes again humanity. But the democrats did not offer enough hope for people to get out and vote. They basically ran on a campaign of “vote for us because you have no better option, the other guy is the worst”, and that is just not an inspiring campaign. Their ongoing support for the genocide in palestine, their lack of interest in fighting for the rights of trans people, all of these things and more left many people, myself included, feeling absolutely abandoned by the democratic party.
I still think that leftists should vote, and they should vote with their heart and with thoughtfulness and think about harm mitigation. But I also cannot blame anyone who just couldn’t muster the energy to go out and queue for hours to express their support for a candidate that they felt very little love for.
I really hope that my love and compassion comes through. It’s hard to express over the internet, and it sometimes feels a little silly, but it’s what we have left. Our love for each other and our hope that the future can be better, even if we may not live to experience that better future.
I really appreciate your thoughtful response, and no question everyone could have done better here. And the country absolutely needs to heal from the division Trump has caused the last 8 or 9 years. The thing that blows my mind though, is when people who didn't vote have the audacity to blame someone else for Trump being elected. The votes are the smoking gun here no matter what else was at play. We had a normal person, more than happy to step in and prevent the further spread of this national cancer and she gets blamed somehow when things go south. Run a better campaign, sure, that's a fair critique. But ultimately the voters did shit the bed here
I don’t buy this. In Nebraska there was an election between an independent union leader and a career politician. The union leader lost.
The consensus seems to be that people that voted democrat in 2020 voted republican this time because they experienced inflation under Biden that think it was his fault.
People don't vote for numbers they vote for stories. They vote for their feelings. Do they feel like they're in a better place today and they were the four years ago. Do they feel like they're better off financially. Do they feel like the economy is stronger. And the answer for most of us is no of course not. So regardless of the reasons for that they're going to vote that way. That's just a harsh reality of elections and economics.
people that voted democrat in 2020 voted republican this time
Both parties lost millions of voters since 2020. Trump lost about 2 million, Harris lost about 16 million.
It wasn't people switching parties, it was people not voting because Biden didn't make a difference in their lives and Harris promised more of the same.
no no, I think it's really that she wasn't horribly racist enough. really, it's that she didn't tack hard enough to the right. she should've promised to build two walls, one on canada too. she should've promised to kill the palestinians even faster, actually, she should've resurrected the corpse of kissinger and then sent him to michigan to explain why they needed to die. THAT will solve things.
How many hoops are we going to jump through to avoid admitting complete and total defete??? Word it how you want but trump won, trump won big. Let's move the fuck on already and keep sone dignity unlike them
Edit: yikes, yall are pathetic and im ashamed to be affiliated with the democratic party. Just fucking wow man
This is like gameplay analysis mode atm, the lessons need to be learned and strategies need to be changed.
I'm actually thinking we might need to be throwing dignity out the window. It's just being used as traditionalism to keep the status quo much like we've seen with feudalism. A progressive movement should've been continued after the DNC chicanery in 2016, dignity be damned. I've watched Bernie bend the knee to a left-wing party that's been completely overtaken by big interests, if they didn't play fair he shouldn't have endorsed and went back independent immediately (it's all speculative though).
I do fear that jumping through too many hoops will land the democrats back to square one and they'll just continue the same path (Desi Lydic did a good bit on the daily show about the media's many conflicting critiques).
Fuck outta here.