Flopped? It was incredibly close and if Elon did what he claimed she probably won overall. It’s only MAGAts that think it was a landslide.
Article was a great read. This part really resonated with me.
It may seem petty to use this incident, but it does illustrate Harris’s expectation that the world should conform to her needs. Towels on the far side of the room? Someone else must fetch them. A slot as the Democrat presidential candidate that party leaders conveniently made sure would be uncontested by anyone else, a massively well-funded campaign that raked in over a billion dollars and the support of celebrities like Oprah and Beyoncé, a popular vice presidential candidate, a huge boost in the polls as soon as she stepped into the campaign… and, yet, somehow, her loss is still anyone’s fault but her own. Why are my towels on the other side of the room? Who will fetch them for me?
It really did feel that way in hindsight. That we all were just supposed to conform to her and not the other way around.
I remember Hacks on Tap talking about how their contacts were frustrated that Harris wasn’t out doing more national television interviews and that she wasn’t really putting herself out there. This feels like another example of the towel in the bathroom.
Not for nothing, but trump wasn’t exactly out there either outside of the incel podcasts. She was a poor candidate and the funding bullshit meant she had to be the candidate. Fuck her, but fuck every protest non voter way more.
No FUCK Biden for continuing to run even though he was too damn old to. He should have passed the torch properly and allowed for primaries to happen.
He not only robbed us of a primary, he broke his one term promise.
And in doing so, shoved an uncharismatic center right candidate down our throats, whose only redeeming quality was not Trump.
Is that what democracy looks like?
he broke his one term promise.
Biden never made a one term promise.
Yes, but also fuck every protest non-voter even more.
What? She was a fantastic candidate! The fact she lost to someone so obviously bad just means she was bad at communicating to dumb voters. This is a widely known and predictable problem with Americans and you can’t blame her for that. So you see, she was the best person to not get the job. /s
People are missing your /s unfortunately lol
I was never a big fan, but I was passionate about supporting her from the moment Biden stammered through that debate until this moment in her DNC speech: https://youtube.com/shorts/-UQliWnKnqY
This was the moment when she did the heel turn away from all the clever, momentum building moves that assembled a surprisingly left-friendly coalition. Everything after this was punching left and she lost as a result.
Bill Maher did a bit, just before taking a break in his show where he discussed future news that would happen while on break. He said Biden would drop out, and then he looked at the top contenders. He really crushed Harris, saying she would never be president.
people still watch bill maher?
We didn’t need a memoir to tell us what a fuck up she was
Harris adviser says VP ran ‘flawless’ campaign
“I would posit she ran a pretty flawless campaign, and she did all the steps that [were] required to be successful,” she added. “And I think – obviously, we did not win, but I do think we hit all the marks.”
…
Nix, Harris’ campaign manager, also attributed Trump’s decision not to participate in any debate following the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10 as detrimental to the Harris campaign’s strategy of presenting the choice between Trump and Harris clearly to voters several times.
“I think that was hard for us to then get the attention that we would have liked to,” Nix said.
Well, there you have it. Perfect campaign. No notes. Just wish Trump had been willing to debate, because we all know the problem Harris had was getting her face out there.
Time of death:
This right here is when she lost me for sure.
So this is why you supported Trump (by not voting against him)? Wouldn’t it still be so much better than what you have now?
If only our opponent hadn’t made a choice detrimental to us!
Number of times a candidate has run against or in place of the incumbent and failed miserably before Harris: 3
…And succeeded: 0
Number of times a candidate has run against or in place of the incumbent and failed miserably after Harris: 4
It was a terribly weak position, but she foolishly believed in the American people to pick the best of two bad options.
She was misguided.
Look. I am not going to pretend that Kamala The Cop was some amazing candidate.
But she never stood a chance with, what, a three month campaign where much of the voting populace never even realized she was running? And a LOT of the reporting and commentary around this reeks of “she just isn’t charismatic” or “she is unlikeable” and all the dogwhistles involved.
If anything, it speaks poorly of her leadership potential that she was willing to be saddled with that mess of a non-campaign.
This is a perpetually idiotic take.
All the statistical evidence that we have, is that once Kamala was the candidate, her polling rose meteorically. Until she started to define herself as a candidate, when all we had were her words as former candidate to base her policy positions on, she was heading towards blue-wave-of-epic proportions territory. She named Walz as running mate and people thought they had someone to vote for herself
Then, during the convention, the definition began as a continuance of a corporate, Biden-esque, more-of-the-same, Democrat. They silenced Palestinian voices and shunned the progressive vote, while embracing Republicans and hawkish dem’s.
And her polling rapidly stagnated, then began to slide. As she slid further and further right, so did her polling.
Harris’ loss was not an inevitability, and to present it as such is to both misunderstand the political moment then, as it happened, and to misrepresent the ongoing political moment.
If Harris’ had ran on her 2020 campaign platform with Walz as vice, she wins. Hands down. The political pressure desperately seeking an outlet on issues like M4A, and so many other leftwing polciies isn’t new. Bernie got it started in 2016 and it never stopped growing. All she needed to do was step left and ride the wave. But she chose to make losing decisions. Her loss was not an inevitability and to present it as such is a form of lying.
Taking campaign advice from her brother in law, the CLO of Uber, who is a big part of the gig economy which destroys workers rights, was also a huge red flag.
I still voted for her, but it was like choosing a shit sandwich over Hitler. I didn’t exactly want either one.
Yup, all the momentum and revitalization of the democratic vote slowed to a crawl as soon the biden-esque political strategy got involved, caving on the Palestinian genocide, and by pretty much kicking Walz to the curb when it comes to PR. We could’ve been riding the “MAGA is just weird” all the way to polls, but neoliberealism had to fuck it all up again.
Her 2020 campaign wasn’t actually that good. She started with the same boost of optimism and then fell apart once she started defining specifics and every other statement was walking things back. She flamed out for a reason.
I agree with your statement here though. She had all the momentum and tools to win and flubbed it through actual choices, not some inherent insurmountable challenges.
Yeah, but then how does she get all of those bribes, er, money?
The whole campaign was a scam to make consultants rich by buying TV ad spots for which they get a percent…
Well, she wasn’t going to be able to throw the election if she made herself popular.
had ran
had run
Maybe, but actually moving left wouldn’t assure a victory either. If it became clear that Kamala was moving left, the DNC and the rich people in power would help Trump win through lots of propaganda on the news.
Kamala only wins via the progressive route if she gets lucky at countering both Republican and Democrat propaganda, like Mamdani.
Then stand true and lose well.
Down the road she took, you don’t even get to keep your self-respect.
But she never stood a chance with, what, a three month campaign
That was half her strength. Trump’s entire team was geared around shitting on Joe Biden. And then Joe Biden stops being on the ballot, sending oodles of oppo-research and Hunter Biden smears and god even knows what kind of October Surprise they had cooking down the toilet.
Biden dropping out and throwing up Harris in his place meant she was free to pummel Trump with negative ads while he had to fully reconfigure his campaign to attack someone who’d spent four years as a backbencher. And - early on at least - Harris capitalized on this well. She came in with a moderate Dem - Tim Walz - who defused some of the Zionist image built up around Joe. She spewed negative ads at Trump and Vance, leaning on the “they’re just weird” talking point that got plenty of mileage both on and off-line. She was a prodigious fundraiser, unlocking a ton of cash that Biden had left on the sidelines because he was too senile to call the mega-donors and ask for it.
And, as a tabula rosa, she (initially) ditched all of Biden’s first term baggage - his failure to secure student loan relief, his endless efforts at compromising with far-right Republicans, his pull-out of Afghanistan and dive into Ukraine, his just being a gross old fart who couldn’t talk good.
But then Harris had to take on a bunch of Hillarycrat advisers and tack to the right. She ditched Walz for Liz Cheney and Cindy McCain. She sucked up to the Silicon Valley Techbros as they lined up to knife her in the back. She repeatedly defended Joe Biden’s least popular policies. She undid everything that Biden dropping out was intended to accomplish.
If anything, it speaks poorly of her leadership potential that she was willing to be saddled with that mess of a non-campaign.
She never really had a choice. But that’s been the hallmark of her entire political career. Harris always just kinda blew where the wind took her. She shouldn’t have been VP to begin with, taking the job only because Biden confusedly promised a black woman VP when he was asked about his plans for a next SCOTUS pick.
But then she surrounded herself with some of the most abysmal neocon reject advisors $1.5B could buy. And she tanked her chances at becoming the First Woman President by running the Clinton Playbook that had cost her predecessor so two prior electoral defeats.
tabula rosa
It’s “tabula rasa” (meaning “blank slate”)
I think the short timeframe was ultimately a detriment, despite this. How many people Googled “who is Kamala Harris?” and “Did Joe Biden drop out?” on election day?
Yeah. The short time frame and trump not having years of insults ready were her only hope. But it was still a doomed endeavor because biden insisted on running until well past the last minute.
Turning a weakness into a strength is a good idea… but it doesn’t stop it from being a weakness.
The campaign came out of the gate punching and dominated the news cycle. Then they took pelosi’s advice and tacked right and immediately began to flounder.
Im not convinved the technofascists wouldve allowed a democrat win, but i don’t think it’s because kamala only had 3 months. Thats how long election campaigns are in civilised countries.
Enough of America is racist, sexist or lazy enough to not vote for Harris and it got us in the position we are in now.
Ahh yes. This tired, losing canard.
America will vote for immigrants. It will vote for women. It will vote for black people. It will vote to defend trans people.
It doesn’t want to vote for apologists to corporatism.
Its very clear.
It’ll also vote for Trump who is King Capitalism.
What alternative did you provide them?
You do understand that your approach to rhetoric is fundamental to why Democrats lost and Trump won?
I’ve told you before that the reason Trump won is because people voted for him and others decided not to vote.
That is the technical reason.
There are plenty of reasons for people to decide to not vote in the election.
- Ever since 2016, the Democrats seem to have run mostly on a plattform of keeping the status quo, Obama ran on “Change”, and managed to change healthcare for the masses with Obamacare. What was the main point in the Democrat campaign in the last election, to an outsider, the answer seems to be “we are not Trump”, which while true, is not interesting or engaging.
- Kamalas stance on Israel/Gaza, this is a stupid reason not to vote, but an important point, it also ties in with the previous point of that the Democrats didn’t seem to have any idea of what direction they would go if they were elected, other than “steady as she goes”.
Had the Democrats found and picked a course with a clear message to of what they were going to do when they won, and dropped the “steady as she goes” attitude, they may have won.
others decided not to vote
And why is that?
Because they didn’t give a shit if Trump won and did everything he said he would do.
As he is doing now.
Or, and this might be completely revolutionary towards your thinking…
Maybe how you approach politics is harmful and supports rightwing movements.
Race and gender had absolutely nothing to do with it. Democrat voters as a whole was trying to tell the party they are tired of old white rich men making decisions for them, she did absolutely nothing to differentiate herself from those old rich white men. Voters by and large said we have a red line and that red line is genocide but she continued anyway. His administration went on day after day after day telling us that the economy is good, we are not struggling when we could see in our day-to-day lives that yes we are struggling. The only message that sends is that they are not listening to us.
The DNC fucked around and found out
Lugging Cheney around was a wtf move.
Then why did America end up voting the polar opposite of everything you say they stand for then?
Because there’s a vast and well supported propaganda ecosystem on the right keeping their enthusiasm for kicking the shit outta the queers up.
Elections are won by getting your voters excited to vote for you. Republicans did, Democrats didn’t.
Democrats have told voters for generations there are only 2 choices to vote for. They exercised another right, abstain. If the party thought trump was a serious threat they would have primaried the senile guy that refused to step down
They exercised another right, abstain.
They should have voted and left the Presidential race empty on their ballots. All those down-ballotnstate and local races could have really made an impact. And strategists only care about the policy issues of likely voters.
Look. Everyone knows that there is nothing that Old White Rich Men want more than to elect a brown woman of asian descent. They HATE IT when you instead elect an Old White Rich (But Not Really) Man instead.
Fight the power!!!
