Harris only received five percent of Republican votes — less than the six percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the seven percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him. While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020.
Meanwhile, Harris lost households earning under $100,000, while Democratic turnout collapsed. Votes are still being counted, but Harris is on pace to underperform Biden’s 2020 totals by millions of votes.
You keep blaming the voters for deciding the Democrats aren’t representative of them.
Have you thought about blaming the Democrats for not being representative of the voters they want?
You can blame both, honestly. The US has always had the same political game as ever, people should be wise enough to understand how to play it. If you ever want to get to a more stable democracy that no longer has the stupid two party system that prevents any form of real representative democracy where you can actually have a selection of parties that represent you perfectly, the choice should be obvious.
At least with Harris they could try to work with her and convince them to change their views for the future as they ruled. Trump will call you a left wing lunatic and slam the door in your face. Zero influence and no chance for progress (and even regression) vs some influence and some chance to progress.
Are you saying its common sense to vote Kamala because she would help dismantle the two party system?
Not that optimistically (And realistically, not common sense either apparently), but yes, it’s a potential path. And a peaceful one, among a multitude of bloody ones.
Half the country is white people who aren’t going to have a meaningfully different life experience under Trump. Saying “they have to” do anything is vastly over estimating how much they care. They believe both sides are just as bad and if they’re political at all they only trust the lowest politicians they can personally interact with.
You are expecting a level of political education and activation that just isn’t there.
I’m not expecting anything, And I never said they had to do anything. Who would be expecting any kind of logical reasoning from US voters after this result. I said “If you want to” = “In order to get a desirable outcome, this is potentially the only way to do so.”, not “Everyone must do this because I say so”
You don’t have to use the imperative tone to set up an imperative. You clearly lay out two choices, forgetting there’s always a third.
Stop trying to force your interpretation on my words, it’s not what I said, period. I’m not limiting my scope to two choices. The US constitution does that for the matter of what party is in office. There are very obvious other choices, and most of them call for massive human suffering like civil war or political violence, which I’m not going to iterate on for obvious reasons. Nowhere do I deny the existence of those choices, I’m just presenting the obvious conclusion of trying to change the system in a peaceful manner.
Except you do.
people keep saying this, but she got like 65 or 70 million votes?? Seems representative to me.
Not representative enough.
Your suggestion has slightly less weight because Biden was elected with essentially the same platform.
Biden’s win was NOT a confirmation of his campaign’s correctness. That should have been an easy election but he barely won.
I didn’t say it was. I’m just saying that the main difference between Bidens campaign vs Clinton and Harris is that his bits are on the outside.
Sexism. The point being made was sexism.
The Democratic party’s policies have not severely changed between Clinton running and Harris running that would account for the lower voter turnout.
The courting of the less Trumpian Republicans and Harris not being an old white dude are the two biggest things that affected voter turnout.
The main difference is that Trump was president at the time. Before people didn’t think it could be that bad, and four years after people had forgotten the chaos (2020 election was in the middle of COVID). It was a change election, and Harris was unwilling to try to be a change candidate because it would involve saying Biden did something wrong.
People point to sexism because it’s an easy out. “The people are bad, so all we need to do is nominate a man” means it’s a simple matter of internalizing their misogyny and then we win, when the throughline of three bad elections (Biden’s was bad) is uninspiring politics about slow and steady government being all you need. In one instance we had an immediate example of what a government by an amateur outsider could do so a plea for normalcy produced some benefit, but it still didn’t knock it out of the park when everything should have been in its favor.
Which is kind of a problem. The platform needs to reflect the current reality, not the reality 4 years ago.
Biden at least attempted to appear progressive. Harris went further right than him. Even to the point of saying she wouldn’t raise taxes on the rich as high as Biden said he would