If Kamala was a garbage candidate, what does that make Trump?
For bonus points, how is it not the voters fault considering any rational answer to the above question? You may open your book to look up topical issues like peace, climate, genocide, rights, hate, juvenile bullying, criminal bullying, felony conviction, bigotry (don’t miss misogyny relating to to “garbage candidate”, see above), and tariffs.
Turns out, lecturing the voters doesn’t make them want to vote for you. Everything you said is correct, but those weren’t the concerns that resonated. To quote Bill Clinton’s strategist in 92, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Yeah, the economy is doing great right now, but you have to ask, “for who?”
I agree that right now, our economists have a terrible way of defining a “good economy”. They have praise for a set of numbers such as the stock market rates, which have almost no connection to the well-being of common people.
We need more medians and fewer averages; not to measure wealth when it’s spread among the extremes.
It’s not the economy, it’s a popularity contest when the majority of the electorate stop choosing candidates based on what they do and have done and instead only pay attention to what they say or choose based on uninformed vibes.
Exit polling overwhelmingly disagrees with you. The number one stated reason was the economy.
Which economic policy did they report was the deciding factor?
Now you’re going to try and nit pick to back peddle? The economy was the star of the show and Kamala didn’t have an easy to understand answer. The messaging, as always, was piss poor from the democrats.
what does that make Trump?
The 47th POTUS.
topical issues like peace, climate, genocide, rights, hate, juvenile bullying, criminal bullying, felony conviction, bigotry
Every single one of those issues was put to measure last week and came up short to “the economy.” Idpol has been the Dem’s running charge since Occupy and has netted them exactly (1) election since Obama’s win as incumbent. It’s just not the winning strategy in national elections.
Even then, Bidens win was despite that, not because of it.
Exactly. Milquetoast old white man got the most votes of any president ever. Work with that.
The COVID situation was so specific that it 1) will never happen again, so don’t count on it, and 2) let a single-issue candidate win.
None of those issues mattered because the US system showed everyone it did not matter.
The system had 4 years to enact any form of consequences and there where none. That MUST mean trump was right and it was all lies and nonsense aimed at discrediting him.
And Trumps campaign ran on idpol this time… is she black? Illegal mexicans in prison getting sex changes, kids getting sex changed… you know, the counter to dem IdPol. They pulled it into the extreme and the Dems took the bait… they did not push back.
With the blatant lies of the magas and their fragile egos… I think the only thing that might have made a difference is call trump fat and stupid, bully him to his face and see if you can make him throw a tantrum or make him cry. Same with Vance… are you wearing eyeliner? Would you not be more comfortable on a couch?
Trump won. Sadly this means he was the better candidate. Which damning for the Democrats because he’s dog shit.
Ok…
Weird this hasn’t come up before for you.
But different people have different standards.
For Republican voters, it’s usually just the letter by someone’s name.
Dem voters have always had higher standards than Republican voters.
For bonus points, how is it not the voters fault
Because the entire point of a candidates campaign is to get votes. And Kamala and her campaign couldn’t even beat fucking trump.
For all those reasons you just listed he’s terrible, Kamala still couldn’t beat him.
What metric do you think a candidate and their campaign should be judged by except number of votes?
Bonus points:
Why don’t you think a shit tier opponent wouldnt make it easier? And how can a candidate who can’t beat trump not be considered “garbage”?
This is maddening. It will never stop. The democrats refuse to campaign on progressive policies, which are incredibly popular among the entire electorate (yes, also among republicans, see the recent ballot measures in Missouri on paid sick leave and higher minimum wage, for example), instead opting to position themselves as “republican light”. They completely capitulate to republican messaging on pretty much every issue (border wall, fracking, pro war, etc), and predictably lose to the people who invented this messaging. And then comes the worst part: angry libs start blaming the electorate instead of the people who lost. It’s not the lack of the dems even mentioning universal health care, no it’s the trans people. It’s not the genocide that the current democratic regime is committing, no it’s probably actually latino voters. It’s not the fact that the Harris campaign asks us to pretend everything is hunky spunky with the economy, offering nothing to relieve the 80% of the population who live paycheck to paycheck. Noooo you know what it’s actually white women and muslims faults. You fucking morons.
Can’t wait for the 2026 anti-transgender dem ticket, and the anti gay marriage ticket in 2028. It’s gonna be great.
then comes the worst part: angry libs start blaming the electorate instead of the people who lost
I feel like even calling them “angry libs” gives them some measure of undeserved credibility. Let’s call them “fucking crybaby closet fascists” because that’s what they are.
Try some lefty moves or keep losing Dems.
Money… the big donors won’t let them
California couldn’t get minimum wage, rent control, health care, it even slavery, One state moving progressively is not winning the federal election
The point that I’m making is that across the board, progressive policies are popular. And that does win elections, just look at Obamna’s and Sanders’ campaigns. That one state was just one extreme example of this fact.
Little bit of A, lotta bit of B.
Trump was the most garbage candidate in every way in the history of our country.
He basically coasted to victory.
Double-standards for days.
If candidate 1 is garbage, and candidate 2 loses to candidate 1, what does that say about candidate 2?
That the voters are braindead
Yep. Garbage in, garbage out.
Idiocracy is a documentary.
Though I’ll say it shouldn’t come as a surprise that voters vote against their own interests when the waters of truth are so muddied by the rich and powerful.
That the electorate has been primed to applaud fascistic tendencies as long as they are not called “fascist” by a 24/7 deluge of propaganda networks. The caricature of Harris painted in a phalanx of right-wing disinformation channels looks worse than the picture they painted of Trump. Reality has not had as much impact on this election as one would hope.
Cool, so, we’ll see the voters in the primaries going forward, right? Unlike in 2016 and 2020, when they nominated said garbage candidates?
Being a low-information voter doesn’t make your takes correct.
But sure, you saw an emotionally cut video online, so now you’re convinced the DNC stole the primary from the rightful winner.
I’m in California I don’t even get to vote in primaries.
I’m in California I don’t even get to vote in primaries.
what.
California primaries occur on March 5th my incredibly high information friend.
California primaries occur on March 5th my incredibly high information friend.
How does that prevent you from voting in primaries, again?
By the time I vote in the presidential primary there is typically one name on my ballot.
Why do American voters dodge personal responsibility better than bullets?
Since we are asking questions, why are you taking bullets for the DNC after making the exact same mistakes again. You wanna talk personal responsibility, where is the responsibility expectation for the multi billion dollar campaign.
why so mad bro?
Man I can hear the laugh.
I’m gonna take a wild take and say the rich and powerful who direct the campaign are at fault for the campaign failing.
You are literally saying “all they had to do was appease these people and they’d win” and somehow it’s the fault of millions of random people rather than the few individuals unwilling to make that concession.
I’ve had comments with you before.
I know what you’re about, and you’re just boring. same old rhetoric over and over again.
no thanks.
Tired old rhetoric? What you want, me to spice it up with a random new position every time? Switch stances at random so you can feel some kinda satisfaction?
If the only reason you voted for trump as a form of ‘punishment’ towards dems, then yea that is on the voters. You should be voting for what helps you. Not to be a petty idiot.
People vote for single issues all the time. Sometimes its abortions, the economy, etc. But God forbid people seem disgusted at rewarding genocide and voting for harris. People saw no other option other than to either punish them by voting for the other, 3rd party or not voting at all. I dont blame them.
It’s kinda crazy to me that a sizable amount of people expect a perfect completely spotless candidate, or they don’t vote and hand over the win to fascism.
In a rational world, Harris would have won without even doing a single rally, because the alternative is Trump and his cronies.
People generally don’t realize that the only way to get an option to the left of the democrats is if Republicans no longer win elections. But with each “punishment”, voters give the democrats, the Republicans’ grip on power gets tighter and tighter, with more cronie judges, more gerrymandering, more voter purges, more ID rules, and more propaganda.
So, are the voters, or rather those who didn’t vote, wrong? Fuck yes, for the reason that because of them, we now have Trump as the US president rather than him going to prison like he deserves. Of course they are wrong. How is that even a question?
Good luck with shaming people into voting for you. It didn’t work in 2016 and it didn’t work now. Letting the DNC off the hook won’t change anything.
This, but unironically.
Trump was so bad that in a sane world a desiccated cat turd shoukd have beat him
The fact Harris lost doesn’t mean shes a bad candidate, it means we don’t live in a sane world.
Yeah I agree, it’s the voters who are wrong. Can’t wait to see how this strategy pans out next cycle!
Honestly, the voters voted in a way that made sense, given the information they had, which was either nothing - complete and utter lethargy, or a hyper-partisan distortion of reality reinforced by a multi-billion dollar propaganda industry backed by, among many others, the literally richest man on the planet in addition to an entire network of propaganda stations blasting disinformation 24/7. The voters being wrong is intentional and has been in the making for decades.
They did vote in a way that makes sense. The Harris campaign offered nothing in the way of economic relief, while committing genocide. That’s an insanely bad proposition. Stop blaming voters and look at your dogshit candidates.
Be honest: you claim that Harris offers no economic relief because you yourself never bothered to look up her actual policies and you’ve been told that she has none. It’s wild to even compare anything she’s proposed to Trump’s economic policies and conclude that she offers the general populace less when all Trump has done is to massively shift wealth from the bottom to the top and will most likely continue to do just that.
Name them.
Go to her fucking policy page and read them. They’re still there. Off the top of my head, additional support for parents, anti-gouging laws limiting price hiking, tax incentives for creation of more housing supply, among others that were expressly mentioned by her and can still be found on hee campaign page.
Here’s the thing; if, “go to her policy page,” is your answer, you’re proving their point. There was some stuff in her platform that I actually really liked, but I didn’t hear about it for a while, and I’m terminally plugged into politics. What I heard a lot about when I listened to her stumping was middle-class shit like small business credits and first-time homebuyer’s assistance. For Americans living paycheck to paycheck, you might as well be offering them a butler subsidy. The stuff that would have helped the poorest Americans, like grocery price control, was on the sidelines when it needed to be the center of the campaign.
You understand we’re talking about messaging here, and that most of the electorate does not read the policy pages. I guess you don’t actually otherwise I wouldn’t have to write this. The electorate sees the ads, the debates, and if they’re really engaged, maybe the interview. Compare those with Obamna’s interviews and so on. His were inundated with references to health care and the like. Hers with quaint stories about how she was a small business when she was growing up or some shit, and maybe uncritical support for apartheid.
Opposing price gouging alone would be a step that aims to prevent corporations from conspiring to drive costs up at will for everybody who doesn’t profit off price-gouging. Compare and contrast that to Trump’s biggest achievements, massive tax cuts for the ultra-rich and getting his cronies the commission to build a tiny fragment of a wall that Mexico yet has to pay for, and everybody who’s not rich enough to own a TV station should be on her side.
Being right doesn’t automatically make you popular.
Apparently it does on the right.
I mean, yes, the over 70 million voters who voted for Trump absolutely are wrong. That they’re mostly too willfully fucking stupid to understand that may speak to a failure in Harris’ messaging, but nevertheless does not absolve them of the guilt of being willfully dumb as fucking rocks.
Harris had concrete plans to tackle many, though not all, of the issues people actually care about. People voted for the man openly stating he will make those issues worse.
It’s blatantly the fault of the voters. Until you people can get your heads out of your asses and join us in reality nothing will change.
No she hasn’t.
Right, so you expect me to believe that your own wilful ignorance is also her fault?
The voters aren’t wrong. It’s the non-voters that are wrong. Democracy should never be collateral for a protest…
EVER.
TBF if we lived in a democracy there would be no protest, because most people want the progressive policies over which they were protesting.
But electoralism has less to do with policy than narrative. Most people vote against progressive policies because the prevailing narrative paints them as tyrannical government overstep, and like it or not “socialism” is a scary word to the very people who would benefit most. You don’t win by being right, you win by convincing people to vote for you. The ones campaigning on progressive policies are bad at that
Despite everyone on Lemmy saying otherwise, people didn’t stay home because of the genocide. Most Americans don’t give a fuck about what’s happening in the next town over, let alone in Gaza. They stayed home because they weren’t given a convincing self-serving reason to make the effort to vote.
The threat of trump should have been enough reason to vote. Because we were at eleventh hour of the life of our democracy. Yet these smug, entitled protest voters stayed home and let trump win America.
It’s their fault.
You’re right, it should have. But I don’t think the vast majority of the 15 million-ish people who stayed home were protesting. I think they were low-information voters who didn’t see a compelling reason to get out and vote. And yes, it is their fault.
