• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Top 5 Reasons the Democrats Lost the Election

He comes off as a smarmy coastal elite, which I have been told over and over is why people hate Democrats.
 
Bill Maher is a smug moron who thinks he knows everything and if you don't agree with what he knows you're an idiot. He believe in all kinds of woo as well.
 
theprestige said:
I can't tell if you're saying that Bill Maher is literally Hitler, or that Donald Trump is literally Bill Maher.
Click to expand...
Both can happen but more the latter. Bill Maher used to sit on tv shows with his black porn star girl friend once upon a time. That sounds liberal, but not really.
 
I read this on David Lowery's blog yesterday and thought of this thread. (Singer/guitarist for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker)
It's a post that I think is over ten years old where he is talking about writing the Cracker song Hey Brett (you Know What Time it is).
It contains this little blurb:
I’ve never really asked Brett Netson about his politics, but I assume he is generally on the left. Most people in rock bands are-with the apparent exception of Ted Nugent. But i would like to point out that once i got into the songwriting i dispensed with the real brett netson and began to create a fictional character and narrative. In the song the protagonist is a 4th generation Boise Idahoan. A veteran, hard working in his own way: “trying to make a living playing on my SG Gibson tending bar and sometimes selling herb.” But not getting his due. “we live like serfs in this new feudal land we pay the bills we fight the wars”. He’s rightfully angry.

But heres the twist. I wanted to use the language of the right.
Because the right is oftentimes better at distilling and identifying many of the injustices and problems in our country than is the left. The left may have a good point but it’s often so convoluted and nuanced it doesn’t have the same emotional impact. They don’t work as well in song lyrics. This was not always the case, think Woody Guthrie.
Click to expand...
David Lowery Music

I think it's relevant to the elections in both 2016 and 2024. It also fits in with what Bill Maher said above, I think.

Trump manages to capture people's anger and promise action. The Democrats seemed to largely say "get over it, you are bad/stupid/wrong for having that perception of your world" instead of acknowledging and addressing those concerns.
 
Tero said:
If there were any undecideds, the message from harris did not reach them well. TV ads maybe.
but propaganda won.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right? Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes. Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.

After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.
Click to expand...
Especially when you consider that she passed on Josh Shapiro, who would have delivered her the most important swing state as well as Jewish votes nationwide, and this she did to avoid losing Arabic voters, whom she lost anyway.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right?
Click to expand...
Hey, you said it
mikegriffith1 said:
Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes.
Click to expand...
Literally the oppoisite of what they did. They voted for the dimwit whose action and lack of action directly led to the outrageous inflation the Biden admin did a reasonbly good job of getting under control.
mikegriffith1 said:
Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.
Click to expand...
True. she should ahve said she would have pushed harder with their agenda instead of tripping over the great and holy Compromise.
mikegriffith1 said:
After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.
Click to expand...
Ya, cuz your weak daddy wasn't getting billionaire donations. Does that number include PAC spending?

Although, I've said one of the main lessons from 2016 should have been that campaign spending has a point of diminishing returns
mikegriffith1 said:
The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028.
Click to expand...
He probably won't want to do it.
mikegriffith1 said:
He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.
Click to expand...
He was actually really popular and brought a lot of energy. The problem is they needed more Tim Walz and a lot less, like none at all, Liz Cheney.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
Yeah, you bet. Just too many stupid voters, right? Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes. Maybe Harris's message--i.e., that she couldn't think of anything that Biden did that she would not have done--maybe that message did reach them, and they decided they didn't like it.

After all, Harris, loaded with cash from liberal billionaires, outspent Trump on political ads by $460 million, $1.4 billion to Trump's $940 million.

The delusion seen in this thread is something to behold. Hey, you folks who say that Tim Walz was a solid, good pick for VP, please put him on your ticket in 2028. He gave Harris no voters she didn't already have, and he came from a deep blue state that Harris had no chance of losing. Not to mention that he sat on his hands for three crucial days during the summer 2020 riots and allowed BLM rioters to cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in his state. But, hey, great pick for VP. You bet.
Click to expand...
No.
Yes. In the following days, Governor Walz deployed the - what turned out to be the largest Minnesota National Guard presence since World War II, and the state patrol, which Walz also oversees, was directed to help Minneapolis police respond to further protests. However, Walz and officials with the state's Department of Public Safety wound up being heavily criticized after state patrol troopers arrested hundreds of people that were demonstrating on an interstate highway. And that action resulted in sharp rebukes from activists and at least one Minneapolis City Council member.
Click to expand...
 
Even after they win, people who support The Party are still lying about the people they ran against. I think this is a big part of the Dems losing, they had to deal with all the lies and spend so much time dealing with the lies that they couldn't get their message out.
Next time, Dems should be absolutely shameless and make up all kinds of lies about what the GOP is doing. I mean, the truth is bad, but not bad enough for the average voter.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
I think these are the top five reasons the Democrats lost the election:

1. Biden should not have immediately endorsed his far-left vice president when he dropped out but should have allowed more-viable candidates to have a chance to contend. Nancy Pelosi recently made the same point. In reality, Biden never should have run for reelection in the first place. This would have enabled the party to have a real primary.

2. Harris should have taken the border crisis seriously, both as an economic threat and a national security threat. She should have apologized for dropping the ball as the border czar. Then, she should have pledged to seal the border and to stop the disastrous catch-and-release policy. And, she should not have used the dishonest argument that Trump is "anti-immigration" and "anti-immigrant." Most people understand that opposition to illegal immigration is not "anti-immigrant."

3. Harris should have ditched the transgender agenda. Even many Democrats, arguably the majority of them, do not agree with allowing biological males to compete in female sports, and do not support allowing teens to start taking puberty blockers, much less allowing teens to get irreversible transgender surgery. Republicans hammered her on the transgender issue because their own polling showed that most Americans disagree with the transgender agenda.

4. Picking Tim Walz was an odd and inexcusable blunder. Walz, an unknown woke leftist, gave her nothing she did not already have. He gave her no new voters, and he came from a very safe blue state. Plus, he comes across as unserious and flaky. Governor Josh Shapiro, a confirmed centrist and a person with solid gravitas, was the obvious pick.

5. Harris should have frankly acknowledged that a solid majority of Americans are worse off now than they were four years ago. Exit polling shows that Trump won an astonishing 81% of the vote of voters who said they are worse off now than they were when Biden took office. Note: Only 24% of those polled said they are better off now than they were four years ago.
Click to expand...
MAGA voters were conned. That is all. Plus they all have been brainwashed. They cannot be reached. Only after years of Trump failure...
meme.jpg
 
mikegriffith1 said:
Or maybe those undecideds looked at their grocery bill and the price of gas and decided not to vote for the candidate who endorsed the policies that caused those steep cost-of-living hikes.
Click to expand...
What policies were those? And what caused the steep cost-of-living hikes that occurred at the same time in countries run by right wing politicians with very different policies?
 
jt512 said:
On the contrary, "trans issues" were, arguably, the decisive factor in the election. According to a post-election survey of voters conducted by a Democratic polling firm, the statement "Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class" was ranked the most important reason for rejecting Harris among swing voters who voted for Trump.
Click to expand...
I notice that your chart is entirely unsourced.

ZiprHead said:
I guess I have heard nothing of it. Please provide examples.
Click to expand...
I also notice the lack of examples so far provided.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
A slightly smaller percentage. But there was only a percent difference in Harris' share of women's votes and Hillary's share of women's votes (Biden actually received a slightly larger share of women's votes than Hillary did). Given that there were larger shifts in other demographic groups, I don't see the slight drop in Harris' votes from women as proving that women were fearful for their safety because of Democratic support for transgender rights.
Click to expand...
Check the forbidden thread where this is argued in granular detail.
It is an agreed statistical fact that the issue was sufficient, if not necessary, to lose the democrats control of everything.
In other words, if the democrats, starting with Obama, had not falsified the science of evolution, they could well have run right through from 2008.
This is an unforced error of galactic scale.
 
Last edited:
Oh, so now Bill Maher is not a liberal!!! Wow, you gotta be bonkers woke to say such a thing. Let's see: Maher endorsed and voted for Harris. He still says Trump should have been removed from office. He endorsed and voted for Hillary in 2016, for Obama in 2008 and 2012, etc., etc. He actually stumped for Obama in 2012.

Bill Maher is certainly a liberal. He's just not woke liberal. He's a liberal who is patriotic, who thinks America's founding was a noble and positive thing. He doesn't buy into the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas insanity and obscenity. He doesn't buy into the extreme transgender agenda, and he's in good company with many other mainstream liberals and moderate Democrats.

So if you see some leftist claim that Bill Maher is not a liberal, you know that that leftist is a woke extremist, a radical liberal on the fringe of the political spectrum.
 
you are assuming that being a liberal in the contemporary sense is a good thing.

What it means is that someone is a middle-of-the-road, move with the Overton Window to stay in the Center person who thinks the West Wing had all the answers.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Even after they win, people who support The Party are still lying about the people they ran against. I think this is a big part of the Dems losing, they had to deal with all the lies and spend so much time dealing with the lies that they couldn't get their message out.
Next time, Dems should be absolutely shameless and make up all kinds of lies about what the GOP is doing. I mean, the truth is bad, but not bad enough for the average voter.
Click to expand...

But how do you get those lies out?

The media are perfectly happy to propagate the lies of the 'right'. Less so to broadcast, oh, I don't know, facts and useful information.

This entire thread is predicated on the US election having been a level playing field, when any reasonable, unbiased election coverage would never have seen Trump anywhere near the presidency. The Democrats lost the election because the billionaires who own the media wanted them to. It's as simple as that.

Propaganda wins elections.
 
Democrats lost because Trump never stopped campaigning. He still is.
He campaigns and takes credit continuously. Biden did none of that, a few speeches here and there. But he was so in the back ground, so presidential, that in this social media world it looks like he did nothing.
 
mikegriffith1 said:
Oh, so now Bill Maher is not a liberal!!!
Click to expand...
In terms of the American political definition, he never was. He always called himself a libertarian.
mikegriffith1 said:
Wow, you gotta be bonkers woke to say such a thing.
Click to expand...
You wanna translate that into English?
mikegriffith1 said:
Let's see: Maher endorsed and voted for Harris. He still says Trump should have been removed from office. He endorsed and voted for Hillary in 2016, for Obama in 2008 and 2012, etc., etc. He actually stumped for Obama in 2012.
Click to expand...
So, at most, he's centrist
mikegriffith1 said:
Bill Maher is certainly a liberal. He's just not woke liberal. He's a liberal who is patriotic, who thinks America's founding was a noble and positive thing. He doesn't buy into the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas insanity and obscenity.
Click to expand...

He's a rich white guiy who likes his cocaine and really believes those disturbingly younger women are having sex with him because of his personality.

He just happens to side with Democrats about gay marriage and climate change. So long as he doesn't actually have to change his life, of course.
mikegriffith1 said:
He doesn't buy into the extreme transgender agenda, and he's in good company with many other mainstream liberals and moderate Democrats.
Click to expand...
You mean he buys into the hypocritical nonsense you do?
mikegriffith1 said:
So if you see some leftist claim that Bill Maher is not a liberal, you know that that leftist is a woke extremist, a radical liberal on the fringe of the political spectrum.
Click to expand...
Funny how he's acceptable to you because of the bigotry.
 
Tero said:
Just confirms the point of the article. Very little is reaching from the left side to the middle. Let alone the right. Maybe it was too many words for you?
Click to expand...
Not too many words, just too delusional.

You didn't really have to look very far to find propaganda in support of Kamala Harris. You couldn't really avoid it. I think the meltdown you linked is mostly happening because there has been a bit of loss of control of the narrative by the Democratic party.
 
Probably been said already but:

"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." -Will Rodgers

Some things never change.
 
Pixel42 said:
What policies were those? And what caused the steep cost-of-living hikes that occurred at the same time in countries run by right wing politicians with very different policies?
Click to expand...
Don't you know that Biden's policies were followed by the rest of the world that also suffered post-Covid inflation and, in many of the G20 countries, was even higher?
(2023)


infl.JPG
 
At this point I'm almost convinced the Democrats did nothing wrong. They were just injected into a different timeline by a cruel and unusual wizard.

Stacyhs, is Harambe still alive, where you come from?
 
arthwollipot said:
Thank you. I didn't see the first time you posted it. You should post attribution each time you use someone else's content.
Click to expand...
The blueprint article just shows that most voters are ignorant of reality. This is because the GOP has built up, over the last 20 years or more, a media infrastructure that is a giant echo chamber. Democrats are late to the game on this and, likely, will not be able to catch up. Also, the propoganda machine for The Party is only going to get stronger as Trump restricts media and goes after outlets that do not support The Party.
 
I think we need to expand the definition of "work" to include "unable to admit mistakes or errors."

True, there was not really time to hold another primary, but the Dems certainly could have held an open convention to let other candidates compete for the nomination. However, Biden ruined any chance of an open convention by foolishly endorsing Harris at the same time he dropped out. Harris was a total flop in the 2020 primary, yet Biden chose her as his VP nominee anyway. Yet, he was under no obligation or precedent to endorse her when he dropped out.

And, BTW, with 99.7% of the votes counted, Trump has won the popular vote 50% to 48.4%, 76.9 million to 74.4 million. Dems endlessly harped on the fact that Gore won the popular vote by 540,000 in the 2000 election, as if this made Bush an illegitimate president. Yet, Trump won the popular vote by 2.5 million.
 
Last edited:
I think we need to expand the definition of "work" to include "unable to admit mistakes or errors."
Click to expand...
"Work" should be "woke."

It is amazing to see how many people argue that Harris lost because she did not run far enough to the left but tried to posture as center-left. Wow. First of all, she ran as a woke liberal on several issues. She only pretended to be center-left on a few issues. Republicans did a good job of exposing her far-left record.

I suspect she would have lost by a much larger margin if she hadn't been running against Trump. As it is, she lost the Electoral College 312-226 and lost the popular vote by 2.3 million votes. She won only on 19 states to Trump's 31 states.
 
Stacyhs said:
Don't you know that Biden's policies were followed by the rest of the world that also suffered post-Covid inflation and, in many of the G20 countries, was even higher?
(2023)


View attachment 57888
Click to expand...
No, the majority of voters did not know that.

This is where Democrats fell down. They assumed that because they knew it, everybody else did too. What they should have done was get economic experts to tell us what would have happened if Trump had been president for the past 4 years.

We should have been constantly reminded about how Biden moved Heaven and Earth to stomp down the runaway inflation Trump's actions had set us up for - not just in campaign adverts but also interviews, documentaries and magazine articles. They should have plastered the airways with charts showing how quickly Biden got inflation back down to pre-covid levels - with another scary line showing where we would have been under Trump.

Then they should have made a projection for the next 4 years, showing what a disastar Trump's policies would be and ramming home the message that only Biden/Harris can keep the economy on track. And they wouldn't even have to lie about it!

That's what they should have spent all their campaign funds on, not holding rallies for the faithful.

The most pathetic part is that even Fox News and the Wall Strret Journal were (belately) praising Biden for his work on the enonomy. And Democrats pissed it away, no doubt thinking that acknowledgement was enough. IOW, they grossly overestimated the brain power of the voters they needed to get onboard - unlike Trump, who 'understands' them well (for the purposes of manipulatiing them).
 
mikegriffith1 said:
"Work" should be "woke."

It is amazing to see how many people argue that Harris lost because she did not run far enough to the left but tried to posture as center-left. Wow. First of all, she ran as a woke liberal on several issues. She only pretended to be center-left on a few issues. Republicans did a good job of exposing her far-left record.
Click to expand...
It's not amazing. You don't seem to appreciate just how far to the right US politics is. Most other western countries, even my own with its current 'anti-woke' libertarian right wing government, is way to the left of yours on most issues.

The majority of liberals posting here are to the left of Harris and Biden. Many of them complained that Biden wasn't left enough in 2020, and were even more sure of it this year. The proximate reason Harris lost was that she didn't get enough liberal votes, and they weren't holding back because she was too liberal - quite the opposite in fact. Some say Bernie Sanders - who borders on being communist - would have been a better choice. Having seen how Harris performed I'm inclined to agree.

Whether Republicans did or didn't do a 'good job' of exposing her 'far-left' record is irrelevant - people weren't voting on those issues. Top of the list was inflation, and next down immigration. IOW it was all about jobs and the economy. If only Democrats had gotten the message out on how well they were handling that they might have won (not that it would be much of victory when nearly half the country is under Trump's spell).
 
Roger Ramjets said:
It's not amazing. You don't seem to appreciate just how far to the right US politics is. Most other western countries, even my own with its current 'anti-woke' libertarian right wing government, is way to the left of yours on most issues.
Click to expand...

And none of you people from the other western countries pause to think why that might be, just moan that it is. Did it ever occur to you that we have to be the serious ones about spending money on defense, because we have effectively been delegated the role of the world's policeman? That because we have to spend so much on defense, we can't afford the generous social benefits you consider the primary responsibility of your government.
 
i'm having trouble squaring up the idea that woke leftist policy is unpopular, yet most of the country seems to be somewhere between pretty ok to genuinely happy with a health insurance ceo being gunned down in the street
 
Someone replied that Kamala Harris was not the "bor
Random said:
2.) Harris was never a "Border Czar". Please stop watching Fox News.
Click to expand...

Uh, yes, she most certainly was. Maybe you should start watching Fox News. The Associated Press (AP), hardly a right-wing news source, said the following about Biden's appointment of Harris to handle the border and immigration:

President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem. (https://apnews.com/general-news-3400f56255e000547d1ca3ce1aa6b8e9)
Click to expand...

When Biden put her in charge of handling the immigration at the southern border, he specifically said she would be "leading the effort." Now, if that didn't make her the border czar, what would? I mean, the president publicly named her to "lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border." So nick-naming her "the border czar" is entirely fair and reasonable.

Politico, another non-right-wing source, headlined their article on Harris's appoint as follows:

Biden makes Harris the point person on immigration issues amid border surge

And then said this:

Vice President Kamala Harris will be the White House’s point person on immigration issues at the nation’s southern border, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday, tasking her with stemming the rising tide of migrants, many of them unaccompanied children, arriving in the U.S. (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/24/kamala-harris-immigration-border-surge-477810)
Click to expand...

Everybody at the time understood that Biden was delegating to Harris the job of tackling border security and other immigration issues. By any honest, rational measurement, she not only failed miserably, she was basically AWOL. She did nothing about border security because, being a woke leftist, she believes anyone who wants to cross our border and enter our country should be able to do so if they're fleeing poverty and/or political oppression, even if they enter illegally. But she would never dare voice that view because she knows that the vast majority of Americans reject it. Most Americans are fine with orderly, responsible legal immigration but oppose illegal immigration.

 
Last edited:
She stopped being the border czar the minute the Republicans started calling her that. Of course, when she was initially given the assignment, the media was calling her the border czar, because that's effectively what Biden tried to saddle her with. My personal favorite of the border czar gaslighting is the one by Axios:

In the past few days, the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the "border czar" title — which she never actually had.
Click to expand...
Oh, look there's no such title! Unfortunately, Axios is forced to admit that back when she got the assignment, they "contributed to the confusion."

Why it matters: The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the "root causes" that drive migration.
Click to expand...
I don't mind saying that given Kamala that job was dirty pool on Biden's part; they effectively gave her the responsibility but none of the authority to change the "catch and release" policy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom