What did Democrats do wrong?

[Donal]

Rejecting “diet Republicans” only to end up with “Republicans” is self-defeating. It puts you farther away from your stated goal.

Doesn't *running* diet Republicans do the same thing?

That so many people voted against their own interests is a testament to the power of propaganda.

That the Democrats were so out of tune with the interests of their base is a testament to their ineptitude.

I suppose their is an argument be made that Democrats didn’t do a good enough job combatting this propaganda, but believing propaganda is a choice and talking people out of something their identity demands they believe is pretty much impossible.

They didn't do enough with the power they had. They weren't stopped by Sinema and Manchin. Sinema and Manchin just played their parts. If not them, it would have been Tester and Durbin. The fact is, these aren't the Democrats of FDR, JFK, or LBJ. These are the Democrats of Goldman Sachs and Citi.

 

[d4m10n]

I’ve twice provided reasons why I think Democrats lost the election in recent posts.

Did you ever—at any point in this thread—tell us what you would actually like them to get right instead of wrong?

Your constant hall monitoring is tedious and adds nothing to the discussion.

Looking forward to the part where you actually say something Democrats need to do better.

Please get back to the topic of the thread.

LOL.

 

[d4m10n]

They seem pretty happy to say yes to corporate donors and right-wingers.

For example?

 

[Donal]

You want an example of one of John Fetterman's lackeys being pro corporate donors and appeasing right-wingers?

 

[dirtywick]

Rejecting “diet Republicans” only to end up with “Republicans” is self-defeating. It puts you farther away from your stated goal.

That so many people voted against their own interests is a testament to the power of propaganda.

I suppose their is an argument be made that Democrats didn’t do a good enough job combatting this propaganda, but believing propaganda is a choice and talking people out of something their identity demands they believe is pretty much impossible.

i agree and i think the two big obvious mistakes are not stopping political propaganda and not prosecuting republican officials for their crimes against the constitution.

on the other hand, to suggest taking concrete steps against lies and propaganda beyond polite disagreement is often framed as a free speech issue. personally i think there’s been a pretty major shift in blurring the lines between legitimate political speech and cons and scams, and i think well meaning people warning about the potential dangers of abuse of having some kind of standard of ethical conduct have missed the very real dangers of leaving everyone to figure it out in their own. the deck is really stacked against the average person

 

[d4m10n]

You want an example of one of John Fetterman's lackeys being pro corporate donors and appeasing right-wingers?

If you believe that will somehow make their arguments less valid or sound, go for it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Again, you need to look at the voters to understand why the Democrats lost the election. And pointing out that the voters don't seem to care that Trump is backing away from his campaign promises seems to be an important point in studying the voters.

EVERY president in my memory has backed away from their campaign promises. At this point, it's a given. So I'm not sure why you think this is worth pointing out, or what relevance it has to Dem campaign strategy.

I am not sure how you could even say the Democrats did anything wrong without looking at how the voters voted, or why they voted Trump. Even if we were to assume a complete separation of Politics and Policy (as terrifying as that is), you still would have to examine why the voters preferred Republican Politics.

Sure, absolutely - understanding why voters voted the way they did is important. But it also really helps if we actually do understand those reasons as opposed to simply assuming that Trump voters voted for Trump because they're all racist transphobic evil poopyheads. Just sayin'.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Fareed Zakaria wrote a column for the Washington Post in which he claimed that the Democrats made a mistake by thinking that they could win back the white working class vote by enacting programs that had large benefits for the working class. These included the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the infrastructure spending, all of which were designed in part to create manufacturing jobs (and more than 3/4 of the spending under the Inflation Reduction Act was in congressional districts that had Republican congresspeople). Yet they lost ground among working class voters.

This is probably behind a paywall:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/17/biden-democrats-working-class-economics/

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

EVERY president in my memory has backed away from their campaign promises. At this point, it's a given. So I'm not sure why you think this is worth pointing out, or what relevance it has to Dem campaign strategy.

Sure, absolutely - understanding why voters voted the way they did is important. But it also really helps if we actually do understand those reasons as opposed to simply assuming that Trump voters voted for Trump because they're all racist transphobic evil poopyheads. Just sayin'.

I personally can't remember a president who made such explicit promises during the campaign who after winning the election openly admitted that he actually has little chance of fulfilling those promises before even getting into office and attempting to fulfil them.

 

[d4m10n]

i agree and i think the two big obvious mistakes are not stopping political propaganda and not prosecuting republican officials for their crimes against the constitution.

The biggest and most obvious mistake was choosing the oldest conceivable candidate to run once again, during an anti-incumbent election cycle.

Nothing says "hope and change" quite like an octogenarian with several decades of institutional service.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

EVERY president in my memory has backed away from their campaign promises. At this point, it's a given. So I'm not sure why you think this is worth pointing out, or what relevance it has to Dem campaign strategy.

Sure, absolutely - understanding why voters voted the way they did is important. But it also really helps if we actually do understand those reasons as opposed to simply assuming that Trump voters voted for Trump because they're all racist transphobic evil poopyheads. Just sayin'.

If voters did not actually expect Trump to keep his campaign promises, nor show any evidence of being upset upon learning that he won't, then it is reasonable to conclude that the content of those promises had little or nothing to do with why they voted for Trump.

On the other hand, such behavior remains consistent with the notion that they voted for him because they liked his "racist transphobic evil poopyhead" talking points, and/or his overall RTEP vibe.

 

[TragicMonkey]

The biggest and most obvious mistake was choosing the oldest conceivable candidate to run once again, during an anti-incumbent election cycle.

Nothing says "hope and change" quite like an octogenarian with several decades of institutional service.

So instead we got an octogenarian without several decades of institutional service. Then when the Democrats switched to a much younger candidate she still lost. I'm comfortable with ruling out age-of-candidate as a decisive factor in this election. (Unless people actually wanted an old candidate, and switched to Trump in anger after Biden was replaced with that young kid.)

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Anyone who abstained from voting for Democrats because they didn’t like their position on Gaza, thereby opening the door for Republicans to win and implement even worse policies for Gaza, isn’t a serious person and doesn’t really care about Gaza beyond the performative.

Arab Americans didn't abstain: they shifted from voting Democrat to voting Republican or a third party, specifically due to Biden's piss-poor handling of the Gaza situation.

In historic shift, American Muslim and Arab voters desert Democrats

For the first time in two decades, most Muslim and Arab American voters supported a presidential candidate other than a Democrat

www.voanews.com

 

[The Don]

Arab Americans didn't abstain: they shifted from voting Democrat to voting Republican or a third party, specifically due to Biden's piss-poor handling of the Gaza situation.

In historic shift, American Muslim and Arab voters desert Democrats

For the first time in two decades, most Muslim and Arab American voters supported a presidential candidate other than a Democrat

www.voanews.com

Which makes the situation even more puzzling.

Voting for a third party candidate kinda makes sense but given US politics, that's functionally equivalent to abstaining.

Voting Republican, the party which is vehemently pro-Israel and is actively working towards conflict in the Middle East as a means to bring about the second coming, because the Democrats aren't sufficiently pro-Palestinian doesn't sound that sensible to me.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Which makes the situation even more puzzling.

Voting for a third party candidate kinda makes sense but given US politics, that's functionally equivalent to abstaining.

Voting Republican, the party which is vehemently pro-Israel and is actively working towards conflict in the Middle East as a means to bring about the second coming, because the Democrats aren't sufficiently pro-Palestinian doesn't sound that sensible to me.

Biden is massively unpopular with Muslims, because of his handling of the Gaza conflict. That is apparent here in Saudi Arabia as well. Here, too, they seem to gloss over or ignore Trump's anti-Muslim and pro-Israel stance. This is indeed curious.
If you read to the end of that article I linked to, it mentions other reasons for the switch among US Muslim/Arab voters. It appears that Gaza was the proverbial, and apt, straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[The Don]

Biden is massively unpopular with Muslims, because of his handling of the Gaza conflict. That is apparent here in Saudi Arabia as well. Here, too, they seem to gloss over or ignore Trump's anti-Muslim and pro-Israel stance. This is indeed curious.
If you read to the end of that article I linked to, it mentions other reasons for the switch among US Muslim/Arab voters. It appears that Gaza was the proverbial, and apt, straw that broke the camel's back.

And rather like switching to Trump and the Republicans because Biden and the Democrats are too pro-Israel, their other reasons for switching to the Republicans - handling of the economy, immigration and drugs - demonstrates that they have heard the MAGA slogans but don't understand the impact of the actual policies (if there are any).

Republican policies will likely damage the economy and will concentrate wealth in the hands of an ever smaller group of billionaires. Immigration will always be a "problem" for MAGA unless all brown people are removed from the US and they have no incentive to "fix" immigration because it's one of their key ways of scaring voters. Muslim citizens and residents will likely get swept up in immigration dragnets and anti-Muslim propaganda will continue to get worse. The war on drugs is pointless and lost, particularly because the biggest problem is legally obtainable opioids, the GOP are going to do nothing about legal or illegal drugs apart from jailing more brown people, Muslims among them.

 

[johnny karate]

Doesn't *running* diet Republicans do the same thing?

That the Democrats were so out of tune with the interests of their base is a testament to their ineptitude.

They didn't do enough with the power they had. They weren't stopped by Sinema and Manchin. Sinema and Manchin just played their parts. If not them, it would have been Tester and Durbin. The fact is, these aren't the Democrats of FDR, JFK, or LBJ. These are the Democrats of Goldman Sachs and Citi.

I don't disagree with any of this, but in general, the proposition that Democrats lost to hard right Republicans because they didn't go far enough to the left doesn't track.

Furthermore, I think there's too much focus on what Democrats lost in the margins. A better Gaza policy might have gained them voters from the left, but also might have lost them voters in the center.

The bigger and more important question is why huge swaths of voters chose fascism and conspiracy theories over what Democrats were offering. The efforts in this thread to force that answer into the realm of traditional politics by saying things like "Democrats didn't focus enough on the economy" might as well be taking place on another plane of reality.

 

[johnny karate]

I personally can't remember a president who made such explicit promises during the campaign who after winning the election openly admitted that he actually has little chance of fulfilling those promises before even getting into office and attempting to fulfil them.

Yes, it's almost as if what Emily's Cat said was just a big lie in service of excusing Trump and his voters. What a shocker.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Biden is massively unpopular with Muslims, because of his handling of the Gaza conflict. That is apparent here in Saudi Arabia as well. Here, too, they seem to gloss over or ignore Trump's anti-Muslim and pro-Israel stance. This is indeed curious.
If you read to the end of that article I linked to, it mentions other reasons for the switch among US Muslim/Arab voters. It appears that Gaza was the proverbial, and apt, straw that broke the camel's back.

That won't be an issue with the next election, as by then there won't be a Gaza and the number of US Muslims/Arabs will be a lot lower.

 

[johnny karate]

The biggest and most obvious mistake was choosing the oldest conceivable candidate to run once again, during an anti-incumbent election cycle.

Nothing says "hope and change" quite like an octogenarian with several decades of institutional service.

As already pointed out, Democrats switched to a significantly younger candidate who still lost to someone who is effectively an octogenarian.

I honestly thought that anyone who wanted to be taken seriously wouldn't bring up the age thing again after it was shown to be mostly media-driven the moment Biden dropped out. Once Trump became the oldest candidate in history with obvious signs of cognitive decline, approximately zero people that claimed this was an Important Issue maintained that position. It was never about Biden's age.