What did Democrats do wrong?

[Hercules56]

As far as this poll goes, the most number of forum members voted that what the Democrats did wrong, was

"Too much transgender stuff".




Followed by:

America not ready for Progressive women leader.​

then

Didn't fight illegal immigration enough.​

and finally

Didn't fight inflation enough.​

 

[ahhell]

Only because there wasn't an option for letting Biden run in the first place.

 

[Hercules56]

Only because there wasn't an option for letting Biden run in the first place.

^^^^^ Excuses.

 

[dirtywick]

i’m not sure that there’s a “they” that lets the president do or not do stuff. as the leader of the party and incumbent president, i’m sure biden had the biggest role in determining whether or not he would run.

 

[ahhell]

I say this again for the lolz. Harris only lost by 1.5% of the vote and however much in the swing states, almost everything matters when the vote is so marginal.

Why Biden running was the biggest factor the Dems could control that impacted the race:
1. He said he wasn't going to run again when in ran in 2020.
2. He was unpopular, valid or not he had very low approval ratings.
3. He was obviously old and infirm.

So he was personally a bad candidate.

His running then led to the following:

4. The dems couldn't run a primary to find an actually popular candidate, instead they were stuck with the person who garnered all of 900 votes in the 2020 primaries.
5. It was especially bad for Harris on account of her bing his VP. It made it nearly impossible for the eventual Dem candidate to distance herself from the unpopular president and she could not explain how it is that she didn't realize how his age had so obviously caught up to him.

In a loss this narrow, almost anything could have changed things but I don't think most of it would have mattered if the Biden hadn't run and the Dems had had a primary. We can blame all of that on right wing propaganda if we want but it was all baked into the cake in 2023.

If Biden had been in his 50s, it would be a problem for him not to run but he was in his 80s and said he was going for one term in the first place. Give a speech about handing off the mantle the next generation, don't endorse Harris but say any Dem is better than any Rep and retire quietly.

Now granted, its easy to say, I'm sure its mighty struggle for anyone to voluntarily give up the house, helicopter, and airplane.

And to be honest, once Biden decided to run, it was a very difficult ask for the Dems to force him to stop. So, saying this is something the Dems did wrong is a bit of a stretch. Its really what Biden and his immediate circle did wrong.

 

[dirtywick]

i agree biden bears most of the responsibility for his decisions. in fact i think a messy public break with biden would have been a lot worse than what he did.

 

[ahhell]

i’m not sure that there’s a “they” that lets the president do or not do stuff. as the leader of the party and incumbent president, i’m sure biden had the biggest role in determining whether or not he would run.

While this is mostly true, the party leaders eventually forced him out. One of the problems with US politics is the parties really do have a lack of control over who becomes their eventual candidate. If the GOP leadership could have stopped Trump from being the candidate in 2016 they would have. They could have actually but they would have had to do what the Dems did and force everyone but a single non-trump candidate to drop out. The stupider thing is that they did it again in 2024.

ETA:

On the messy break. They had that anyway so would have been better to do it early and get it in the rear view. Also, if the leadership aside from Biden were any good at politics, it would have been a quite private break. The thing is, polling was showing that he wasn't popular and most Americans even Dems thought he was too old* from the start. They were starting the race from half a lap behind because he was running.

*I know, barely older than trump but come on, Biden looks, acts, and feels decades older. Even at his best Biden's stories were about when he called some dude Ester as in Esther Williams at a pool. Highly recommend that clip, the Simpsons writers couldn't come up with better writing for old man Simpson if they tried.

 

[dirtywick]

While this is mostly true, the party leaders eventually forced him out. One of the problems with US politics is the parties really do have a lack of control over who becomes their eventual candidate. If the GOP leadership could have stopped Trump from being the candidate in 2016 they would have. They could have actually but they would have had to do what the Dems did and force everyone but a single non-trump candidate to drop out. The stupider thing is that they did it again in 2024.

i'm fairly certain there was a big element of biden seeing the writing on the wall and willfully dropping out. the debate was a disaster, and his follow up interview was worse. to whatever extent his party could shield him from public opinion, he was there for that one. biden could have soldiered on, probably lost, and i don't think the margins would have been much different.

i agree though that had biden chosen not to run in the beginning and they had a primary and all that, well i still don't think the margins would have been much different, but maybe a win for the dems. he wasted a lot of time being really publicly old, but i'm not sure there's a politician in the country that's polling much better than 50/50 nationally on either side, and many of them are much, much worse.

 

[ahhell]

There's the thing, the margins didn't have to be that different for the Dems to have won. Its weird how everybody seems to forget how close this election was. I get why Trump does, he wants to act like was a landslide for lots of obvious reasons.

Just looked up the results for swing states, the first site I found included Texas as a swing state, so don't trust that site.

 

[dirtywick]

yes it was very close, about the same as the margins as biden's earlier victory where several hundred thousand votes in three swing states would have tipped it to harris. but it's not clear to me that any particular candidate or minor policy position change would have tipped the outcome to their favor anymore than it could have slightly hurt them. to me it's clear the bigger factors, things that would have definitively mattered, were external of the campaign.

 

[esquel]

The thing I don't understand is why in the Forum poll, "Too much transgender stuff" won. Transgender was an issue, but not to the extent that was represented in the local poll; the economy, DEI and immigration were much hotter from what I saw in other polls. Maybe that reflects Forum members and not overall US voter opinions.

 

[Donal]

Pew released a poll about what people prioritized when they voted and 7 of the top 10 were like 7 different ways of saying "the economy". There wasn't anything about transgender issues on the list.

 

[johnny karate]

A lot of the Monday morning quarterbacking about what the Democrats did wrong seems to presume that the Republican strategy would have remained static when theorizing about different possibilities. In particular, I find the "weak candidate" argument for either Biden or Harris with the implication that there was some better candidate out there to be laughable.

They were rendered "weak candidates" because the right wing propaganda machine that has infected media and politics shaped public opinion to that end. Any other candidate would have suffered the same fate.

Propaganda won this election and what the Democrats did wrong - and continue to do wrong - is not adequately combat it.

 

[thaiboxerken]

The thing I don't understand is why in the Forum poll, "Too much transgender stuff" won. Transgender was an issue, but not to the extent that was represented in the local poll; the economy, DEI and immigration were much hotter from what I saw in other polls. Maybe that reflects Forum members and not overall US voter opinions.

It's the narrative that MAGA wants to push.

 

[Hercules56]

87% of forum members believe Dems lost because of a combination of concerns over inflation, illegal immigration and the trans agenda.

 

[ahhell]

The thing I don't understand is why in the Forum poll, "Too much transgender stuff" won. Transgender was an issue, but not to the extent that was represented in the local poll; the economy, DEI and immigration were much hotter from what I saw in other polls. Maybe that reflects Forum members and not overall US voter opinions.

If it was phrased "Too extreme" rather than "too much" it would be more correct. The Dems were mostly trying not to talk about during the campaign. The issue was really that activists generally associated with the left have been campaigning for relatively extreme positions related to trans issues. Harris had previously taken at least one of fairly extreme positions and not talking about it really just gave up the fight on the issue.

Its true, the Dems did not campaign on trans issues, that's mostly because they seem to largely support positions that are broadly unpopular with voters. Who came up with the notion of popularism? The notion that run on issues where you have popular opinions. That's what the GOP did and it worked. Honestly, I'm not sure what Harris could have done, totally change her previously stated position maybe but that would have hurt her more.

In my opinion, that's not a mistake of the dems, its a mistake of activists groups. Transrights folks have become the grover nordquists* of the left only their extreme positions are less popular than nordquists'.

*If you don't know, he's the guy that has made every GOP candidate for office in the US sign a pledge not to raise taxes and has an extreme view on what that means. Literally, he opposes simplifying taxes because if you make them easier to deal with it will make people less unhappy to pay them, which he seems to consider a raise in taxes.

 

[johnny karate]

If it was phrased "Too extreme" rather than "too much" it would be more correct. The Dems were mostly trying not to talk about during the campaign. The issue was really that activists generally associated with the left have been campaigning for relatively extreme positions related to trans issues. Harris had previously taken at least one of fairly extreme positions and not talking about it really just gave up the fight on the issue.

Its true, the Dems did not campaign on trans issues, that's mostly because they seem to largely support positions that are broadly unpopular with voters. Who came up with the notion of popularism? The notion that run on issues where you have popular opinions. That's what the GOP did and it worked. Honestly, I'm not sure what Harris could have done, totally change her previously stated position maybe but that would have hurt her more.

In my opinion, that's not a mistake of the dems, its a mistake of activists groups. Transrights folks have become the grover nordquists* of the left only their extreme positions are less popular than nordquists'.

*If you don't know, he's the guy that has made every GOP candidate for office in the US sign a pledge not to raise taxes and has an extreme view on what that means. Literally, he opposes simplifying taxes because if you make them easier to deal with it will make people less unhappy to pay them, which he seems to consider a raise in taxes.

Neither tariffs, deporting legal immigrants, nor anti-vaxxersim are or were popular ideas.

The idea that Republicans just ran on "popular ideas" and that's how Trump won is profoundly stupid.

 

[dann]

The thing I don't understand is why in the Forum poll, "Too much transgender stuff" won. Transgender was an issue, but not to the extent that was represented in the local poll; the economy, DEI and immigration were much hotter from what I saw in other polls. Maybe that reflects Forum members and not overall US voter opinions.

It's the narrative that MAGA wants to push.

Not just wants to push. They did push it, paid a fortune to push it, and managed to make it seem to people in swing states as if it was the only thing Democrats cared about unlike Trump, who was allegedly going to 'fix the economy':
GOP ads on transgender rights are dominating airwaves in the election's closing days (NPR, Oct 19, 2024)
Why anti-transgender political ads are dominating the airwaves this election (PBS, Nov 2, 2024)

Many Republicans still believe it. So do right-wing Democrats like Bill Maher and James Carville. Or at least they pretend to believe it. Many MAGA Republicans probably also think that DEI is just another way of saying schools are turning children gay and trans. They always have a hard time defining what DEI is. Same as with CRT.

 

[Donal]

If it was phrased "Too extreme" rather than "too much" it would be more correct.

You could also say it was "less laughably wrong"

The Dems were mostly trying not to talk about during the campaign.

Because its not an issue people were looking to vote on.

The issue was really that activists generally associated with the left have been campaigning for relatively extreme positions related to trans issues.

"Trans people shouldn't be murdered" isn't extremism.

And, have you seen some of the lunacy from the GQP? Not just random activists nominally associated with the party. Actually elected officials. Including their presidential nominee.

Harris had previously taken at least one of fairly extreme positions and not talking about it really just gave up the fight on the issue.

You mean explaining a federal statute signed into law by Donald Trump?

Its true, the Dems did not campaign on trans issues, that's mostly because they seem to largely support positions that are broadly unpopular with voters.

Or, again, its an issue voters didn't really care about.

Who came up with the notion of popularism?

You did, apparently

The notion that run on issues where you have popular opinions. That's what the GOP did and it worked.

They did not do that. They ran on vibes. They had no coherent policies.

Honestly, I'm not sure what Harris could have done, totally change her previously stated position maybe but that would have hurt her more.

She was already being accused of flip flopping

In my opinion, that's not a mistake of the dems, its a mistake of activists groups.

Or of the gullible fools still running with this talking point.

Transrights folks have become the grover nordquists* of the left only their extreme positions are less popular than nordquists'.

*If you don't know, he's the guy that has made every GOP candidate for office in the US sign a pledge not to raise taxes and has an extreme view on what that means. Literally, he opposes simplifying taxes because if you make them easier to deal with it will make people less unhappy to pay them, which he seems to consider a raise in taxes.

Please take your bigotry to the other thread. As you can clearly see, most of here aren't as petrified about trans people as your are. You should really look into why you are so obsessed about this topic.

 

[Hercules56]

...
"Trans people shouldn't be murdered" isn't extremism....

Absurd strawman.