What did Democrats do wrong?

[johnny karate]

You may have noticed that there are a lot of people on the left, who think trans rights activism has gone too far, into an antisocial anti-science place they want no part of. That's as good an explanation of why so many of the voters you needed stayed home right when you needed them most.

But there's a whole thread for that, if you're ever interested in a serious and useful discussion, with other leftists who disagree with you on this one issue.

"Trans rights activism" wasn't part of the Harris campaign or platform. What you're referring to here is the right wing propaganda about "trans rights activism" as opposed to the reality. Which just proves my point.

Furthermore, anti-vaxxerism was very much a part of the Trump campaign, so the idea that the 2024 election was about the electorate rejecting an anti-social, anti-science candidacy is profoundly stupid.

 

[d4m10n]

"Trans rights activism" wasn't part of the Harris campaign or platform.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1499556483272519680

 

[Reformed Offlian]

"Trans rights activism" wasn't part of the Harris campaign or platform. What you're referring to here is the right wing propaganda about "trans rights activism" as opposed to the reality. Which just proves my point.

Furthermore, anti-vaxxerism was very much a part of the Trump campaign, so the idea that the 2024 election was about the electorate rejecting an anti-social, anti-science candidacy is profoundly stupid.

"Follow the science". Unless it's science about evolution, vaccines, climate change, the complicated and contingent relationship between chromosomes and biological sex, etc.

 

[johnny karate]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1499556483272519680

That’s not from the Harris campaign or platform.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1499556483272519680

That's supposed to be a rebuttal? A text from 2022 about the Equality Act?

 

[Safe-Keeper]

The number one response in the thread poll is "too much transgender stuff".

Spare us all the laughably disingenuous claim that this was ever meant to be a serious or useful discussion.

And that 'didn't fight inflation enough' is even an option even though inflation was low and near an ideal level in the run-up to the election.

eta: Not to mention 'should have kept Joe'. I love troll threads.

 

[theprestige]

"Trans rights activism" wasn't part of the Harris campaign or platform.

Maybe it should have been. There was already backlash against trans privileges in public policy, including against trans privileges in US federal government policy. Keeping silent about federal policy on this subject probably didn't do her any favors at the ballot box.

What you're referring to here is the right wing propaganda about "trans rights activism" as opposed to the reality. Which just proves my point.

It's not propaganda if it's true. Again, there's a whole thread where you can discuss this in detail, with receipts, with other progressives who happen to disagree with you on this one issue.

Furthermore, anti-vaxxerism was very much a part of the Trump campaign, so the idea that the 2024 election was about the electorate rejecting an anti-social, anti-science candidacy is profoundly stupid.

It's no surprise to me that a lot of people who saw how horribly and inhumanely the medical community was treating "trans" minors also lost trust in the medical community on the topic of vaccines. Especially new, experimental vaccines that were rushed out with minimal testing.

In the event, I think rushing the covid vaccine and taking the covid vaccine were the right things to do. But I don't blame people who were suspicious of the covid vaccine, and became more suspicious of the entire vaccine proposition, the more the covid vaccine was pressed on them.

And again, I'm not saying the Dems should have tried to convert the anti-science MAGAs. I'm saying they should have done more to understand and address the concerns of left-leaning voters who somehow needed more of a reason to come to the polls in swing states. Because, again, the GOP margin of victory was not overwhelming. There were likely Democrat votes out there, that could have been picked up to secure a much-needed victory in the presidential election.

 

[johnny karate]

That's supposed to be a rebuttal? A text from 2022 about the Equality Act?

My favorite thing about it is that the best they could come up with is a text from not only two years before the 2024 election but also a few months before Democrats had historically successful midterms.

The argument is then as follows: A text from 2022 didn't negatively impact the 2022 midterms for Democrats but did negatively impact the 2024 election for Democrats. Real galaxy brain stuff.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

My favorite thing about it is that the best they could come up with is a text from not only two years before the 2024 election but also a few months before Democrats had historically successful midterms.

The argument is then as follows: A text from 2022 didn't negatively impact the 2022 midterms for Democrats but did negatively impact the 2024 election for Democrats. Real galaxy brain stuff.

The whole "oh the Democrats lost because of trans stuff" thing is so weird anyway because it's such a massive giveaway, especially when people frame it as "oh I had to vote Drumpf because Harris trans people!".

Okay, so you hate trans people so much that you felt forced to vote for outright fascist dictatorship rather than... Accepting trans people? If that's really what toppled the election, American democracy was already doomed.

 

[dann]

Who Owns America? Bernie Sanders Says the Quiet Part Out Loud (Trevor Noah on YouTube, Oct 9, 2025 - 1:26:58)
0:00-Intro
04:03 – “The system is broken” (and why that half-truth works)
06:40 – One billionaire vs. the bottom 52%
10:10 – Oligarchy explained: ownership, media, elections
17:13 – 50 years of productivity, lower real wages
22:02 – AI super PACs: “We’ll destroy you before you run”
23:50 – 50,000 volunteers vs. billionaire money (Mamdani)
36:04 – Healthcare in the polls vs the votes
38:06 - When college was tuition-free (yes, really)
41:04 – Demagoguery 101: blame the powerless
57:44 – Worker-owned companies that actually work
1:02:04 – Public funding = salary cap for politics
1:12:25 – AI endgame that forgets buyers exist
1:21:48 – A message to angry young men

4:04-->
Trevor Noah: How far do you think America is off from the promise it's given to its people?
Bernie Sanders: Uh, I think you have a president who is way, way off. Who is, in my view, the most dangerous president in American history taking us in the wrong direction in every area.
On the other hand, I think you got a whole lot of people uh who would love to see a very, very different America than we have today. So Trump is ... what Trump is saying, and this is I think an important political point, he says the system is broken.
Trevor Noah: Yeah.
Bernie Sanders: And you know what? He's right. The system is broken. The problem is his solutions will make a bad situation worse. And from a political point of view, the Democrats say, "Well, you know, we got to tinker around the edges on this, do a little bit over here, but basically we're doing okay."
Trevor Noah: Yeah.
Bernie Sanders: That's wrong. So, I think you have millions of people who understand that in the richest country in the history of the world, we should be doing a hell of a lot better than we are doing today.

 

[ahhell]

The whole "oh the Democrats lost because of trans stuff" thing is so weird anyway because it's such a massive giveaway, especially when people frame it as "oh I had to vote Drumpf because Harris trans people!".

Okay, so you hate trans people so much that you felt forced to vote for outright fascist dictatorship rather than... Accepting trans people? If that's really what toppled the election, American democracy was already doomed.

Maybe if everybody thought it was as such a stark choice as you did.

 

[theprestige]

The whole "oh the Democrats lost because of trans stuff" thing is so weird anyway because it's such a massive giveaway, especially when people frame it as "oh I had to vote Drumpf because Harris trans people!".

Okay, so you hate trans people so much that you felt forced to vote for outright fascist dictatorship rather than... Accepting trans people? If that's really what toppled the election, American democracy was already doomed.

Again, we're not talking about deep MAGA constituencies, where the Dems never had a chance. We're talking about left-leaning voters in swing states, who needed more encouragement to turn out. And it seems that the current state of trans rights privileges in public policy are in fact a turn-off for a lot of left-leaning voters.

And again, the margin of victory wasn't insurmountable. It's not unreasonable for Democrats to conduct an honest post-mortem on what went wrong, if only to improve their showing in the mid-terms.

 

[dann]

The whole "oh the Democrats lost because of trans stuff" thing is so weird anyway because it's such a massive giveaway, especially when people frame it as "oh I had to vote Drumpf because Harris trans people!".

Face that it's not entirely wrong! To a large extent, Trump did win because of the trans stuff, the abortion stuff, and the illegal-aliens stuff. But Trump didn't win because of that stuff as such but because of the GOP's successful lies:
They'll perform sex-change operations on your kids in school.
They'll kill babies after birth and call it abortion.
They'll let illegal aliens kill your family and eat your pets - and give them free health care (and sex-change operations).
They'll come for your stoves.
They'll put nanobots in your vaccines, which will make you magnetic, control your thoughts and make you gay.
And so on and on and on.

And what was the Democratic response?
To embrace the Cheneys!
They never went on the offensive. Instead, they made sure that the people who did - people like AOC and Bernie Sanders - were marginalized.

Okay, so you hate trans people so much that you felt forced to vote for outright fascist dictatorship rather than... Accepting trans people? If that's really what toppled the election, American democracy was already doomed.

It's not that they hate trans people so much and don't accept them. It's that they believed the lies about the transification of America. And it's that they are uneducated enough to believe those lies. They have been trained to believe preposterous lies in their mega churches and by Fox News and OANN. In other words, by American society as it has been for more than 40 years. The kind of American Democracy that Democrats hope to return to and ask people to vote for.

 

[theprestige]

I mean, if the real answer is, there was nothing the Democrats could do, the fascist voting bloc was just too large to ever defeat at the polls, then I I guess what the Democrats did wrong was not launch a bloody revolt, having already exhausted all democratic remedies. Because you've tried every peaceful, democratic thing you can possibly try. You've had the best messaging, and the best voter drives you could possibly have. You've engaged in every legal expedient against corruption and treason that the courts would allow. You've done it all. You've done nothing wrong. But you still can't win, because the forces of evil are just too strong. Even doing everything right isn't enough. And in that case, there's one more right thing to do: Hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. Which the Democrats failed to do.

Maybe that's the moral of this story. Maybe that's the message behind this refusal to conduct a proper post-mortem: The next step is revolution, but the Democrats can't bring themselves to take that step.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I mean, if the real answer is, there was nothing the Democrats could do, the fascist voting bloc was just too large to ever defeat at the polls, then I I guess what the Democrats did wrong was not launch a bloody revolt, having already exhausted all democratic remedies. Because you've tried every peaceful, democratic thing you can possibly try. You've had the best messaging, and the best voter drives you could possibly have. You've engaged in every legal expedient against corruption and treason that the courts would allow. You've done it all. You've done nothing wrong. But you still can't win, because the forces of evil are just too strong. Even doing everything right isn't enough. And in that case, there's one more right thing to do: Hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. Which the Democrats failed to do.

Maybe that's the moral of this story. Maybe that's the message behind this refusal to conduct a proper post-mortem: The next step is revolution, but the Democrats can't bring themselves to take that step.

I'm not so sure they can't bring themselves to take that step. They just aren't going to say it explicitly.

 

[d4m10n]

That’s not from the Harris campaign or platform.

First off, "What did the Democrats do wrong?" cannot be answered solely in terms of campaigning without regard to governance. Arguably—and in my view—voters should be much more concerned with their experiences of governance rather than their perceptions of messaging. As Rachel Maddow often says, "Watch what they do, not what they say."

Secondly, can anyone else recall Harris' campaign-era stance on how well they had actually governed?

 

[Segnosaur]

Let’s send the Equality Act to President Biden’s desk.

We must increase protections for LGBTQ+ Americans

That's supposed to be a rebuttal? A text from 2022 about the Equality Act?

Not only was the tweet something that wasn't even released during the election, it also didn't specifically mention "trans rights", instead using the broader LGBTQ+ term (also covering homosexuals/bisexuals/etc.)

So their defense against "I don't like Trans people" is to admit "I also don't like gays/lesbians/bisexuals".

 

[Garrison]

Again the major mistake of the Democrats was to underestimate the willingness of sections of the electorate to self-harm with their vote so long as some group they didn't like was brutalized.

 

[d4m10n]

Not only was the tweet something that wasn't even released during the election, it also didn't specifically mention "trans rights", instead using the broader LGBTQ+ term (also covering homosexuals/bisexuals/etc.)

Did you miss the bit about "bills targeting transgender Americans" or do you believe that they were not about trans rights?

It is weird to pretend that this issue wasn't in play throughout the Biden presidency, even though its impact is almost impossible to measure.

 

[johnny karate]

Maybe it should have been. There was already backlash against trans privileges in public policy, including against trans privileges in US federal government policy. Keeping silent about federal policy on this subject probably didn't do her any favors at the ballot box.

And yet when she explicitly mentioned trans rights before the 2022 midterms, it didn't hurt the Democrats during that election.

To sum up:

Openly talking about trans rights in 2022 = No anti-trans backlash during the 2022 election.
Not talking about trans rights in 2024 = Huge anti-trans backlash during the 2024 election.

It's almost as if you guys are working backwards from a conclusion and just ignoring everything that contradicts your theory.

It's not propaganda if it's true. Again, there's a whole thread where you can discuss this in detail, with receipts, with other progressives who happen to disagree with you on this one issue.

Based on the performances of the participants in other threads, I feel very comfortable dismissing your claim out of hand.

It's no surprise to me that a lot of people who saw how horribly and inhumanely the medical community was treating "trans" minors also lost trust in the medical community on the topic of vaccines. Especially new, experimental vaccines that were rushed out with minimal testing.

In the event, I think rushing the covid vaccine and taking the covid vaccine were the right things to do. But I don't blame people who were suspicious of the covid vaccine, and became more suspicious of the entire vaccine proposition, the more the covid vaccine was pressed on them.

This much excuse-making for the very real existential threat that anti-vaxxersim is to all of us in this country leads me to suspect that your claims to support science-backed beliefs are a pretense.

And again, I'm not saying the Dems should have tried to convert the anti-science MAGAs. I'm saying they should have done more to understand and address the concerns of left-leaning voters who somehow needed more of a reason to come to the polls in swing states. Because, again, the GOP margin of victory was not overwhelming. There were likely Democrat votes out there, that could have been picked up to secure a much-needed victory in the presidential election.

Again, to believe this claim I would need to believe your claim that Democrats didn't try to secure those votes, which I do not.