I wonder to what extent it was just the latter. If Biden won because of R's who had enough in 2020, but this time were ambivalent.

I think that's absurd. Hillary Clinton was a highly flawed, unpopular candidate and won the popular vote. Kamala was anointed with nobody voting for her in the primary, the VP of an unpopular president, and proceeded to do things like announce she 'wouldn't change a thing' that happened under that administration.

Edit: it appears that Trump actually won more women than in 2020, in contrast to the 'angry about Dobbs' or 'men just won't vote for a woman' takes.

OK, let me re-state for Danny: The demographics that have outsize influence in the Electoral College are too misogynistic to elect a female president.

You should. You shit on me for a year and ended up being wrong. It sucks to feel dumb so find a bubble where you can blame this on the Russians or some minority. Anyone but the party for hiding Biden's cognitive decline for years and forcing a last minute replacement on the voters they didn't want.

To that I'll say the same thing; disagree entirely, for the same reasons stated.

Maybe, maybe not.

When this thing is fully dissected, the over emphasis on "Republicans for Harris", and "Trump did/said this and therefore you can't vote for him" ended up not making any difference, and might have even backfired to a certain extent. Same for thinking that a billion dollar war chest, relentless surrogate campaigning from the Obamas and Bill Clinton, and endorsements from Oprah, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, etc. were going to propel Harris across the finish line.

Yes, sorry, I post quickly while watching my kids so my words are not very carefully chosen and as thought through. I absolutely do think gender has an effect on the outcomes in certain states that are close and important for the electoral college.

"You got any more of them....Barak Obama's?"

But then we won't hear him repeat the same thing over and over again every day.

There is no guarantee that whoever came out of a Dem primary would have won, but I do think in the end someone not directly tied to the administration would have had a better shot. I can't say that for sure, because it just didn't happen.




I think it is the same as when it was said the US would never elect a Black president. The right person, the right situation, it can happen.

I do think that the hypothetical of what if Biden had never tried for a second term and the Dems had a normal primary is too speculative to really know what would have happened.

This might be earlier in the thread, but I found this fascinating: based on this exit poll of 20,000, Trump had majorites in the following demographics:

• White
• Male
• 45-64
• No college degree

If you weren’t in these groups, unless you were 65+ (which was basically even) you likely voted Harris

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lp48ldgyeo

I want to meet the 5+% of Arizona voters who:
1. Voted 'Yes' on the abortion prop.
2. Voted for Gallego over Lake in the senate.
3. Voted for Trump in the presidency

Seems like an odd combo to me.

I don't know. Maybe I am just tapping into the "White Male Without a Degree That Feels Left Behind" in me, but it feels like six hours plus hours after the election is called is a bit early to rule out any reason why your candidate/party lost. I'm not saying that any reason is THE reason or anyone has to agree with the reasoning. I do think that there are a lot of reasons that were deemed not worthy of consideration that led to the outcome of the election.

Exactly. Could have went well, could have ended the same, or it could have went very badly. Looking at what happen, though, it was probably the best chance to defeat Trump. Biden would not have done better (probably much worse actually), and I don't there was some magic candidate that would have pulled this off after he stepped aside.

Here's my post mortem on this election:
1. I think a big problem the democratic leadership has is they just don't understand the issues that the non super-partisans care about. Their campaign was extremely focused on ads on abortion rights, health care, "freedom" and of course Trump lying. There was next to nothing on the economy and inflation (outside of a small ad talking about a middle class tax cut). Meanwhile, people were really worried about inflation and the economy. She basically ignored the issue, said she wouldn't change anything about the Biden policies and offered no real economic plan to the middle class. Exit polls showed that Trump voters were extremely focused on the economy/inflation and that was their biggest concern.

2. Biden not pulling out early really hurt the dem's chances. Had he done that, we would have gotten to choose Harris, learn more about her and see some differences between her and Biden. She could have leaned more into changes she wanted. Instead, she was forced to walk this tight rope in keeping the money that went to Biden and trying to define herself in three and a half months. Trump was able to paint her as this massive liberal who wanted to keep the "Biden economy" going and she didn't have the time to change that narrative.

3. The people running the democrats need to stop painting all white men as "assholes/idiots" and anyone who runs a business or has money as "evil". The party needs these people to win and needs to understand how to reach them. White men voted for Obama and Biden, but both those guys tried to court them. My hope is the result of this isn't "Well, let's just throw up our hands for the white male vote and just focus on increasing turnout for women and minorities". I feel like that was Harris' plan this election.

4. It's really hard to elect a president (or vice president) to a second term when the economy is viewed as bad or under-performing. The effects of high inflation the past two years really hit hard for a lot of voters. The only chance the dems had was to show how the next four years would be different in regards to the economy and they failed.

I think there's a real good chance a democrat wins the presidency in 2028 if they can self reflect and learn from these mistakes. It's just a shame the result is four more years of Trump.

I bit my tongue yesterday, but I've got this notion that he might just figure that he can declare that he doesn't need an election next time around.

The GOPers complaining that it's taking too long for Kamala to concede just fuck all the way off.

I'm going to say this, even in fear of creating a curse. I doubt he is going to be dictator for life or some such. He will leave in 4 years. Will there be an actual free and fair election in four years, or a symbolic coronation? IDK. But I think he will be done being in office.

hXXps://www.arcdigital.media/p/america-chose-this

It is really hard to convince people to run on improving the economy when they want to spend all their time pointing out how great the economy is. Inflation hurt people. Its effects are still hurting people. But on here and on line, all I get back is "But the GDP", "But the stock market". People were telling you they were hurting, and their vote proved they were hurting. Blaming the media, or saying "it isn't that bad" is equal to gaslighting. Telling people "you shouldn't feel that way" never ever ever works.

Yeah, their message to people struggling was "actually the number say you're doing good". This is why running someone who is outside the Washington bubble like a midwest Governor would have been better.

Yeah, I'm also shocked at the latino results (especially Latino men). They went pretty hard for Trump and I really don't know why.

Hispanic vote and Kari Lake is just a hated figure in Arizona.

Gallego is a pretty good politician and should be someone the Dems push to run in future elections for higher office. Especially with how much Hispanic support they've lost over the last few cycles.

Was just talking to a co-worker about this who is in local politics and was talking to other insiders about it.

The theory is (1) they have always been strongly culturally conservative, and this is a realignment that was probably inevitable and was just delayed by MAGA's open racism, and (2) a lot of Hispanics who have been here a while start to identify as more American and/or more White, so when they hear "deport all of them," they don't think that they are part of "all of them."

Take it for what it is worth, but both of those make some sense to me.

The short and medium term issue for Dems is that if they can't hold the Midwest and they can't win enough Hispanics to convert the Sun Belt, then there's no path to 270 anytime soon.

dola: These things always reach some equilibrium, and the most steady group of voters seem to be the people who are now committed to voting against the incumbent party no matter what. So I could see a good mid-term, etc. for the Dems.

But with the Blue Wall gone, I don't see any stable base for them. Every election is going to be some version of trying to cobble together a lucky mix of states.

I think context matters, but the complexities of explaining how or why an economy coming out of a pandemic might struggle to immediately snap back into place is too much for some people to want to listen to. Trump himself called his pre-pandemic economy the greatest economy in the history of the world, and by the end of the Biden administration, we will have slightly improved the numbers while navigating a difficult period.

I'm not sure how, politically, you can effectively tell people to live with short-term pain while we right-size the ship coming out of a once-in-100-years event that shut down the world's economies. Sure, maybe some of Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" would help, but people just wanted results that weren't going to come as quickly as they wanted. Biden is only partially to blame for inflation, but takes the full blame for us out-performing every other comparable nation during this same period, just not to the extent of immediately bringing it back to pre-pandemic levels. I'm not sure how you effectively run on that set of facts.

This is it. Trump didn't have a great election. He mostly just did what he did in 2020. As many people have said in this thread, he had a ceiling and that seems true.

The difference in this election is Democrats didn't come out and vote. I think that's been a fear from a lot of people on the left who have said repeatedly shitting on your base is going to depress turnout. You have to give people actual reasons to show up to the polls.

The party thinks that this is the 70's or 80's where people switch parties all the time. That a good Democrat will draw in Republican votes. That just doesn't happen anymore. Elections are about getting your base out to vote over all else. And every single time you bring out Liz Cheney or fracking or building a wall, you're alienating your base. And the Republicans that message is aimed at are going to vote Trump anyway.

I'll never understand how the party watched Obama run two brilliant campaigns with this strategy and then said "fuck it, we need Republicans". It's either incompetence or a shift done for their donors.

Right now she is 14 million votes off the pace from Biden.

Trump is about 3 million short of his 2020 number.

So yes you are spot on that this was about turnout as Trump will likely get close to our even short of his ceiling when all is said and done

Are there any stats out there around "protest votes" and what that total may be? Curious if there is a tally of filled out ballots that left President blank as an example.

I haven't checked yet to see what the 3rd party tally is nationwide as of yet.

{yawn}

Best night's sleep I've had in several weeks.

Did I miss anything?

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...295136769.html

The last few Senate seats are looking razor thin. I see Baldwin got called in Wisconsin and she's under 30K. Michigan looks like it will go to Slotkin, but is under 20K and uncalled. PA is uncalled and McCormick leading Casey by around 30K with some urban vote still out, so it could come in really close either way. Nevada is a 6K margin for the Republican, but tons of vote left and it usually comes back more Dem.

I think the Dems win all of the above, with PA really being a true toss up and easily into recount territory. GOP should end with 52 or 53 by my count.

You're right that there isn't much you can do on messaging in the short term. Maybe even less you can do politically to fix it in the short term. These are long term systemic issues that have crushed the middle and lower class.

But these issues are also here because of the policies of the party for decades. The support of deregulation of business. The complete lack of interest in the housing market and the failure to hold those who blew it up accountable. The student loan debacle is a Joe Biden bill from back in the day. Complete abandonment of working class voters for corporate donors which started with Bill Clinton.

Neoliberalism has failed and it's going to take a major shift in the party's stance on issues to turn voters around. And with their ties to corporate donors, I just don't see that ever happening.

Good article, but I just want to point out something. It says "U.S. annual inflation has fallen to 2.4% in recent weeks, but the news came too late to change voters’ minds about their personal economy."


Serious question here, do people really think the average voter's opinion of the economy comes from the news? I have heard statements like this a good bit, but it is so wrong. their opinion on the economy comes from direct observation. They look at their checkbook, and what their friends and family are saying about their own checkbook. If they have more money and can pay the bills, then they are happy about the economy. If they are struggling to pay bills, they are not. Same with something like employment. If they have a job or they can find a job, employment is good. If they are out of work, and people they know are out of work, it is bad. They aren't reading as jobs report. You can shout from the roof top "unemployment is at an all time low", if they can't find a job they aren't believing you. You can say "inflation is down", but if they are paying $1400 in rent when I used to pay $900, they are going to say "bite me."

But the turnout numbers in battleground states don't show a large depressed turnout for Harris.

PA - 3458229 2020
3326712 2024

MI - 2804040
2713281

WI - 1630866
1668025

GA - 2473633
2533860

NC - 2684292
2684549

Total - 13051060 2020
13106427 2024

The loss of votes came in solid blue states, not in the battleground states where Harris is going to slightly outperform Biden's numbers.

(I didn't include NV and AZ because a third of the vote is still to be reported.)

edit There might be 2.5 million fewer votes in NY, NJ, MA, and IL, but that didn't make any difference in who won.

Meanwhile Trump ran slightly ahead in all five of the fully counted battleground states.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Machismo culture.



Seriously, that's my take. They see someone who resembles things they admire in their own culture. They identify with that. They support it.

But isn't a big part of that just the way the larger economy is working. The dems didn't fix what the Rs broke, and now the Rs are going to fix it, by exploiting more and more workers, using large corporations to keep price pressure on them and force them into work to just barely afford anything. House ownership might drop and instead, they will just be rented out forever. Remember when we could 'buy' software? Rentals will become subscriptions, and your place to live might just be tied to the job you work at. Maybe they will build an apartment complex close by that will come with your job?



I mean, capitalism is great until it stops working, and becomes the exploit of the population. It's all a continued search for maximum efficiency and maximum profits. No matter where that money comes from. Might as well make that last bit of money before Ai takes huge parts of the job sector, filter back into the pockets of the businesses by squeezing every last penny out of Maslow's Needs list of the people. It's not like they have any power to stop it.

I mean just looking at Pennsylvania, she's down 125k votes from Biden despite the state adding like 75k registered voters since 2020. That's a lot of people in a close race that just didn't bother.

Yeah, I mean I tried to make this point on FB, not that anyone cared to hear. If it's the economy...we are back down to low year over year inflation, the stock market is rolling, unemployment is low. So I don't know where you improve there. What you're talking about is higher wages. How does Trump help there, exactly? Mr. Fire the Union Workers, friend of billionaires? I want to know what the supposed plan is supposed to be there. Deport low-wage immigrants and somehow...you get better jobs that magically appear? Between that and the tariffs, I'm wondering how their math is supposed to work on this.

The point is that it doesn't matter. He's already told them it's broke and he can fix it. So guess what. He didn't do anything and it'll be magically fixed.

I don't have the energy to post a ton here but i do want to say that I agree with every single word that Rainmaker posted in this thread after i caught up on it. I didn't agree with every word leading up to the election, but the analysis he's pulling from to state the absolutely horrific decisions made by the Harris campaign to sprint to the right and court republican voters ("Run as a Republican" I believe was the phrase) and to make her official stance on Palestine to mock those who brought it up were serious issues with the campaign.

I don't think it was a fixable situation. People right now are looking for things to fix, things to blame, where did it go wrong, etc.

The problem is the electorate is incapable of doing it's job well. Simple as. Yes a lot of economic signs are good now, but that doesn't change the fact that they sucked earlier in Biden's presidency. And rather than admitting that and saying 'here's what we have done to make it better, and here's what we think we should do to improve it more', we got 'wouldn't change a thing'.

The main thing to blame for the economy is the pandemic, and that's not Biden's fault, but voters aren't that sophisticated. All that matters to many of them is it was better under Trump so we're going back to that. They are not good enough at the task of voting to draw the reasonable conclusions that we'd prefer that they draw. If we want that kind of government, we can't have a democracy.

Realties like the long-term spike in housing prices and other essentials often dwarf the impact of 'oh, inflation is lower now in most ways'. Them's just the facts. And many is the election where a Democrat has won because of the exact same voter mindset.

Good article and matches a lot of studies and polls over the years.

What it boils down to is their issues are running more in line with traditional white voters. The economy being #1 for instance. You have families that are established in this country and generations deep. They are middle class with jobs, houses, and bills. They attend college and are being burdened by loans, can't afford to buy a house, and concerned with crime in their neighborhoods.

It's just their concerns have changed and Democrats haven't shifted to address them. Just racist stereotypes like above.

It is hard to sell the economy is doing well when lower and middle class people are struggling just to buy gas, food, and rent then the car insurance bill rolls in and it's doubled. Hell, we are very high earners and even I go to the store and am like, nope, not paying X amount for that product, I'll find something on sale.

To my knowledge he hasn't talked about increasing wages as much as he has talked about lowering the price of goods through energy independence. His plans are drill baby drill and tariffs, but if you ever heard him talk about it he has no clue, dudes brains are cooked.

Well yeah, I always think that because I am by nature cheap. (At the store. Being bled by subscription services I don't use, that's another story.) We'll see how that approach works though, I have my doubts. (Especially when drill baby drill leads to increasing natural disasters which set people back to 0, but that's another discussion.)

But she's ahead overall in the five battleground states. There's no evidence of depressed turnout in the battleground states. She lost votes almost exclusively in states where the outcome wasn't in doubt. She actually seems to have focused her campaign where it mattered, it's just that Trump got even more votes.

There are a lot more registered voters in 2024 than there were in 2020.

For instance, there are 300,000 more registered voters in North Carolina yet her vote total is just about even to 2020.

In Wisconsin she is up 35000 from 2020 but there are over 155,000 more registered voters before election day. And Wisconsin has same day registration which usually tacks on another 200k.

Basically if registered voters are up 5% in a state from 2020 and you're even or up only <1% from 2020, you're losing your base.