Every statewide D candidate is winning or running ahead of Harris in those battleground states, some of them significantly so. Are they blaming the Biden/Harris administration in a way they aren't tying in their Senators and incumbent governors or as she just a really uninspiring candidate (with frankly a poor team on the ground from what I saw)? I disagree. It wasn't just Josh Stein beating a clown in Mark Robinson here, Dems won every statewide race, including guys like Jeff Jackson beating a semi evil but really competent sitting congressman in Dan Bishop for AG. It's probably because of MAGA overreach here in the state but they also ran on values and competency and concrete things, I feel like nationally Trump/Fox/etc has successfully painted the Dems as a party that cares more about the rights of trans/LBGTQ people and illegal immigrants who aren't in the country than their wallet. Roe v Wade backlash did carry them in 2020 but we've now had 4 years of Dems in power to change it back (they couldn't) and where it really didn't affect the vast majority of people's personal lives. The niche special interest stuff plays well in the liberal elite echo chamber which is as bad as the MAGA echo chamber these days but people here care about their rent and items at the grocery store going up in price while their wages haven't kept up. Trump may have zero plan to fix that and will in fact make it worse, but he at least plays into people's anger at that, and maybe that was too much for an incumbent administration to overcome, but clearly they need to stop focusing mainly on flipping suburban white women while taking minority men and young voters for granted.

What part of the does the party in power play regarding grocery store pricing and wages? What direct control?

They of course don’t but low information uneducated voters are easily convinced they do.

Of course they don't, but voters have always been that way (and arguably Trump lost in 2020 because of economic factors outside his control too). A lot of the asset inflation is tied to the massive bank parachutes at the start of Covid and a lack of regulation on banks or VC moving in to the real estate market, but Dems have no interest in fixing that or trying to tie it to Trump because the money printer was going brrrr under him even though it was a very bipartisan decision. Money was poured into the system, it's found an outlet in an increasing stock market, crypto, and real estate and eventually it trickled down to increased consumer goods prices as well.

Explaining that to people is really hard, but somehow a significant enough chunk of voters in these close races were persuaded by the local politicians while Harris and the national party lost them to a demagogue who certainly isn't laying out detailed policy proposals. Why do you think she underperformed vs them in those key states?

I really wonder how much weight that one shitty gender-reassignment-for-prisoners ad carried. It was everywhere, even here in Oregon.

She's just shy of the record for most votes ever for a Dem in Wisconsin (just behind Obama in 2008). She's set the record for most votes for a Dem in NC.

Based on what you have said Dems have failed to turn out their base in WI every year since 2008. If that's the case it certainly isn't based on any specific position of Harris.

Trump folks claim it was their best ad of the year. I haven't seen any data to support that, but they claim to have it.

There are a bunch of voters who went for D's AND Trump over Harris in 4 key states (not sure on Arizona/Nevada, while Georgia had no statewide races), I find it hard to believe the answer is simply sexism when many of those Kamala underperformed are also women. But I'd really try to drill down on those split ticket voters in swing states and figure out why they did before making sweeping generalizations or assuming those states are now lost going forward.

I'd bet a lot of the split ticket voters see their state as doing better economically than the country. There's a lot of, I'm fine but the rest of the country is going to hell.

Enforcing existing antitrust laws is a good start. Many economists have pointed out that monopolies and duopolies on essential items has lead to high prices. We basically found out that the high egg prices were caused by collusion among the biggest egg producers in the country. Not a peep from the FTC or DOJ.

As for gas, not letting the Saudis walk all over us would be good. Obama did a masterful job of putting pressure on them to keep prices low (which also hurt Russia). Biden was incredibly weak in that area.

Wages is trickier and a systemic problem. Increasing the minimum wage would help but Harris blocked that from happening. Enforcing existing laws antitrust laws as to create more competition from companies. Going after companies who commit systemic wage theft. And little things like getting rid of non-competes will help, but was done 3 years too late to make a difference.

I mean, that just sounds like Communism and government intervention in the free market. Surely, the R's wouldn't suggest those things. Imagine how they would have run on too much government intervention.

How are we going to pump more when the oil and gas industry is privatized? Sounds like more government overreach.

The minimum wage is completely dead. The Rs killed that too. It will never get raised again. Each state will set the bar now.

Obama had the luxury of international prices being high enough that it was cheaper to drill and produce locally. Now that the world has caught up to that, guess what? They have the market priced right where it's just about too expensive for the US to do that and make it worthwhile. The times aren't the same.

If you don't want to enforce existing laws, that's fine. Monopolies are not free market. And I don't think people would lose sleep over their groceries getting cheaper and their wages rising.

OPEC and the Saudis control a huge chunk of the oil supply in the world. Obama threatened the Saudis with more production stateside and by not selling them weapons if they cut supply. Using that leverage, the Saudis pumped out oil which brought the cost down a ton and really ravaged Russia. It's why the Russians wanted Trump to win so bad.

The minimum wage wasn't dead. It was up for a vote and Harris killed it as President of the Senate.

These are all things that could have been done that would have helped Americans.

Which vote was it where Harris killed this?

(If it’s this one, looks like she was for it, before the parliamentarian said no, and the WH/Manchin wouldn’t endorse overriding that: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article...-minimum-wage/ https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wir...nt-at-least-1/ ; but sure, all Harris’s fault)

It was a provision in the COVID-19 bill from 2021 that would have increased the minimum wage to $15/hour.

I don't think misogyny is the primary reason Haris lost, but I do think we're not ready yet to elect a woman. If Clinton, Haley, and Harris aren't good enough it's hard to see anyone who is.

It didn't get included in the COVID 19 package because the parliamentarian ruled it didn't fit the limitations for a reconciliation bill.

They tried to pass it on its own in May of 2021 and the GOP plus Manchin and Sinema blocked it. That's the bill where Sinema was laughing and made a big show of her no vote.

I agree but haven't we been doing this since forever?

There was a time a few years back when the stock market was hitting record highs for weeks at a time and that was supposed to be a symbol of the economy doing well. We always have these Wall Street vs Main Street conversations no matter what was going on in the family home.

I know folks don't want to hear it but it also matters who is struggling to pay their bills. For some, if they don't have more money, they are expected to get a second or third job or to cut out everything but ramen noodles. If they don't have a job, it is because they don't want to work.

I don't think it's new; I think it's just harder to accept this particular time because it played a role in there being a second Trump administration.

I agree, it's just odd they vote for the people who want to cut their wages and make them get a third or fourth job and destroy any worker protections they have.

It is because they don't pay attention enough to know that. In an ideal world people would actually educate themselves, weigh the issues, and make reasonable and rational decisions. But many of the people we are talking about work hard and just scrape by. They are getting most their news third hand from their family, friends and co-workers. Or maybe the Joe Rogan podcast while driving to work.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

Lol. So the message I am seeing from some is that Biden went too far to the left, that Biden just basically was enacting Bernie Sanders' agenda, and the voters yesterday rejected pro-labor and anti-business policies.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

People don’t even know what they are voting for. I had five people today that as a group couldn’t tell me a single Trump policy besides making the economy better and fixing the border. That’s as specific as they could get.

"They" are voting for anyone to cut their wages etc. "They" are voting someone who will make sure that their wages increase...by cutting the wages of those other "they's".

My boss was telling me how happy he was because inflation has been killing him. In the last four years, he has bought a $88k truck, a $65k camper which he had 6 months and traded for a $85k camper, built an indoor electronic golf course, and put in a $120k pool. I mean, inflation has him over the barrel.

Yeah, had a guy from school just say it was the border, the economy, and the “woke crap.” Waiting to hear if my non-binary kid or their mixed race girlfriend are part of his “woke crap.”

The funny thing about his spending habits is that drastically increasing tariffs seems to be one thing that could hit him hard if he continues to buy things where most of the parts are imported.

The products and equipment we use mostly comes from China. The last tariff battle had us short on somethings, and increased the price dramatically on others. But somehow that was the Democrats being soft on China's fault.

I disagree. They are voting FOR Trump and whatever comes with that while people who voted for Harris were voting AGAINST Trump. A CNN exit poll showed a +8 for people voting for Trump than against Harris. It was +25 against Trump than for Harris. That is actually down from the +38 when Biden won.

Don't get me wrong, I do think some people who voted for Trump because they know he would be against things that Harris proposed. But most on the right just don't see Trump as the lesser of two evils in the way I heard most Dems talk about Harris. This is where I think Rainmaker has a point. I understand why independents and Republicans Against Trump types would feel that way about Harris. The registered Dems need to figure out what so many in their party felt this way about one of their own.

She's the President of the Senate. She can just say I disagree and leave it in the bill. The Parliamentarian is an unelected person who has no power unless you give it to them. Republicans would absolutely ignore it if they were in the same position.

The choice was to follow what the Parliamentarian said or make the minimum wage $15/hour and improve the lives of millions. She chose.

Everyone has been cutting their wages if we're going back 50 years. The cost of school, housing, cars, and health care have soared for decades and not kept up at all with wages. That leaves a lot of frustrated people.

So they vote for someone like Joe Biden in 2020 because Trump wasn't improving their life. Biden doesn't do anything to improve their situation in 4 years either. So they either vote Trump or sit it out. They aren't policy experts or economists. They just know the one party isn't helping so maybe the other party will.

This is why we have a see-saw effect. In 2 years when Trump doesn't solve any problems, the Democrats will clean up in the midterms like almost every single opposition party does. And this will continue to happen because the actual problems people face can't be solved because both parties are so engrossed with corporate donors.

It would have been Schumer's call, not Harris'. The Senate majority leader is responsible for the parliamentarian and president of the senate is a somewhat meaningless title unless there's a tie vote to break. Standard Senate procedure would have been a simple majority vote to overrule her and they didn't have the votes to even do that.

But I'm sure this is still Harris' fault somehow. Yet you give Trump a pass for Covid.

I noticed that 3% of voters chose 'None of these' in the Nevada Senate race. Does that mean if that option were to win an election, they would just be deciding to ... not have a Senator for the next 6 years?

This is not true. The presiding officer of the Senate (the Vice President) makes the decision. The parliamentarian is just an aide to them and has no functional power.

There was a stink over it when Obama was in power. Republicans didn't like when the parliamentarian ruled that repealing Obamacare wouldn't qualify under budget reconciliation. Cruz called for her to be fired but then realized it didn't matter because Biden got to make that call anyway. If it's any consolation to you, Cruz didn't understand the rules of the Senate either.

Oddly, they apparently just ignore it and declare 2nd place the victor.

Biden did more for the left flank of the party than anyone since Roosevelt and all he got was hatred. Regardless of policy merits, I can guarantee that the next several election cycles will be far from what the left is looking for. Dems are moving back to the 1990s.

It's 100% true. The last Senate Parliamentarian to be removed was Robert Dove, who was fired by majority leader Trent Lott.

We can even reference the Wikipedia page for the Parliamentarian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlia..._States_Senate

It's ok the left flank will tell everyone that voted for Harris how it's their fault that we ended up with Trump.

Because Dick Cheney was the VP! The VP is the presiding officer of the Senate. They hand that role over to someone in their party in the Senate when their party controls the Senate.

I don't know what you're trying to argue. The Senate was 50/50. Harris was the presiding officer and had the sole power to overrule the parliamentarian. It was a big story at the time. She chose not to. That was her choice. You don't need to defend her from something she willlingly chose to do.

You all moved as far right as a Democratic candidate ever has and got trounced. Maybe just nominate Trump next time instead of running on his policies.

Maybe part of it is that she wasn’t a good female candidate. If she were a man, she’d be a senator right now not the VP.

Frakking AZ and NV are still not called.

I know it doesn't matter now but they really need to reform whatever is stopping them from finishing the count.

I dunno man, don't think the VP statement is fair. Presidents pick VPs for all sorts of reasons and its not because they are the "best or most qualified" but more because they believe "they are best to help the win" the election (and then everything else).

But yes, I do agree she got a free-ride from VP to Democrat nominee. Not saying that was good, bad, right, wrong etc. but just that it was a free-ride.

Was Vance more qualified to be VP in 24 than Harris was in 20?

Also, was Trump more or less qualified to be Potus in 16 than Harris was in 20?

Ahh, it's probably because she was too young. Let's compare.

Age of VPs at start of VP:

Walter Mondale: 49 years, 15 days
George H. W. Bush: 56 years, 222 days
Dan Quayle: 41 years, 351 days
Al Gore: 44 years, 295 days
Dick Cheney: 59 years, 356 days
Joe Biden: 66 years, 61 days
Mike Pence: 57 years, 227 days
Kamala Harris: 56 years, 92 days

Joe explicitly stated that he was looking for a woman the VP slot. So if Kamala had a penis then she never would've been picked for VP. She was a DEI hire.

So, that's worse than all the other guys who didn't say they were looking for a white guy with a penis (but still obviously were), as was the case of the 48 other Veeps?

Don't dispute that but my below statement is also true. DEI and "best to help win the election" are not mutually exclusive.

Nobody says Vance was a DEI hire even though Trump was only looking at men.

White men can't be a DEI hire, because that is who you are SUPPOSED to hire. Duh.

There are some people pushing election conspiracies. Haven't seen any major Democratic politicians or pundits yet. They have a very "Stop the Steal" kind of vibe that it almost feels like it could be from the same sources. Something to use to point out "both sides don't trust the elections" to bring in draconian election laws.

California only has 60% counted. Most people don't notice because it's one-sided presidentially. I don't think we have an inherent right to rapid results, only accurate ones. It's worth noting that none of the states are official yet, 'calling' is just media outlets following a confidence interval.

AZ is not called so we can be 145% sure that Kari Lake lost so we don't have to hear her bullshit for months.

lol

I'll give you right of Biden and maybe right of 2008 Obama, although that's debatable, but otherwise absolutely not.

The party is about to return to the 1990s, so you'll get to see how much further left they were.

This. Everyone on the right wants to brag about FL, but they have almost two weeks between election day and certification. They can only make super quick calls when the margin of victory isn't razor thin. If you have to wait for mail and provisional ballots to know the winner it's going to take time.

Potentially unpopular opinion: I think most if not all of the comparisons to 2020, while natural, are misplaced. COVID was a unique situation and emergency. Extrapolating those trends to elections afterwards is not reasonable, because some people motivated by that to vote are not going to behave the same way when there's nothing they see as a crisis of the same level of urgency.

I I think this line of thinking is really dangerous to Dems. It comes off condescendingly, and may make people in their college educated echo chambers feel morally superior, but end of the day 57% of the electorate doesn't have college degrees so you're drawing dead the more you make that education cut off the dividing line. It's not just a male thing either, white women who never went to college make up 20% of the electorate and went 65/33 Trump. I even disagree with Bernie when he says the Dems have abandoned "the working class" or "blue collar workers" with their policies but I think they 100% have with their rhetoric. There are racist sexist idiots out there but it's not 100% of Trump voters this cycle, painting every one with that brush is just hardening their support and making them less likelt to flip down the line.

Obama literally ran against Dick Cheney's policies. Kamala was touring with Liz Cheney and talking about building the wall.

Even Biden is wrong. He kind of ran a populist left campaign talking about a green new deal, student loan forgiveness, free pre-K, and being a safe place for asylum seekers.

You have to go back to 96 Clinton to find a campaign that was as far to the right as hers.

Obama ran as a guy above partisanship who could bring everyone together. He was against the Iraq war, but otherwise he was all about overcoming partisan debates and finding solutions everyone could accept. He certainly wasn't running a Bernie like campaign.

dola

It's just amazing that RFK Jr., who four years ago literally could not have gotten a single GOP confirmation vote, will now sail through with the GOP voting in lockstep for him. There really is nothing important to the GOP now other than loyalty to Trump.

I am sorry if you read it that way, and yes if the Democrats think that the majority of the voters are this way like you seem to be suggesting I meant then they would be in trouble. I was not in any way suggesting that the majority of anyone fits this description. There are people that have voted both parties that fit what I described, as much as there college educated and people that didn't finish middle school. I am describing people who do not care about politics, and there are a sizable number of them. I work with and meet people who fit what I described every day. It is not that can't educate themselves on the issues, it is they don't particularly want to. I mentioned my boss before. He a smart guy, and runs a business. He isn't spending his time watching Fox News, or reading political blogs. He couldn't name his congressman right now and he just voted for him. Most of his political views comes from his buddies that he camps with. He is the person that once said to me "I don't know what socialism is, but I don't want it." His vote counts as much as yours does.
If you don't believe there are people like this, there are a good number of people still to this day believe that schools installed kitty litter boxes in classroom for students who identify as a cat. And some of them vote.

I agree with what you are saying in theory. I ask this as a genuine question for everyone.

Why is it that painting all Trump supporters in a negative light does not work for the left while painting all Harris supporters in a negative light is at the very least effective for the right? Why does it feel more harsh for Dems to say it about the Repubs than it does for the Repubs to do the same to the Dems? Why does "Not all..." only seem to work for the right?

I don't mean this as an attempt to both sides the discourse either. Maybe I am wrong and there are Republican voices saying "Not all Dem..." to other Republicans. I just don't hear them.

Because we're punching down on the white trash instead of helping them up, even though the specifically refuse the help that's been offered and would rather just wait for a lottery and blame others for their shit existence while believing they can get away with being pieces of shit because they go to church.

Or that was just sarcasm... I don't know...

I don't really understand the DEI talk. She was selected to be the Vice President. They won. It worked. Maybe you could argue there was someone who would have helped them win by more but her resume is pretty good for a VP candidate. She was a Senator from the most populous state. And it helped she stood for nothing and would be malleable on the issues.

People are mixing that up with her being the candidate for President. That's Joe Biden and the party's fault. She was never supposed to be the nominee as she's not a good campaigner. It was basically thrust on to her because there were no other options. She ran a terrible campaign but she was also thrown into a campaign in freefall and had to use Biden's disastrous team for the campaign instead of her own people. And it sure seems like part of the deal to get Biden to step aside is she wouldn't criticize him which crushed her too.

Blaming her or some DEI nonsense is just some racist excuse for the party completely fucking this up.

He literally ran on a public health insurance option! Iraq was one of the primary issues along with the financial crisis in which he called for more regulation. Yeah he wasn't full on Bernie and he didn't accomplish much, but he did actually run on a pretty progressive platform if you look through it. This re-writing of history is not helping you or the party.

The main reason is because back when he was picking a running mate he didn't just say I'm picking Kamala because she is the most qualified. He led up to the announcement by talking about picking a minority and a woman. If he had just narrowed it down and picked her and said she was the most qualified it would be alot harder for it to stick, but at the time he wouldn't shut up about only considering minorities and women.

So it's just DEI when you say the quiet part out loud? I thought everyone kind of understood the deal with picking a VP.

I don’t think your average uneducated voter understands that at all.

Biden explicitly said he was choosing a woman to be his running mate. That's where the DEI talk comes in.

But why is it an issue now? I get not saying the quiet part out loud but how is that at all related to anything going on right now?

His healthcare plan was to the right of Clinton and specifically based on Romney's plan in MA.

But even so, Harris supports the ACA and wanted to expand upon it. She's to the left of Obama there.

That's just not true. The public option was heavily campaigned on in 2008. It was sort of supported by Clinton in 2016 and definitely supported by Biden in 2020. Harris cut it from her campaign when she got the nomination. Her plan was some convoluted tax credits.

Like I'm sorry your choice lost and your plan failed. But the lady who campaigned with the Cheneys, bragged about building a wall, talked up fracking, wars, and her gun was not running a campaign on the left like you think. You were alive in 2008 and I would hope remember what the opinion of many of those topics was (especially wars).

It was just low hanging fruit. It plays to the base. They remember it and believe it because they all laughed at it four years ago.

Obama ran to the right of Clinton on healthcare. Obama was anti-Iraq, but wanted to send more troops to Afghanistan. He certainly wasn't anti-all wars.

Not seeing home health care coverage as an expansion of healthcare is just not seeing the obvious benefit of that for millions of Americans.

SHE RAN A CAMPAIGN NEXT TO THE LADY WHO PROPPED UP THE BIRTHER CONSPIRACY. Holy shit no wonder you guys always lose.

So you're talking vibes rather than policy? So all of your previous complaints about policy don't really matter?

dola

At the end of the day none of this matters. The 2028 election will be a referendum on what happens over the next four years. The Dem nominee will have their own charisma or lack of it. The policy agenda will be focused on what has happened, not what anybody thinks about the 2024 election.
There won't be meetings over the next six months that make any difference on the next election.

I think Kamala Harris ran about as good as a campaign as she possibly could. In retrospect, it would have been incredibly difficult for any Democrat to win in this environment. That's what the Pod Save America Guys are saying anyways who worked for the Obama Administration and have been around campaigns.

I think she would have been a great president. I don't think blaming this result on her, Tim Walz, or her campaign team is remotely productive.

Here are some things I think that hurt the Democrats.

1. Most incumbents around the world have been losing their elections. Many people want someone to blame for their problems and will blame the party in power.

2. Many people resonate with Trump rhetoric because they are racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, and/or transphobic themselves and thus Trump says things they are already thinking themselves. These people aren't going to ever vote for the Democrats.

3. Republicans have built a media engine of Fox News and right wing podcasts that receive a lot of viewership. This is a very big engine to contend with and it has radicalized many Americans against the Democrats. The Democrats don't have anything comparable to these things.

4. Republicans have a pretty big electoral map advantage right now.

LMFAO.

My God, that might just be THE funniest thing I've seen in the entire election cycle.

They have the enormous majority of the media carrying their water for them.

Civil War II talk disappeared. I wonder why.

Apologies to GD for using his post as the jumping off point, but this is the exact type of counterproductive thinking and statements Dems need to avoid. Enough of those Trump voters elected D's and even women or people of color down the ticket in enough swing states to win in NC, WI, MI, I think/hope AZ/NV, and nearly PA. It's quite probable the headwind of being attached to the current admin was too strong, certainly so if she wasn't allowed to break from him more, but mostly she was an uninspiring candidate even compared to other D's in every single state that was remotely close.

It's not even that I disagree with the premise that there are sexists and racists and idiots, but a bunch of them used to vote Dem too and you kinda need some of them back and on your side to win elections.

Outside of the Times and maybe the Washington Post who are just rich coastal liberals, who is this majority? The biggest cable news network is right wing. Most of the local stations are now controlled by Sinclair, a far-right company. Private equity has gutted most local papers. All your American social media companies are owned by people on the right. They have a pretty strong presence on alternative media sites like YouTube.

Sure this was the case in the 90's or whatever when options were limited, but media now is so fragmented that I don't see how they have some kind of advantage. No one under 40 cares about the NYT or MSNBC.

Jon Truth #whatever:

Nobody -- and I mean NOBODY -- gets elected without votes from a sizable contingent of rather complete idiots.

They're too big a percentage of the population now for 50%+1 to not include them.

That is one of the few Jon Truths that I actually agree with :D

It's absolutely non-partisan, and undeniable for pretty much anyone who ever leaves their house and ventures out into public.

I agree it's definitely counterproductive.

The fact of the matter is there is a bias against these groups in the United States. The MAGA movement would not exist if a portion of Trump's support were not these things.

To clarify, I used the word "many" because I don't know what percentage of Trump voters this time around are one or more of those labels. I avoided the words "majority" or "most" because those terms indicate more than half and that may not be the case.

There has been historic inflation around the world so most incumbents in recent races have lost. I think many people blame Biden and the Democrats by extension for this just as they probably did the Republicans for the Recession in 2008 when George W. Bush was leaving office.

For all of the talk about "the death of polling", I noticed that AtlasIntel was very accurate again this cycle, as they were in 2020. Here are their final 2024 polls:

National: Trump +1 (Probably close to that after all ballots are counted)
Pennsylvania: Trump +1 (Actual: Trump +2.1)
Michigan: Trump +2 (Actual: Trump +1.4)
Wisconsin: Trump +1 (Actual: Trump +0.8)
North Carolina: Trump +2 (Actual: Trump +3.3)
Georgia: Trump +2 (Actual: Trump +2.2)
Nevada: Trump +5 (Actual: Trump +3.8)
Arizona: Trump +5 (Actual: Trump +5.6)
Ohio: Trump+9 (Actual: Trump +11.2)

Virginia: Harris +5 (Actual: Harris +5.2)
Minnesota: Harris +2 (Actual: Harris +4.2)

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1854544657570492894

Yeah the polls actually got a little more accurate this cycle. It will always be an inexact science because you can't precisely predict turnout. I wish polls didn't exist. But their demise has been greatly exaggerated. They are far more accurate than any other method of prediction such as 'there's lots of lawn signs in my area' or 'the vibes are clear'.

Their internals are so crazy, though. It literally looks like they are just making up the numbers.

If this was their first time polling, I suppose the accuracy could be written off as a fluke, but according to 538, AtlasIntel was also the most accurate polling firm in the 2020 election.

Some guy on reddit took the vote totals from 2020 and 2024 (from CNN) and made the below map. It's not 100% accurate because not all the votes are in yet, but it's indicative.

The numbers behind the map appear to show the changes are more due to a softening of support for Harris (2024) vs. Biden (2020) vs. significant gains in absolute numbers by Trump.

But more to come I'm sure once all the analysis and counting is done.

https://i.redd.it/chtptwunqhzd1.png

I think they are herding and getting lucky. There's no way I believe they were getting 8000 responses in a single day and their percentages of voters are often way off. One of the late PA polls had over 80% white voters.

Harris lost votes in safe states, but she matched Biden overall in the battlegrounds. Trump just did a little better.

Yeah, I've been watching and voting in elections for over 30 years, and outside of some outliers, people generally get votes on party ID ("I've always voted Democrat and I'll always vote Democrat"), name recognition ("Susan Collins has been my Senator for decades, why would I vote against her?"), or charisma+vibes (if we throw out 2020 due to being a COVID outlier, then every POTUS victor going back to Kennedy has been the more charismatic candidate).

Throwing out 2020 as an outlier, the last two successful Democratic POTUS candidates were hugely charismatic vibes-campaigners who minimized talk of policy (especially detailed talk of policy) in favor of coming off as someone who was likeable, empathetic, and swathes of the electorate could convince themselves either would pursue ends they liked, or not aggressively pursue ends they didn't like.

Harris may have tried to campaign on vibes, but she didn't have the charisma to make it stick, especially in an anti-incumbent environment.


Now, you're thinking, Trump isn't any of those things. He's not likeable or empathetic, he talks about very specific policy details (even if they're factually incorrect or physically impossible), and he definitely will pursue ends that lots of people don't like.

Well, Republicans don't need the same type of candidate that Democrats do, because their base, and the part of the electorate who can be swayed to their side, are looking for other things. For evidence I put forward all of the nationally-elected Republican politicians now in the ascendancy.

So basically Democrats should run white male midwestern governors going forward.

Depends on who you ask.

I know a helluva lot of people who would readily take a bullet for the guy ... but the majority of them couldn't name an actual specific policy with any real level of detail.

For many, I believe he's the most relatable candidate in decades.

It’s funny because it’s true. In reality there are maybe 20 men in the county that can relate to Trump’s life but dudes of all incomes and lifestyles have convinced themselves they can relate to him because of….well…I’ll let everyone else fill in that blank.

He's relatable because he treats the system with the disdain many people already have for it. Sure, he's a pathological liar, but so is every politician. He's just more brazen and doesn't care about decorum when lying. He talks about other politicians the same way your friends and family would.

And there's a weirdly authentic vibe to him, even when he's breaking traditions. Leaving town and not attending the inauguration angered many but is relatable. Would you sit and watch a ceremony for the guy who just took your job? Would you leave a nice note like Obama did for him after he spent years making racist attacks? Of course not.

I'm not saying any of it is good, either. Just that I sort of get it. If you're angry with the system, watching someone act phony in support of that system will make you angrier. And at some point, you'll yearn for someone who wants to break the whole thing.

There are probably a lot of days that me & you ought to be separated by well-trained security, but when you're right, you're right.

You nailed the shit out of it.

And I think that's something that this board maybe doesn't quite get on the same level that exists "out in the world": the absolute disdain, nay, sheer hatred of "the system".

Trump picked the best person he thought would be a VP and it showed in the VP debate. Harris was picked because of identity politics. I’d argue that any time you don’t pick the best person but you want to pander it’s less qualifying.

Trump was more qualified in 2016 because he was elected as the Republican candidate. Harris was selected, not elected, as VP and then selected, not elected, as the Democratic candidate. One is qualified by the people and one is qualified by the party elites. We saw the result in 2016 and then again in 2024.

There is a chart in link that rates Left-Center-Right (can't embed, sorry). Take it for what it's worth ...

Just a moment...