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[Great Order]

Saw someone say that one of the big issues with the Dems is that they feel that the people fail the politicians and it's not that the politicians are failing the people, and damn if that attitude isn't coming to the front a lot.

[Truean]

Please do not quote

"2) The progressive attitude of telling men they're the issue. Tell a group of people they're a problem (Or idiots, I feel this is another problem American liberals have, this idea that you know better and everyone else is stupid) and they aren't inclined to vote with you. Similar to how you wouldn't expect to get black people to vote for you by being racist to black people, you shouldn't expect to get men to vote for you by being misandrist.

Progressives as a whole need to have a good, hard look at themselves, their attitudes, and their culture. If they don't, they're going to see a lot more of this."

THIS. I've been saying it for years. This is absolutely paramount importance. Don't alienate allies. There needs to be a drastic look at the past 12-16 years of liberal philosophy in America if liberals are going to survive. Is there even a plan to deal with this situation or did the "Brilliant" put all their eggs in one basket of Harris winning their 11th hour candidate swap?
Frankly, this is the "there's no plan" and LBJ history repeating thing. There are a lot of hard truths American liberals aren't ready to hear and they will get pissed at me if I say them even when doing so for their benefit. Here are just a couple.

1.) "We need a better reason than, he's not Trump!" <--- Really? Self defeating. Enjoy Trump. He will hurt your reasons.

2.) "We can make history with the first [insert characteristic] president!" <--- Really? Two women lost to Trump. Run candidates who can win or nothing you care about will happen, and it will be destroyed instead. Get practical or lose again, and again.... I don't like it either.

3.) "But the numbers don't lie." <--- Really? They lied and were B.S.

This was a landslide for Trump. The polls had Harris winning Iowa.... The democratic party had enormous, expensive tactical blunders. They couldn't beat Trump, despite all the [insert reasons here] .... This was 2016 all over again.

The American liberals can't endure much more of this and continue to exist.
Please do not quote

[McTraveller]

Telling people they are fools never turns out well, even if (and especially if?) they are indeed foolish.

Even now, saying, "WTF America!?" is alienating. This is what I think people mean when they say the Democrats were being hateful. Saying "I don't understand how you can vote for Trump" basically tells people you think they are idiots or lesser because of it.  You have to give people better options, not tell them they are dumb for taking the option they did take.

[bloop_bleep]

Democrats lost because people want populism, redemptive politics, politics of saying you're going to smash things as they are and making something better. They don't want people who are about defending the existing institutions as they are; they could have run ANYBODY who wasn't like this and they would've handily defeated Trump, who is the worst, most insincere example of the first messaging but an example nonetheless.

The question is whether Democrats are institutionally capable of doing that by embracing leftist populism and haven't just due to incompetence or other obstacles, or whether they cannot due to capture by the capital class.

[Duuvian]

No, they were correct in leaning to the center. I voted for them anyways though I had great difficulty doing so. I did not vote for the IC senator candidate (security faction) who barely made it through with a fraction of a percent, dammit.  I was going to do a link dump or something on Day 1 and go into some level of opposition to try to get it back on track.

The issue was that for the previous 4 years there numerous parts of the party who were undermining their only allies. Then the Oct 7 war started, and young lefties were victims of a foreign conservative influence campaign B. Foreign conservative influence campaign A for good reason does not like this and rallied their critics into going overboard in reaction to it, possibly due to not understanding the issue well but more likely just not giving a shit.

Turnout was down among the youth. In my opinion the moderate Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. Let's not forget the foreign-influenced conservative driven false info supported bills the moderat Democrats like Klobuchar or Blumenthal are pushing on internet regulation. Here's an idea, get good at using these things instead of taking them away because your corrupt IC agencies are giving you bad, selfishly conservative advice designed to make it hard to be in opposition because they are led by bad, selfish conservatives who are 1: often but not always doing a good job 2: abusing authority to mislead and accumulate power 3: mutual failure to be held responsible for failures or bad decisions or, especially, war crimes.

I mean, if Trump's people were clever, they'd realize just by not supporting Netanyahu they could probably run Benny and the Jets out and replace him with someone who won't backstab them as a matter of course while also running out domestic critics in the US agencies who are able to be proven in court as culpable for war crimes. After all, Trump put sergeants in charge of targetting ISIS in Mosul, which seemed like had high potential to be a war crime but probably not for Trump.

Of course, this won't happen and Netanyahu will probably try on day 1 to make them complicit in something so they can never even investigate what happened.

T:

1: I agree. That's why I earnestly supported the faction busily undermining mine: their people were in the executive.
2: I absolutely agree. Identity politics were the main show for the past 8 years. This did not result in the best candidates on some if not most instances. It allowed the moderates to sidestep policy and issues and run a high school popularity contest.
3L I agree. I also think the moderates are twisting things in this way to their benefit.

[bloop_bleep]

No, the issue is not that they haven't moved right enough, which they have already tried repeatedly.

Either case you cannot trust them to defend your rights. They have failed in being able to do so.

[Duuvian]

That's the propagada view, bloop. It's what the moderates, the conservatives, the far-right, the Putinists, the Modists, the Erdoganites, the Netayahites, Juche philosophers, the Ayatollah all push out. It's all horseshit.

EDIT: I misread that. I thought it was saying the issue was the lack of rightward movement. I think you were in agreement with me actually. As to the failure to defend rights part, that I do disagree with. What they have failed is understanding the issues well and being susceptible to information operations. I don't think even the whacky internet bills are malicious beyond an intent to disrupt critics and the moderates' failure to realize the implementors of this policy are not doing a good job with what they have already.

[Great Order]

They don't want people who are about defending the existing institutions as they are

Not surprising, when people are hurting from the status quo, saying "We'll keep running the status quo" isn't popular.

[Duuvian]

They do actually change but it's two election cycles later

EDIT: Also you need to look at what Labour has done in Olde England. I don't think I'm spilling the beans when I say I thought they had moved much farther right during the general election than they actually have. It's normal practice to go towards the center in the general in US politics. That's where the most voters are. Whether it was done well is always questionable, but the doing of it to some degree is pretty much mathematical necessity afaik.

I don't think that was the issue rather than the general distaste the public had developed after 4 years of information campaigns against (and also to misdirect) the left. You can look at Steam forums if you need proof. I saw a few days ago a new game is announced and the 2nd response post in the announcement thread is someone demanding culture war against all liberals and wokes (which are the moderate Democrats too). Every single person of the thousands of people who read that thread is going to see that post. It rightfully received mostly Clown (jester) awards but also many supporting awards. The issue isn't that the post exists, it's that these ideas filter into the leadership of the Democratic party while good ideas from their supporters are opposed or slowly undermined with media. This means the ratchet move to the "center" is a move to the extreme right, or at least much farther to the right than all but the most (conservative) moderate Democratic party supporters are at. This may be why dissatisfaction is high among low information voters such that some went to Trump because of false assumptions about his character or ability because he is a businessman; but also because explaining how the economy works would be too "left" for the moderate Democrats because more people might question spending decisions imo.

[MaxTheFox]

They don't want people who are about defending the existing institutions as they are

Not surprising, when people are hurting from the status quo, saying "We'll keep running the status quo" isn't popular.

Yeah kind of my point too.

[Truean]

Please do not quote

"Democrats lost because people want populism, redemptive politics, politics of saying you're going to smash things as they are and making something better. They don't want people who are about defending the existing institutions as they are; they could have run ANYBODY who wasn't like this and they would've handily defeated Trump, who is the worst, most insincere example of the first messaging but an example nonetheless.

The question is whether Democrats are institutionally capable of doing that by embracing leftist populism and haven't just due to incompetence or other obstacles, or whether they cannot due to capture by the capital class."

They want solutions, current ones are (becoming) outdated/unworkable. They don't have what their parents did. Current situation slow motion failing. Thus, desperate, they turn to the other option. Except that's the other extreme on blame....

I'm a pragmatist, have offered recent solutions, and been rejected. Everyone wants (subjective) perfect; not happening. There's so much division/so many conflicting demands that unification for goal(s) (e.g. survival/thriving) becomes unlikely/impossible for that reason. Part of it is because so many things are going wrong now and information on them spreads. We still can't do it all at once especially when seemingly anything anywhere in the world seems a valid issue for a domestic election. I've fought my way through hell and led some others out who listened: conserving/pooling resources, tactical advantages. I run into "I don't wanna do X." Of course not, neither do I. Something had to give. The perfect wound up being the enemy of "good enough for now" so now there's nothing and probably bad.

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[Maximum Spin]

I can't help but feel that the Democratic party is increasingly falling victim to Goodhart's Law - the idea that you can't rely on a particular statistical measure to reflect the underlying state correctly when people are trying actively to affect that measure. You can see this in their economic messaging, with the technocratic conviction that the economy was Fine, Actually because the metrics said this and that, which failed again and again to resonate with the people who actually have to deal with the real state of the economy and don't care at all about the specific CPI formula or the formal way the labor force participation rate is counted. Things on the ground are genuinely pretty dire for most and the Democratic campaign failed to show much sign of acknowledging that, let alone having a plan to fix it. Of course, on some level I wonder whether it wasn't a conscious choice of people who decided they didn't much want to be the ones in charge to get blamed for what's to come.

Separately from that, though, I'm seeing a lot of claims that the election was lost because of "abysmally low turnout", ostensibly blamed on people not wanting to come out for Harris because of bad charisma, not wanting to vote for a woman, or whatever. Has anyone else noticed this? This is obviously completely wrong-headed, because the Democrats got nearly the same number of votes as in 2008, and more than in 2012 or 2016 - none of which were considered particularly low-turnout years, and Obama in particular was hailed as a charismatic candidate who drew people to the polls in 2008 especially. Given that the number of Republican votes was substantially higher than any of those years, and it's not like the US population (especially of eligible voters) has hugely increased over that time, the turnout will have to have been pretty good overall.

[wobbly]

Harris could have won handily if she made a few concessions to the left wing. Not all, not most. Even one or two somewhat daring reforms would have probably helped secure otherwise non-voters and might even have swung over a few centrists. But what do you expect from the party whose totem animal is a donkey.

I'd argue that Harris had a hard time campaigning on a better platform then she did, under the circumstances. Her platform is always going to be "mostly the same as Biden" as she spent 90% of the campaign running to be Biden's VP.

[McTraveller]

I hear you about using aggregate statistics vs. "personal" statistics, though the problem there is compounded by most people not actually knowing how to evaluate their own situation anyway. They see the price on the gas station go up, they see their prices at fast food restaurants go up, but since basically Nobody™ has a budget or tracks their finances, they don't also see how their income changed.  This makes it tough, because as many of us have said, "statistics never lie, but they can say whatever you want."  Especially when people are constantly fed messaging like "it's never been this bad before!"

Essentially it's the danger of unfounded certainty, rearing its head.

[hector13]

What I’m hearing is that pretty much every demographic other than black women Harris underperformed (or Trump overperformed, depending on how you want to look at it) from what was expected. My county had a 70+% turnout rate, pretty sure.

There does seem to be a focus on why Harris lost, rather than why Trump won, though. Personally I’m more interested in why people voted for somebody who you can say was campaigning on fascist lines this time round, was called a fascist by a handful of people who worked with him the first time round, and was generally said to be a disaster by a huge chunk of people who worked with him the first time round, too.