Summary
Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harrisās defeat, with many votersāoften womenāexpressing doubts about whether āAmerica is ready for a female president.ā
Some said they ācouldnāt see her in the chair,ā or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, āyou donāt see women building skyscrapers.ā Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line.
Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.
Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Bidenās administration.
Ultimately, Hall believes that Trumpās unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harrisās campaign efforts.
You may find it an absurd opinion, but Iād say itās exactly why the Democrats canāt help but grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
Theyāre simply bad at showing off the good that they do and they spend their campaign time courting some mythical moderate Republican voting base that wouldnāt vote for them anyway by moving further and further right, disenfranchising their voting base. Who they then blame for their loss. Leftists donāt like voting for the lesser of two evils and vote with their heart, while Republicans vote for the nominee, regardless of their positions or values. And the stats show that the Democrats failed to motivate people to get out and vote. Trump actually lost 2 million votes compared to 2020. If thereās still elections in 2028, weāll see a resurgence in votes for the Democrat candidate after 4 more years of this monstrosity, but people have forgotten just how bad it really was.
The economy does better under Democratic presidents. Thatās a verifiable fact. Biden added 500,000 jobs to the economy and brought inflation down, started student loan forgiveness programs, and all kinds of other things. But the Dems didnāt talk about that, and the media sure as hell wasnāt when going to when they could blast Trumpās absurd claims instead. And when we did hear about it, it was through the lens of the economy as a whole, not what you average American experiences day to day. Inflation is down, but prices arenāt, and wages havenāt kept up in decades. According to the IRS, 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.
So when Trump says heās gonna change things, and Harris looks like itās gonna be more of the same (no matter how much hogwash Trumpās claims are and things are only going to get worse), itās gonna do nothing to alleviate the grievances leftists have had with the Biden administration on all sorts of things like the genocide in Palestine. Theyāve heard the āvote for me or itās the end of democracy!ā song and dance too many times while seemingly getting nothing out of it.
pardon me, but I think this is an extremely bad take. because the two things that were glaringly obvious to me over the last 8 years have been
it is extremely hard for a party to proclaim their good things when the people who have the most exposure to the public outright refuse to tell people about it. pundits have complained bitterly about the democrats communication problem on network tv but never seem to question those same tv networks why they wonāt talk about what the democrats just did. and when democrats appear on those same shows and bring up their accomplishments themselves the hosts are completely disinterested in the topic and donāt allow the democrat to expound further on their accomplishments.
this country has a severely unbalanced media coverage and bias issue that no one wants to talk about because it exposes how much the media has been bought and bullied by the right wing. for at least 40 years itās just accepted that what a republican says goes unchallenged while the democrat gets no positive press whatsoever. acceptance of the false āliberal mediaā trope is baked in and simply taken as fact. itās no wonder why the news is distrusted and no one pays it any attention anymore.
I agree, the media has an absurd right-wing bias. You need simply look at the view ratios between the posts of right-wing and left-wing politicians to see how leftist messages are filtered out. And thatās not even getting into stuff like the company that bought up something like 500 local news channels after 9/11 with the sole intent of running more anti-Muslim broadcasts.
But even beyond that, when you look at the Democrats during the campaign, itās all maintaining the status quo rhetoric or shifting away from what their base wants to court the nonexistent moderate Republican, not showing how theyāve moved towards what their voting base wants.
CBS morning news would always start off with a Trump droning sound bite EVERY FUCKING DAY. And then maybe a 3rd of the time they would play a Harris clip, but always after the mandatory Trump sound bite clip. Even though their viewers did not want to hear Trump.