• PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Whats the word for when you don’t really fully like someone, so you don’t vote for them, thereby giving the edge to the other guy, who you don’t like even more?

    • buttnugget@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      It’s called “right wing stupidity” and we should be calling out these worthless dumbfucks wherever we can. Although we should be clear that it does not seem like those particular brainless fools made enough of a difference.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      19 days ago

      Spine? Conviction?

      Whatever it is, the important takeaway is if future campaigns take the same approach, they’re liable to get the same results.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    21 days ago

    Number of times a candidate has run against or in place of the incumbent and failed miserably before Harris: 3

    …And succeeded: 0

    Number of times a candidate has run against or in place of the incumbent and failed miserably after Harris: 4

    It was a terribly weak position, but she foolishly believed in the American people to pick the best of two bad options.

    She was misguided.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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    21 days ago

    Look. I am not going to pretend that Kamala The Cop was some amazing candidate.

    But she never stood a chance with, what, a three month campaign where much of the voting populace never even realized she was running? And a LOT of the reporting and commentary around this reeks of “she just isn’t charismatic” or “she is unlikeable” and all the dogwhistles involved.

    If anything, it speaks poorly of her leadership potential that she was willing to be saddled with that mess of a non-campaign.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      This is a perpetually idiotic take.

      All the statistical evidence that we have, is that once Kamala was the candidate, her polling rose meteorically. Until she started to define herself as a candidate, when all we had were her words as former candidate to base her policy positions on, she was heading towards blue-wave-of-epic proportions territory. She named Walz as running mate and people thought they had someone to vote for herself

      Then, during the convention, the definition began as a continuance of a corporate, Biden-esque, more-of-the-same, Democrat. They silenced Palestinian voices and shunned the progressive vote, while embracing Republicans and hawkish dem’s.

      And her polling rapidly stagnated, then began to slide. As she slid further and further right, so did her polling.

      Harris’ loss was not an inevitability, and to present it as such is to both misunderstand the political moment then, as it happened, and to misrepresent the ongoing political moment.

      If Harris’ had ran on her 2020 campaign platform with Walz as vice, she wins. Hands down. The political pressure desperately seeking an outlet on issues like M4A, and so many other leftwing polciies isn’t new. Bernie got it started in 2016 and it never stopped growing. All she needed to do was step left and ride the wave. But she chose to make losing decisions. Her loss was not an inevitability and to present it as such is a form of lying.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Well, she wasn’t going to be able to throw the election if she made herself popular.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        21 days ago

        Her 2020 campaign wasn’t actually that good. She started with the same boost of optimism and then fell apart once she started defining specifics and every other statement was walking things back. She flamed out for a reason.

        I agree with your statement here though. She had all the momentum and tools to win and flubbed it through actual choices, not some inherent insurmountable challenges.

        • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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          20 days ago

          The only time she looked strong in 2020 was when she pointed out Biden’s support for old racist policies. After that, she had nothing to say or to differentiate herself from the rest of the DNC corporate pack.

      • n4ch1sm0@piefed.social
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        21 days ago

        Yup, all the momentum and revitalization of the democratic vote slowed to a crawl as soon the biden-esque political strategy got involved, caving on the Palestinian genocide, and by pretty much kicking Walz to the curb when it comes to PR. We could’ve been riding the “MAGA is just weird” all the way to polls, but neoliberealism had to fuck it all up again.

      • I_Jedi@lemmy.today
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        21 days ago

        Maybe, but actually moving left wouldn’t assure a victory either. If it became clear that Kamala was moving left, the DNC and the rich people in power would help Trump win through lots of propaganda on the news.

        Kamala only wins via the progressive route if she gets lucky at countering both Republican and Democrat propaganda, like Mamdani.

        • rafoix@lemmy.zip
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          20 days ago

          Your strategy is literally the continuation of the same weak and ineffective DNC strategy we’ve had for decades.

          • I_Jedi@lemmy.today
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            20 days ago

            Correct, if you define victory as benefiting the people of the country.

            But if you define victory as helping yourself while pretending to help the people of the country, then the DNC strategy is unbeatable.

      • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Taking campaign advice from her brother in law, the CLO of Uber, who is a big part of the gig economy which destroys workers rights, was also a huge red flag.

        I still voted for her, but it was like choosing a shit sandwich over Hitler. I didn’t exactly want either one.

          • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            The real problem was that voting for Trump was voting for Mussolini today. Voting for Kamala was voting for Hitler in 2028. If she had managed to win, someone even worse than Trump would win the election in 2028. That’s the only possible result from a hypothetical Kamala admin, if she had managed to win the election.

            • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              I don’t know if that was the only possibility.

              But yes, Kamala was to the right of Nixon. And cranked the ratchet effect hard during her run.

              The fracking, Gaza, and ties to Uber was especially disgusting imo.

              I wouldn’t be surprised if in that timeline a more competent fascist took 2028.

        • kreskin@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Both her husband and her campaign manager (her brother in law) are hard core zionists who pushed Harris to ditch the left. What those two wanted was support for israel, and that meant turning away progressives to get votes from the right. The only way those two were ‘losing’ would be if Harris or Trump won + turned left, which didnt happen. So they got an acceptable outcome. Harris chose her allies (and husband) badly.

          I cant imagine a dem ever winning a pro genocide, anti american worker campaign, can you? I can easily imagine right wingers winning such a thing, and thats what happened. Republican voters will cheerfully turn out to harm people— and dems a bit less so. Some of you think thats a problem, and I dont think it is. I’m glad we’re not a party that wins based on embracing mass murder and war crimes.

          • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            Yeah, she also was going on about fracking.

            Campaign was like “see, I’m left of Trump and he’s literally the devil. Never mind that I’m to the right of Nixon myself. Blue no matter who! Shame on you for not bothering to vote.”

            I dislike Trump. I mean he’s evil and is trying to erase me.

            But I hate Kamala. Because betrayal cuts deeper.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      But she never stood a chance with, what, a three month campaign

      That was half her strength. Trump’s entire team was geared around shitting on Joe Biden. And then Joe Biden stops being on the ballot, sending oodles of oppo-research and Hunter Biden smears and god even knows what kind of October Surprise they had cooking down the toilet.

      Biden dropping out and throwing up Harris in his place meant she was free to pummel Trump with negative ads while he had to fully reconfigure his campaign to attack someone who’d spent four years as a backbencher. And - early on at least - Harris capitalized on this well. She came in with a moderate Dem - Tim Walz - who defused some of the Zionist image built up around Joe. She spewed negative ads at Trump and Vance, leaning on the “they’re just weird” talking point that got plenty of mileage both on and off-line. She was a prodigious fundraiser, unlocking a ton of cash that Biden had left on the sidelines because he was too senile to call the mega-donors and ask for it.

      And, as a tabula rosa, she (initially) ditched all of Biden’s first term baggage - his failure to secure student loan relief, his endless efforts at compromising with far-right Republicans, his pull-out of Afghanistan and dive into Ukraine, his just being a gross old fart who couldn’t talk good.

      But then Harris had to take on a bunch of Hillarycrat advisers and tack to the right. She ditched Walz for Liz Cheney and Cindy McCain. She sucked up to the Silicon Valley Techbros as they lined up to knife her in the back. She repeatedly defended Joe Biden’s least popular policies. She undid everything that Biden dropping out was intended to accomplish.

      If anything, it speaks poorly of her leadership potential that she was willing to be saddled with that mess of a non-campaign.

      She never really had a choice. But that’s been the hallmark of her entire political career. Harris always just kinda blew where the wind took her. She shouldn’t have been VP to begin with, taking the job only because Biden confusedly promised a black woman VP when he was asked about his plans for a next SCOTUS pick.

      But then she surrounded herself with some of the most abysmal neocon reject advisors $1.5B could buy. And she tanked her chances at becoming the First Woman President by running the Clinton Playbook that had cost her predecessor so two prior electoral defeats.

      • dontsayaword@piefed.social
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        21 days ago

        I think the short timeframe was ultimately a detriment, despite this. How many people Googled “who is Kamala Harris?” and “Did Joe Biden drop out?” on election day?

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          21 days ago

          Yeah. The short time frame and trump not having years of insults ready were her only hope. But it was still a doomed endeavor because biden insisted on running until well past the last minute.

          Turning a weakness into a strength is a good idea… but it doesn’t stop it from being a weakness.

    • Hegar@fedia.io
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      21 days ago

      The campaign came out of the gate punching and dominated the news cycle. Then they took pelosi’s advice and tacked right and immediately began to flounder.

      Im not convinved the technofascists wouldve allowed a democrat win, but i don’t think it’s because kamala only had 3 months. Thats how long election campaigns are in civilised countries.

  • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    Bill Maher did a bit, just before taking a break in his show where he discussed future news that would happen while on break. He said Biden would drop out, and then he looked at the top contenders. He really crushed Harris, saying she would never be president.

    • EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml
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      21 days ago

      Race and gender had absolutely nothing to do with it. Democrat voters as a whole was trying to tell the party they are tired of old white rich men making decisions for them, she did absolutely nothing to differentiate herself from those old rich white men. Voters by and large said we have a red line and that red line is genocide but she continued anyway. His administration went on day after day after day telling us that the economy is good, we are not struggling when we could see in our day-to-day lives that yes we are struggling. The only message that sends is that they are not listening to us.

      The DNC fucked around and found out

        • HopeOfTheGunblade@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          21 days ago

          Because there’s a vast and well supported propaganda ecosystem on the right keeping their enthusiasm for kicking the shit outta the queers up.

          Elections are won by getting your voters excited to vote for you. Republicans did, Democrats didn’t.

        • EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml
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          21 days ago

          Democrats have told voters for generations there are only 2 choices to vote for. They exercised another right, abstain. If the party thought trump was a serious threat they would have primaried the senile guy that refused to step down

          • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            They exercised another right, abstain.

            They should have voted and left the Presidential race empty on their ballots. All those down-ballotnstate and local races could have really made an impact. And strategists only care about the policy issues of likely voters.

              • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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                20 days ago

                Glad to hear it. If I’m reading this correctly, only 13 districts nationwide split for Trump with Democratic candidates down-ballot. So to me that suggests far more people who refused to vote for Harris simply refused to vote outright.

        • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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          21 days ago

          Look. Everyone knows that there is nothing that Old White Rich Men want more than to elect a brown woman of asian descent. They HATE IT when you instead elect an Old White Rich (But Not Really) Man instead.

          Fight the power!!!

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Ahh yes. This tired, losing canard.

      America will vote for immigrants. It will vote for women. It will vote for black people. It will vote to defend trans people.

      It doesn’t want to vote for apologists to corporatism.

      Its very clear.

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          What alternative did you provide them?

          You do understand that your approach to rhetoric is fundamental to why Democrats lost and Trump won?

            • stoy@lemmy.zip
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              21 days ago

              That is the technical reason.

              There are plenty of reasons for people to decide to not vote in the election.

              • Ever since 2016, the Democrats seem to have run mostly on a plattform of keeping the status quo, Obama ran on “Change”, and managed to change healthcare for the masses with Obamacare. What was the main point in the Democrat campaign in the last election, to an outsider, the answer seems to be “we are not Trump”, which while true, is not interesting or engaging.
              • Kamalas stance on Israel/Gaza, this is a stupid reason not to vote, but an important point, it also ties in with the previous point of that the Democrats didn’t seem to have any idea of what direction they would go if they were elected, other than “steady as she goes”.

              Had the Democrats found and picked a course with a clear message to of what they were going to do when they won, and dropped the “steady as she goes” attitude, they may have won.

                • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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                  21 days ago

                  Or, and this might be completely revolutionary towards your thinking…

                  Maybe how you approach politics is harmful and supports rightwing movements.

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    I was never a big fan, but I was passionate about supporting her from the moment Biden stammered through that debate until this moment in her DNC speech: https://youtube.com/shorts/-UQliWnKnqY

    This was the moment when she did the heel turn away from all the clever, momentum building moves that assembled a surprisingly left-friendly coalition. Everything after this was punching left and she lost as a result.

    • khepri@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      I still think Biden’s refusal to let go of the reins until way way too late is what doomed her primarily. As VP, she had to hold and defend Biden’s exact policies and positions, even the unpopular ones, while he was running. By the time he finally quit, she was basically stuck inside the rotting corpse of his campaign, having painted herself into a corner on every issue.

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 days ago

    It is true that she didn’t have enough time to put together a viable platform, but if Biden had dropped out early enough for her to develop a viable campaign and platform, that would have meant a primary, and it’s doubtful she would have won that primary.

    Even if she had won that primary, it’s still doubtful that she would have assembled a viable platform and campaign. The political cliques she was aligned with were diametrically opposed to the kind of policies that would have made a viable platform.

    A break from neoliberal politics was necessary. But basically all of the institutional pressure for Biden to drop out came from neoliberal diehards who were pissed at him for deviating from that line slightly, the age thing was mainly just an acceptable cover story for the insiders. Haris got her chance by appealing to those groups and thus she was never going to challenge those interests.

    • khepri@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Oh she never in 100 years would have won a primary. She was like rank 8 of 10 in the 2020 primaries, people do not like her

      • quetzaldilla@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        I voted for her but don’t like her.

        Primarily, because of her stance on prison labor which is just slavery with extra steps.

        • khepri@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Yeah, I voted for her too, as I would have voted for Biden or for a fucking Funko doll over Trump.

      • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        19 days ago

        The voting public didn’t care about her, but she had good connections with relevant instructional actors. That’s why she was relevant. People like trump will keep winning until the Democratic Party, as a political institution, cuts those neoliberal actors out of the coalition. If the party doesn’t, democracy will fail in America, or they will be replaced by some new party, or both.

        People complaining about voters not choosing her over trump, or people not being motivated by voting for her, are just feeding in to that dark future. The only way out is standing up and demanding better candidates, refusing to accept the lesser of two evils.

  • criss_cross@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Article was a great read. This part really resonated with me.

    It may seem petty to use this incident, but it does illustrate Harris’s expectation that the world should conform to her needs. Towels on the far side of the room? Someone else must fetch them. A slot as the Democrat presidential candidate that party leaders conveniently made sure would be uncontested by anyone else, a massively well-funded campaign that raked in over a billion dollars and the support of celebrities like Oprah and Beyoncé, a popular vice presidential candidate, a huge boost in the polls as soon as she stepped into the campaign… and, yet, somehow, her loss is still anyone’s fault but her own. Why are my towels on the other side of the room? Who will fetch them for me?

    It really did feel that way in hindsight. That we all were just supposed to conform to her and not the other way around.

    I remember Hacks on Tap talking about how their contacts were frustrated that Harris wasn’t out doing more national television interviews and that she wasn’t really putting herself out there. This feels like another example of the towel in the bathroom.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 days ago

      So… the Dem strategy was… run an insufferable, stuffy, haughty narcissist to counter a more bombastic, less classy, insufferable narcissist…???

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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      19 days ago

      Not for nothing, but trump wasn’t exactly out there either outside of the incel podcasts. She was a poor candidate and the funding bullshit meant she had to be the candidate. Fuck her, but fuck every protest non voter way more.

      Edit: knowing I pissed off at least three of you you lazy fuckers makes me smile.

      Edit 2: 8!

      • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        No FUCK Biden for continuing to run even though he was too damn old to. He should have passed the torch properly and allowed for primaries to happen.

        • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          He not only robbed us of a primary, he broke his one term promise.

          And in doing so, shoved an uncharismatic center right candidate down our throats, whose only redeeming quality was not Trump.

          Is that what democracy looks like?

            • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              So even worse, he manipulated and deceived the entire electorate from the get-go.

              Did Biden explicitly promise to be a one term candidate? No. But he personally implied it on many occasions, and he had his underlings spread the messaging of him as a one-term president in the press. His minions were out there in the media basing their entire pitch for his candidacy on the idea of him as a one-term caretaker president, running to restore normalcy.

              He deliberately put the idea in the public consciousness that he would only run for a single term but without ever explicitly promising to do so. This way the bastard could get woo voters on the prospect of him making a graceful exit, but while still leaving his future options open. It was a Machiavellian move, and it ultimately blew up in his face and gave Trump a second term.

            • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              Okay so it wasn’t a promise, it was a leak from several of his aides that was probably calculated in order to help folks feel more comfortable electing somebody that’s 77.

              The fact that he spoke out of both sides of his mouth, one being the mouth of several of his aides, doesn’t change my feelings about the man.

          • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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            20 days ago

            Don’t care how much we get down voted! Fuck yeah this sentiment! Fuck all your protest non voters! I hope you read this and it makes you upset!

            Edit: why am I twice as high as homie saying the same thing‽

            Edit 2: that’s better, bring on the hate you lazy fuckers!

        • khepri@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          I think people forget that Harris only had a mere 15 weeks between Biden dropping out and election day to establish herself and try to bootstrap and run some kind of campaign that wasn’t just her wearing Joe’s skin. It’s insane that anyone expected her to win under those conditions and Biden could not have fucked us harder with his arrogance. Add to that the headwinds of her being a woman of color, not especially charismatic, and to the right of her base on many issues, and the outcome was written in stone from the start.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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            19 days ago

            In 2020, she had all the time in the world, and she mismanaged things badly enough that she ended up dropping out before a single vote was cast. What happened in 2024 was purely advantageous to her, she got to skip the primary altogether and only had to keep it together for 15 weeks. Few people in history have ever received such a privileged ramp towards the presidency.

            The primary process is an additional hoop that a candidate has to jump through, they have to appeal to a different segment of the people than in the general, which may leave them having to pivot or backtrack on their positions. They may have to endure bad blood, or harsher criticism from people who had been invested in another candidate. You could say that the lack of the primary cost the Democrats the election but only in the sense that Kamala probably wouldn’t have won a primary and we’d have gotten someone better.

            15 weeks is also plenty of time to get a message out. Other countries do much shorter campaign lengths. And in the current situation where most people are driven by “negative partisanship,” voting against the people they hate more, being relatively unknown (not that a VP is that unknown) can be advantageous.

            The main thing was policy but she was also just an unpopular politician with bad political instincts (campaigning with the Cheney 's lol), and she basically got to fail upwards and bypass any of the checks that would’ve recognized that unpopularity before it was too late.

          • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            If she had had more time, she would have lost even worse. The peak of her popularity was when people knew nothing about her. She just kept getting more unpopular as the election wore on.

            The only scenario that Kamala could have won is if Biden had somehow dropped out just weeks before the election. Her only shot was to get elected before people really got to know her. She’s a deeply unlikable candidate.

          • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            The only reason Biden picked her for vice president was that she was a woman and black because she honestly ain’t a good politician in general. Her performance in 2020 is telling. I remember the CumTown podcast was constantly making jokes about her back then and they were still relevant in 2024.

            • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              I never understand comments like these. She was elected senator of California. She was an AG. Her list of accomplishments is available on Wikipedia for free. What does a black woman have to do to prove herself in this day?

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                19 days ago

                Why else would he pick the least popular person who ran for the Democrat primary for vice president??? He straight up said that is why he picked the Supreme Court justice he picked and you can assume the same for Vice President. If you are going to pick someone for that position, then pick someone people actually like.

                • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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                  18 days ago

                  This comment just reeks of vibes. She’s extremely accomplished and intelligent. She wasn’t the most hilarious or charming person, but again, that’s not what I look for in a leader.

          • bufalo1973@piefed.social
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            19 days ago

            I always find it funny that the US sees 15 weeks as too short for making a campaign when in Europe we have 2 weeks for the European elections campaign.

  • Son_of_Macha@lemmy.cafe
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    20 days ago

    Flopped? It was incredibly close and if Elon did what he claimed she probably won overall. It’s only MAGAts that think it was a landslide.

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      20 days ago

      When a team loses a basketball game by 1 point, literally every missed shot or turnover (or blown defensive coverage leading to an easy basket for the other side or foul leading to made free throws) could be pointed to as the “cause” of that loss.

      So yeah, if she were an actual better politician she probably would’ve won with the cards she was dealt. But there were also dozens of other causes that would’ve made her (or an alternative candidate) win, all else being equal.

      And it’s hard to see how a better politician would’ve ended up in that position to begin with. The circumstances of how Harris ended up as VP probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the specific way that her 2020 campaign flamed out.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      20 days ago

      Imagine not voting for the black lady because she has to prove herself worthy while a criminal senile pedophile can go on insane demented rants for a year and win by default.

      There’s a lot of cope happening in America, and everyone is pointing fingers, but the fact is 2/3 of the electorate either voted for fascism or didn’t bother to vote against it.

      But go ahead and blame everyone and everything other than the fact that American culture is fundamentally rotten and most people either want fascism or at least don’t care about whether it happens.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        19 days ago

        Harris ran on a campaign of “everything is fine, status quo as usual.”

        If you’re drowning in the ocean and you see two life boats, one is rowing away from you saying “you’re not drowning, everything is fine” and the other has a guy reaching his hand out that you have personally seen sink 5 other live boats he was on, you’re still going to swim towards the guy holding his hand out.

        One person seemed to at least acknowledge that a lot of people were barely surviving, and maybe, maybe try his time, he would actually help which was better odds than the person who made it clear they definately wouldn’t.

      • Jhuskindle@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Ehhhh I think it will come out the election results were mostly faked or influenced in an illegal way. I don’t think people voted this way. But Trump had allies with voting machines.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Well that’s a gross over-simplification. It certainly wasn’t her and the DNC’s long history of clearly ignoring the needs of the people who want to vote for them while regularly reaching for “moderate” votes. It definitely wasn’t her disconnection from Walz while hanging out with Liz Cheney for a significant amount of time.

        People don’t see her as any form of significant opposition to the far-right but they do see opposing the DNC as something worth doing and I’ve come around to supporting them there. It is not their fault that the Republicans won, anyoderately sane and intelligent people would have laughed him into oblivion but the US threw tens of millions of people at Trump.

      • baines@lemmy.cafe
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        19 days ago

        regardless of what it says about America wtf did the democratic establishment run a corpo black woman against a populous racist white guy?

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg, who ran as a left wing centrist. And at the time they were fighting against a bloc of left wingers and a small group of communists. Sound familiar?

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        19 days ago

        Hindenburg, who ran as a left wing centrist.

        There wasn’t anything “left-wing” about Hindenburg. He ran on maintaining the status quo - a status quo that was a rapidly deteriorating depression with very high unemployment. He represented business interests and was never going to do any of the major reforms that would’ve been necessary to save the republic (if anything could).

        The social democrats decided to throw unconditional support to these centrist parties for the sake of stability. They didn’t seem to have any actual understanding of why conditions were deteriorating, why extremism was rising, or what needed to be done in order to address it - all they could ever think to do was support the bourgeoisie in order to buy time - in order to sleepwalk into fascism.

        Naturally, as Hindenburg represented bourgeois interests, he was always going to side with the far-right against the left, if he had to choose. And, since conditions were declining with no plan to actually fix anything, he was always going to end up in the position of having to choose.

        I would say that there are similarities, though, yes.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Harris adviser says VP ran ‘flawless’ campaign

      “I would posit she ran a pretty flawless campaign, and she did all the steps that [were] required to be successful,” she added. “And I think – obviously, we did not win, but I do think we hit all the marks.”

      Nix, Harris’ campaign manager, also attributed Trump’s decision not to participate in any debate following the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10 as detrimental to the Harris campaign’s strategy of presenting the choice between Trump and Harris clearly to voters several times.

      “I think that was hard for us to then get the attention that we would have liked to,” Nix said.

      Well, there you have it. Perfect campaign. No notes. Just wish Trump had been willing to debate, because we all know the problem Harris had was getting her face out there.

      • EmpireInDecay@lemmy.ml
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        20 days ago

        It would be more of exactly the same except liberals would be at brunch, not noticing that it’s their party that is chasing down Haitian immigrants on a horseback or deporting immigrants in record numbers or having two back-to-back years of the largest increase of the unhoused. Every time Republicans shift further to the right Democrats are in lockstep right behind them to fill the void just left by Republicans. Did you think that Biden giving ice one of the largest federal increases of funding they have ever seen with the largest expansion of detention centers was going to go unused?

  • yarr@feddit.nl
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    19 days ago

    Kamala is so out of touch it’s outrageous. If you take things at face value and Kamala says “I wouldn’t do anything different from Biden” and you have Trump saying “Biden destroyed the USA” it seems to reason that voting for Kamala means you want more fails.

    Of course, things are usually more nuanced than this, but do you think the average American voter is extremely savvy? If anything, the future of the country is determined by quips and sound bites.

    Here’s a clue: if you need to hire “influence experts” to figure out how to “outreach” to younger voters, you’re out of touch. For several categories of voter, it seems that they are valued for what they pick in the voting booth instead of any kind of actual consideration.

    Trump’s rhetoric and puffery makes some people believe he has their back. Kamala’s pitch seems to boil down to “I’m not that other guy”, which historically doesn’t get you very far.

    It was frustrating to watch the election more or less be handed to Donald Trump, because the only segment of society the Democrats seemed to appeal to was the large corporations that hand over large amounts of donation money. The plight of the average citizen was nowhere near the top list of concerns.

    • sfgifz@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      you have Trump saying “Biden destroyed the USA” it seems to reason that voting for Kamala means you want more fails.

      Of course, things are usually more nuanced than this, but do you think the average American voter is extremely savvy?

      Sorry, but your opinion is foolish. If your “average unsavvy American voter” was going to vote against Biden just because Trump said he destroyed America, they weren’t going to vote for Kamala no matter what she said.

      • yarr@feddit.nl
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        17 days ago

        What’s your point? People that don’t like Biden don’t like Kamala either? I agree.