Centrist Democrats should stop blaming progressives for Harris’s loss: Whether to use he/she pronouns in emails wasn’t a factor in the Harris-Trump race.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/05/centrist-progressive-democrats-election-recriminations-blame/
33 comments
I’m over here like “we can insist on a culture of inclusion *and* have a New Deal style economic message.”
I blame people who voted for Trump or didn’t vote.
If that shoe fits I don’t care wha else you call yourself.
I’m a left leaning independent, and absolutely nothing in Harris’s platform/campaign jumped out at me as being too radical or over-inclusive.
The fault is squarely on voters choosing against the best interest of americans
Hot take: Literally any post election analysis that goes beyond “Lots of people blamed Biden/Harris for high grocery prices” is a self indulgent, navel gazing waste of energy.
> Democrats are nowhere close to having tried everything else, though. Before throwing social justice causes and activists under the bus, could they consider not running an 81-year-old candidate for president? Or his vice president, who insists on never criticizing him? How about a party chair whose experience is in running successful campaigns, not lobbying for corporations? Or not relying on strategists whose heydays were 16 years ago? How about language that normal people use, instead of stilted phrases such as “opportunity economy”?
Exactly. Lots of Democrats need to acknowledge how flawed the current approach has been before blaming everything else.
Well, once we stop treating politics like team sports, we may start making progress…
Any candidate, especially Presidential candidates in America’s two party system represent and are associated with the views and perception of the party as a whole. People don’t vote based on a transcript of what that candidate has said.
It’s disingenuous to dismiss this so casually, particularly when the evidence suggests the opposite. Exit polls of swing voters and people who changed their vote from 2020 to 2024 showed that they identified transgender issues as the most important factor in voting for Trump.
The Trump campaign spent 20% of its ad spending on the “Kamala is for they/them” ad. Even Democratic research showed that the ad was unbelievably effective, perhaps the most effective political ad in American history.
Even Bernie Sanders’ primary takeaway on Harris’ loss was that Democrats were sunk by focusing too much on identity politics.
This is a losing issue for the left and Republicans are going to keep hammering it because it’s extremely to defend. It’s extremely cynical but it is undeniably effective politically.
One of Trump’s most effective ads was “She’s for they/them, I’m for YOU.”
It doesn’t matter what is right or wrong. It doesn’t matter that Harris didn’t campaign on it. It only matters that the DNC got tarred with it and the middle American swing voter doesn’t like pronouns.
The topic of Trump’s most common, ubiquitous campaign ad wasn’t a factor in the race?
Democrats should look to the rest of the world over where incumbent administrations are getting the boot and realize the fault lies mostly with COVID and inflation, no matter who would have been in office likely would have lost. People vote for their own self interests first, and too much of the middle class is living paycheck to paycheck and having to put groceries on credit card is the reason dems lost. The rest of it is just noise.
Trump ran ads with the tagline “Harris is for Them/They, Trump is for you.” It totally had an effect on the overall narrative and people’s perception of harris.
I used to think Maslow’s was something that was obvious but clearly it’s not.
The majority of people want first their economic issues solved.
Once people *perceive* that their vibes in terms of money and buying stuff is good then you can concentrate on the social stuff.
If Dems made UBI, groceries and such the central part of their pitch they could won better. We would have the house and maybe the presidency at least.
We can call Republicans idiots all day, but they’ve realized the simple truth that what matters is winning elections and getting butts in seats. Once that happens go ham. We need to win and Democrats are too afraid of punching and getting mud on their face
A bag of Doritos is $7. That’s why she lost. We need to change a lot about how we do things as democrats but we don’t need to burn it all down nor do we need to throw trans people or any other marginalized groups under the bus to try to win back power.
Trump is going to hurt a lot of people over the next four years. We need to be there to help those people, and make sure voters know who are the ones inflicting that pain when the midterms start.
It certainly is a factor. Perhaps not the biggest one, but telling people to change their behavior essentially overnight and yelling at them if they don’t creates enemies.
Now Harris didn’t run a woke campaign though. So why was it a factor? Because the GOP didn’t run against Harris – they ran against the wokemonster. They would bring up the craziest comically leftist “your kids will go to school a boy and come home a girl” things and casted that on Harris, and ran against that.
The problem is Harris and dems in general need to come out against some of these really crazy things the gop throws on them. It’s not that hard, but they don’t (probably afraid of offending the very few ultra-left Dems).
The dems need to make clear that they are not the monster the GOP casts them out to be. Because the GOPs messaging is winning.
I know this is a cop-out but it’s true.
History is not kind to the party in power when there’s economic pain. Biden’s admin managed to cool inflation but wages didn’t keep up.
Harris had to walk a tight rope between appealing to those who voted for Biden and those who didn’t.
I do think progressives turned out, but it was the older ones.
The young didn’t ( that’s actually pretty normal by history’s standards ).
We also had crossover votes from people who voted Biden but instead were throwing a Hail Mary that Trump will recreate the 2016-2019 economy. A fantasy. It may seem stupid, but it’s a sign of desperation.
Democrats did not motivate their base. 20 million people that voted for Biden did not vote for Harris.
The problem as I see it is we live in a world where a health insurance CEO getting murdered is cheered for online, showing just how fed up people are and angry at the current system. Dems didn’t tap into that at all and basically campaigned on tinkering around the edges of slapping band aids on our current system while trump is promising to burn it down. People are angry and unhappy while democrats are representing themselves as the protectors of the status quo.
I saw only signs of regressives – not progressives anywhere
Enough of the blame game. It’s time to give this corps an autopsy and find out what lessons can be learned for future elections. Here is my takeaway. You cannot take any voting demographic for granted. Make them all feel valued. Men might not have swayed so far for Trump if there was literally ANY outreach from the Democrats. A lot is being said about young men but the truth is the Democrats lost ground with pretty much all men. I’m a life long Democrat, have never voted GOP once and at this rate never will. I can still see how the Democrats dropped the ball here.
The left just actually needs to go left in their policies, it’s shown that most Americans want Social Security and Medicare, they should have pushed those offering even more benefits. Now, it’ll all be stripped away.
She ran almost the most centrist campaign possible, and people will still blame anything in it that was leftist.
I don’t think these critics are actually liberal.
Pronouns and messaging have very little to do with why she lost. It seems obvious the reason she lost was because roughly 6 million people who showed up voted for Biden, chose not to show up and vote for her, they didn’t migrate to Trump, though he did gain a few million votes over what he got in 2020, that doesn’t account for the number of folks who simply stayed home, or who voted in their state and local elections and simply refused to vote for her, all one needs to do is look at states that had statewide Senatorial elections, that picked a Democrat but didn’t pick Harris for President to see the trend, Michigan and Arizona are perfect examples of that, and there’s a slight difference in total numbers for Senate versus total numbers for President, some simply didn’t vote in the Presidential race, but did vote in the senate race, and it seems the most obvious reason is because she was forced on them and the voters refused to support her.
Biden insisted he was running and only after most of the primaries were over did he decide to pull out, and the party had no choice but to put her in as the nominee. And folks felt they didn’t get a choice on who they wanted, just like in 2016 when basically nobody ran against Clinton, she was anointed by the party because for whatever reason the party felt she got snubbed by Obama winning the nomination in 2008, so 2016 was her turn and they discouraged others from running, of course a few folks jumped in, Martin O’Malley was in a few states and withdrew early, and Sanders threw his name in but it is well known he was discouraged by the party, and didn’t receive the party’s support, because he was an independent, and then they were openly discouraging him, anyway, she won without much competition, and the voters rejected that.
Many were trying to encourage Biden to replace her as his running mate, because she was not a popular choice as VP in the first place, and it was hoped he’d pick someone else, but he wouldn’t, and then when it was painfully obvious he couldn’t handle to rigor of another campaign season he waited too long to pull out, and then there was no time, and the voters were stuck with Harris, and had no time to build her up, so people simply refused to support her, it’s that cut and dry. It’s not about pronouns or progressive messaging or wokeism or any of that. 3 things, she’s a woman, she’s black/ bi-racial if you prefer, and she was not well liked in the first place so apathy kicked in, too much to overcome. Simple. Hopefully the party gets the message and let the voters decide who they want, and it will show in the voting booth, next time.
I blame the media. Harris had a well defined socio-economic platform, while her opponent had ‘a concept of a plan’. But that isn’t sexy so instead the media runs with “Did you hear what outragous thing Trump said today?” and it consumes all the oxygen in the room. Very very very few Americans have the attention span to listen to a campaign speech, so all they get is the insubstantial buzz and their own echo chamber.
And Democrats ads were terrible. They should have gone for the jugular.
They don’t give a fuck. Establishment losers like Tom Suozzi will continue to blame trans people for their loss and say that his party needs to tack further more to the right and pander to Cheney Republicans. It’s time, and always has been time, to throw them out with the bath water and get real politicians who actually represent the working class and local communities into power already and get shit done.
Stop blaming democrats for how awful republicans are, period.
Harris lost because the Democratic Party ran a lukewarm campaign and totally fucked up the Biden transition. Yet all everyone wants to do is point fingers at everyone else.
Maybe if WaPo hadn’t sanewashed tfg’s looney speeches. We know Fox and Newsmax are spouting pure propoganda, but if the so-called progressive news sites weren’t trying to paint “ooga booga price of eggs” as a real economic agenda, we might not be here. WaPo was just as complicit by not calling out how disconnected tfg’s speeches were.
anyone who thinks centrism is the answer should look at how almost universally popular the cold-blooded murder of the UHC CEO has been. find me a free market solution that polls better than anonymous vigilantes killing the people who profit from our misery and i’ll be willing to listen to another neoliberal half ass proposal
We need economic progressive policy and fighters who believe in that cause desperately. Culture war BS is just a distraction for either side meant to divide us.
I love how she literally spent days with Liz, brought on Mark Cuban who was bragging about canning Lina Khan and ignored any of the “woke” talking points and then after the loss the party establishment and media class blames the left. These people need to get a grip on reality. People are sick of the status quo and catering to billionaires. If Dems dont realize this we are doomed to lose over and over again.
She lost because USA is a misogynist and racist country! Period!
My dad said he’d voted for Trump because he didn’t want to vote for someone who was “more concerned with they/them than [with] the average voter.” Trump was the only person who raised transgender issues on the campaign trail, so my dad apparently failed in his objective.
Comments are closed.