- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
To win working-class voters — and possibly today’s election — Democrats need to attack economic elites. But the Kamala Harris campaign hasn’t consistently offered an anti-elite counter to Donald Trump’s right-wing populism.
I don’t think it works. People voted for Trump because he is the economic elite. They believe that just because he’s a businessman, he’s going to make good economy.
Democrat voters and Republican voters are different. As I’d like to hope the DNC learned today, you can’t win democrat votes with Republican policy.
Yeah, but you don’t understand. It’s Kamala’s turn. she deserves it.
-That strategy has never failed the Democrat party before.
All the downvotes forget that she promised to seek the democrat nomination, and then was essentially selected 12 hours later after only discussion with likes of Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries (aka party leaders). Source, but if you call that clearly fascist move what it is you’re the bad guy.
Anyone undecided between Trump or Harris wouldn’t suddenly decide for Harris if she was more anti economic elite. They probably voted for Trump in the end because he’s economic elite.
The only voters they could potentially earn are those who otherwise wouldn’t vote for either because both are too right leaning. I don’t believe there are many votes to gain in this group. If you’re to the left of Harris, then you’re probably going to vote for her over Trump.
This conclusion rests on three assumptions: All left-leaning Americans are rational actors, their main or most important goal is keeping Trump out of office and they’re all invested in that goal enough to turn out no matter the Dem candidate. All these are false. American elections have for decades been a matter of how many Democrats go out to vote, which is a function of how inspiring the Dem candidate is. A good Dem candidate produces good turnout which wins Dems elections, while a bad Dem candidate (like Harris or Hillary) puts off Democrat voters, causing low turnout and a Republican victory. How bad the Republican candidate is, frankly, not as decisive as more politically invested Dems would like it to be without an electable Dem candidate. Ignoring these fundamental truths is what did Harris in.
PS: It’s not a matter of Harris being just too right wing. I mean that’s part of it, but American politics isn’t nearly as simple as rightwing = GOP vote, leftwing = Dem vote. Reality’s deviation from that hypersimplified idea is why things like inspiring candidates and smart campaigning matter.
Given that Democrats pulled less votes than 2020, it’s not the undecided between D&R that decided this election, it’s the ones undecided between D or not voting. As stupid of a choice that is, those are the ones that voted way less in this election, and those voters maybe would have voted more if the platform was more anti-elite. I don’t know how many swingers would pass to R with that move, though.
Really stupid to not vote in protest because D is not left enough since that mathematically is equivalent to voting the winner, in this case R. In any case, going more left might have helped more.
This is 100% what everyone was saying in 2016. And the truth is, the rich got way richer. So naturally they were right.