Harris only received five percent of Republican votes — less than the six percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the seven percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him. While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020.

Meanwhile, Harris lost households earning under $100,000, while Democratic turnout collapsed. Votes are still being counted, but Harris is on pace to underperform Biden’s 2020 totals by millions of votes.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    2024 14 million registered Democrats didn’t vote in this election because Harris just didn’t “do it” for them. But since they HAD registered, they were prepared to vote.

    As an outsider, if the democratic candidate has to do anything to “appeal to you” for your vote, to prevent a fascist party from taking over, then democracy is obviously not for you. That’s just being a fucking dumb moron. “You didn’t ask nicely enough, so let’s hand over the country to the Nazis”

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      This mentality is what the Dems keep applying and it doesn’t work. Trying to shame people into voting isn’t an effective message. You can argue that it should be, but what matters is how things actually are and how a party can act most effectively based on that. It’s either adapt or keep railing against reality and lose.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Alright, well “expecting them to do the bare minimum” isn’t a winning strategy either. Expecting people to do things they’ve demonstrated they won’t do doesn’t make any sense.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            well if you don’t consider upholding the values of the people within the government structure worth voting for, than maybe democracy isn’t the thing for you.

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              That’s completely upside down. Democracy means the people within the government structure are supposed to uphold the values of the broader population. If you think the people in the government structure should be the ones to set the values, then maybe democracy isn’t for you.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 month ago

                i mean sure, if you thought i was defining democracy, that’s one of the ways you can define it.

                I was just making the argument that you shouldn’t give a fuck at all if you don’t even care to uphold the values of such democracy, yourself.

                Also if we’re being semantically pedantic here, a democracy is technically just a form of collective enrollment in governance. The people collectively as a unit decide who best represents their values, and then they elect that person to a position they see fit for those values.

                fun fact, we call people who are represented by politicians, constituents.

    • sudo@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      If you’re a politician who doesn’t appeal to your base then democracy is not for you. That’s just how democracy works.

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Ah yes, you must vote for the one party every time in order to save democracy. Democracy is the thing where you only vote for them Dems right?

      • Kitty Jynx@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Trump said he’d be dictator on day one and Harris didn’t. It’s like choosing a surgeon who said they would only rape your unconscious body for only the first ten minutes of the surgery over one who would just perform the operation as usual. The first surgeon my have just claimed to be joking but the statement in itself is disqualifying. In this case voting Dem was literally a vote for democracy while previous elections were cruelty vs the status quo and voting was harm reduction.

        • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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          2 months ago

          Oh I agree. But you can not call the mess of a two party system in the states a democracy anymore.

    • peppers_ghost@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Saying the other guy’s bad and expecting that to be enough to get votes has failed a couple of times now. Those 14 million voters sent a message but I expect it to land on deaf ears.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Facists are not just “bad”, they are actual mass-murderers. Handing your country over to fascists is how you become complicit to mass murder.

        • spacesatan@leminal.space
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          2 months ago

          The median american voter can only recognize fascism if it’s literally gangs of swastika wearing thugs going door to door rounding people up. 20%+ would actively be in favor of that if it’s queers and democrats being rounded up.

      • spacesatan@leminal.space
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        2 months ago

        It worked for UK Labour at least. But crucially they were out of power and up against a party that was one of the biggest ongoing shitshows in democracy worldwide.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyzOP
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      2 months ago

      Democracy is “not for” a lot of people. They’re lazy. They don’t think it impacts their lives. They don’t want to put in the mental effort to follow politics and make a good decision, so they just leave it to other people. You certainly know someone in your extended social circle who is just “not political”.

      But that doesn’t change anything. The conservatives find a way to motivate their morons, they don’t complain about non-voters and then just wish it were better. Some of your “not political” friends probably went out to vote for Obama.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Some of your “not political” friends probably went out to vote for Obama.

        Certainly not, because luckily I don’t live in soon-to-be Nazi-America. But like so many other Europeans, we will all have to suffer from the fallout :( Possibly with Russians marching through Ukraine right to our doorstep because our European Union can’t get their shit together either.