Opinion | Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t ignore working class voters
Opinion | Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t ignore working class voters
The Biden administration was staunchly pro-labor, subsidized Obamacare and managed to avoid a recession. But Trump and Republicans sold resentment, and it worked.
Summary
Following the Democrats’ recent election losses, some, including Senator Bernie Sanders, argue that the party failed by “abandoning” the working class.
However, critics counter that Democrats under Biden implemented one of the most pro-working class agendas in decades, passing union-supportive policies, job-creating infrastructure bills, and increasing wages.
Despite these efforts, Democrats saw little electoral benefit, especially among nonwhite working-class voters, as cultural grievances took precedence for many working-class voters.
Analysts suggest that the party’s best path forward may be to focus on college-educated suburban voters rather than attempting to win back working-class Republicans.
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Biden/Harris: [Works to help working class]
Working Class: [Doesn't listen / pay attention]
Working Class: WhY ArE yoU igNOrinG us??
Or they failed at messaging.
If Kamala would have spent half the time she spent talking about Trump, talking about corporate price gouging instead and how she would go after corporations like a bulldog, voters would have had a place to look for blame other than the Democrats.
Instead her vision was narrow and she mostly just compared herself to Trump.
Yes, she had some good policy ideas. Yes she was backing some other good policy ideas. Yes Biden has been great.
Her messaging still sucked.
Likely because she didn't want to piss off corporate donors.
Her messaging still sucked.
It was this. I was really engaged this season. I was fully on board to support her, but towards the end, I had to remind myself why I was excited. I was already going to support her, and I had forgotten what made me excited more than once.
If that happened to me, a fervent supporter of what she represented, everybody else who was more lukewarm forgot completely. She was the candidate of change at the beginning and was Joe Biden 2.0 by the end.
If Dems don't figure out how to capture excitement in their next attempts, if they can't energize the young who are so naive they follow Instagram influencers without a second thought, they're gonna keep losing to these terrible but charismatic Republicans.
She was a prosecutor and was mostly using court room style arguments that appeal to reason.
And that works great in court and for high information voters, but doesn't connect with people's emotions.
Trump connected with people's frustrations and grievances and basically argued that Harris and Biden were to blame. There's no rational argument that can counter an appeal to emotion.
This is pretty much it. The disengaged public needs simple, three-word slogans and they need to stick on message, relentlessly (and it needs to connect emotionally as you said).
And while it goes against every instinct of those who are college educated, you need to say things with over the top confidence. Hedging makes sense in the academic world, but average people trust people with excessive confidence.
They needed a blend of both. Explain in detail your plan, but pair it with simple slogans and sound bites. That way you cover all your bases, the low information voters get motivated by the sound bite and the high information voters by your detailed plans (assuming they're good). You can of course have a terrible plan that loses the high information voters even if your sound bites are keeping people engaged.
Not really. She did talk about policy but media only ever highlighted her few minutes rightfully calling trump a fascist.
Not really her fault that media wants ratings and clicks instead of doing their job as the fourth estate.
I'm not saying she didn't talk about policy I'm saying she didn't connect with voters about policy.
Trump didn't need to connect about policy because he could connect with them emotionally. Kamala just tried to appeal to reason but when people are frustrated with the government that doesn't work so well.
And it doesn't work well on busy low information voters either.
In other words she lacked charisma. I like her policies I don't think she would have been a bad president and I voted for her.
But she talks like a prosecutor. And she uses that type of argument style. And it just doesn't connect as easily as appeals to emotion.
Like every Democrat for the last forever I didn't like her policies in general although there were a couple that weren't terrible. On the other hand I would have gladly taken all her policies over the absolute shit storm that Trump is about to rain on this country. The closest thing to a Democrat I liked was when Bernie ran on the Democrat ticket, but then the DNC did everything in their power to fuck him over. Maybe he would have lost anyway, but he never even really got the chance, so I guess we'll never really know.
I've been thinking since the election, there needs to be a rebranding. Most Republican voters agree with "liberal" policies. Most liberals agree with "progressive" policies. We need to start calling it what it is.
Bernie, AOC, Warren are liberals.
Clinton, Biden, Harris are conservatives.
DeSantis, Trump, Huckabee-Sanders are authoritarian elites.
Liberals are pissed because we keep reaching across the aisle in hopes of centrism from the DNC candidates. And conservatives won't even vote for their values.
Hell, that was a whole media cycle where the media wanted her to call him a fascist and blow up, but she kept saying "let's move forward." The slogan became a thing because the media kept insisting she respond to him and she wouldn't.
Seeing everyone blame her for not doing the things she was doing makes me feel more emboldened that this was inevitable.
If Kamala would have spent half the time she spent talking about Trump, talking about corporate price gouging instead and how she would go after corporations like a bulldog, voters would have had a place to look for blame other than the Democrats.
I agree. It was really frustrating that she wasn't hammering this home. BUT I still don't think that it would have really moved the needle that much. Same with Palestine. Same with Biden dropping out earlier. Same with being a bit fuzzy on details. So on and so forth.
In the end, the American people wanted Trump the person. He has no economic messaging besides a nebulous idea of "fixing" the economy through tariffs, which is laughable. People who use the economic anxiety argument are either trying to deflect blame from themselves for voting for him ("I don't like him as a person, but he has good policies.") or because they want to believe in the fundamental goodness of their fellow Americans so that their choices can be rationally explained. The former is deluding themselves since Trump has no cogent economic policy. As for the latter, I get why they want to believe that, but the truth is a lot uglier. The majority of Americans either affirmatively approve of or tacitly tolerate Trump's authoritarian tendencies and/or are simply too uneducated (or just plainly stupid) or (if I'm being extremely charitable) woefully misinformed or uninformed to understand the gravity of his election.
I'm tempted to blame the Democratic party and nitpick, but at the end of the day, Harris ran a good campaign. It wasn't perfect, but even if it were, we'd still more or less be here. The core problem, I think, lies in our culture and our educational system. Trump was a uniquely awful candidate, and Harris was a competent, "standard" politician. By all measures, she should have won. Even still, the American public repudiated her, which is simply irrational. In the end, it comes down Trump being the symptom not the problem. The problem lies in our culture and society.
tl;dr: Even if Harris did message better, she still would have lost. American culture and society is flawed and ultimately at fault.
Trump appealed to emotion. Harris tried appealed to reason.
Considering most voters don't pay enough attention to politics to have well informed opinions, it's easy to see why her messaging failed.
I think if we would have had a primary, had Biden stepped down a long time ago, we may have gotten a more charismatic nominee.
So I absolutely do blame Biden. And I forgive him too because he has been a good president and we all are vulnerable to pride and hubris.
I still blame the Democrats, they're a shit party that talks a big game then utterly fails to deliver on it again and again, and Kamala was somehow even worse than average. But they're not entirely to blame, there were a lot of factors that went into this loss. A couple of the bigger ones I think were the Republicans mastery of propaganda (helped along by foreign actors), and the generally poor education in the US. Republicans have spent literally half a century now perfecting how to push peoples buttons and Fox "News" and their shows are a master class in lying just well enough to convince the ignorant. Added to that was Twitter with its army of bots both foreign and domestic with Musk providing cover to them.
Perception isn’t reality, but it’s just as important. You have to do great things for the working class, and then tell them, with examples, both how you helped and how the Republicans would have screwed them. Repeatedly. No room for kid gloves.
You also have to connect to people on an emotional level. The argument style that appeals to voters isn't the one that is going to convince a judge that you're right.
She appealed to reason in other words. And she needed to hit people on more levels than that.
More blame shifting, and I will not accept it. We all knew what was at stake, and we let it happen.
Again, we failed.
I could say the same thing about blame shifting.
My opinion is that Biden cost us the election, by running again and not allowing a primary to take place.
But if you want to shift that blame onto yourself and your fellow voters go for it.
Biden/Harris: [drops the bare minimum of crumbs from the table without pursuing any enduring change]
Harris campaign: [runs as far and as fast as possible to the right, abandoning policies to help the working class Harris campaigned on in 2020]
people that have no clue what they're talking about: tHe wORkiNg cLasS wAs DOiNG gREat aCTuaLlY
Or Biden/Harris didn't works to help working class, or at least not hard enough.