You can't judge primary races like that. The final spread is irrelevant because of how the votes are spread out. The media calls it long before half the country has even voted, then the remaining votes always avalanche to the presumed winner.
Not sure why this applies to what I said, but my few Republican friends and family are uncomfortably aware of what I think about their politics.
You tried to chastise voters to see things your way, and now you're surprised that it didn't work. Sure, you were absolutely right, but the way you and others made your case made your efforts less than useless. The way you feel about those voters is exactly how I feel about you right now, because I was ignored by you and your fellow ranters for months while you berated voters into hardening their stance against you and Harris.
Biden undermined democracy by preventing a proper primary from taking place. The voters never got to nominate a candidate, and the establishment thrust a candidate on them that had already been rejected in a previous primary. That's the establishment's fault, and Biden if the face of the Democratic establishment.
Dems are clearly better on economic issues as well. Not nearly good enough, but better. The problem is that they will only go so far, and they won't talk about it, out of fear of angering their wealthy patrons.
Your right. The anti-establishment mood in this country and abroad has been building for decades. Americans have never voted based on foreign policy unless that foreign policy is directly impacting them.
Your tantrum might be more convincing had I actually called you or anyone else a name. As for tone, read your own comments.
Way to miss the point. Against Trump, it shouldn't matter who the other candidate is.
That's a useless point to make. Of course is shouldn't matter. The important point is, it did matter. The disconnect between these two points ought to make you question your assumptions about how to win elections. Clinging desperately to a model that has failed over and over and over again is insanity.
"This candidate isn't left enough for me. By not voting I essentially vote for fascism"
This is rhetorically a dumb way to argue. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but it's just to easy to point out that not voting for fascism would also have to be considered a vote against fascism. It's just a dumb way to argue and just further antagonizes the person you are supposedly trying to convince. You don't get votes by attacking voters.
Would a more left leaning candidate have more chances? Maybe?
A more populist candidate would have more chances. That does generally mean further left or right, but doesn't necessarily have to be either. I want a leftist candidate but, honestly, an anti-corruption centrist might have as much of a chance. Big money billionaires buying politicians is extremely unpopular across the spectrum. Good luck getting a Democratic centrist to run on that though.
They are, but not nearly enough. The entire primary system is setup to be easily manipulated by the party leadership and their puppets on cable news.
I didn't have time to write a book. The examples I gave were more than sufficient to get the point across. A couple of minor exceptions don't disprove the rule. COVID and abortion dominated in 2022, and Trump looked more like the status quo than a disruptor in 2018.
The half that were victories are when the Republicans took the more centrist approach and Democrats ran as disruptors. Remember Obama's "Change!" slogan? Too bad he didn't mean it.
I note that you only used one election from over a quarter of a century ago to support your argument.
Kamala had a billion dollars. Progressives have a deep ecosystem of independent media that establishment Democrats undermine at every opportunity. Democrats were hand in hand with Republicans in pushing social media "reforms" that today promote media like FOX News as trustworthy over progressive media sources. The Democrats create their own weakness.
That's an impressive writeup. Here is the problem. This is 2024, not 1992. Clinton's strategy has not aged well.
2008 - Hillary and McCain both ran a centrist strategy and lost to Obama who ran as a disruptor. Obama gets a mandate.
2010 - Democrats lose Congress and the mandate on a centrist strategy.
2012 - Obama almost loses to Mit Romney with both running centrist strategies.
2016 - Hillary loses on a centrist strategy against Trump who is clearly not a centrist.
2020 - Biden barely moves towards a disruptor position and barely beats Trump who should have been easily beatable.
2024 - Need I say it?
Here is what you are missing. The point of finding fault is to do better next time. Anything else is just bitching. Yes, the voters got it wrong. Next cycle we will have the same voters and a different candidate. Pretending Harris was a good candidate just invites the same outcome.
Maybe you think the voters are just unreachable. I think that's nonsense.
No it doesn't. A candidate needs a lot of qualities to be "good". One of those qualities is the ability to be popular on election day. An unpopular candidate isn't a good candidate. A popular candidate might be.
Trump offered less than nothing in the way of economic relief and he will accelerate the genocide. The voters didn't vote in a way that makes sense, and that is Harris's fault.
Unpopular opinion: Kamala was a solid candidate.
If that is an unpopular opinion then the statement is definitionally false.
So the action plan is what? Cull the voters? Breed better voters?
The first job of a politician is to reach and convince voters. Harris had a billion dollars and didn't do it. Yes, the voters made bad choices, but blaming the voters is not a way forward. There is no escaping that we have to figure out what Harris could have done better. More precisely, shitlibs need to figure it out because progressives already know and have been screaming it from the rooftops for decades.
People generally don't realize that the only way to get an option to the left of the democrats is if Republicans no longer win elections.
Absofuckinglutely wrong. The number of Democrats still buying this bullshit is astounding. THIS is why you lose so damn much.
No Democratic candidate has had more support from right leaning voters than Bernie Sanders in the last 30 years. Explain that with your model. It's not just about some smooth gradient from left to right and capturing the middle. We are in a populist age. The people are totally fed up with the status quo.
It's disruptors that win, not whomever captures the center of a spectrum that only policy wonks even care about. Anyone who's chief concern is left vs right is already a decided voter.
Some people want to cast blame. Some want to identify the problem so it can be addressed. Blaming voters is just establishment bitching to distract attention from reforms they want to avoid.