MicroWaveNov 9, 2024

I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost | Oliver Hall

https://lemmy.world/post/21818288

I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost | Oliver Hall - Lemmy.World

Summary Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, with many voters—often women—expressing doubts about whether “America is ready for a female president.” Some said they “couldn’t see her in the chair,” or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, “you don’t see women building skyscrapers.” Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line. Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats. Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Biden’s administration. Ultimately, Hall believes that Trump’s unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harris’s campaign efforts.

Show threadZakNov 9, 2024

Persuadable voters seemed really focused on prices. It’s hard not to be condescending here. Eggs are expensive because of bird flu. Rent is high because not enough housing is being built, mostly limited by local issues. Gas is high because of Putin’s war. Anyone who thinks electing Trump will bring those prices down because they were lower last time he was president is fucking clueless.

I’m interested to see how much of a factor unenthusiastic Democrats were. Trump got about the same number of votes he did in 2020, but Harris got far fewer than Biden. It looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.

Show threadspacecadetNov 9, 2024

I’m fortunate to be well off, but I used to be below the poverty line in my city and qualified for social assistance (which I didn’t know about until a coworker told me). Having been in most of these voters shoes a little over a decade ago, I can tell you that don’t care about trumps rhetoric, he can stand there for an hour blathering non sense, but at the end of it he will say “I love you, I know you are hurting and I’m going to fix that”.

Then a long come the democrats telling these people who are living paycheck to paycheck or still in their parents house that they are privileged racist ass holes who could never understand what is like to struggle as a rich minority woman from California. Then the most unrelatable person in the world gets chosen to replace Joe Biden and rich democrats and dumb ass celebrities like Cardi “I brag about how I used to drug, rape, and Rob men” B start telling working class men that they are stupid and racist if they don’t vote for Kamala.

A lot of people couldn’t vote for a wannabe dictator, but they also couldn’t vote for someone who despises their very being.

Show threadgAlienLifeformNov 9, 2024
That is a completely accurate depiction of what every member and supporter of the Democratic party has said, which has certainly been much more hurtful than Republicans’ repeated threats to rape and kill us /s
Show threadspacecadetNov 9, 2024
I haven’t heard of any republican threat to raise and kill everyone, but a lot are unhinged and I’m sure it happens. But it’s not a central platform of the Republicans, while being condescending of working class men is a central campaign point of the democrats, in fact it was so bad that black and Hispanic men showed up in record numbers to vote for Trump
Show threadgAlienLifeform

I mean, no offense but the fact that you haven’t heard this just might mean you’re deep inside an echo chamber. It’s hard to have an exact measure of these thing, but Republican threats and celebrations of violence and sexual assault are at least as central to their party’s platform as being opposed to bigotry is to the Democrats party’s from where I’m sitting.

And I’m not sure why you think being opposed to bigotry is an attack on working class men. Like, if we want to talk about the working class and poor people, let’s talk about the fact that transgender people are more likely than the average American to be living in poverty because of the discrimination they fave.

I will say that’s an easy to miss fact because society in general doesn’t like to platform working class people because they’re not as eloquent or pretty and the Dems tend to behave the same way, so we hear more about wealthy celebrity members of queer communities and other marginalized groups. At the end of the day, tho, if you do really care about the working class you need to care about transphobic discrimination (among all the other kinds of discrimination) too, because it is absolutely a tool the capitalist class wields to keep us divided and oppressed.

Nov 9, 2024 at 2:40pmWeb