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.

Is this low unemployment and wage growth in the room with us?

Unemployment is “low” because shitty gig economy jobs are counted as employment. And wages might be growing, but are lagging far behind inflation.

The majority of Americans aren’t sexist and racist, they are living paycheck to paycheck and some unlikable rich black woman from San Francisco isn’t going to be able to relate to a poor white man from Nebraska or even a Hispanic dude from El Paso. And you would think “neither should a rich ass hole from NYC”, but he at least pretends to care about them. Democrats have been demonizing the working class for over a decade and they are starting to reap what they sow.

I voted for Kamala, but she was a terrible candidate. She made no attempt to empathize with the plight of the majority of the working class voting base and instead was more worried about capturing the vote of rich trust fund babies that are being misgendered.

Unemployment is “low” because shitty gig economy jobs are counted as employment. And wages might be growing, but are lagging far behind inflation.

As soon as Trump takes office, the nuance you’re evaluating these numbers with will be lost. I’ve lived this thing before, Trump may use economic conditions to his benefit rhetorically and may even disagree with the numbers while he’s out of power, but the instant he’s in the same numbers will automatically signal to him and his cult of supporters that everything is great and people should stop complaining.

Correct, there is zero chance of ever getting through to these 75 million people… But there was a very good chance of getting through to the 10 million who stayed home but had voted last time, and at least some chance of getting through to the 50% who regularly don’t vote… But the Dems never go after those people, they continue to insist on wasting everyone’s time by only going after the imbeciles with actual policy changes (they go after the 10 million with bullying and fear mongering, which clearly doesn’t work)

Maybe and maybe not. Maybe I actually don’t give a fuck because all of this “but they didn’t actually improve main street” online shit also disappears during Republican administrations. I’ve been through multiple cycles of this shit and the people whining about the dnc online are just another level in Dante’s Inferno.

We get it, you guys love Bernie and think Bernie would’ve won everything. Carry that energy forward for another decade if you don’t wind up in a Trump camp first.

I think for a lot of people the choice ended up being between a quick leap into fascism or the ongoing painfully slow fascism temperature being risen one degree to keep the other guy from blowing it to 100, and I think more people than I’d have hoped decided to let the bandaid be ripped off

Less people than you think thought that was the choice. Americans are big time ignorant of politics and even on this site we had people asking if this was a normal election.

According to those who voted, this election was about the economy. 🙄

Most people probably couldn’t tell you the first thing about fascism or even capitalism.

I wouldn’t say 5 million people thinking this way would be out of the question though… Would you? And are they polling the people who voted for Biden but didn’t show up this time? Because that data would be wildly valuable
It really wouldn’t shock me if a lot of the loss could be attributed to the fact that they couldn’t mail it in from the couch as easily this go around. I also think that people in this country are not as progressive socially as some of the most ardent people online like to pretend. Some simply didn’t want to vote for a woman…which is part of what the article says.

I got 2 ballots mailed to me, and just had to fill one out and send it in. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been that easy for everyone. Anywhere that it was harder than that, I’d guess Republicans were behind it, but if it was Dems they should be kicked out of the party, if the party wanted to start leading the widely varied left.

No one on the actual left wouldn’t vote for a woman because she’s a woman… These are mutually exclusive things