this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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My favorite lemmy bubble is the smug woke ( idiot leftists, who think they are smart but aren't) who think Kamala lost because she didn't take a stance on Gaza and people abstained in protest and not because of sexism and racism.
I mean, there's no singular reason for Kamala's loss - but abstentions over the middle east were still a reasonably noteworthy problem for the campaign.
With that being said.... more broadly, people are just generally awful and a lot of people bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledging how backwards the majority really are.
Maybe I am too european but I have seen two people lose to Trump and one overwhelming win against him and only one of those had a penis.
This happens a lot when on all major platforms, there's nothing (not discussion, not ballot initiatives, not informational pieces about causes) that allow you to take direct action. When things broke out in Ukraine and Russia invaded there were people who jumped on planes to go fight. People were posting donation pages everywhere. People were actively rallying against actions they felt were wrong with avenues to help that were meaningful and available to the average human being.
We just don't have that in any political election and since it's a lot of the smaller elections that matter, it's important to note this deficiency. People who feel a call to action, but not a way to enact change get overwhelmed and despair. Lemmy is one of the only places I see giving information about candidates in local and rural elections (and even that isn't wide spread and mostly happens on community pages like the one for people from Maine or Chicago, or wherever).
I think you're also missing a huge part of it. People don't care about Gaza nearly as much as people here think, nor do people care about her race or gender much.
You can see a massive shift in betting odds and polls around the time she had an interview where she said she wouldn't have done anything different than Biden. My general perception is that she didn't really have a plan, and I think that's true for the public. I also think the public didn't like the comparison of Trump with Hitler. Trump, on the other hand, claimed to have a plan for fixing the economy, and I think that resonated with people, especially since the economy was good under Trump. They see the inflation during COVID as Biden's problem (I personally blame supply chain disruption mostly, and also Trump's spending), and Harris refused to throw Biden under the bus.
I personally blame Harris's loss on three things:
I don't think her being female hurt her, and it probably helped her appeal to female voters vs Trump, and Obama winning implies race doesn't matter much either. To me, it comes down to policy and lack of a primary. People wanted change, while she offered more of the same. If you don't believe me, watch some interviews with people in swing states and listen to what they're most interested in.
That is why she lost to though. 15 million blank ballots don't lie.
15 million blank ballots is why she lost, but it doesn't say why those 15 million didn't show. If you think 15 million people, or even a majority of them, who are largely, older, white, men, did it to protest gaza, I got news for you. It isn't just the governments, and corporations, that don't assign value to palestinian life.
No they were not largely older white men. And the Gaza issue has a ton of support on the left which would be more readily apparent if it wasn't so viciously censored by the media and Harris' own administration.
Everything I see about the statistics of those who previously voted biden, then sat out harris, show the largest single demographic, by far, was older white men. You have anything to counter this? The gaza sentiment, while truly more popular than the powers that be wanted to propose, is a lot smaller, when leveled against the entirety of the non GOP voting population, than progressive venues, especially online ones, want to pretend.
As an example, not a single person in my mom's big social circle, most of which are not GOP supports, has said one damned thing about the genocide in gaza, and they talk about political issues fairly frequently, even if it is just snipes at someone. Their age/race/economic demographics make the largest portion of those who voted. In the spaces my family live in, down south, people in the their 20s are talking about politics, but gaza isn't much of a topic, and often when it is, they openly say things to show they need to worry about home, not gaza. The ones who differ are your classic WEIRDs. This same thing holds in a lot of the region I live in, the midatlantic/midwest appalachia region. These people lost her, or at least played a major part in losing her, the election in GA, and PA. They voted mostly based on how bad economic life is for them. They voted stupidly, and are now pissed that they made it worse, but it wasn't gaza that they gave two fucks about. The one place gaza, likely, truly damaged the harris campaign was MI, because it is second only to India, in muslim population, outside of muslim majority countries.
I think you are the victim of cultural bubble on this one.
There nothing to counter. You just pulled this stat out of your ass and demand I debunk it. No one knows the demographic of the blank ballot voters but to not vote for Harris while still voting down ballot for other Dems suggested it was motivated by a very strong conviction.
And no misogyny and racism don't explain it considering how many female candidates den voters elect, how even Hilary performed better, and how Obama was elected.
I really don't care if you believe me. You liberals are controlled opposition and will continue to field right wing neoliberals and never see the white house again.
I didn't say it was misogyny or racism either. You made a claim with out evidence, and I told you what I have read, then asked for your counter, since you seem to have one, but now you say you don't, so you pulled it out of your ass, just like you claim I did. Pointing out white, older, men, were the big portion of those who sat out, was to point to interests outside of gaza, namely economic ones.
I am not a liberal, I am just able to recognize that most people in the US do not actually, truly, care about gaza. I can care all I want about stopping genocide, and it wont make a damned bit of difference to the greater population around me who, vocally, didn't vote for her, mostly due to economic reasons. Also, you are just projecting that it was YOUR strong conviction that made them not vote for her. Maybe, just maybe, you are out of touch with the fact that most of the US is not particularly progressive, or leftist. Doesn't matter that I want a leftist system. The dominant conviction was that she dropped the ball in reaching out to people about how she intended to make their personal struggles, better.
I also don't believe that you don't give a fuck what I believe, I see you everywhere, arguing with everyone, about this, and adjacent issues. Then, when you can't make a convincing argument, you call them liberals, claim you don't care, and run off to the next argument, about this.