Unlike 2016, when his victory over Hillary Clinton came as a shock to many Americans, Trump was no surprise in 2024. The Democratic Party had the benefit of four years to ensure that this would not happen again. Yet as in 2016, Democrats appear to have failed to win over the electorate in a race against a uniquely unpopular candidate — this time one with multiple impeachments, indictments, and criminal convictions.
The short-lived Biden campaign and subsequent Harris campaign opted to try to beat Republicans at their own game, by tacking rightward on issues such as immigration, criminal justice, and climate. After President Joe Biden dropped out, the Democratic Party rejected calls to stop providing arms to Israel’s war on Gaza. Instead, Harris touted the endorsements of conservatives such as Liz Cheney. The strategy was a ploy to woo moderates and conservatives wary of a second Trump term, but it may have alienated key voting blocs.
I don’t buy this. In Nebraska there was an election between an independent union leader and a career politician. The union leader lost.
The consensus seems to be that people that voted democrat in 2020 voted republican this time because they experienced inflation under Biden that think it was his fault.
All the polls suggest it was driven by the economy. Inflation is quite moderate right now, but the prices stay high, so that’s got to be on everyone’s mind.
People around here think it’s all manner of things except what voters are actually saying.
Donald Trump winning is not an indictment of the Democratic Party, or Harris for that matter. It’s an indictment of the American people.
It’s all three.
The way modern democracies die is they democratically elect authoritarian leaders who erode and dismantle that democracy. Parties don’t matter. It’s the people who do it to themselves. Sad but true.
I mean yeah but that didn’t need to be now. Harris basically threw the race and that’s part of why this disaster came to be. Even assuming American democracy was nearing the end of its lifetime, it should’ve had a few more decades in it. The popular will to defeat Trump was there.
Harris didn’t do anything any good pol wouldn’t do. The popular will was not there, as the results displayed.
Harris tried to run on protecting abortion rights, and saving democracy from Trump and Project 2025. Under other circumstances, that probably would have worked.
Unfortunately, she was the nominee for the incumbent party at a time when the vast majority of voters were unhappy with the economy. That’s a hard position to be in, and requires a compelling answer. She had a few token items for the agenda, but nothing that would address the larger issue of people feeling squeezed by inflation. Saying things are better now or going to be better soon doesn’t appease the voters who don’t feel better.
The horrible truth is, a large portion of the electorate would vote for the literal devil if he was running against an incumbent during a bad economy.
I’ve seen this put a different way. That she didn’t separate herself adequately fromas Biden, in this case the economy. But, that’s the problem for a politician as the minute any c she separates on one issue, others will be asked about. Then the story is about perceived failures, rightly or wrongly. Most young voters have never been through an inflation cycle. They don’t realize that that they are pretty natural, and also this one was controlled well. You just ride them out. But, I doubt you could point to this issue as a sole cause.
Harris didn’t do anything any good pol wouldn’t do
Huh? Look at her campaign’s treatment of the Uncommitted movement, among others, and say that again. Harris was openly antagonizing her voters, relying completely on not being Trump ala Hillary Clinton and courting right wing voters at the cost of her base. And if you don’t believe it, well, take it up with Bernie.
Fringe groups always think they have more political power than they do, and always feel picked on.
Liberals will do any amount of mental gymnastics to point the finger at anyone but themselves.
Harris lost Michigan by less people than voted Uncommitted during the primaries. They might be a “fringe group,” but Harris sure could’ve used some of their votes, don’t you think?
Honestly, I think they blew it back over the 4 years they barely did anything to lock him up. It took them the better part of 3 years to just get the freaking classified documents back. And they still don’t have them all back.
They sat around all that time because they were afraid of being political. Well guess what. Now that fascist fuck is the next POTUS and it’s bloody political.
They tried to impeach him and more. They were blocked by Congress. It was pretty clear that they didn’t have enough votes to do anything.
What does congress have to do with a fucking criminal trial on violating the National Espionage Act?
What do democrats have to do with it? I was under the impression that you were talking about Congress not taking action to hold Trump accountable.
Yes, because the DoJ are “congress”.
Biden is the head of the executive branch, and Marrick Garland’s boss.
It took Garland two and a half years just to appoint Smith as special counsel. They sat around with their thumbs up their asses hoping trump would fade to obscurity because they were afraid of being “political”
What would have changed by doing it sooner?
And how is Merrick Garland working for democrats? I thought the FBI was non partisan?
I mean, Merrick Garland is literally working for Democrats. But they tried to give it the appearance that wasn’t working for Democrats. That’s what the other poster is complaining about. Trump cases needed to be expedited, knowing that he would piss and moan and delay as much as possible. Now it’s too late because he’s going to be president in a couple months, and he can just pardon himself.
If it were that simple why didn’t they just do it? Do you think they were conspiring to help Trump? Or do you think they were lazy?
Or is it the same situation it has been every single time Trump commits a crime and gets away with it, where he has weaponized his base to avoid consequences?
The latter is the obvious answer imo and even the FBI can’t stop the man with the Supreme Court on his side. Scapegoating the FBI seems odd here.
Did you really just ask what getting highly classified nuclear secrets back from a broke-ass billionaire with ties to both the saudis and Putin sooner would change?
Also I already answered your second question.
Biden was his fucking boss, and not doing his job is inherently partisan when it protect a politician. Make sense?
If it were that simple why didn’t they do it? Do you think they were conspiring to help Trump? Do you really think they just said “I don’t want to do that today, let’s put it off for another time”?
I think if it were that simple they would’ve done it. But Trump has been able to avoid consequences for everything he has done so obviously it is not that simple to prosecute him.
I dont know why it is so hard for you to see that.
In 2016 when Trump supporters were declaring the economy fixed on DAY ONE. Or when Trump supporters were blaming inflation on the inflation reduction act, which was named after the ALREADY soaring inflation.
They’ve been gaslighting Americans for the last 8 years. We overestimated Americans, just like Hillary did in 2016, and assumed they would see the obvious faults in logic.
Bingo. Garland has the same amount of blame as Biden and Harris. Biden should’ve thrown him out and replaced him with anyone willing to actually enforce the law regardless of “conflict”. Trump doesn’t wanna return documents after being asked nicely? An FBI raid or two should fix that. Judge Cannon doesn’t wanna prosecute and keeps stalling the case? Move the case to another judge, keep moving it until you find one who isn’t going to play games.
The DNC’s perennial problem is that they’re so afraid of fighting dirty against a party that, since Nixon, has had little problem doing exactly that. I wanted a Democratic Party that was willing to go to the mat and meet the GOP where it was, rather than trying to take the high road, and for a few weeks it seems like we HAD THAT.
The sad part is…. That’s not even fighting dirty.
Garland fucked around, and now we’re all finding out.
Locking up Trump wouldn’t have kept the Republicans from winning. They’d have just found another candidate willing to say the same things.
I don’t know. it would have been hard for them to change the figurehead of the cult. it also would have sent a clear “Don’t do that” signal vis a vis insurrection and treason. Especially because Trump absolutely would have split the vote from jail.
fact is Trump has barely seen any consequences at all for his actions, and now he never will, and that’s on democrat’s and Biden’s DOJ in particular. (And yes. Biden could have lit a fire under Garland if he wanted. Not doing your job is grounds for firing, even if Biden can’t dictate day to day or specific courses of actions.)
One doesn’t guarantee the other. Trump had something special that nobody else seems to have. I doubt they could get that lightning in the bottle again.
Exactly. “Biggest ever threat to democracy”, so big they sat on their hands for four years
I bet Harris hasn’t given a speech because they’re coming over the votes with a fine tooth comb to check for anything funky. I’m not claiming I think that happened, but the trump party has been caught doing almost every single corrupt thing they have accused the dnc of doing, and the trump party has done an awful lot of finger pointing about rigging the election.
