What went wrong?
Everything. Absolutely everything.
Yes, those who look at my recent posts will know I missed my election prediction by a mile.
Truthfully, my prediction was not based on sophisticated poll analysis or other scientific data. Polls were unreliable and all over the map.
No, mine was based on gut instinct. I had faith in the decency of the American people and that they would give Vice President Harris the landslide she deserved.
I relied on the decency of our fellow citizens. I was wrong. I'm not the first person to get shot down because they overestimated the discernment and intelligence of Americans.
The bottom line is I couldn't fathom us choosing another Trump administration. I couldn't imagine enough people deliberately picking that kind of hate and destruction.
What went wrong?
There are as many theories as there are people as to why Harris did not emerge victorious. Most of them are bullcrap.
Should Biden have gotten out earlier? It wouldn't have helped. He'd be done as President, and he would not have been able to accomplish anything. The nominee that they picked would have either been Harris or somebody on the Corporate Democrat side of the spectrum.
Harris was too woke? HAHAHAHAHA! That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Did you really listen to their campaign? We have guns! I'll shoot the burglar invading my home! We'll be tough on the immigrants! And not one word about the endangered trans community. They weren't even allowed to speak at the convention.
Harris should have gone further right? That would have been difficult. Any further right, and the Democrats might as well have picked Liz Cheney.
The economy was bad? Disregarding the power of Fox to make you believe what isn't true, the economy was about as good as it gets for at least the last fifty years. There were some problems (housing, college costs, healthcare), but anyone who thought that Republicans had any solutions were fooling themselves
Here's some that I consider to have at least some validity to them -
1) Harris spent too much time courting the elusive disaffected Republican.
This has happened before. Much of Hilary Clinton's campaign overfocused on winning over Republicans who understood that Trump was a bad character.
It didn't work then. It didn't work now.
Granted, even I thought there was some validity to the strategy this time. Many (well, more than a handful) of Republicans stated their opposition to Trump, some prominent, some not so prominent. Surely, some of the more reasonable Republicans would choose country over party.
I knew this was a failure when I saw the Pierce County vote count. 89% voted for Trump, virtually the same percentage for every Trump election. No falloff whatsoever. No miracle conversions. Just the same percentage determined to plunge this country into a nightmarish hellscape.
2) Harris's policies were incremental rather than dramatic.
Harris overfocused on small incremental tax code changes rather than bold, transformative initiatives. This caused particular problems with the working poor and/or the noncollege educated.
I guess she thought she would lose support among moderate and right-leaning independents if she was too bold. Maybe she would have, but I don't know.
All I know is that, since 2000, Democratic campaigns have been littered with the corpses of those campaigns that refused to be bold. Gore, Kerry, and Clinton (and now Harris) all tried to trim their sails and all came up short (thanx and a hat's tip to the slave state inspired Electoral College).
We lost the working poor (mainly but not exclusively whites) when the Democratic Party did everything it could, in both 2016 and 2020, to shut down Bernie Sanders and then to ignore what appealed to his more diverse base.
The Democrats chose corporate policies over people policies. And they've been suffering ever since.
3) Too many refused to vote for a woman, especially a black woman,
This was a factor. It makes me sick to my stomach to live in a country so backward and so misogynistic that this may have been why some didn't vote for her.
And the most important -
4) I blame the American people.
Yeah. I said it. All of you who voted for Trump; those of you left it blank or voted third party - I blame you.
You know better. At least you should.
He was/is lawless.
She was/is flawless. Regardless of what was said above, she is of sterling character, ran the best campaign she could, picked the best Vice Presidential candidate I've ever seen, is the most qualified candidate of recent times, and is empathetic and caring.
And none of that mattered. None of it.
These next four years are going to be terrible.
The best case scenario is that an adult/adults come back in 2026 and 2028 and can repair as much as possible.
The worst case scenario is that was the last election, and anything in the future will be a front and a sham, like they are in other authoritarian governments, like Hungary and Russia.
What went wrong?
Everything. Absolutely everything.
And we're just beginning to find out what that means.
Lawless vs. Flawless is a great catch phrase, though not reflective of reality. Was she better than Trump? Absolutely, but that is a low bar to clear. Abandoning the working class is the big mistake and it is one that the Democrats have been making repeatedly for decades now. Courting corporate sponsors and move to the "middle" (read: right) might have worked for Bill Clinton, but he still had the working poor in addition to corporations backing him. By the time Hillary made a grab for the brass ring, the people suffering most from the move corporations over people were already losing faith in the party that was once their champion. Couple that with the American people's basic misunderstanding of how economics actually work and a tendency to not look before leaping (note the surge in Google search terms for how tariffs actually work wasn't until AFTER the election), the explosion of magical thinking (especially among, but not limited to the religious right), and the deadly one-two punch of underfunding education and the rise of propaganda outlets like Fox for decades (and more recently the dumpster fire that became of Twitter), well, the outcome of the election was saddening but not surprising.
ReplyDeleteIt is always easier to find flaws after the election. Campaign strategy flawless? In hindsight, as both of us have pointed out, there were mistakes made. Also, we can only guess that our recommendations would make for a better chance. There is always ying to every yang. But as a person, in resume, and in most (but not all) of the decisions she made, I do see her as flawless. At least as good as we could get.
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