I really hope this clear loss without the excuse of the electoral college leads to a total reformation into a sane party. I just wish that had happened to republicans first.
The democrats, by european standards, are about as centrist as it gets.
Describing any policy of the dems as "far-left" is just nonsense. It's used as an insult rather than to further actual political discourse.
- Decriminalization of theft (now overturned via prop 36 in California) - Wealth redistribution via wealth taxes, unrealized gains taxes etc (Kamala policy proposal) - Support for anarchist movements (support for Jihadist elements, 2020 riots etc)
This is a really interesting analysis that differs greatly from how I'm seeing it - in particular your characterization of the democrats as "far left." What policies of theirs would you describe as "far left?" Specifically ones that don't have to do with identity politics, since you categorized that as something else.
In my opinion, leftists in the USA are effectively disenfranchised and there's votes on the table for a leftist voting bloc. The democrats this election turned hard right (immigration, law enforcement, Israel weapon sales, etc), which is a strategy that has never really worked for them but remains their favorite thing to continually try. If someone didn't want immigration, why would they vote for the candidate that's light on immigration when they could vote for the guy promising to deport (somehow) millions?
I saw another interesting chart that showed that something like 4% of registered republicans voted for Biden and 3% for Kamala. Capturing right wing votes seems to be a fools errand for the Democrats that they simply won't give up. Meanwhile there's a whole entire political spectrum unrepresented in the USA - and it's not like there's no historical precedence for demonstrable popularity of leftist candidates, one of the most popular and consistently reelected senators is an out and out socialist.
This is a red herring, and ultimately thinking it had any real effect on the race (beyond being used as fodder for mocking them) is a dangerous distraction.
Despite the fact that the president doesn’t have that many short term economic levers that aren’t destructive/wasteful, the fact that most USians have worse economic circumstances now than they did four years ago is probably the main driver.
The big irony of this is that a lot of it is probably the lingering echoes of the massive economic damage from the pandemic, most of which was not only not mitigated, but massively accelerated by Trump’s policies during the main sequence of same.
Do we know that yet? Last I checked, there were still millions of votes not counted. (California alone still has enough to change it, if they all went one way.) They just aren’t in areas that would swing the overall electoral vote, so the people doing the math can call the race overall.