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angrysaki | on: Trump wins presidency for second time
Just picture Bernie Sanders hammering home that the wealthy are screwing everybody. That's the kind of messaging they need but they would rather loose than move left.
spankalee | parent | next
Identifying a viable villain and being mad about it would probably have helped, but the election pretty clearly shows that moving left would have had a _worse_ result.
greycol | root | parent | next
Arizona and Nevada both voted for abortions rights even though they voted republican. The left and right aren't a boolean option, a left candidate who says the system isn't working may do just as well as a right candidate who says the same because they get more of "the grocery prices are broken" crowd even if their overall policies are less palatable.
no_wizard | root | parent | next
How exactly?

Harris didn't run even a center-left campaign, she pushed center-right except on a few issues at the margins and it was late in the game on that front.

Americans generally favor more liberal policies economically, like stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation etc. There was a lot to offer voters of all stripes there.

I think too many Democrats counted on a huge pro abortion turn out of women specifically and that translating into democratic votes, which, even to my surprise, it did not.

int_19h | root | parent | next
Take a look at the results of the various referendums. Some of the same states that have voted for Trump with a hefty margin also voted for things like raising minimum wage or guaranteed paid sick leave.
TimTheTinker | root | parent | next
I think most conservatives have a strong idea in their mind of who their idealogical opponents are: ivory-tower academics, liberal business people and politicians, and all the plebs who side with them to push ideologies and social policies they don't want (policies like people born as men competing with women in sports).

Harris did nothing to distance herself from being strongly associated with that liberal cohort. Regarding social policy and ideology, she came off as being far-left to the average conservative.

lynx23 | root | parent
Have you ever considered that the stance regarding pro aboriton amongst women is to a certain extend age dependant? What I have noticed anecdotally amongst my acquintances is that older women tend to change their mind on that matter, at least sometimes. I am suspecting this has has plain egotistical reasons, simply because they no longer have to care, paired with a certain amount of women that had an abortion and never really managed to find peace with themselves about it. TL;DR: Careful, not all women are pro abortion, possibly not even the majority.
UncleOxidant | root | parent
I'm not so sure of that if they found a way for the message to connect. Bernie did pretty good with his messaging in 2016.
EricDeb | parent | next
exactly its all messaging. dems suck as messaging and kamala was not the right person to deliver messages because she avoided interviews, conversations, etc. Dems needed someone who would go on any show at any time like Bernie does.
exceptione | parent | next
The problem is: Bernie can hammer all he want, but there is no platform to reach the voters. That is __the problem__ for the Dems.

1. The big media is in the hands of a select few (tech) oligarchs. Look for the accelerationists there.

2. Take notice of what happened at the WaPo. Bezos fell on his knees for Trump, fearful of having his other business interests been killed.

2. I mean: no reasonable platforms. The false balance in the New York Times is below the most horrible standard you can get in journalism. New York Times Pitchbot exists for a reason.

3. In the US the press is allowed to spread fake news. Some media make a living of it. Others (see 2) try to give a neutral impression by presenting false balance

4. The serious, damaging analysis will get moved below the fold, if there is one.

==> Now you have gotten a system where the populace doesn´t even get informed anymore, so no serious debate is possible.

==> The Dems are not even able to have their own policies, they have to lean deeply right to stay not too much out of touch of what is presented as normal discourse in the media.

If the US slips further from Anocracy to Autocracy, it will be 1) because the press gave the autocrats the nod and 2) some powerful captains of industry were on board, 3) and they were helped by radicalized far right christianity (Heritage Foundation et ali.).

An echo of Weimar.

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gizmo | parent
You can -- to some extent -- combat right wing populism with left wing economic populism, but there are two key problems with this strategy:

1) the Democrat party hates economic populism. Bernie would have to hijack the party like Trump did. But where Trump has many allies in positions of power, Bernie has none.

2) the populist rhetoric that people like the most is false. Grocery prices aren't high because supermarkets suddenly got greedy. Worker exploitation isn't why billionaires exist.

I also don't think it's good strategy blame a minority group for all the problems in the country. Billionaires are not a protected minority obviously, but when you stoke anger against one group it can easily result in a different group getting unjustly targeted (Mexicans, trans people, etc). We don't need any more of that and politics of hate and resentment isn't the way forward.

ImHereToVote | root | parent | next
The COVID years oversaw the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.
Seattle3503 | root | parent | next
October 2023 impressed upon me how quickly "kill the rich" can take on an antisemetic tint and become "kill the rich, you know, the jews"
int_19h | root | parent
Either billionaires really earn their pay, which implies that they are thousands of times more productive as a person than the rest of us - literally superheroes.

Or - if you accept this as the obvious bullshit that it is - then all that money is not a fair compensation for anything, but rather the consequence of being in a position of economic power that makes it possible to extract wealth from the economy in one way or another. How exactly said extraction is done is immaterial - if the wealth is unearned, it means that it was taken from someone else, since someone ultimately did the work necessary to create it.

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