I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.
I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people.
Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.
Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom?
The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.
That’s why Biden should have picked a vice presidential candidate who could run a good campaign in 2024. It’s not like Biden’s age was an unknown factor. Biden himself floated the idea of only running for one term back in 2020.
> the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began.
And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist. They all pretended to have some knock-off version of Medicare For All because it polled so well, only to rugpull the concept as soon as Bernie was booted out.
Dems know how to win, but it's against capital's wishes, so they obey accordingly as controlled opposition via illusory democracy and choice.
All of the progressives combined were putting up lower numbers than Biden alone in several states, and Biden and moderates combined in nearly every state. It wasn't "rigged" and progressives convincing themselves that it was is MAGA-style revisionism.
I also have to admire the irony of Bernie supporters acting entitled to a coronation / noncompetitive primary after the kinds of things they said in 2016.
> identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist
Yes, and I think that error had profound consequences. Democrats got so drunk on “demographics is destiny” they thought it was a good idea to shoot at their own side as long as the targets were “old white guys” and “Bernie bros.” For every white guy that left the party, two brown guys and girls would replace them.
Democrats, as controlled opposition, intentionally lose in certain scenarios. FFS, they propped up Trump during his first run with their Pied Piper strategy which elevated him from meme-tier gameshow host to frontrunner, as exposed by wikileaks.
Republicans of course are no better. It's a carefully tuned machine of good cop / bad cop, and enough people fall for it to keep the illusion of democracy afloat.
What we functionally have is a uniparty of capital interests which depends on "idpol" types of division and distraction.
Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine.
Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?
Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.
> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending
All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.
I totally agree that republicans are irresponsible with the deficit. But americans don't seem motivated by the deficit, they seem motivated by inflation.
Inflation and the deficit don't have a 1:1 relationship. For the same dollar of debt, you'll see more inflation from social service spending than you will from tax cuts.
Republicans are responsible for making their constituents happy in some way at least, directly or indirectly. Voters can say they want cutting, Republicans can cut, but when does that translate to better life? There has to also be spending.
So true. You can apply this to limiting federal government. The GOP used to all be about states rights to self government. It’s so reversed that it feels like that’s never been the case.
The GOP was never actually about that. They were only ever about states rights to govern themselves according to conservative Christian principles. They have always opposed states' rights to support social welfare, abortion, gun control, environmental programs, immigration, etc.
Dems have repeatedly ceded that ground and our joke of a "free press" refuses to challenge the notion. So whether it's true or not is ultimately irrelevant. Everyone (including and especially Republican voters) just let's them say it.
And in reality shifted labor markets and supply chain was the issue and the FED in 22 raised interest rates to 'regress labor back to their natural position'.
Never forget: the FED did this more than any republican or democrat and their new stated position is to ensure not the enablement of the population but keeping the labor pool 'in their place.'
This, beyond everything else, changed america the most in recent history.
I don't know that higher interest rates are necessarily anti-labor. Low interest rates result in rapid asset inflation and labor usually owns fewer assets.
The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:
1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.
2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.
The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)
Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.
> Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently?
For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either.
Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
Go tune into reactionary talk radio for a taste. Really listen to what they're saying and just let it wash over you. I'll do this occasionally on long drives by myself when I'm out of range of familiar radio stations.
The problem isn't so much differing values in terms of specific policies, but rather a deep chasm of anti-intellectualism that makes them mistrust anyone but their ingroup partisan preachers. Even if you are coming from a place of mostly agreement about some issue, and appealing to values they purportedly have, the minute you start deviating from anything the preachers have said you've immediately put yourself into the "other" camp where their only conclusion is that you "don't understand" or are even trying to trick them.
Those partisan preachers had at least been owned by US business interests, preaching policies that hurt individuals while helping entrenched corporate interests (eg the decades of shipping industry to China). But at this point it seems they've been bought by foreign interests hence the new trend of supporting the wholly destructive policies of trumpism.
The "psychologism" isn't directly from listening to reactionary media, but rather trying to talk to reactionaries about, well, anything. One time I was talking to extended family who were complaining about GPS satellites tracking the location of their phone. This is something I myself also care deeply about, and that I know a thing or two about how it works as well. So I tried to make some points to them that there are some understandable mechanics whereby you can start taking concrete steps to at least reduce the tracking. They showed zero recognition or interest in the idea of being able to do something about it, and actually became more argumentative as if my knowing technical details meant I supported it!
My conclusion is that they only use the vague paranoia and blaming "the government" as a group identity bonding mechanism, and that by deviating from their victimhood narrative I was marking myself as an outsider. Even on a politically adjacent topic where it should have been easier to find common ground. But please do tell me another way that I can possibly interpret that interaction.
Family is usually not the best place to explore the political landscape because: 1. your family is almost certainly layman 2. it’s intertwined with other interpersonal conflict.
About your interaction. Just because someone mentions a thought does mean they are ready to take action to fix it. Their real concern may be “isn’t it disappointing that we live on a society where we can be tracked?” rather than “please give me some tips I can use to mitigate the ability to track me”.
Team dynamics are real but they are certainly not uniquely characteristic of what you’re referring to.
I don't buy your explanation. I said extended family, there isn't really interpersonal conflict. If anything a personal relationship should convey a bit of "this person works with technology and perhaps knows what they're talking about".
I also didn't present it as "you should do this" or worse "it's your fault", as we often see in many ham-fisted HN comments. Rather it was more like hey it is actually possible to defend against this thing we both feel is attacking us. As I said, the problem was they were not interested in the idea that it's possible to avoid surveillance.
Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).
As a more general point, 2024 saw many establishment governments switch across the world. My hypothesis is that many people around the world were still craving a pre pandemic lifestyle and world. And that was expressed as anger at the current government regardless of how they handled covid and the aftermath. Others have brought up specific issues but I think there is some connective tissue for people across the world because amount of similar sentiment from different cultures. There is no silver bullet though. Multiple events, policies, and statements factor into a major election win or loss.
A lot of people were sick of the status quo. For better or worse, Trump represented change. Obviously, there are many more factors that contributed, but in my opinion, this is where the momentum was.
tl;dr A US political party is more like a European coalition government than a European political party.
US political parties try to form tents that various subgroups can join under. Usually, some sort of compromise is formed among the various participants. One break down in the Democratic Party tent was over Israel/Gaza, another was over pro-tech/anti-tech. Simultaneously, there were factional wars over redistribution and immigration in both parties. These are two such but perhaps not even the biggest two such things. Inflation and government spending were another. And Biden's competence was also in question.
Every faction is likely convinced their own support is what would have turned the tide because it is somewhat true, except for the property that they're linked. e.g. pro-Gaza positions are also usually anti-tech so depending on how much you aim to get more Gaza supporters you also lose pro-industry people. There are many things like that.
A US politician will therefore try to walk the line of support to get elected. For example, you'll see a substantial change in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's positioning over time. Notably, she is currently actively attempting to reduce housing construction by corporations - a position she has not been historically associated with - because this polls very well among Americans (who, for the most part, believe that building new expensive housing makes all housing cost more).
I think Kamala should have flipped on the second amendment then gone on all the podcasts and called trump a nerd for being sober and not liking guns.
Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know anything about her. Normally I'm sick of them a month into the campaign. It kind of felt like a snub, as if they were telling me they didn't want my vote. I could imagine someone else using that as the reason to vote for Trump.
That said, I only ever vote 3rd party because I believe they work together to keep each other in power, and that a vote for either is a vote for both.
You only ever vote 3rd party but you wanted them to try to target you? Seems like their targeting tech was actually working in your case.
EDIT to reply: That category, yes, but within that category it makes sense specifically to exclude your subcategory: the ones who would never vote for either me or my opponent. You are essentially irrelevant to my outcomes and I'd be wasting money and time paying attention to you.
Well. We know that some platforms promoted the gop significantly more that dems. The same companies that now enjoy protection while licking the boots. If you take that into consideration with the fact that she is just not really interesting, I'm not really surprised thet you didn't noticed her.
I did see plenty of anti-trump ads coming from her campaign, but I think that was a huge misstep. Everyone already knew who Trump was and already had an opinion on him that they weren't going to be able to change. They should have used their considerable resources to tell us about her.
If being anti something is your main point, then it's just sad. I'm not even sure if it is needed, if you are candidate against him then logically you are against him. I'm not really sure how liberal parties can compete with strong man politics, promoting. Making straight forward points as a individual is much easier that promoting something as party in todays main channel which are social media.
Generally speaking, it's better to not assume that everyone with political views opposing yours has them out of racism, or whatever other personal defects you might imagine.
In reality, the nonwhite vote share for Trump went up for almost every group in 2024 vs. 2016. "White fragility" was probably not their top concern.
Much of what people say has always been strange about politics. It doesn't seem to be rooted in fact so much as in wanting to dunk on someone.
I remember when Roe v Wade was being overthrown and people would talk about how this was how "Men try to control Women's bodies" or something like that. The reality around that time was that the gender differences were a few percentage points[0]. Since then a gender gap has widened[1] but notably among Republicans. Voters for the Democratic party barely differ on abortion attitudes based on gender.
i never said everyone with opposing political views has them out of racism, i'm saying it just plays well. Way too many of the white voting share went to the eating cats and dog racism that we saw play out. Cuz it works. That is america.
I'll bite as an independent: I believe that "they" could have reverted to Clinton(Bill) or Obama's moderate stances in regards to border/immigration and gender/identity politics and maintained a sweeping majority.
If the Democrats had disclosed Biden's decline and held a primary this likely would have sorted itself out.
As a Canadian I strongly felt it was GG to the Democrats when they didn’t run a second, competitive, knives-out primary for VP Harris.
For the second time, the party apparatus coalesced around a candidate who was ultimately trounced by someone wrongly considered unelectable.
Even if it was just theatre in the end, having a dramatic primary where the VP won would have made her look stronger and given her a chance to claw back some of the swing voters.
Or could have made her look worse because of the mud slinging between the candidates in the primary debates. You know that any criticism of a candidate by her competitors would have been trumpeted and distorted by Trump.
The best politicians understand the value of being perceived as authentic. Pushing the VP at the last minute and pretending nothing was wrong just felt incredibly stilted and insincere. Politicians like Trump are popular because they "tell it like it is" and not the media trained evasive responses you typically get from politicians.
I would have voted for a partially sentient dung heap over Trump, which at the current rate is probably in the cards as a next GOP candidate.
Absolutely. For more progressive democrat voters already been harbouring bad feelings around the legitimacy of the establishment candidate from previous elections. The two party system already loses a ton of the feeling of choice and participation in Americans. The primary is the escape valve. It is supposed to be when people that care about politics get to argue about policy, direction, etc. Even if you don't agree with the final candidate, you feel like you helped shape the direction of the process. By skipping this, even if there were other circumstances, it feels like a huge turn off for that base of the party.
And then for other democrats, the feeling when you have an unpopular president like Biden was seen at the time is to go anti estabilishment. But Kamala was Bidens VP. She couldnt run an anti estabilishment campaign when she was part of the estabilishment.
If there had been a primary, whoever was the candidate, even if it was Kamala herself, would have been much better positioned for the General Election.
You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency. You run the incumbent (especially against a candidate they've already beaten) or the VP - the two most famous people in the party. All Harris had to do was read the room and she would have won.
Literally every other possible option would have been a nobody with none of the advantages Biden or Harris had and would have only risked splitting the ticket, whereas every Republican was already going vote for Trump. I can't think of a worse way for the Democrats to fail than that... except for the way they actually failed.
And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was and no one seems to care.
> And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was
Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.
> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.
Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
> what specifically should they have done differently?
Kamala squandered a lot of good will and enthusiasm when she needed it the most. When Biden dropped out there was a lot of real excitement about something different.
It really wouldn't have been hard for her to spend time touting some of the best parts of the Biden admin like Lina Khan. But that sort of messaging was unpopular with the donors.
Putting forward actual policies to make things better would have also helped, even if they were just carbon copies of the biden policies. The way she campaigned there was, frankly, really weak. Giving a tax break to home owners and copying Trump's "No tax on tips" line really did not look good.
It was also pretty apparent that while Walz was doing a pretty good job making Trump and Vance look bad, the Kamala team pulled him in for being too alienating. Kamala distanced herself from her own VP pick and instead decided to campaign with Liz Cheney, a well known republican who's father was good ole war crimes cheney. Neither are particularly popular with either Democrats or Republicans.
The Kamala campaign spent a large amount of time trying to win over disaffected trump voters. That was a disaster. No amount of "I'm tough of transnational criminals" would convince a crown that's currently cheering on ICE to cheer on Kamala.
In the end, she did a lot to kill the enthusiasm of the base. She spent just too much of the limited time she had trying to make the case that she is appealing to republicans. Who, of course, all thought she was a super woke radical leftist (she was not).
Gaza was another huge issue that Kamala's campaign ignored and never addressed. A lot of people believe this is why the DNC autopsy hasn't been released as it likely played a large role in the depressed voter turnout for Kamala.
In the end, the problem with her and her campaign is she ran the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook. Far too much time trying to remind people that Trump is bad and far too little time making the case for why she's better.
This isn't all her fault. Biden is a big asshole for running for a second term. There has been leaks that his staff knew full well that he was a train-wreck and that his polling was really bad. I think they thought that the early debate would ultimately prove that he was capable of winning which, as we all know, was one of the biggest train-wrecks of a modern presidential campaign. But also, there's absolutely no chance that Biden didn't know he was dealing with cancer going into 2024. That's not something a President is unaware of. Especially not getting to stage 4. My conspiracy theory was that a major reason he disappeared towards the end of his term is that he was dealing with cancer therapy. It wouldn't shock me to know that he had chemobrain while debating trump.
The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel. It was the largest reason that Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris in 2024, per polls that specifically analyzed the causes of her loss. (not polls that took general moods or ideas)
Had she dropped support for Israel, she would have been president.
And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Edit: man some of you REALLY don't want Israel to be blamed for anything. Anyways, here's one poll clearly showing it was her support for Israel that cost her the most votes: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
> And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Why would she lose the general Presidential election based solely on her pro-Israel stance, if Trump also had a pro-Israel stance at that time (and still does)? That explanation doesn't make sense.
It's because it's important to make sure anyone in office that supports Israel loses, EVEN IF their opponent also supports Israel.
The job of the voter is to make sure elected officials are held accountable. Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
> Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
How does that explain the outcome of Presidential elections that follow term limits? Donald Trump had no meaningful political record prior to the Republican primaries in 2015--and he was pro-Israel in his first term as well.
I remember the pro Palestine groups were threatening to not vote for Kamala if the Dems didn’t push for a cease fire or whatever. All while the other side was Trump.
They didn’t go, “maybe we should do our best to prevent a worse situation“.
Even back then I had a gut feeling something like this would have cost the Dems the election.
People really need to stop saying Trump is worse than Kamala/Biden on Palestine.
Biden and the Democrats erased Palestine. There is nothing anymore that Trump could do about it. He can't resurrect the dead. Everything happened because of Democrats, not Trump.
Voters are very rational. They know that Democrats were the bad guys. It's why they currently have a 17% approval rating.
Let's all focus on removing the rest of the Democrats from power and replace them with true anti-Israel candidates. That's the only hope for a modern society.
Unfortunately the answer is that the far left who have adopted Palestine as the omnicause are, to the last voter, stone cold idiots. It turns out that an electorate of morons behaves erratically.
I don't think there was as much pushback about his policy as much as there was discontent with an economic slowdown and a somewhat ironic (considering where we find ourselves) frustration with his age.
Well there was a lot of people, especially on the dem side of the spectrum, who weren't a fan of his public unwavering support of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Internal investigations within the party allegedly agree with this analysis.
But yes, people dislike Biden for a lot of things he didn't deserve to be disliked for, such as inflation which was caused by COVID and Trump and which Biden did a fantastic job of controlling, but which parts of the public simply perceived as "inflation went wild under Biden". Still, even though it's not fair, the message "I will do nothing different from (unpopular incumbent)" isn't great campaign strategy, in my opinion.
based on recentish interviews (or book?) it was likely genuine in the sense of not being performative, but apparently she knew it was both false and the wrong thing to say but said it anyway out of loyalty to Biden.
If people payed attention, Kamala’s policies were decently well thought out and not the exact same as Biden.
It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman.
I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)
Broadly speaking, people don't pay attention. The message from her campaign[1] was that she would do nothing differently from Biden. This is a mistake even if (especially if!) her actual policies are different from Biden's.
The only thing Harris could come up with was, eventually: "unlike Biden, I will have a republican in my cabinet".
She was basically trying not to go negative on Biden while still in office. Biden and his team were actively pressuring her to stay onside, according to some reporting, which is indefensible. Reprehensible really. She should've burnt the bridge.
But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time.
Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.
This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and logic.
My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans.
What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
Voters still need to look through the barrage of miss- and disinformation, hatred, blaming etc. in short through all the shit the zone is flooded with. Republicans can if required always turn the dial further.
A principled democratic opponent on the other hand should not succumb to all of this, they should act with integrity etc. traits that also seem to not be pushed by algorithms nowadays. All in all I think it's a lot harder, especially when paired with short attention span of viewers.
Democrats ran mostly fine candidates. I think people have really unrealistic if not impractical expectations. I personally want my politicians to be boring.
As to how to get Republicans to stop voting for evil? I have absolutely no idea and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not sure why anyone thinks the Democrats can conjure great people either. I just think that Republicans are the bigger problem by far.
They already did that - the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough (especially after we already got a preview of Trump's Republican party the first time around). They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough. Most of them actually wanted the job because they believed in the mission of government, not because they personally benefited from ruining whatever office or authority they might be given.
The only thing the non-Republican voters had to do was show up, hold their nose over whatever bullshit short-coming their rep had (in comparison to "perfect" and whatever it is the Republicans offer to voters), and vote for whichever jerk had a D next to their name. There were only ever two options and U.S. citizens fucked up - through either silence (mostly) or blind support of whatever it is that's happening now.
Unfortunately I don't have any great solutions at this point, so voting with my feet seems like the only practical method I have for reducing my exposure to this electorate. Failing that - continuing to vote for the lesser-evil and shout from the various rented/lended soapboxes I have until something different happens.
D's need to figure out effective ways to counter the Republican bad actors, but no strategy is ever going to be enough, with a full blown authoritarian party in a 2 party system and massive propaganda ecosystem absolutely dominates the media and has thoroughly cooked millions of brains.
There's just no way to overcome all that every time, at the candidate level.
The right-wing propaganda machine, from Fox to Nick Fuentes to Joe Rogan - even to Twitter - has to be effectively dismantled or countered.
Yeah really the take away apparently is that Democrats should just lie, brazenly, about everything. I mean that's what Trump and JD Vance did and continue to do. When you can just invent your own world to live in, how are rational people supposed to deal with that? Would people have reacted different if Biden and Harris had truthfully said "oh and the world is still fucked up because of COVID, electing Donald Trump won't change that"
This doesn't seem based in reality. You don't go from majority support for you running to less than that and blame the other side. There are demonstrable actions and events that have a distinct link to her downward popularity.
When examining why someone lost you generally don't insinuate that the loser did everything right and the other side are just bad people and that's why they won. That's a recipe for learning nothing and repeating the same mistake over and over again. Which unfortunately seems to be the national policy position.
The biggest problem with her campaign was the one thing it was impossible to fix - the amount of time. Everything else is nitpicking and wish-casting.
And that's on Biden and his team, mostly. I do give credit to the party for actually forcing him out. That's a hard thing to do, and it's exactly what R's ought to have done to Trump a long time ago.
I disagree. When she announced her candidacy she largely had the election in her pocket. Had she run the same campaign for longer her support would have just been even lower. The only reason Biden stepped down was because the ruling class in the DNC made the call. The party voters were very vocally against him the whole way.
I'm a bit confused why you think republicans would toss aside a winning candidate. The party is laser focused on winning. That seems to be sadly a major difference. The DNC seems overly concerned being as milquetoast as possible and to simply assume a moral high ground.
Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff.
In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.
It's worse than that though. They are dismantling things that congress has mandated, and also just not making legally mandated payments, and no one is stopping them.
Congress has abdicated their duty of checks and balances. In a functioning government, the executive would have already been removed for not following legally mandated spending.
The issue isn't that they can't be stopped, it's that they don't fear that they will be.
If you or I knowingly and flagrantly break the law, our understanding isn't that we'll be stopped and nothing else, it's that there will be punishment, that justice will be done.
How are we at a point now where we all know the administration is breaking the law. That they know they are breaking the law. That they can be stopped months or years later, but there is no justice. Not even the hint or thought of justice.
These people should fear the consequences of their actions, but at the moment there are none.
This is just an attempt by one political party to censor climate research. The hope is, if there is no research being done, then there will be no pressure to do anything about it. This is similar to the COVID mentality of, "stop the testing." If you don't test for COVID, the numbers don't get worse.
However, as someone who has worked at NCAR for many years, I can tell you that the place is a mess. The Table Mesa facility is mostly devoid of employees, with entire floors of offices left in a state of dark decay. Most of the vehicles in the parking lot are people hiking the trails, and days of yucky weather will reveal at most a couple dozen cars in the parking lot, mainly maintenance people. Elementary school groups continue to show up for tours, but the scientists and technical staff have moved to other buildings in town, specifically the Center Green and Foothills Lab clusters.
NCAR has become a mere shadow of its former self, with > 30% of its funding being absorbed by the Directorate and President's offices, with some executive salaries exceeding half a million dollars (not bad for a non-profit). The younger talent have fled, from the engineers up to the upper management, and what remains are aged-out scientists just waiting for retirement. Internal surveys, which seem to be sent out almost weekly, tend to show very low confidence in the leadership. It's a tanker running on inertia, and breaking it up and selling it off may be the best thing for it.
It's going to take a lot of glue to try to put the United States together again. Breaking things is easy, and the Trump administration absolutely excels at it. The White House, some buildings (some occupied) in Iran, the economy, the cohesion in so far as there still was any left in the country, the scientific community and the reputation of the United States as a dependable ally.
> NCAR’s climate research may not be the only thing driving the White House attack. It is widely believed to also be part of a campaign of political retribution waged against Colorado for its conviction and imprisonment of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who breached election security systems in a scheme to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The state has included the attack on NCAR in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Federal policy by wounded ego is still wounded ego.
It's also widely believed that is a big part of why he vetoed a bill to fund the Arkansas River Valley water pipeline in Colorado, to bring much needed clean drinking water to rural communities in southeastern Colorado (communities that overwhelming voted for Trump all three times).
Another reason widely believed to be a significant factor is that it would benefit Lauren Boebert's district, and Trump wanted to punish her for siding with Democrats in the House on releasing the Epstein files.
The pipeline funding bill had been very bipartisan. It had passed the House by unanimous consent, and whatever the equivalent procedure is in the Senate.
There was an attempt to override the veto. The House vote was 248-177, which failed because a veto override requires 2/3 of the votes. It would have needed 283. All Democrats voted to override. It would have taken 71 Republicans to push it over, which would have been 1/3 of Republicans present. It only got 35, 1/6th of the Republicans.
Closing a single lab is not fascism. It becomes fascism when a regime systematically targets institutions that produce independent knowledge that doesn't align with Dear Leader's propoganda.
You mean techno-fascism? Since this benefits Meta, Microsoft, Google, et. al. Cheaper oil, gas, electricity infrastructure means bigger profit margin. It’s not so much they want pollution or to go all in on oil infrastructure specifically, but less oversight and regulation so they can build more and faster for cheaper.
>A month earlier, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), had said the White House would “break up” NCAR, citing its role in “climate alarmism.”
This is absolutely the biggest pain of today's politics. You can't argue with their dogma even when it agains literally all the facts. Needless to say, both parties are doing it. Just a little bit differently.
You're mistaking the stereotype for the people in charge of the policy. If you want to destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private yachts. nationalize car dealerships. break up the megacorps.
And breakup Paramount+
CBS
CNN
Showtime
HBO
Warner Bros
TNT
TBS
MTV
DC Studios
Nickelodeon
Comedy Central
Cartoon Network. And the other media empires!
> destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private (…)
Wouldn’t that validate the rhetoric that Democrats have the same methods as the Nazis: Threats, destruction, (racial preference), and social censorship?
It takes two to tango. Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.
> Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.
Are you using some nonstandard definition of "progressive" and "MAGA", or do you genuinely have the belief that the left wing is closer to the center majority of this country in "culture war" matters than the right wing?
Spoken like a true culture warrior! It's not a matter of who is "closer", rather it's a matter of which party leans into politicizing the policing of cultural choices in the first place.
Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country and fix how our officials are elected. I wish I had the answer on how to solve this, but alas… I’ll defer to people who are smarter than me.
> Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country
Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos.
What is your idea of democracy that needs to be restored in this country?
Boulder is not a town you generally want to upset, I would expect this to have an outsized inverse impact compared to what the White House expects over the long term.
There’s a lot of different reasons that have nothing to do with this particular situation that has led to the saying that Boulder is “nine square miles surrounded by reality”…
I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.
> The problem is that there was no primary.
I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
Intra-party elections should definitely be some variant of ranked-choice voting. To at least try to avoid the current fractal polarization.
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.
No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people.
Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.
Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom?
The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.
That’s why Biden should have picked a vice presidential candidate who could run a good campaign in 2024. It’s not like Biden’s age was an unknown factor. Biden himself floated the idea of only running for one term back in 2020.
> the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began.
And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist. They all pretended to have some knock-off version of Medicare For All because it polled so well, only to rugpull the concept as soon as Bernie was booted out.
Dems know how to win, but it's against capital's wishes, so they obey accordingly as controlled opposition via illusory democracy and choice.
All of the progressives combined were putting up lower numbers than Biden alone in several states, and Biden and moderates combined in nearly every state. It wasn't "rigged" and progressives convincing themselves that it was is MAGA-style revisionism.
I also have to admire the irony of Bernie supporters acting entitled to a coronation / noncompetitive primary after the kinds of things they said in 2016.
> identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist
Yes, and I think that error had profound consequences. Democrats got so drunk on “demographics is destiny” they thought it was a good idea to shoot at their own side as long as the targets were “old white guys” and “Bernie bros.” For every white guy that left the party, two brown guys and girls would replace them.
That left them completely unprepared for an electoral environment where Trump made huge inroads with minorities and won half of foreign born voters: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... (see pp. 7 and 9).
The point though is the error was intentional.
Democrats, as controlled opposition, intentionally lose in certain scenarios. FFS, they propped up Trump during his first run with their Pied Piper strategy which elevated him from meme-tier gameshow host to frontrunner, as exposed by wikileaks.
Republicans of course are no better. It's a carefully tuned machine of good cop / bad cop, and enough people fall for it to keep the illusion of democracy afloat.
What we functionally have is a uniparty of capital interests which depends on "idpol" types of division and distraction.
Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?
Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.
> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending
All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.
I totally agree that republicans are irresponsible with the deficit. But americans don't seem motivated by the deficit, they seem motivated by inflation.
Inflation and the deficit don't have a 1:1 relationship. For the same dollar of debt, you'll see more inflation from social service spending than you will from tax cuts.
Republicans are responsible for making their constituents happy in some way at least, directly or indirectly. Voters can say they want cutting, Republicans can cut, but when does that translate to better life? There has to also be spending.
So true. You can apply this to limiting federal government. The GOP used to all be about states rights to self government. It’s so reversed that it feels like that’s never been the case.
The GOP was never actually about that. They were only ever about states rights to govern themselves according to conservative Christian principles. They have always opposed states' rights to support social welfare, abortion, gun control, environmental programs, immigration, etc.
Dems have repeatedly ceded that ground and our joke of a "free press" refuses to challenge the notion. So whether it's true or not is ultimately irrelevant. Everyone (including and especially Republican voters) just let's them say it.
That had nothing to do with it. Her support for Israel caused her to lose, if you actually look at polls that analyze her election loss.
And in reality shifted labor markets and supply chain was the issue and the FED in 22 raised interest rates to 'regress labor back to their natural position'.
Never forget: the FED did this more than any republican or democrat and their new stated position is to ensure not the enablement of the population but keeping the labor pool 'in their place.'
This, beyond everything else, changed america the most in recent history.
I don't know that higher interest rates are necessarily anti-labor. Low interest rates result in rapid asset inflation and labor usually owns fewer assets.
No but the direct statements from the FED itself that it was trying to hurt labor and reduce average household spending was very clear
Fed, not "FED". It isn't an acronym.
The point I was making was labor has something to lose in any interest rate environment.
You're asking the wrong questions.
The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:
1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.
2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.
The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)
Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.
I've heard Poland has similar issues, FWIW.
> Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently?
For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either.
Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
There’s no one single thing of course, but there are themes
A couple generally unifying themes:
1. People that for the most part want to be left alone and not messed with 2. People that don’t want to be talked down to
Those points could apply to all and every political situations everywhere.
tbf, people who actually believed that Trump was the candidate of leaving stuff alone are unusually deserving of being talked down to...
Go tune into reactionary talk radio for a taste. Really listen to what they're saying and just let it wash over you. I'll do this occasionally on long drives by myself when I'm out of range of familiar radio stations.
The problem isn't so much differing values in terms of specific policies, but rather a deep chasm of anti-intellectualism that makes them mistrust anyone but their ingroup partisan preachers. Even if you are coming from a place of mostly agreement about some issue, and appealing to values they purportedly have, the minute you start deviating from anything the preachers have said you've immediately put yourself into the "other" camp where their only conclusion is that you "don't understand" or are even trying to trick them.
Those partisan preachers had at least been owned by US business interests, preaching policies that hurt individuals while helping entrenched corporate interests (eg the decades of shipping industry to China). But at this point it seems they've been bought by foreign interests hence the new trend of supporting the wholly destructive policies of trumpism.
yes, please do listen I don’t think you will come to the same conclusions as this poster’s laughable psychologism
The "psychologism" isn't directly from listening to reactionary media, but rather trying to talk to reactionaries about, well, anything. One time I was talking to extended family who were complaining about GPS satellites tracking the location of their phone. This is something I myself also care deeply about, and that I know a thing or two about how it works as well. So I tried to make some points to them that there are some understandable mechanics whereby you can start taking concrete steps to at least reduce the tracking. They showed zero recognition or interest in the idea of being able to do something about it, and actually became more argumentative as if my knowing technical details meant I supported it!
My conclusion is that they only use the vague paranoia and blaming "the government" as a group identity bonding mechanism, and that by deviating from their victimhood narrative I was marking myself as an outsider. Even on a politically adjacent topic where it should have been easier to find common ground. But please do tell me another way that I can possibly interpret that interaction.
Family is usually not the best place to explore the political landscape because: 1. your family is almost certainly layman 2. it’s intertwined with other interpersonal conflict.
About your interaction. Just because someone mentions a thought does mean they are ready to take action to fix it. Their real concern may be “isn’t it disappointing that we live on a society where we can be tracked?” rather than “please give me some tips I can use to mitigate the ability to track me”.
Team dynamics are real but they are certainly not uniquely characteristic of what you’re referring to.
I don't buy your explanation. I said extended family, there isn't really interpersonal conflict. If anything a personal relationship should convey a bit of "this person works with technology and perhaps knows what they're talking about".
I also didn't present it as "you should do this" or worse "it's your fault", as we often see in many ham-fisted HN comments. Rather it was more like hey it is actually possible to defend against this thing we both feel is attacking us. As I said, the problem was they were not interested in the idea that it's possible to avoid surveillance.
Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).
really? or is it just that you don't like the answer so you keep trying to find another one.
what historical examples of this very common pattern did you read up on?
I do not believe their failure was purely poor economic timing. This sounds similar to the “Hilary and an unlucky night” narrative.
As a more general point, 2024 saw many establishment governments switch across the world. My hypothesis is that many people around the world were still craving a pre pandemic lifestyle and world. And that was expressed as anger at the current government regardless of how they handled covid and the aftermath. Others have brought up specific issues but I think there is some connective tissue for people across the world because amount of similar sentiment from different cultures. There is no silver bullet though. Multiple events, policies, and statements factor into a major election win or loss.
I didn't mean any of this. I am so sorry. Please forgive me and flag this for deletion.
A lot of people were sick of the status quo. For better or worse, Trump represented change. Obviously, there are many more factors that contributed, but in my opinion, this is where the momentum was.
tl;dr A US political party is more like a European coalition government than a European political party.
US political parties try to form tents that various subgroups can join under. Usually, some sort of compromise is formed among the various participants. One break down in the Democratic Party tent was over Israel/Gaza, another was over pro-tech/anti-tech. Simultaneously, there were factional wars over redistribution and immigration in both parties. These are two such but perhaps not even the biggest two such things. Inflation and government spending were another. And Biden's competence was also in question.
Every faction is likely convinced their own support is what would have turned the tide because it is somewhat true, except for the property that they're linked. e.g. pro-Gaza positions are also usually anti-tech so depending on how much you aim to get more Gaza supporters you also lose pro-industry people. There are many things like that.
A US politician will therefore try to walk the line of support to get elected. For example, you'll see a substantial change in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's positioning over time. Notably, she is currently actively attempting to reduce housing construction by corporations - a position she has not been historically associated with - because this polls very well among Americans (who, for the most part, believe that building new expensive housing makes all housing cost more).
I think Kamala should have flipped on the second amendment then gone on all the podcasts and called trump a nerd for being sober and not liking guns.
Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know anything about her. Normally I'm sick of them a month into the campaign. It kind of felt like a snub, as if they were telling me they didn't want my vote. I could imagine someone else using that as the reason to vote for Trump.
That said, I only ever vote 3rd party because I believe they work together to keep each other in power, and that a vote for either is a vote for both.
You only ever vote 3rd party but you wanted them to try to target you? Seems like their targeting tech was actually working in your case.
EDIT to reply: That category, yes, but within that category it makes sense specifically to exclude your subcategory: the ones who would never vote for either me or my opponent. You are essentially irrelevant to my outcomes and I'd be wasting money and time paying attention to you.
Wouldn't it make more sense to target everyone who doesn't routinely vote for your party?
Not if you can split that group further into people that you can convince to change and people you can't convince.
Well. We know that some platforms promoted the gop significantly more that dems. The same companies that now enjoy protection while licking the boots. If you take that into consideration with the fact that she is just not really interesting, I'm not really surprised thet you didn't noticed her.
I did see plenty of anti-trump ads coming from her campaign, but I think that was a huge misstep. Everyone already knew who Trump was and already had an opinion on him that they weren't going to be able to change. They should have used their considerable resources to tell us about her.
If being anti something is your main point, then it's just sad. I'm not even sure if it is needed, if you are candidate against him then logically you are against him. I'm not really sure how liberal parties can compete with strong man politics, promoting. Making straight forward points as a individual is much easier that promoting something as party in todays main channel which are social media.
Biden admin was leaps better than this crap we have but he didn't assuage white fragility - that's the republican brand.
Generally speaking, it's better to not assume that everyone with political views opposing yours has them out of racism, or whatever other personal defects you might imagine.
In reality, the nonwhite vote share for Trump went up for almost every group in 2024 vs. 2016. "White fragility" was probably not their top concern.
Much of what people say has always been strange about politics. It doesn't seem to be rooted in fact so much as in wanting to dunk on someone.
I remember when Roe v Wade was being overthrown and people would talk about how this was how "Men try to control Women's bodies" or something like that. The reality around that time was that the gender differences were a few percentage points[0]. Since then a gender gap has widened[1] but notably among Republicans. Voters for the Democratic party barely differ on abortion attitudes based on gender.
0: http://pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion...
1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/03/12/do-abortion-...
i never said everyone with opposing political views has them out of racism, i'm saying it just plays well. Way too many of the white voting share went to the eating cats and dog racism that we saw play out. Cuz it works. That is america.
I'll bite as an independent: I believe that "they" could have reverted to Clinton(Bill) or Obama's moderate stances in regards to border/immigration and gender/identity politics and maintained a sweeping majority.
If the Democrats had disclosed Biden's decline and held a primary this likely would have sorted itself out.
As a Canadian I strongly felt it was GG to the Democrats when they didn’t run a second, competitive, knives-out primary for VP Harris.
For the second time, the party apparatus coalesced around a candidate who was ultimately trounced by someone wrongly considered unelectable.
Even if it was just theatre in the end, having a dramatic primary where the VP won would have made her look stronger and given her a chance to claw back some of the swing voters.
Or could have made her look worse because of the mud slinging between the candidates in the primary debates. You know that any criticism of a candidate by her competitors would have been trumpeted and distorted by Trump.
Can you describe how Harris's policies there meaningfully differed from Bill Clinton's or Obama's?
Simple: Biden should have never run for re-election. I loved the guy but his physical decline couldn’t be denied.
A proper primary would have most likely resulted in a dem president (and most probably Newsom).
The Democrats didn't have a primary, so I'm going to vote for the criminal/fabulist/sex pest who is also obviously declining.
I find it difficult to buy that logic. The inescapable conclusion is that a large number of Americans are ignorant, gullible, and cruel.
yes. If people who often vote dem are not motivated to show up that hurts their chances.
Low turnout means the party isn’t that excited about their candidate leading
The best politicians understand the value of being perceived as authentic. Pushing the VP at the last minute and pretending nothing was wrong just felt incredibly stilted and insincere. Politicians like Trump are popular because they "tell it like it is" and not the media trained evasive responses you typically get from politicians.
I would have voted for a partially sentient dung heap over Trump, which at the current rate is probably in the cards as a next GOP candidate.
Absolutely. For more progressive democrat voters already been harbouring bad feelings around the legitimacy of the establishment candidate from previous elections. The two party system already loses a ton of the feeling of choice and participation in Americans. The primary is the escape valve. It is supposed to be when people that care about politics get to argue about policy, direction, etc. Even if you don't agree with the final candidate, you feel like you helped shape the direction of the process. By skipping this, even if there were other circumstances, it feels like a huge turn off for that base of the party.
And then for other democrats, the feeling when you have an unpopular president like Biden was seen at the time is to go anti estabilishment. But Kamala was Bidens VP. She couldnt run an anti estabilishment campaign when she was part of the estabilishment.
If there had been a primary, whoever was the candidate, even if it was Kamala herself, would have been much better positioned for the General Election.
You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency. You run the incumbent (especially against a candidate they've already beaten) or the VP - the two most famous people in the party. All Harris had to do was read the room and she would have won.
Literally every other possible option would have been a nobody with none of the advantages Biden or Harris had and would have only risked splitting the ticket, whereas every Republican was already going vote for Trump. I can't think of a worse way for the Democrats to fail than that... except for the way they actually failed.
And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was and no one seems to care.
> And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was
Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.
> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.
Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
> what specifically should they have done differently?
Kamala squandered a lot of good will and enthusiasm when she needed it the most. When Biden dropped out there was a lot of real excitement about something different.
It really wouldn't have been hard for her to spend time touting some of the best parts of the Biden admin like Lina Khan. But that sort of messaging was unpopular with the donors.
Putting forward actual policies to make things better would have also helped, even if they were just carbon copies of the biden policies. The way she campaigned there was, frankly, really weak. Giving a tax break to home owners and copying Trump's "No tax on tips" line really did not look good.
It was also pretty apparent that while Walz was doing a pretty good job making Trump and Vance look bad, the Kamala team pulled him in for being too alienating. Kamala distanced herself from her own VP pick and instead decided to campaign with Liz Cheney, a well known republican who's father was good ole war crimes cheney. Neither are particularly popular with either Democrats or Republicans.
The Kamala campaign spent a large amount of time trying to win over disaffected trump voters. That was a disaster. No amount of "I'm tough of transnational criminals" would convince a crown that's currently cheering on ICE to cheer on Kamala.
In the end, she did a lot to kill the enthusiasm of the base. She spent just too much of the limited time she had trying to make the case that she is appealing to republicans. Who, of course, all thought she was a super woke radical leftist (she was not).
Gaza was another huge issue that Kamala's campaign ignored and never addressed. A lot of people believe this is why the DNC autopsy hasn't been released as it likely played a large role in the depressed voter turnout for Kamala.
In the end, the problem with her and her campaign is she ran the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook. Far too much time trying to remind people that Trump is bad and far too little time making the case for why she's better.
This isn't all her fault. Biden is a big asshole for running for a second term. There has been leaks that his staff knew full well that he was a train-wreck and that his polling was really bad. I think they thought that the early debate would ultimately prove that he was capable of winning which, as we all know, was one of the biggest train-wrecks of a modern presidential campaign. But also, there's absolutely no chance that Biden didn't know he was dealing with cancer going into 2024. That's not something a President is unaware of. Especially not getting to stage 4. My conspiracy theory was that a major reason he disappeared towards the end of his term is that he was dealing with cancer therapy. It wouldn't shock me to know that he had chemobrain while debating trump.
The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel. It was the largest reason that Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris in 2024, per polls that specifically analyzed the causes of her loss. (not polls that took general moods or ideas)
Had she dropped support for Israel, she would have been president.
And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Edit: man some of you REALLY don't want Israel to be blamed for anything. Anyways, here's one poll clearly showing it was her support for Israel that cost her the most votes: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
Which is crazy.
Democratic voters would rather have someone opposed to their values in power and make worse the issue they supposedly care about.
> The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel.
I'm american and I've never heard that.
I've only heard her total unwillingness to be interviewed without a script.
Perhaps what one hears varies across the country, of course.
> I'm american and I've never heard that.
It's been in the news for a while.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
upvote : thanks for the link.
i meant actually "hear" as in from the large number of americans i see weekly.
I wouldn't expect everyone to know everything. But I follow all the polls. YouGov are some of the best.
Man after my own heart. I'm a statistician, and the data-free narratives on HN sometimes make me want to pull my hair out.
no kidding
good info: thanks as i'd not seen that (very randomly)
> And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Are you willing to put money on that?
Why would she lose the general Presidential election based solely on her pro-Israel stance, if Trump also had a pro-Israel stance at that time (and still does)? That explanation doesn't make sense.
One of the most baffling things in modern history for sure. But some people did believe he would "bring peace to the Middle East".
It's because it's important to make sure anyone in office that supports Israel loses, EVEN IF their opponent also supports Israel.
The job of the voter is to make sure elected officials are held accountable. Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
> Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
How does that explain the outcome of Presidential elections that follow term limits? Donald Trump had no meaningful political record prior to the Republican primaries in 2015--and he was pro-Israel in his first term as well.
Stop thinking voters are rational.
I remember the pro Palestine groups were threatening to not vote for Kamala if the Dems didn’t push for a cease fire or whatever. All while the other side was Trump.
They didn’t go, “maybe we should do our best to prevent a worse situation“.
Even back then I had a gut feeling something like this would have cost the Dems the election.
People really need to stop saying Trump is worse than Kamala/Biden on Palestine.
Biden and the Democrats erased Palestine. There is nothing anymore that Trump could do about it. He can't resurrect the dead. Everything happened because of Democrats, not Trump.
Voters are very rational. They know that Democrats were the bad guys. It's why they currently have a 17% approval rating.
Let's all focus on removing the rest of the Democrats from power and replace them with true anti-Israel candidates. That's the only hope for a modern society.
I'm very confused by this comment. It sounds like satire, mixed with a few poll results (that lack context).
Elections in the US are mostly decided by who can drive turnout.
It isn't that the people who would have voted for Kamala (if not for her stance on Israel) voted for Trump instead, they just didn't vote at all.
I wish potential voters like that put a little more effort into harm mitigation but history shows they dont.
Unfortunately the answer is that the far left who have adopted Palestine as the omnicause are, to the last voter, stone cold idiots. It turns out that an electorate of morons behaves erratically.
"In a democracy, you get the government you deserve."
I don't think there was as much pushback about his policy as much as there was discontent with an economic slowdown and a somewhat ironic (considering where we find ourselves) frustration with his age.
You're confused if you think it was about his age. It was his cognitive ability.
Well there was a lot of people, especially on the dem side of the spectrum, who weren't a fan of his public unwavering support of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Internal investigations within the party allegedly agree with this analysis.
But yes, people dislike Biden for a lot of things he didn't deserve to be disliked for, such as inflation which was caused by COVID and Trump and which Biden did a fantastic job of controlling, but which parts of the public simply perceived as "inflation went wild under Biden". Still, even though it's not fair, the message "I will do nothing different from (unpopular incumbent)" isn't great campaign strategy, in my opinion.
based on recentish interviews (or book?) it was likely genuine in the sense of not being performative, but apparently she knew it was both false and the wrong thing to say but said it anyway out of loyalty to Biden.
If people payed attention, Kamala’s policies were decently well thought out and not the exact same as Biden.
It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman.
I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)
Broadly speaking, people don't pay attention. The message from her campaign[1] was that she would do nothing differently from Biden. This is a mistake even if (especially if!) her actual policies are different from Biden's.
The only thing Harris could come up with was, eventually: "unlike Biden, I will have a republican in my cabinet".
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
She was basically trying not to go negative on Biden while still in office. Biden and his team were actively pressuring her to stay onside, according to some reporting, which is indefensible. Reprehensible really. She should've burnt the bridge.
But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time.
Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.
This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and logic.
My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans.
What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
Voters still need to look through the barrage of miss- and disinformation, hatred, blaming etc. in short through all the shit the zone is flooded with. Republicans can if required always turn the dial further.
A principled democratic opponent on the other hand should not succumb to all of this, they should act with integrity etc. traits that also seem to not be pushed by algorithms nowadays. All in all I think it's a lot harder, especially when paired with short attention span of viewers.
Why can't there be 2 good parties? The very existence of an "evil" party is a problem.
Sure but that's the reality.
Democrats ran mostly fine candidates. I think people have really unrealistic if not impractical expectations. I personally want my politicians to be boring.
As to how to get Republicans to stop voting for evil? I have absolutely no idea and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not sure why anyone thinks the Democrats can conjure great people either. I just think that Republicans are the bigger problem by far.
They already did that - the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough (especially after we already got a preview of Trump's Republican party the first time around). They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough. Most of them actually wanted the job because they believed in the mission of government, not because they personally benefited from ruining whatever office or authority they might be given.
The only thing the non-Republican voters had to do was show up, hold their nose over whatever bullshit short-coming their rep had (in comparison to "perfect" and whatever it is the Republicans offer to voters), and vote for whichever jerk had a D next to their name. There were only ever two options and U.S. citizens fucked up - through either silence (mostly) or blind support of whatever it is that's happening now.
> the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough
But it wasn't.
> They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough
Clearly not. They lost.
What's your solution? Shout on Hacker News that "it should have been enough"?
Unfortunately I don't have any great solutions at this point, so voting with my feet seems like the only practical method I have for reducing my exposure to this electorate. Failing that - continuing to vote for the lesser-evil and shout from the various rented/lended soapboxes I have until something different happens.
D's need to figure out effective ways to counter the Republican bad actors, but no strategy is ever going to be enough, with a full blown authoritarian party in a 2 party system and massive propaganda ecosystem absolutely dominates the media and has thoroughly cooked millions of brains.
There's just no way to overcome all that every time, at the candidate level.
The right-wing propaganda machine, from Fox to Nick Fuentes to Joe Rogan - even to Twitter - has to be effectively dismantled or countered.
Yeah really the take away apparently is that Democrats should just lie, brazenly, about everything. I mean that's what Trump and JD Vance did and continue to do. When you can just invent your own world to live in, how are rational people supposed to deal with that? Would people have reacted different if Biden and Harris had truthfully said "oh and the world is still fucked up because of COVID, electing Donald Trump won't change that"
Murc's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law
This doesn't seem based in reality. You don't go from majority support for you running to less than that and blame the other side. There are demonstrable actions and events that have a distinct link to her downward popularity.
When examining why someone lost you generally don't insinuate that the loser did everything right and the other side are just bad people and that's why they won. That's a recipe for learning nothing and repeating the same mistake over and over again. Which unfortunately seems to be the national policy position.
I can't delete this comment. I am really sorry. I didn't mean to say any of this. Please flag these comments. I am so stupid.
You can fix this by emailing the mods, but otherwise - thanks for the correction
I sorry I opened my mouth. I swear I'll never do this ever again. Please PLEASE forgive me.
The biggest problem with her campaign was the one thing it was impossible to fix - the amount of time. Everything else is nitpicking and wish-casting.
And that's on Biden and his team, mostly. I do give credit to the party for actually forcing him out. That's a hard thing to do, and it's exactly what R's ought to have done to Trump a long time ago.
I disagree. When she announced her candidacy she largely had the election in her pocket. Had she run the same campaign for longer her support would have just been even lower. The only reason Biden stepped down was because the ruling class in the DNC made the call. The party voters were very vocally against him the whole way.
I'm a bit confused why you think republicans would toss aside a winning candidate. The party is laser focused on winning. That seems to be sadly a major difference. The DNC seems overly concerned being as milquetoast as possible and to simply assume a moral high ground.
I am wrong. Please flag so this can be deleted.
This fits a consistent trend:
Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff.
In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.
It's worse than that though. They are dismantling things that congress has mandated, and also just not making legally mandated payments, and no one is stopping them.
Congress has abdicated their duty of checks and balances. In a functioning government, the executive would have already been removed for not following legally mandated spending.
It's mandated by law how tariffs may be levied and how states may police themselves and how they may independently conduct their elections.
If you think law will stop this administration then you're not paying enough attention.
The law has stopped this administration on things from offshore wind farms to tariffs.
Maybe not fast enough, but it happens routinely.
The issue is that SCOTUS decides to use administration to reinterpret precedent.
The issue isn't that they can't be stopped, it's that they don't fear that they will be.
If you or I knowingly and flagrantly break the law, our understanding isn't that we'll be stopped and nothing else, it's that there will be punishment, that justice will be done.
How are we at a point now where we all know the administration is breaking the law. That they know they are breaking the law. That they can be stopped months or years later, but there is no justice. Not even the hint or thought of justice.
These people should fear the consequences of their actions, but at the moment there are none.
While true in the abstract, this administration has also dismantled numerous things that are mandated by congress.
Like what?
The department of education for one.
It's been crippled essentially without anything being passed by Congress
This is just an attempt by one political party to censor climate research. The hope is, if there is no research being done, then there will be no pressure to do anything about it. This is similar to the COVID mentality of, "stop the testing." If you don't test for COVID, the numbers don't get worse.
However, as someone who has worked at NCAR for many years, I can tell you that the place is a mess. The Table Mesa facility is mostly devoid of employees, with entire floors of offices left in a state of dark decay. Most of the vehicles in the parking lot are people hiking the trails, and days of yucky weather will reveal at most a couple dozen cars in the parking lot, mainly maintenance people. Elementary school groups continue to show up for tours, but the scientists and technical staff have moved to other buildings in town, specifically the Center Green and Foothills Lab clusters.
NCAR has become a mere shadow of its former self, with > 30% of its funding being absorbed by the Directorate and President's offices, with some executive salaries exceeding half a million dollars (not bad for a non-profit). The younger talent have fled, from the engineers up to the upper management, and what remains are aged-out scientists just waiting for retirement. Internal surveys, which seem to be sent out almost weekly, tend to show very low confidence in the leadership. It's a tanker running on inertia, and breaking it up and selling it off may be the best thing for it.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again
--
It's going to take a lot of glue to try to put the United States together again. Breaking things is easy, and the Trump administration absolutely excels at it. The White House, some buildings (some occupied) in Iran, the economy, the cohesion in so far as there still was any left in the country, the scientific community and the reputation of the United States as a dependable ally.
But once broken they are not so easily restored.
> NCAR’s climate research may not be the only thing driving the White House attack. It is widely believed to also be part of a campaign of political retribution waged against Colorado for its conviction and imprisonment of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who breached election security systems in a scheme to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The state has included the attack on NCAR in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Federal policy by wounded ego is still wounded ego.
It's also widely believed that is a big part of why he vetoed a bill to fund the Arkansas River Valley water pipeline in Colorado, to bring much needed clean drinking water to rural communities in southeastern Colorado (communities that overwhelming voted for Trump all three times).
Another reason widely believed to be a significant factor is that it would benefit Lauren Boebert's district, and Trump wanted to punish her for siding with Democrats in the House on releasing the Epstein files.
The pipeline funding bill had been very bipartisan. It had passed the House by unanimous consent, and whatever the equivalent procedure is in the Senate.
There was an attempt to override the veto. The House vote was 248-177, which failed because a veto override requires 2/3 of the votes. It would have needed 283. All Democrats voted to override. It would have taken 71 Republicans to push it over, which would have been 1/3 of Republicans present. It only got 35, 1/6th of the Republicans.
Fascism, plain and simple. This is caving to corporate interests at the expense of the public.
No, closing a research lab is not fascism.
Closing a single lab is not fascism. It becomes fascism when a regime systematically targets institutions that produce independent knowledge that doesn't align with Dear Leader's propoganda.
Nope, not fascism.
Maybe another f word then. Like Fucking stupid.
The goal is to privatize these things and have their buddies own it, while taxpayers still pay for it. So yes, fascism.
https://www.notus.org/health-science/trumps-privatization-of...
You mean techno-fascism? Since this benefits Meta, Microsoft, Google, et. al. Cheaper oil, gas, electricity infrastructure means bigger profit margin. It’s not so much they want pollution or to go all in on oil infrastructure specifically, but less oversight and regulation so they can build more and faster for cheaper.
Fascism is when research labs are reorganized?
"reorganized"
Yes, as described in the article.
>A month earlier, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), had said the White House would “break up” NCAR, citing its role in “climate alarmism.”
This is absolutely the biggest pain of today's politics. You can't argue with their dogma even when it agains literally all the facts. Needless to say, both parties are doing it. Just a little bit differently.
What beloved right wing institutions can be destroyed once democracy is restored?
A NASCAR track somewhere? A ban on country music? Wearing the red cap? Wife-beater shirts? Diesel pickups with emission controls removed?
You're mistaking the stereotype for the people in charge of the policy. If you want to destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private yachts. nationalize car dealerships. break up the megacorps.
>nationalize car dealerships
Or just allow direct sales.
And breakup Paramount+ CBS CNN Showtime HBO Warner Bros TNT TBS MTV DC Studios Nickelodeon Comedy Central Cartoon Network. And the other media empires!
The problem with that is those networks are pretty tiny if you don't count sports. Mr. Beast has more viewers the CNN's top show.
But the people of the stereotype helped those idiots to come to power.
> destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private (…)
Wouldn’t that validate the rhetoric that Democrats have the same methods as the Nazis: Threats, destruction, (racial preference), and social censorship?
You actually don't need to engage with the arguments of people arguing in bad faith.
Sure, but its against the "actual" bad guys this time.
Everyone thinks they're the good guys, even the bad guys.
Yeah, or, hear me out, we could stop with the stupid culture war crap and get back to running the country like adults?
It takes two to tango. Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.
> Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.
Are you using some nonstandard definition of "progressive" and "MAGA", or do you genuinely have the belief that the left wing is closer to the center majority of this country in "culture war" matters than the right wing?
Spoken like a true culture warrior! It's not a matter of who is "closer", rather it's a matter of which party leans into politicizing the policing of cultural choices in the first place.
Techo bros control everything now and they want us in our silos.
I read this as techno bros. Frankly that wouldn't be a bad life.
bah meant 'tech.' I’ll leave it unedited and accept my shame.
They’re all so upset that they have nothing worth saving and they take it out on everybody else with wanton destruction.
SpaceX should be nationalized to restore the capabilities that were lost when DOGE and Musk gutted our national science agencies.
Crypto should be first on the chopping block. Then they should designate A16Z a national security risk just like they did with Anthropic.
NASCAR is awesome. Don't diss NASCAR.
PACs.
Casual racism.
Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country and fix how our officials are elected. I wish I had the answer on how to solve this, but alas… I’ll defer to people who are smarter than me.
No hope even with that, as long as Citizens United is still alive and kicking.
> Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country
Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos.
What is your idea of democracy that needs to be restored in this country?
You're selling yourself short here given that your response is the most intelligent of its 8 siblings.
For some it's more iconic than for others.
What is that supposed to mean? Don't paraphrase, just say it.
Boulder is not a town you generally want to upset, I would expect this to have an outsized inverse impact compared to what the White House expects over the long term.
There’s a lot of different reasons that have nothing to do with this particular situation that has led to the saying that Boulder is “nine square miles surrounded by reality”…
Could you expand on this a bit?
Very rich, very liberal, very loud, has a lot of free time too. Elon raised his first set of kids there for a reason.
Folks there tend to have a lot of hooks in a lot of places.
Why? When I think of boulder I do not think of “people that resonate with the American public”