Summary
Despite Trump’s criminal record, serial lying, and racist demagoguery, he won the 2024 US presidential election, reflecting America’s deep-seated anxieties and cultural divisions.
Trump’s celebrity persona, economic populism, and culture warrior appeals resonated with his base, while Kamala Harris faced challenges in defining herself and overcoming gender and racial biases.
The election underscores the decay of American democracy, raising concerns about the future of the nation.
The decision to seek re-election by President Biden’s inflated sense of self-importance cost us.
It would have been prudent for him to adhere to his previous commitment and serve a single term, allowing the Democratic Party to conduct its primaries without undue interference. The Harris campaign’s very late entry into the race was premature and potentially detrimental to the party’s chances of success.
The Harris campaign turned out great initially.
They fucked it up immediately by saying they weren’t going to be any different from Biden on Gaza and that was one of the wedge topics that had been created about Biden.
Rather than compromise with the electorate to get people out to vote, they tried to use Trump to bully voters out of the house saying he’d be worse.
I don’t think Gaza specifically was decisive here. It could’ve been with a thinner majority, but Harris lost before Michigan finished counting and Trump is collecting swing states like MTG cards. The way I see it, this isn’t the result of one unpopular policy, but rather a wider campaign failure that destroyed Democrat voter enthusiasm.
Yeah. I think it was the biggest issue and was easily solvable, but the campaign was a fuck up through and through.
Across Biden and Harris they kept trying to steal a sliver of the conservative vote instead of just taking from the huge infrequent voter slice. They didn’t do anything to try to get that slice to vote for them, they just threatened them with Trump if they didn’t get out to vote.
They were right to. Everybody who abstained from voting is going to end up getting their comeuppance now, and I’m not going to feel bad for them.
Maybe, but I strongly suspect that there were enough other things going in Trump’s favor that if she’d broken with Biden on Gaza–which is not nearly as easy as you make it sound–then we would have still ended up in the same place, except that different people would now be blaming her for that decision.
(Just to be clear, I am not saying that her campaign was flawless, only that it is easy to second guess.)
It’s ironic that Palestine is just going to be more Israel now. At least we won’t have to worry anymore about Palestine.