electoralism

linky

So basically they increased they federal minimum wage for salary employees. By a LOT. This is a huge huge increase for a lot of people. And it is recalculated for further automatic increases every 3 years. I personally know people who will benefit massively from this.

And yet I never heard about it. I would actually give a point to the Biden administration for this...it's a good and meaningful, if small, systemic change. I asked the turbolibs in my life about it....they didn't know. I asked folks who are going to be receiving this increase...they didn't know why they were getting it. Some of them didn't even know they were getting it. They just thought their boss was being nice. A few didn't know they were getting it at all and will probably just be surprised when suddenly their paycheck is bigger.

Like how are you not leading with stuff like this? Hey millions of Americans who wants a $10,000 plus raise automatically? It doesn't impact hourly employees so it still leaves a lot of the working class out, but many many working class people are salaried and below this threshold and will benefit a lot from this. How is this not plastered on every billboard? "Dear America look how much of a raise we got you."

They didn't want to win on the economy. If they did they would have led with things like this. They wanted to win on their thirst for blood. I think the fact that nobody knew about this change is compelling evidence enough.

HOW CAN ANYONE BE THIS DAFT

https://archive.is/lbWKO By Michael C. Bender Nov. 11, 2024Updated 3:17 p.m. ET

Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald J. Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of preliminary election data.

The numbers help fill in the picture of Mr. Trump’s commanding victory, showing it may not represent the resounding endorsement of his agenda that the final Electoral College vote suggests. Mr. Trump won the White House not only because he turned out his supporters and persuaded skeptics, but also because many Democrats sat this election out, presumably turned off by both candidates.

Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.

The drop-off spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats — including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.

The decline in key cities, including Detroit and Philadelphia, made it exceptionally difficult for Ms. Harris to win the battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The drop-off is an extraordinary shift for Democrats, who, motivated by Mr. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, had turned out in eye-popping numbers for the three subsequent elections. They clipped his power in Washington in 2018, removed him from office in 2020 and defeated many of his handpicked candidates for battleground races in 2022.

Democrats said they need a new way to re-engage voters who are fatigued by the anti-Trump message and distrustful of both parties.

The reasons behind the drop-off are varied. For one, some backsliding could be expected after the record turnout in 2020, which was aided by pandemic rule changes that increased mail voting.

Some analysts point out that Ms. Harris was simply the latest political casualty of a postpandemic global trend favoring challengers, no matter the incumbents’ politics, in places like Japan, South Africa, South Korea and Britain.

But narrow results in swing states indicate that Democrats had an opportunity to turn back Mr. Trump once again. Some party officials said Ms. Harris did not have enough time to overhaul the campaign after taking over for Mr. Biden, whose popularity has plunged since his 2020 win.

Others were more critical of her messaging, suggesting the campaign was chasing ghosts in trying to appeal to Republican crossover voters by campaigning with conservatives like Liz Cheney and talking about threats to democracy. Instead, these people said, the Harris campaign should have spent more time talking about how her economic policies would affect an important, but disaffected, part of her party.

Structural differences between the Republican and Democratic operations may have played a role, too. The Harris campaign, flush with cash, relied on a traditional turnout program that stationed field staff members in campaign offices across the battleground map. To some degree, the data suggest that program worked; Ms. Harris won more voters than Mr. Biden in four of the six battleground states where the count is nearly complete. But that increase was swamped by Mr. Trump’s gains.

The former president seized on new federal election rulings that, for the first time, let campaigns directly coordinate with outside groups focused on pushing voters to the polls. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, poured $175 million into canvassers for America PAC, whose team effectively took its marching orders from the Trump campaign. Editors’ Picks A Union Square Date Night for Inter-Borough Relationships Don’t Say ‘Macbeth’ and Other Strange Rituals of the Theater World Are Seed Oils Actually Bad for You?

“It’s really a question of playbooks,” said Donna Brazile, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. “Trump had edgier and stronger material that he was constantly communicating at rallies, on podcasts and in other appearances. Democrats tried to compete in seven battleground states and call it a day.”

In Pennsylvania, the biggest electoral prize on the battleground map, Mr. Trump’s victory received an outsize boost from an unlikely place — the five counties with the highest percentage of registered Democrats: Allegheny, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery and Philadelphia.

Ms. Harris won these counties, but not by the margins needed to overcome Republican-heavy areas of the state. Total turnout was down from 2020 in all five Democratic strongholds, which could partly explain how Ms. Harris received 78,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump added 24,000 votes to his total in these same counties.

This gap left Ms. Harris with little chance of winning Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump’s victory margin in the state, as of Sunday, was about 145,000 votes.

In Wisconsin, the voter participation rate overall was among the highest of any state. But voters in Democratic-heavy counties simply could not keep pace with gains from their Republican counterparts.

In the eight counties that include Milwaukee, Madison and the surrounding suburbs, Ms. Harris surpassed the Biden totals by about 20,000 votes. But Mr. Trump gained about the same. In the rest of Wisconsin, Democrats were drubbed.

In Michigan, Mr. Trump’s victory was mainly a result of the drop-off in Wayne County, home to Detroit and diverse suburbs like Dearborn and Hamtramck that supply the state with its most significant source of Democratic votes.

While Ms. Harris easily won Wayne County, she did it with 61,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden had, a decline of about 10 percent, while Mr. Trump added 24,000 votes, a jump of about 9 percent.

That swing limited Ms. Harris’s hopes of winning Michigan, where Mr. Trump was ahead by about 81,000 votes.

Branden Snyder, a liberal organizer in Detroit, said he had conversations with other activists in the final weeks of the race about how strange they thought it was for Ms. Harris to bring Ms. Cheney, a former Republican House member from Wyoming, on the campaign trail in Detroit. Many progressive voters in the city viewed Ms. Harris as a centrist, he said, and they may have been better served hearing from a fellow liberal who could explain why they should be excited to support the vice president.

He said he vividly recalled realizing that Democrats were in trouble during the final weekend of the race when he was knocking on doors on the east side of Detroit and he could not find a way to persuade a middle-aged Black woman to cast her ballot. Black women have long been some of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voters.

“When you have Black women not voting because they say nothing is going to happen — that neither candidate is going to change anything — that is doomsday for Democrats,” Mr. Snyder said. A Nationwide Trend

The warning bells are ringing for Democrats well beyond the battlegrounds. Ms. Harris won fewer votes than Mr. Biden in 36 of 47 states. (Results remained incomplete on Sunday in Alaska, Arizona and California.)

In predominantly urban counties nationwide where most votes had been counted, Ms. Harris received two million fewer votes than Mr. Biden had four years earlier. Overall votes in these counties were down by about 1.7 million.

The trend was especially striking in Cook County, Ill., home to Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city. Overall turnout there was down by 20 percent. Mr. Trump collected about his same 2020 total vote, but Ms. Harris’s total was more than 417,000 votes behind Mr. Biden’s.

In the nation’s suburbs, however, there was clearer evidence that Mr. Trump had successfully persuaded Biden voters to flip. Turnout in predominantly suburban counties held steady from 2020, but Ms. Harris drew about 940,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden, while Mr. Trump added 1.3 million votes.

In counties where at least 40 percent of white adults hold a college degree, total turnout declined by about 230,000 votes, or 3 percent, from 2020. Ms. Harris won 271,000 fewer votes in such places, while Mr. Trump added 61,000.

In Texas, the party’s decade-long dream of turning it blue suffered a significant setback. While total turnout was about the same as four years ago, Ms. Harris won about 450,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump enhanced his margin by 485,000 votes.

In New Jersey, where Democratic presidential candidates typically win by about 15 percentage points, Ms. Harris won by just five points. It was the narrowest margin in more than three decades, when then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas outlasted President George H.W. Bush by two percentage points.

This year in New Jersey, total turnout was down by about 442,000 votes, just shy of the decline of 475,000 votes for Ms. Harris from Mr. Biden.

Mr. Trump, once again, made gains despite a decrease in turnout, lifting his total in the state by 26,000 votes.

I saw #Recount2024 trending and ... yeah. Blue MAGA everyone.

Not a lib

roughly my face reading some quotes here. There is truly well of unbound optimism and naivety in americans

this person does an inverse

Kamala hasn’t picked up her phone since Tuesday.

74,263,792 at current count, last election he got 74,223,975. So about 40,000 more. Relatively minuscule, but still an achievement for him

The top reasons voters gave for not supporting Harris were that inflation was too high (+24), too many immigrants crossed the border (+23), and that Harris was too focused on cultural issues rather than helping the middle class (+17).

Other high-testing reasons were that the debt rose too much under the Biden-Harris Administration (+13), and that Harris would be too similar to Joe Biden (+12).

These concerns were similar across all demographic groups, including among Black and Latino voters, who both selected inflation as their top problem with Harris. For swing voters who eventually chose Trump, cultural issues ranked slightly higher than inflation (+28 and +23, respectively).

The lowest-ranked concerns were that Harris wasn’t similar enough to Biden (-24), was too conservative (-23), and was too pro-Israel (-22).

We have a lot of work to do. The general public doesn't understand their own economic system and blames everyone except Capitalists for their eggs costing $5 instead of $2.

Also those numbers around "Israel" and Palestine...

archive link

Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.

lmao

linky

Bernie 2016 was a much better campaign than 2020 because of one reason. Bernie personally hated Hillary, didn't rate Hillary, and not Hillary's friend. The 2016 campaign against Hillary had much more artillery and venom than the 2020 campaign against Biden. Bernie has always been Joe Biden's friend when they were at the Senate.

We all maligned the collusion and consolidation of power that happened before Super Tuesday 2020 - but that was really pertaining to Klobuchar and Mayo Pete dropping out, two third rate politicians. The race was not over then. After it was a 1v1 race, Bernie REFUSES to attack Biden like he attacked Hillary. Biden is as much of a corporate sellout as Hillary. Bernie could've attacked Biden's cognitive decline, which was clear even back in 2020. He could've attacked Biden corrupt family dealing. I was a volunteer canvasser in 2016 and 2020, I knocked thousands of doors for Bernie in NH and MA, it was incredibly frustrating that Bernie wouldn't make a case against Biden like he did against Hillary. That's why Bernie 2020 sucked.

Bernie rolled over, and joined Democrat leadership in Biden administration, essentially extinguished the populist left wing and ceding the populist working class movement to the right. And here we are, Trump is 47th, because Bernie refused to attack "my friend Joe".

Now Bernard had the balls to blame the Democratic party for abandoning the working class, dude you abandoned your volunteers and campaign for your friend Joe.

How many emails will it take to get "Russia!"... three

We don't know yet but fraud is on the table. There was so much Russian interference and free-fall for them on X and then with America PAC, which should have been a GOTV campaign but turned into a paying people off for votes until (?) the justice department warned Musk. But they went undercover or just stopped?

Voters made a statement but until we have a full security overview of this election, we won't know if it's the people's will or the will of foreign adversaries.

There's some sanity in the thread:

I would caution against the message or notion that there was a material impact of foreign efforts until more is known. It robs Trump voters of their agency, ignores their real fears about cost of living and social issues, and wasn't an effective message last time.

There was a great quote I read from post 2016 done by some deep research, I can't remember who wrote it and I'm paraphrasing as I heard it at a lecture in 2017: "Trump voters have a sense they've been waiting in line their entire lives for a slice of the American dream, and they're not where they thought they'd be in life. They feel like they're working hard, playing by the rules, and they're owed something by society. They see progressive policies as giving benefits to other people, which effectively is allowing them to cut in line, and get access to the American dream they don't have. They want those policies to stop, and they're willing to blow up the system to make it happen."

Lots of women in the thread think it all boils down to sexism. "Kamala lost because she's a woman."

CW: SA

Then there's stuff like this:

Early exit polling data suggests that Joe Biden received a higher share of the women’s vote than both Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton did in their respective presidential runs, by at least 3 percentage points.

More broadly, the party’s persistent push to shift rightward has not proven to be a winning strategy. The Democratic base is energized by BOLD, progressive policies, not by chasing endorsements from neocon, right-wing, warhawks like Dick Cheney. This drive to appeal to a “center” often ignores that many independent voters aren’t inherently centrists. They’re driven by issues that demand clear positions, not ideological compromise.

This was a challenging election cycle for Democrats, partly because they didn’t hold a primary to choose the strongest candidate. The Democratic Party needs to return to its principles and embrace a true primary process, so that the most popular candidates emerge, rather than consolidating against enormously popular candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren

Are the libs learning? Welcome to another look inside Lib Land. Anything specific you want me to share?

Amid Democratic mourning over the loss of the presidential election to Donald Trump, the party chair risked deepening already growing divisions by rebuking the leftwing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders for saying Democrats have “abandoned working class people”.

“This is straight up BS,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, said on Thursday. “[Joe] Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime – saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line.”

Harrison also defended Kamala Harris, the vice-president who lost the election to Trump, for proposing policies that “would have fundamentally transformed the quality of life and closed the racial wealth gap for working people across this country”.

He said: “From the child tax credits, to [$]25k for a down payment for a house to Medicare covering the cost of senior healthcare in their homes. There are a lot of post-election takes and this one ain’t a good one.”

I'll go first:

• Libs will suddenly discover that there's concentration camps in Gaza. This will lead to one protest with cheeky signs.
• Someone assassinates a prominent politician (not Trump)
• McDonalds' releases a new burger, which Trump tweets about.
• John Bolton releases a new book.
• Trump inflames tensions with Indonesia or Mauritania, suddenly everyone is a geopolitical expert
• Trump pledges to give more weapons to Ukraine after meeting Zelensky. Stops all support after meeting Putin, pretends not to have made the previous pledge.
• Trump will do a minor goof which libs will bring up for the next four years. His supporters will carry around comfort blankets to show support