Summary
Following the Democrats’ recent election losses, some, including Senator Bernie Sanders, argue that the party failed by “abandoning” the working class.
However, critics counter that Democrats under Biden implemented one of the most pro-working class agendas in decades, passing union-supportive policies, job-creating infrastructure bills, and increasing wages.
Despite these efforts, Democrats saw little electoral benefit, especially among nonwhite working-class voters, as cultural grievances took precedence for many working-class voters.
Analysts suggest that the party’s best path forward may be to focus on college-educated suburban voters rather than attempting to win back working-class Republicans.
Biden/Harris: [Works to help working class]
Working Class: [Doesn’t listen / pay attention]
Working Class: WhY ArE yoU igNOrinG us??
Or they failed at messaging.
If Kamala would have spent half the time she spent talking about Trump, talking about corporate price gouging instead and how she would go after corporations like a bulldog, voters would have had a place to look for blame other than the Democrats.
Instead her vision was narrow and she mostly just compared herself to Trump.
Yes, she had some good policy ideas. Yes she was backing some other good policy ideas. Yes Biden has been great.
Her messaging still sucked.
Likely because she didn’t want to piss off corporate donors.
It was this. I was really engaged this season. I was fully on board to support her, but towards the end, I had to remind myself why I was excited. I was already going to support her, and I had forgotten what made me excited more than once.
If that happened to me, a fervent supporter of what she represented, everybody else who was more lukewarm forgot completely. She was the candidate of change at the beginning and was Joe Biden 2.0 by the end.
If Dems don’t figure out how to capture excitement in their next attempts, if they can’t energize the young who are so naive they follow Instagram influencers without a second thought, they’re gonna keep losing to these terrible but charismatic Republicans.
She was a prosecutor and was mostly using court room style arguments that appeal to reason.
And that works great in court and for high information voters, but doesn’t connect with people’s emotions.
Trump connected with people’s frustrations and grievances and basically argued that Harris and Biden were to blame. There’s no rational argument that can counter an appeal to emotion.
Not really. She did talk about policy but media only ever highlighted her few minutes rightfully calling trump a fascist.
Not really her fault that media wants ratings and clicks instead of doing their job as the fourth estate.
Hell, that was a whole media cycle where the media wanted her to call him a fascist and blow up, but she kept saying “let’s move forward.” The slogan became a thing because the media kept insisting she respond to him and she wouldn’t.
Seeing everyone blame her for not doing the things she was doing makes me feel more emboldened that this was inevitable.
I’m not saying she didn’t talk about policy I’m saying she didn’t connect with voters about policy.
Trump didn’t need to connect about policy because he could connect with them emotionally. Kamala just tried to appeal to reason but when people are frustrated with the government that doesn’t work so well.
And it doesn’t work well on busy low information voters either.
In other words she lacked charisma. I like her policies I don’t think she would have been a bad president and I voted for her.
But she talks like a prosecutor. And she uses that type of argument style. And it just doesn’t connect as easily as appeals to emotion.
Like every Democrat for the last forever I didn’t like her policies in general although there were a couple that weren’t terrible. On the other hand I would have gladly taken all her policies over the absolute shit storm that Trump is about to rain on this country. The closest thing to a Democrat I liked was when Bernie ran on the Democrat ticket, but then the DNC did everything in their power to fuck him over. Maybe he would have lost anyway, but he never even really got the chance, so I guess we’ll never really know.
I’ve been thinking since the election, there needs to be a rebranding. Most Republican voters agree with “liberal” policies. Most liberals agree with “progressive” policies. We need to start calling it what it is.
Bernie, AOC, Warren are liberals.
Clinton, Biden, Harris are conservatives.
DeSantis, Trump, Huckabee-Sanders are authoritarian elites.
Liberals are pissed because we keep reaching across the aisle in hopes of centrism from the DNC candidates. And conservatives won’t even vote for their values.
Or Biden/Harris didn’t works to help working class, or at least not hard enough.
Biden/Harris: [drops the bare minimum of crumbs from the table without pursuing any enduring change]
Harris campaign: [runs as far and as fast as possible to the right, abandoning policies to help the working class Harris campaigned on in 2020]
people that have no clue what they’re talking about: tHe wORkiNg cLasS wAs DOiNG gREat aCTuaLlY