Democrats need to start nominating famous actors and influencers.

Trump's reality tv show is not a major part of what got him elected but if someone wants to fund and convince Mark Cuban to try a doppelganger campaign, a fool and his money are soon parted. Cuban seems to know better than to try with his own fortune.

When they did decide to switch, it had to be Harris, because she was the only one who could legitimately claim to use Biden's election funds, and they didn't have time to raise money for anyone else.

From there, they didn't fix the other mistake - the one Democrats have been making for at least a decade. The Democrats' natural constituency is the working class. They can't win without it. But much of the working class is rather socially conservative. The Democrats have spent the last decade telling working class people that if they, the working class, don't think gay marriage is a good idea, or don't think trans people belong on womens' sports teams and in womens' restrooms, or aren't comfortable with abortion, then they are moral lepers and their entire culture needs to be completely eradicated. Well, the natural result is that at least some of those people are going to flip you the bird and vote for the other guy. Democrats wonder "how could people be so stupid?" I ask, "How could you be so stupid? What did you think was going to happen?"

That's the culture war of a decade ago: Obergefell v Hodges was in 2015.

I don't hold it against them that they didn't budge on this one. Beating up on a minority for political points is morally repugnant, and the whole appeal of Democrats is that they have some kind of integrity.

The "moral lepers" thing feels to me like a distortion of reality. The actual Democratic politicians generally didn't engage in denigrating their base. Maybe you mean people on the disgusting website.

If you mean that the messaging on trans rights alienated swing voters then I think it's probably true, but moderates and swing voters do support general anti-discrimination laws but are wary of policies on sports participation and youth medical care.

If you mean that it was the centerpiece of their identity and everything that were campaigning for, and their pivotal, most important issue, then I don't think that's accurate.

But they did deliberately elevate transgender rights as a moral and civil rights issue. This was a trade off (energize progressives, lose some moderates). Conservatives effectively focused on targeted attacks (bathrooms, sports).

I think that maybe the gamble didn't pay off. The messaging should have probably been about protecting from discrimination, and debate should be focused on attacking republican establishment for being aggressive and hateful.

But really all of this doesn't matter. A better candidate, a white or latino strong charismatic man would have beaten Trump.

The inconvenient thing is, average people are -phobic naturally or historically. That’s just the fact of life. Tolerance, the conscious inhibition of natural processes, is a good-enough contract that keeps them away from negativity, but you cannot tell everyone they are hitler if they feel otherwise, as opposed to act against. That’s bullshit and emotional hegemony. Some of the left figures (can’t name, just echoing some clips) even explicitly enjoyed disturbing these phobias. It all seemed like contrasting mockery rather than integration. I understand that most of it was addressed at far right, but you can’t target them with such negativity without affecting the rest as well.

How could you be so stupid? What did you think was going to happen?

I think they only gained more momentum. They would do so with or without Trump winning because they demonstrate levels of illusion far beyond all return points. They are de-platforming, de-employing people, ostracizing their own people who dare to speak any sort of reasonable thought, and they cheer after doing so. Do you really think they can pause and reflect? It almost feels like US needs a third force that isn’t hitler or hitler and cares about just normal society.

Harris tried to correct some of her past mistakes and did better this time around but she should have never been in that position to begin with. Most of the blame should go to Biden and the activists who want to self-immolate the party on the altar of tokenism.

Perhaps there is clearly something wrong with the voters to opt for a

> racist, homophobic, sexist, rapist, felonic avatar of Hitler

https://youtu.be/eVddGSTjEd0?t=51

Or maybe the explanation is that everybody behaved "responsibly" but they never got the changes they wanted, and chances for anything different looked more and more bleak. Why do you treat this like a single event? It is not. Lots of prior experiences fed into this.

For example, as bad as this is for us (I'm German, but I lived many years in the US once), for Europe I think it is good what is happening. Now we are forced to move and mature. Crisis are not always bad. The personalities involved this time make it especially hard to look at the whole thing calmly. I admit I have a harder time seeing what the US may get out of this except for the shakeup as a general chance. However, too much is concentrated on the personalities, and, like you did, on blaming everybody. How about Democrats look what they did wrong? I mean, other than reverting to "we didn't think the voters would be so stupid", in which case I have little hope for them to get anything positive out of this.

> racist, homophobic, sexist, rapist, felonic avatar of Hitler

And a black woman at that, to further reduce Democrats’ chances.

I’m basing this on the anecdotal evidence from many people who I spoke to, who have zero problem telling me a woman cannot be a leader. Including my own non white immigrant grandmother, who grew up without rights.

Many people don’t like to see people of a perceived lower socioeconomic status pass them up. It makes themselves feel inferior.

You can count on one hand the number of people you know well who are willing to admit they voted against Harris because of her gender or color. This is a critical distinction.

So unless you're giving big racist or misogynist vibes in how you communicate with them, the racists and misogynists you know "well" may be keeping their opinions to themselves.

Harris was part of the Biden administration, she was the 2IC of the Biden administration, she endorsed the policies of the Biden administration and the only official difference between her and Biden was that she was a different race & gender and polled much better than he did. Although unofficially she looked mentally sharper than Biden.

It is difficult to say it was race and gender when the approved candidate of the appropriate race and gender was clearly unelectable. At least Harris was a close call, Biden had lost before the race started. If the Biden administration had been popular and had some achievements to run on then she'd probably have won.

It's depressing not to fit into either side, to be honest. I'm both a racist, sexist homophobe, and a libtard, depending on which echo chamber I am engaging in.

Sexism was probably a small part of why Democrats lost, but much more important reasons were the economy, alienating their base with their Israel policy, moving to the right on immigration instead of permissive policies which are popular with their base and strategically important for future demographics, and focusing most of their attention on highly divisive culture war issues that effect a vanishingly small portion of the population.

Good pollsters would have been a waste of money in that environment and I'm sure the Harris campaign was judiciously watching their budget.

> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

This quote doesn’t apply just to white men, or even just men.

Please keep using the same tired comparisons. It helps a lot.

> Would it not in that case / Be simpler for the government / To dissolve the people / And elect another?

Biden should have pulled out a lot sooner. When? At least a year before the election. But you can easily make arguments for earlier and earlier all the way back to having been too old to run for President in the first place, despite having had a really good term.

Also Harris needs to fire her consultants, who were still trying to play "fair" in an unfair fight and pulled back on the one attack line which was working: that Republicans are "weird".

Things are unlikely to improve until voters start primarying out anyone still trying to do bipartisan equivocation.

Isn't the Democrat brand supposed to be that weird is encouraged? When did they start being against weird people?

I think that loses a lot of effectiveness when people like this [0] and this [1] are part of your cabinet.

0: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/mh-6-1-levine-1-...

1: https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/2019-b...

Me, I can see why the label "weird" would apply to Brinton therefore the Democrats would have a hard time using that word to attack Republicans… except, of course, for the fact that Brinton was fired in 2022.

And if you're going to bring up arrests, then you have to wonder about the mind of a man who frames his own arrest warrant mug shot, on charges of election interference, on the wall just outside the Oval Office: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mug_shot_of_Donald_Trump#/medi...

The fact you show a picture with no name and I had to figure out who they were from the URL slug and multiple google searches because they're not the most famous person with those name fragments was more confusing.

Having finally found a video, not even the Admiral's American accent causes confusion. Only surprise I've got there is that all the trans women I know in person have had voice coaching.

And yes, it’s so goddamn frustrating that Clinton-era consultants are still given meetings.

I predict the Trump term will be an economic disaster on the numbers, but this will have no effect on people's stuck belief that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic management.

Even when the economy's good, they're going to be hindered on messaging until they drop that.

Meanwhile a bunch of them are running around like "the problem's that we were too nice to trans people!" lol no, the problem is the latent one that's been hanging there waiting to be triggered by one party or the other since the '80s, the one any expert should have been watching for a shift in—or looking to move first on—this entire time.

I disagree. What we're witnessing today is that while people are happy with many of the fruits of globalization (cheap Chinese junk, cheap flights, ability to travel anywhere, remote work, etc, etc) our politicians have just about done everything in their power to increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.

A Democrat party that could actually deliver on these things (rather than exacerbate the problems as they have done) would fare far better electorally. No need to put in place unpopular, destructive tariffs.

i.e. things from overseas

> increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.

i.e. things that have large skilled labor inputs within the US and can't be exported, plus housing which half the population doesn't want to be cheaper. This is just "Baumol cost disease". The major component of healthcare, childcare, and education is the wages of other Americans.

Let's not kid ourselves that the election was a fair comparison of economic policies.