So, I went out to eat for thanksgiving with family, and on the way, I listened to that pod save america podcast with the kamala harris campaignj workers on it. And ugh, they are just so clueless. Like, at one point, they addressed the question of "why wasnt harris more different than biden?" And the answer is that they didn't want a set a bad precedent in having a vice president throw the previous president under the bus and they were locked into the same brand of politics.
....and that's why you lost. No, really. People didn't want Joe Biden, they wanted something DIFFERENT. And everything else was just "well we didn't have time to plan a more effective campaign" and "well the fundamentals were just so strong against us." Like there was that quote about how the swings states have so many conservatives, so many liberals, and so many moderates/independents and they had to "dominate" the moderates.
*sigh*
So, having studied political trends throughout modern political history (ie the last century), let me say this. By the time a vice president runs on the previous president's ticket, unless they're EXTREMELY POPULAR, they almost never win. This is because these presidents are unpopular by the time they leave office. It's like outside of realignments, 8 years is the maximum people are willing to accept the same thing, and after 8 years, they want change.
Even in cases where you have a strong charismatic realigning figure, the VP is almost never as popular as the previous president. Truman was never as overwhelmingly popular as FDR, and Bush rode Reagan's coattails. You could argue a case for Johnson, but he took over Kennedy's first term 3 years in after he was assassinated, and served out the rest of his 8 years. And then the democratic coalition collapsed after that.
So...let's be honest. It seems like this conventional knowledge of running on the previous president is a load of crap. Unless you got some super popular realigning figure, you probably don't wanna be the previous president's VP running for president. Because people are tired of that brand of politics.
And that's what killed Harris IMO. People didn't want 4 more years of Joe Biden. That's why he had to step aside. It wasnt JUST the cognitive decline, it was the fact that that brand of politics always sucked. It's the same thing as Clinton. People didn't want 4 years of Clinton after 8 years of Obama. They didn't even want Clinton in 2008. We got 2008's leftovers in 2016. But it was "her turn" and we all just had to put up with it.
Democrats are clueless. It's not about being in touch, everything with them is legacy. You wanna know why the democrats couldnt go with sanders? Because Sanders would erase Obama's legacy, the ACA, and make Obama look like crap. It's the same thing with McGovern. They couldn't let him push for a UBI since it would undermine the war on poverty and all of those crappy programs. Democrats have this obsession with legacy. They can't just have the next person who comes around upstage the previous one and tarnish their legacy, all these people care about is their legacy and looking good in the history books. And that's why they had to push Harris as a centrist. because if she ran as a progressive, she would make Biden look like crap, and again, these peoples' egos are more important than doing what's right for the country. Biden literally was gonna have us all go down with the ship with him. His internal polling had him losing in a landslide, and he literally decided his feelings and his legacy were more important. And then he dropped a mess on Harris's lap when he did back down, and Harris ended up being Hubert Humphrey again.
Is it possible Harris was screwed no matter what she did? Yeah. But honestly, running as a centrist was a big mistake. And these people in the DNC consultant class are just so fricking clueless. They don't get it. They dont understand politics.
I know Kyle made a video claiming that Harris's campaign was sabotaged because the same person who ran it wanted harris out to get a new candidate in. But, I'm going to apply hanlon's razor on this one. Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to pure stupidity. The person who ran her campaign was one of those die hard centrist types who wanted biden and harris out to push their centrist ideology on the party. They hated that biden gave even small concessions to progressives, and they wanted the party to be hardline centrist.
And then Harris ran as a hardline centrist. Was she sabotaged? No. At least not in a malicious way. Basically, she ended up doing exactly what those consultant class morons wanted, she ran to the center to appease moderate voters, and she ended up having no appeal and losing because of it. Again, don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity. The malice was against progressivism. The stupidity was toward harris, because they pushed the exact vision they wanted to push on the country through harris, and they lost.
Seriously. Everything with these people is centrism centrism centrism. They're so clueless. They actively hamstrung themselves by refusing to allow harris to be a change candidate, and it's not because they hated harris and wanted her to lose. It was because they kept trying to force this crappy ideology on the country that no one actually wanted. And the voters voted for trump as a result.
I figured the democrats would try to find a way of weaseling out of responsibility for their failure, and now they're doing it. They're just saying "oh we couldnt have won, we couldnt have done anything differently, we were just screwed", and I'm not gonna lie, to some extent there is some truth to that. But to be fair, a lot of that was also because the democratic brand of politics is FUNDAMENTALLY UNPOPULAR. And they keep trying to ram it down our throats, and they just dont understand voters.
Imagine if after 2008 and 2012's republican failures, they kept ignoring the tea party and kept pushing neocons no one wanted. Say they forced Jeb on us in 2016. Would the GOP have won? Probably not. But then after doing that, they would just do the same thing "oh well what could we do? run donald trump?" As someone who lives in the timeline where trump won, YES. DUH. And it's the same thing here. Bernie 2016 would've changed EVERYTHING. And if anything, the reason the progressive left is in such an anemic state is because the democrats sabotaged us and purged everyone from the party they could. They got rid of Nina Turner for calling Biden half a bowl of crap. Even though she was right, and I'm pretty sure like 2/3 of the country would agree with that. They're clueless. They stifle dissent, they force this exact brand of politics on us, and then they go "well what can we do? literally anything else?" Ugh.
All I know is as far as any further cooperation with democrats go, all bets are off. Just as Bernie is seemingly distancing himself from the democrats, I'm following his lead. If we can accomplish change within the democratic party, so be it. But if we gotta go outside of the party, so be it. I voted democratic this time to save the country from a second term of donald trump, who is literally too dangerous to hold the role. But in future elections, if we still have them, who knows? All I know is dont expect to bully me in line. You'll have to earn my vote for better or for worse, and if you fail to do that, I'm gonna vote elsewhere. Normally when you get your butt beat you should look at why and do some introspection. But if that doesnt happen with the modern democrats, well, what can I say? Keep getting the same results. You guys are hopeless, and I ain't really loyal to you. I'm one of the voters who just hates both parties right now. I hate the democrats less, but make no mistake, i DO hate the democrats.
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