So....I see a lot of leftists grilling the dem autopsy for "not once mentioning gaza." I know it's common for leftists to try to make everything about their pet causes (and im arguably guilty of this myself, although i have a lot more sensibility and awareness on this topic), but I honestly dont think gaza had a huge impact. i know that OTHER autopsy mentioned gaza, but i thought that WAS the dems' autopsy at the time. Anyway, my own take on gaza was this. It was a factor that may have depressed turnout, but to the best of my knowledge....I dont think it was a deciding factor.
Most voters were pissed off about the economy/inflation above all else. And Harris just didnt seem like she offered anything differently from Biden. Not saying trump was the right option, we're seeing THAT play out right now, BUT...people tend to vote against the party in power, remember? We discussed that recently? And that was the democrats. So people blamed the democrats for rising inflation and harris didnt offer any convincing policies to fix the issue. And to be fair, navigating inflation is tricky. This is why i was willing to give biden/harris a lot of grace on the subject, despite not being enthused for them myself. I kinda realized that if the GOP gains power and then the inflation doesnt continue (which, under a competent administration, it wouldn't), we could very well have a carter/reagan type situation on our hands. But yeah. Dems really were in a tough spot and both biden and harris didnt navigate that with grace.
Past inflation/the economy, the next set of issues were immigration and crime that really doomed harris. The republicans did a good job convincing the public that under the democrats we were experiencing an immigration/crime wave like we've never experienced before, and that this was a huge problem. With crime, crime did go up under biden, but only because it went down in 2020 during covid lockdowns and 2021 was a return to normal. Immigration had similar issues, but we also had a lot of refugees come over looking for asylum, and border patrol caught a lot of people, and despite us being legally required by international law to respond to asylum claims properly, a lot of ignorant people were just all SEND THEM BACK! and seem to want all that cruel deterrence stuff trump is doing. Even now, trump's strongest issue is arguably his immigration policy. Dont get me wrong, he's negative on it, but a disturbing amount of people seem to approve of the psychopathy he's engaging in and he's still among his best issues.
Honestly, I'm not sure what we could do here. People just were living in an alternative reality here, and idk how we are supposed to convince people something isnt an issue when they perceive it that way. This is a fundamental education problem driven by things like anecdotal experience and news telling them its an issue rather than it actually being an issue. It takes an educated mind to see past that stuff and sadly we have an education problem in this country. It's a huge reason the left is at such a disadvantage.
Democrats had some issues going for them. Democracy being a big one, SCOTUS being a big one too apparently, and of course abortion rights, but those didnt draw the necessary levels of support to the polls.
Gaza was at best a mid level issue and if anything conservatives seemed more fired up on foreign policy, and their foreign policy is that Harris wasnt pro israel ENOUGH. So....the impact of a more strongly pro palestine position helping is questionable. Even if some leftists sat out the election because of it, between the dismal primary results of the write in campaign (which helped kill support for actual candidates like marianne williamson, not that it would've mattered since like 90% of dem voters voted for Biden anyway) progressives were shown to be a minor, if not nonexistent factor this election cycle. Really, Im not saying they werent a factor at all, but they werent a statistically significant one IMO. They did not swing the election by themselves.
And oh, because centrists love to trot out this one, neither were trans issues. A lot of centrists are acting like those "kamala harris is for they/them" ads were a huge deal, they werent, the first link above showed that trans issues were literally at the bottom and probably one of the least motivating factors of all factors. I aint saying we shouldnt avoid cringey unpopular stances that the overwhelming majority of voters are against, but....let's face it, anyone calling to throw trans people under the bus wholesale needs to shut up as well.
I mean, I aint saying my takes are authoritative, I mean, this is primarily an opinion blog, but the fact that I can put together a better autopsy in like half an hour than the dems did really shows how bad the dems are at their job. And yes, while palestine deserves a mention, as it is A factor, and one often cited, it was a relatively minor one overshadowd by several far more significant ones. Dems had an enthusiasm problem. That much is obvious. But independents also voted against us, primarily because they were pissed off everything was so expensive and they cant afford to live properly. And if anything is the lesson to be learned from 2024, it's that 1) the dems need to do a better job appealing to people on the economy, and 2) a lot of the voter base lives in an alternative reality constructed by conservatives where brown people are an everpresent threat to normie americans' lives...even if they aren't.
If we wanna go beyond that, I'd talk about the dems foisting an 80+ year old nominee on us that no one actually wanted, despite high dem primary support (alternatives werent well known and most just fell in line....dems manufactured consent around him arguably), and then when it was shown he was lacking the baseline competence to do the job properly due to his advanced age (still better than the other guy too old to do his job, as evidenced now), we got his vice president, who was more of the same and voters didnt want that.
Elections are won by enthusiasm, and the deciding factors of election cycles primarily work against the party in charge. While it's not uncommon for incumbents to pull it off and win a second term despite these factors, Biden barely won in 2020 and the dems lacked the sufficient enthusiasm and independent support to clear that hurdle the second time as republican enthusiasm remained high, while democratic enthusiasm dropped off a cliff. While 2024 couldve been much worse had Biden remained the nominee, harris still failed to secure enough votes to win it for democrats. Some of this was due to factors beyond her control, but some of it was just...being another moderate who didnt offer much in a time where voters wanted change.
That's the true lesson of 2024. If we wanna be relatively objective about it, that's how I view it.
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