1mo ago

I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost | Oliver Hall

www.theguardian.com I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost | Oliver Hall

As a phone bank volunteer, I hoped to counter the Republican attacks and half-truths, but people really believed them, says journalist and podcaster Oliver Hall

Summary

Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, with many voters—often women—expressing doubts about whether “America is ready for a female president.”

Some said they “couldn’t see her in the chair,” or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, “you don’t see women building skyscrapers.” Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line.

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Biden’s administration.

Ultimately, Hall believes that Trump’s unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harris’s campaign efforts.

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Persuadable voters seemed really focused on prices. It's hard not to be condescending here. Eggs are expensive because of bird flu. Rent is high because not enough housing is being built, mostly limited by local issues. Gas is high because of Putin's war. Anyone who thinks electing Trump will bring those prices down because they were lower last time he was president is fucking clueless.
I'm interested to see how much of a factor unenthusiastic Democrats were. Trump got about the same number of votes he did in 2020, but Harris got far fewer than Biden. It looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn't vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.
- I’ve talked to a lot of people, and I never once heard anyone complain about her gender. In fact, I was rather surprised that I didn’t hear anything about that. It was 100% complaints about the economy, and no matter how I tried my best to explain how not only are the price of things not Biden’s fault, but we would have been much worse without Biden, it was like talking to a brick wall.
  
  I believe that there were a fair number of people who just couldn't check the box for any woman, but we're too afraid to admit it publically (or even to themselves). While their complaints about the economy were legit, they might have also been a convenient excuse to hide the misogyny.
  And didn't Obama confront this head-on? He told Black men "Look, you may not be inclined to back the woman here, but backing that man in particular would be a disaster". And he was dismissed by many as lecturing too much.
  
  but we're too afraid to admit it publically
  we're???
  /s
  
  Haha, that was a typo, but I'm leaving it anyway, it's fitting
  
  I highly doubt he people who couldn't check the box for a woman were part of the 10 million who showed up for Biden but not Harris. People made it perfectly clear what would get them to show up, and instead of listening she spit in their faces... Anyone who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a woman was almost certainly a Trump voter start to finish
- looks like a bunch of people who voted last time didn’t vote this time. For them, the concerns the author dismisses might have been more important.
  We also made it decidedly less convenient by making mail voting more difficult, and then the media kept blasting a "going out to vote might get you assaulted by Trump supporters" narrative that frightened people.
- I’m fortunate to be well off, but I used to be below the poverty line in my city and qualified for social assistance (which I didn’t know about until a coworker told me). Having been in most of these voters shoes a little over a decade ago, I can tell you that don’t care about trumps rhetoric, he can stand there for an hour blathering non sense, but at the end of it he will say “I love you, I know you are hurting and I’m going to fix that”.
  Then a long come the democrats telling these people who are living paycheck to paycheck or still in their parents house that they are privileged racist ass holes who could never understand what is like to struggle as a rich minority woman from California. Then the most unrelatable person in the world gets chosen to replace Joe Biden and rich democrats and dumb ass celebrities like Cardi “I brag about how I used to drug, rape, and Rob men” B start telling working class men that they are stupid and racist if they don’t vote for Kamala.
  A lot of people couldn’t vote for a wannabe dictator, but they also couldn’t vote for someone who despises their very being.
  
  That is a completely accurate depiction of what every member and supporter of the Democratic party has said, which has certainly been much more hurtful than Republicans' repeated threats to rape and kill us /s
  
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  I don't see how you could possibly see his attacks on migrants, trans kids, etc. as anything other than punching down.
  Also, why are you holding the Democratic party accountable for down voters here or other randos online who say stuff about Trump supporters? They're pretty distinct groups, and the fact is elected Dems bent over backwards to talk as nicely about Trump supporters as they could.
  And I actually think that was a big part of what I think their real voter engagement problem was, which is that everything Dems say comes off like inauthentic over polished political bullshit to a lot of voters. I think simultaneously trying to say "Trump is an existential threat to democracy" and "Trump supporters are not garbage" sounds insane (like, if you're supporting an existential threat to democracy you just inarguably are a garbage human being, sorry not sorry).
  I don't think we should make it a centerpiece of our message or waste a bunch of time on it, but if we get a direct question about Republican party supporters we have to respect our potential voters enough to say "Yes, they are garbage, roughly 35-40% of this country are bad people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want and that's why it's so important for the rest of us to put aside our difference and work together to stop them."
  
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  It's definitely true that white collar, urban liberals sometimes punch down at rural, blue collar white people. It does hurt them politically.
  I'm having trouble seeing anything Trump says about anyone other than high-level elected officials as punching up though. Attacks on the sitting president are punching up by definition, but the challenger always does that.
  It seems more to me that he's telling people who don't feel good about their position in society that there's someone below them. That was the message of slavery, of apartheid, and of Hitler. I find it hard not to condemn those who were receptive to it.
  
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  Not many, and those who come to mind weren't receptive to that kind of messaging. Reasoning I've heard includes "Biden ruined the economy", "vote R no matter who", and "RFK and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed him".
  The statements I've heard from Trump himself are "illegal immigrants are going to steal your job, the election, and your cat", and "trans people want to fuck your kid", which are about groups of people with very little political power.
  
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  I'm not going to cop to strawmanning here, but I will grant that people who are receptive to his messaging on immigration might hear it differently than I do.
  Perhaps part of my difficulty understanding how someone could resonate with that messaging without being an irredeemable racist stems from it not being based in reality any time there are actual numbers available from law enforcement. Drug couriers are citizens far more often than they are immigrants. Illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than citizens. Noncitizens attempting to vote is rare and usually results in prosecution. "Open border" means something very different to me, e.g. intra-EU borders than it seems to mean to Trump.
  Despite all that, Trump's supporters feel like he's telling them the truth about these issues and everyone who contradicts him is lying. The explanations that come to mind for me are... uncharitable. I'd like to hear alternatives.
  
  I haven’t heard of any republican threat to raise and kill everyone, but a lot are unhinged and I’m sure it happens. But it’s not a central platform of the Republicans, while being condescending of working class men is a central campaign point of the democrats, in fact it was so bad that black and Hispanic men showed up in record numbers to vote for Trump
  
  I mean, no offense but the fact that you haven't heard this just might mean you're deep inside an echo chamber. It's hard to have an exact measure of these thing, but Republican threats and celebrations of violence and sexual assault are at least as central to their party's platform as being opposed to bigotry is to the Democrats party's from where I'm sitting.
  And I'm not sure why you think being opposed to bigotry is an attack on working class men. Like, if we want to talk about the working class and poor people, let's talk about the fact that transgender people are more likely than the average American to be living in poverty because of the discrimination they fave.
  I will say that's an easy to miss fact because society in general doesn't like to platform working class people because they're not as eloquent or pretty and the Dems tend to behave the same way, so we hear more about wealthy celebrity members of queer communities and other marginalized groups. At the end of the day, tho, if you do really care about the working class you need to care about transphobic discrimination (among all the other kinds of discrimination) too, because it is absolutely a tool the capitalist class wields to keep us divided and oppressed.
  
  You’re right. Americans as a whole are more stupid and racist than was previously thought.
  
  It's true but not for the reasons we may default to believing. That they're just stupid, bad people who hate because they don't know better.
  Multiple times, I was told that Harris was a “communist”, “clueless” and that she had “thrown black men in jail for carrying one blunt”. One Latin American voter told me at length that she had “seen it all before in South America”.
  Those are all verbatim quotes from Fox News, redstate, talk radio, the massive ocean of right-wing bullshit that these fuckers dunk themselves in daily.
  We're losing to this garbage propaganda because we don't invest in and understand media. As a nation, we don't understand it at all.
  It's really that simple.
  
  Resisting garbage propaganda requires effort, and when that garbage propaganda is being sprayed at you through a firehose, not everyone has the resolve required to resist it.
  Lies and liars don't have to defend themselves, because the message they send does not depend on being true.
  
  Absolutely true.
  
  No, Trump voters are EXACTLY as stupid and racist as was previously thought... The mistake was thinking anyone was going to change their minds by meeting them in the middle, and thinking they could do so in a short amount of time without understanding how to really use social media propaganda (just bullying everyone while ignoring their legitimate demands was not a good strategy) shows how stupid the Dems are as a party
  
  This is an incredibly important statement. You've perfectly summarized exactly how non-Harris voters felt. The opinions you share in here may or may not be true and the Lemmy population certainly doesn't like hearing it, but this was the thought process that brought trump to office.
  Frankly, the way to save America is to attack corporations. Regulate, regulate, regulate, put money back in the hands of the voters. Whoever does this has the vote.
  
  Don't even have to actually do it... Trump sure as hell won't... Just have to say it
  
  a rich minority woman from California.
  She worked at McDonald's growing up. Trump was the rich guy. Anybody not liking Harris because they thought she was "rich" was an idiot. She likely has far less net worth than most presidential candidates do.
  
  Yep, never denied Trump was rich. Only problem is people believe he actually earned his wealth.
  Also, I worked 3 separate manual labor jobs to make ends meet until I was able to graduate from college, yet I am now called a rich privileged white male. Dems want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to labels.

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