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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I just want to say this to all the people who are making up the most hare-brained excuses for why Harris lost.
Kamala Harris cobbled together a campaign in days that took a campaign that was going R+5 and counting and turned it into a toss-up. She had 107 days. From day one, she was held to an infinitely higher standard than Trump. Trump held a debate where he famously said "They're eating the dogs!" and "I have concepts of a plan!.", and Americans were just fine with it. But Harris wasn't perfectly articulate with details over some economic plan or another and apparently this makes her unfit for President. She put up a near-flawless campaign, especially given how stuck behind the 8-ball she was. It ultimately just didn't matter.
Arab-Americans were outraged over Harris' support for Israel because of the genocide in Gaza. So to protest this, they voted for a man who has vowed even more support for israel and to genocide even harder, and also try to kick them out of the country in the process.
Latino men opted to vote for a man who made it a focal point of his campaign to round up and deport Latinos en-masse because the alternative was voting for a former prosecutor who also happens to be a woman.
White people decided that they want someone who's going to fix the economy, so they decided to vote for a guy who campaigned on raising the cost of living by an average of about $400 a month while promising to appoint a budget czar who already said he actively plans on imposing "hardships" on poor people.
Well, it's either that, or tens of millions of people in a country with a long-established history of racism and misogyny refused to vote for a black female president and just used these niche issues as excuses.
I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, and I know what I'm about to say sounds racist as hell. But Obama was a fluke and America in general is just not willing to elect a minority again. That's just all there is to it. The rise of Trump, the rise of far-right groups like the Proud Boys, and the 2024 election are proof of that. Democrat initiatives did relatively fine. The senate went GOP, but that was predicted with the loss of Manchin and Tester. Democrats in the House did fine. Kamala Harris did not.
And for those who believed that embracing centrist policies is what cost us the election, or we weren't left enough, or we should have listened to people like Bernie and AOC: People like Bernie and AOC are wildly popular in their districts and with the far-left coalition of the voting base. But they are wildly unpopular outside of that. And keep in mind......I love both of them and would gladly vote for a future AOC as president. But given the current political makeup of the country, putting someone like Bernie or AOC on the ballot would have made the ass kicking Harris just got seem tame. Sure, they'd have won states like California and Massachusetts by gigantic margins. But they'd do little to nothing to flip red or purple states.
The fact of the matter is that the 2024 results prove that Americans like what the Democrats were selling. They just don't want her to be the one selling it, as evidenced by the fact that only she underperformed so spectacularly. People were so unwilling to vote for a black, female President that over 10 million of them opted to stay home knowing full well that they were essentially voting for Trump.
A majority of this country is white. A majority of this country will not vote for a minority president again in this political climate. And if the Democrats put up another minority candidate in 2028 (assuming we even have elections), they will lose again. That's just all there is to it. It's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the truth. It's not right, but it's the truth. You know how black people across the south have been fighting gerrymandering so they can have majority-black districts and vote for black candidates? Or for that matter, how minority candidates do better in minority districts when championing minority initiatives? White people are doing the same thing. And there's a lot more of them. And they just proved that they absolutely will vote against their best interests vs. voting for a black woman.
- One thing to note about Bernie and AOC is that they're not popular, but their policies are. During 2016, polls showed that even the majority of Republican voters supported Bernie's policies - but only if you told them what the policy was before you told them that it was Bernie's.
  The Red Scare is still ongoing today, and having been labeled socialists and communists has made them untouchables and pariahs. And there has never been any Red Scare equivalent for the KKK or white supremacists, or for corporatism or anything, but there has been for socialism, unions, and anything else that puts power into the hands of the people.
- I want to comment that you nailed so many valid points.
  I know a lot of people don't want to hear this, and I know what I'm about to say sounds racist as hell. But Obama was a fluke and America in general is just not willing to elect a minority again.
  This one, I don't think I agree that it was a fluke.
  Democrats are continuing to let the loudest crybabies take over the room. And then compromise. Conservatives are right on one thing: the message that Kamala put out to their people was, "You don't want to vote for a fascist." Which doesn't resonate with them. What they instead saw was a person who was going to keep things the same.
  Can a minority run again? Absolutely.
  But only stop catering to the status quo and bowing down to companies. Do Bernie Sanders shit.
  
  This one, I don’t think I agree that it was a fluke.
  Fluke probably wasn't the right word in hindsight. He won and got re-elected decisively. Maybe they consider it a "mistake". I don't know what the right word for it is. However you want to call it, they just will not allow it to happen again.
  Democrats are continuing to let the loudest crybabies take over the room. And then compromise.
  That is a decades-long flaw in the Democrat party that had little bearing on this election.
  Conservatives are right on one thing: the message that Kamala put out to their people was, “You don’t want to vote for a fascist.” Which doesn’t resonate with them.
  Actually, many of them were on social media actively advocating for him because of the authoritarianism. They were pretty open about voting for a convict/dictator/rapist over a ~~nig..uh..blackperson..uh~~ "Democrat".
  What they instead was a person who was going to keep things the same.
  Here's the problem. When 51% of your voting base is giving very strong signals they don't want a minority as President and telling you they want things to remain the same, offering up a minority candidate who wants to change everything is not going to win you elections. Doesn't matter how benevolent their ideas are. The American voters just said they are willing to vote against policies they like simply because they don't like the person selling it.
  In the past 3 Presidential elections, the GOP put up the literal worst candidate in history. In two of those 3 elections, the Democrats put up women. Trump won. The only time he lost was when they put up an old white guy. Then they complained about him being an old white guy. Then, rather than vote for the black woman, they voted for another old white guy. And a whole bunch of people are here saying that we would've won if we just put up an even older white guy with the same policies.
  Which is basically the Democrat party as a whole saying that they may not want an old white guy as President, but they'll sure as hell put a white guy in the White House before a they put a woman there, and certainly not a black one. They tried twice, and voters stayed home. And they stayed home knowing full well what that meant. What does that tell you?
  Can a minority run again? Absolutely.
  Assuming we have elections again, a minority will not sit in the Oval Office in my lifetime. And if they put one up in 2028, they're going to lose just as hard. The American public -- from both parties -- have sent a loud and clear message that they will not put a woman in charge of the US, certainly not a black one. And if you think, especially after 4 more years of the Trump Hate Machine blasting propaganda 24/7, that a minority is going to have a snowball's chance in hell, I've got beachfront property on Mars you may be interested in.
  But only stop catering to the status quo and bowing down to companies. Do Bernie Sanders shit.
  Then wonder why you lose again. Outside of his voters and the far left, people don't want Bernie Sanders shit. We may disagree with them, but there's more of them then there are of us.
  
  Outside of his voters and the far left, people don't want Bernie Sanders shit. We may disagree with them, but there's more of them then there are of us.
  Thanks. So many people here seemingly have never met a real person IRL before
  
  "They go low, we go high" is a phrase I associate with the Obama era.
- I think a lot of your comment boils down to a few things that Americans need to accept:
  Americans don't care about policy. They like sound bites, and Trump gives those for days.
  People vote against their interests in the name for change, even if it negatively affects people like them (but importantly, not them)
  America is a deeply racist and misogynistic country.
  Playing it safe doesn't win elections in America, but minorities only win if the other choice is uninspired.
  Where I disagree is that it was a toss-up. Harris has performed worse than Hillary, which is wild considering how deeply unpopular she was. Frankly, before she ran it was obvious how disliked she was.
  
  I’d agree with your paraphrasing but it exists in a media vacuum.
  Americans don't care about policy. They like sound bites, and Trump gives those for days.
  That’s a comment on media that Americans consume, not necessarily Americans.
- hard disagree, progressive policies up for vote were adopted even in deep red states unlike the fake progressive party.
  this sort of holier than thou analysis same as dnc is why they never fix their smugness towards voters.
  “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”
  outside the bubble of .world and reddit, the above statements are seen as nothing but dogshhit gaslighting. people understand that trump is stupid, incompetent and repulsive but they also correctly see that dnc are double dealing scammers who have no problem mass murdering kids for few million in campaign donations. for how many brown women murdered in gaza and now lebanon did harris opened her mouth full of aipac money. her career is full of oppressing poor and blacks and including single mothers, and at the same time sucking up to the rich including trump. she has shamelessly flip-flopped on issues wherever she had seen more votes. why the hell someone would vote for a smug power tripping hack like this in name of democracy and lesser evil. she would have absolutely nuked gaza, lebanon & iran to get funding from aipac and mic for a 2nd term, while inflation and corporate greed would have remained unckecked same as trump.
  and if not for trump and dnc’s over the top fear mongering, she would have likely lost many deep blue state. she lost like hillary because they were planted by the megadonors to create a win-win situation for them for that they sabotaged sanders in 2016 and warren in 2020.
  even the votes dnc got this time were mostly in despair, and many of them unlikely to do it again, those who sat out were disgusted enough to not care.
  the same people wishing more genocide and mocking egg prices were dismissing any criticism of biden & harris as russian troll. and now they are surprised that many of them sat out for not wanting to do anything with this farce of an election where you loose against the oligarchy not matter who you vote.
  imho i don’t see dnc winning again, it will be better if aoc and warren form a new party and destroy them for good.
  
  hard disagree, progressive policies up for vote were adopted even in deep red states unlike the fake progressive party.
  Which is why I said the policies weren't the problem. She was. The voting base did not want to vote for a black woman. The rest of the election went pretty much as predicted.
  “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”
  Tell me which one of these is wrong.
  Is it the one where Trump got no criticism for "They're eating the dogs!", while Kamala Harris was criticized for not being perfectly articulate?
  Is it the one where people criticized Harris for supporting Israel, then voted for someone who was going to ....... give even more weapons and support to Israel?
  Or it is the one where the only two women were both beat by Trump after a smear campaign from the mainstream media?
  Or the one where Trump has vowed to increase prices on goods by slapping tarrifs on everything? Or the one where Musk already said he was gong to impose hardships on people?
  Or the fact that the country as a whole has been leaning hard into the racism since Obama was in office?
  And as for bernie, the entire Democrat base had been saying that they didn't want Biden because he was "too old". And here you are offering someone older. Which means his age was never really the problem, was it? Because half the country just voted for a dementia patient , and the other half are now saying we should've put up someone older.
  And try getting AOC over in independent or right-leaning areas she'd need to pick up a win. Good luck with that.
  outside the bubble of .world and reddit, the above statements are seen as nothing but dogshhit gaslighting.
  Prove me wrong.
  people understand that trump is stupid, incompetent and repulsive but they also correctly see that dnc are double dealing scammers who have no problem mass murdering kids for few million in campaign donations.
  So the answer is to vote for someone who's going to mass murder even more people? Remember, last time Trump interfered in the middle east, he moved the embassy to Jerusalem which pissed off just about everybody and sent Jared Kushner over there, who did exactly nothing outside of collecting $2 billion from the Saudis which they still refuse to explain.
  But sure, the dnc are the scammers.......
  for how many brown women murdered in gaza and now lebanon did harris opened her mouth full of aipac money. her career is full of oppressing poor and blacks and including single mothers, and at the same time sucking up to the rich including trump. she has shamelessly flip-flopped on issues wherever she had seen more votes. why the hell someone would vote for a smug power tripping hack like this in name of democracy and lesser evil. she would have absolutely nuked gaza, lebanon & iran to get funding from aipac and min for a 2nd term, while inflation and corporate greed would have remained unckecked same as trump.
  And tell me how voting for Trump was somehow better in any possible way. And if you abstained from voting knowing all of that full well, you essentially voted for Trump.
  and if not for trump and dnc’s over the top fear mongering, she would have likely lost many deep blue state. she lost like hillary because they were planted by the megadonors to create a win-win situation for them for that they sabotaged sanders in 2016 and warren in 2020.
  Ah yes, it was all a Democrat conspiracy to......hand the Presidency to Trump. Oooooooookay.........
  the same people wishing more genocide
  voted for Trump.
  and mocking egg prices
  Which is the result of bird flu.
  were dismissing any criticism of biden & harris as russian troll. and now they are surprised that many of them sat out for not wanting to do anything with this farce of an election where you loose against the oligarchy not matter who you vote.
  So voting to lose harder was your solution?
  
  still stuck on “trump is worse” instead of dnc has become so bad that trump didn’t matter.
  say that the mayor election is between two criminal, one of them has scammed you of your life savings and killed your family & neighbours in front of your eyes and the other candidate is said to be even worse. are you going to vote for first candidate or plan of shooting him ?
  “held to an infinitely higher standards”, “genocide even harder”, “happens to be a woman”, “make the economy worse”, “obama was a fluke”, “bernie & aoc are wildly unpopular outside of that.”
  Tell me which one of these is wrong.
  all of them
  she has no standards, she was a corrupt cop who rose in dnc for her sucking upto megadonors.
  asking to ignore a genocide is enough to loose all credibility. it only infuriates people when they ask to reward them for burning kids alive in hospitals. what’s trump gonna do reincarnate the gaza population and kill them again ?
  “happens to be a woman” : who had happily jailed single moms and supports israel killing women for aipac money. its the same excuse as pedophile asking for respect because he is a priest.
  she is a entitled hypocrite who has never struggled as black or woman and lived among the elite enabling their corruption same as the white woman hillary. biden would have been the same but he likely got the pass because of being part of obama admin, his son dying and covid mismanagement by trump.
  those still stuck on defending dnc needs to understand in two party system we need to have opposite options else we are basically begging to continue to get trodden by the oligarchs. “the trump is worse”, “harder genocide” just make people loose faith in the system and sit it out.
  i honestly wont be surprised if dnc puts token candidates so they can divert any criticism and reforms by blaming their loss on racism and sexism just like israel uses antisemitism.
- Regarding election of a minority, I think this country would elect an Arab American before a woman. Anecdotally, talking to right leaning voters who really had no great feeling for trump, the theme came up again and again "how can a woman go toe to toe with Putin or the Saudis?" "Will generals listen to her?".
- So much this. The voters fucked up the country - they just don't want to face up to the reality that their childish narrow-mindedness hath wrought. The political mechanism was merely what it has always been.
- They lost because they lost touch with America.
  You can blame everyone you did in your post because you fail to see the bigger picture.
  The democrats did not let you take place in democracy. There was no primary. Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite. She would never have been elected by voters because she is a hollow shell of catchphrases and memorized talking points.
  She is unrelatable and therefore unelectable. She had no platform except that she was going to keep doing the Genocide Joe walk.
  The only tears that you should be crying was that they were able to get you to vote for them while genociding kids Gaza, effectively saying "yeah I don't care."
  
  The incumbent President was the nominee. Generally, the incumbents don't hold primaries because the outcome is all but certain, and party leadership has never forced an incumbent to step aside before. By the time Biden dropped out, there was no time for a primary. If we'd have tried dumping Biden, holding a primary in a country of 350 million people, and running a general election campaign in barely 3 months, we'd have been a laughing stock. We'd be infighting for months while Trump was running a general election campaign unopposed. The RNC would be saying "We're firmly behind Trump. Biden is so bad that the DNC forced him out of the race and all of the other options are so bad that they can't settle on one." If you think that the election was a slaughter, that scenario would have made everything exponentially worse.
  
  Makes you wonder why it was allowed it to happen at all. It's not as if Biden wasn't showing signs of aging the limited times he was seen in public on the first go-round. He should have been primaried again, but it was worth it for them to lose the Whitehouse to Trump 2x. This should be a layup for a major political party to be in opposition of, but old Bernie was too extreme for the corporate warhawk democrats because he wanted to tax the rich.
  Here's the truth: the democrats don't give a shit about democracy and they sure as hell don't give a shit about you.
  
  Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite.
  She was the chosen one of the elected delegates. Just because somebody is elected as a party delegate does NOT make them an "elite". Fuck that shit. It doesn't take a lot of money to be a delegate. It mainly just takes a lot of commitment.
  
  Holy cope batman

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