Not sure how you brought in Matt Ygelsias and David Shor. I dont care about either. Do you think they’re the only people who believe that Kamala was too liberal? Exit polling shows that a majority of folks thought Kamala was too liberal rather than too conservative. And who’s “You people” - you think I work for the Biden campaign? I don’t personally care for Kamala Harris or Liz Cheney, but I’m just an outside observer who’s not tied to either of the ideologies (progressives or neocons) but care about winning at all costs. But if you’re going to make the argument that moving far-left would have won the election, you’ll need to provide numbers or evidence that it would have actually done so. I don’t see you listing anything as such, and it’s just a theory as you’ve mentioned.Sure. Answer any of the questions I posed in my previous replies to you. You people got the campaign you wanted. It lost. It lost with a measurable and vast lack of voter enthusiasm from your supposed base. A progressive campaign would have sustained higher levels of voter enthusiasm. There. That's the theory.
Do I believe it would have worked?
NO. Because this election was decided by voter perceptions of the Biden economy and administration. Every other thing - woke, abortion, whatever, was window dressing around that.
...
A bit of background:
Matt Yglesias during the Biden presidency:
Matt Yglesias during the election:
Yglesias after the election:
David Shor was in charge of 900,000,000 dollars to be spent over 3 months for the Harris campaign. He was, alongside Matt Yglesias, the originator of the strategy of "popularism" which is a strategy of moving to the right, and do things based on polling. He was taken on board because of his brilliant prediction that the Democrats would be wiped out in the 2022 midterm senate election.
These are the frauds desperately covering their asses. You don't have to assist them in saving their multi-millionaire status and insider access.
2024 U.S. Elections | Trump wins
- Thread starter Raoul
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Again, Harris was tied to Biden’s disastrous immigration record. She never went on record even using the term “illegals”, and she let the campaign team speak for her. Did she ever mention at any of her rallies or interviews that she’ll close up the border? She just used vague examples of her prosecutorial record of shutting down transnational crime and never actually talked about the asylum seekers misusing the system. No swing voter reads the party platform, they however pay close attention to what a candidate says, and a simple layman could scarcely understand how Kamala would improve the border situation based on her word salads.
I've said 4 times now that I don't think moving left (or right) would have won because the administration of which she was the second-most-prominent face had sub-40 approval, largely due to inflation and incompetence, and that proved insurmountable, and these debates on messaging are window-dressing on the failures of the administration, primarily on economics and foreign policy.
What I've added is that she did move appreciably right during the campaign, and it is illogical, and motivated reasoning, to then assume that the reason this campaign lost was because it wasn't right-wing enough.
Google trend data for the Sunrise Movement annd ACLU - clearly the reason for Biden's humiliating loss in 2020, when people were most interested in them.
They can't even win without conspiracies. As I've noted before....any democratic win is a conspiracy for these people. We are so far down a dangerous path that I don't know how this ends. For theses people, just saying RIGGED is their entire argument.
Right, but this is just the same idea: rendering the issue entirely as "left-wing" to create a narrative that "the activist left" "bullies" the Democratic Party into adopting "unpopular positions."
First, regarding popularity, the evidence is that public opinion about immigration shifted substantially during the Trump administration, and then again during the Biden administration. Here is, for example, a post by Gallup on the issue. You can see in their graph that there was an increase of support for the position "immigration should be increased" and a decrease of support for the position "immigration should be decreased", such that by 2020, more people thought it should be increased than decreased. Gallup also shows that, even as recently as 2023, 82% of Democrats and 59% of Independents thought that immigration should be increased (40/26) or kept at present levels (42/33). The numbers drop considerably in 2024.
Here is another example, from Yougov. They track the question "do immigrants drain national resources?" In 2020, 45.9% of respondents disagreed and only 28% agreed. Then they start converging. "Agree" only goes past "disagree" at the end of 2022, and the gap only becomes substantial in late 2023. And another example, from Democracy Fund. They show that there are 20 points swings in favor for ideas like "favoring a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants", "make it easier to immigrate to U.S.", and "undocumented immigrants make a contribution to society" among Democrats, from 2011 to 2024. Similar (but smaller shifts) occur for Independents; some of these reverse course by 2024, some remain on their higher position. The Fund describes the changes in this way:
That was the context that the Biden administration took office in. Democrats as a whole went very "radical" (in a largely false way) because that was the zeitgeist of the Trump years. You had people like Kirsten Gillibrand saying they were "ashamed and embarrassed" of supporting accelerated deportations and sanctuary cities in 2018. You had amoral careerists like Sean McElwee pushing "Abolish ICE." Hell, you had people in ICE saying "Abolish ICE"! You could try to argue that these activist groups were entirely responsible for the shifts in public opinion, but that raises the question of how activists can go from having so much power over public opinion during the Trump administration, to essentially zero in the Biden administration.
Second, "immigration" support, both broad and specific, is not limited to "the left." Things get tricky here because "the left" can mean anything to anyone. But the reality is that many of the center, center-left people of the Democratic party are quite supportive of immigration. Matthew Yglesias describes it as such:
I mention Yglesias not because you agree with him (you've already said you don't), but because he is not on the left. He works for the Niskanen Center, which characterizes itself as moderate. There is a lot more than "abstract" support for immigration among center and center-left types that are not 'activists' (Yglesias is often complaining about these 'activists'!). That is the other part of the context. These people did not go heavily against Joe Biden for his immigration positions, they did not accuse him of moving 'too far left' during his administration.
Compare that to an issue like Israel. 'Activists groups' completely failed at moving Biden and Harris on Israel, because it's a completely different context: there is strong internal opposition for the activists' position.
There are other issues where the argument can be made more effectively but immigration is not one of them. It simply isn't.
Trump will be an order of magnitude worse.
What can you even do when 53% of all swing voters believe that Harris supported "abortion up until the day of birth"?
What you can do when you see a crazy number like that is be a little skeptical of the poll.What can you even do when 53% of all swing voters believe that Harris supported "abortion up until the day of birth"?
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The established death toll in Gaza is 45k people. An order of magnitude worse is 450k. That is your position, that we will see 450k deaths in the next four years?
That number has been around for months. I'd be surprised if the real number is under 100k.
Trump will be ok with Israel removing or killing every single Palastinian from Gaza. He wouldn't mind doing the same with Arabs/Muslims who lives in the US as well.
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What in biden's actions tells you he wouldn't also be ok with that?
I don't think every single Palestinian will be killed or removed from Gaza in the four years of Trump's second administration (assuming he lives). Although who knows. We can check in four years.
I fecking hate that account. It is so disingenuous. She is NOT “blaming Jews”. That account couldn’t give a toss about actually fighting antisemitism.
I think that last sentence is correct, but it will be increasingly difficult for progressives to single out AIPAC, especially once the anti-semitism bills are turned into law.
They were trying for ceasefire even if not doing much when Israel ignored them. Harris would have also been better than Biden if elected. Low bar of course.
Probably not but Trump will be far less of a barrier to that happening than Harris would have been if Israel decide to do that.
Quite likely, at least for many, but maybe not.
However there are literally tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza whose life will definitely not be worse under Trump than they were under Biden and Harris.
And if the issue is, as you put it, to not vote for those who hate you and want to kill you, then Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians should not have voted for the Harris Democratic ticket.
But vote for a far worse option? Not a great idea.
Idk why Harris put racism on her platform, especially running against the secret head of the KKK. You're not going to out-racism Donald Trump. He's going to likely make an example out of the Gazans.
Meanwhile Harris said, "As president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.”
Trump is way more racist than that.
This is a really good post and articulates things way better than I did.
The reason for my incoherent rage is Matt Yglesias.
I've followed Yglesias for a while and his whole schtick really infuriates me. He's just Some Guy!. A trust fund kid from Upper Manhattan, who went to a private school with 70k tuition and then to Harvard. His career started off as a pro-Iraq War foreign policy "expert" blogger in the early 00s. He became a liberal wonk about healthcare and social policy under Obama. He became an anti-Trump soft-left guy under Trump, writing a book advocating for open borders, literally titled "one billion Americans." He became the White House's favourite blogger under Biden. And now he is blaming unpopular messaging from advocacy groups five years ago as the kryptonite of the Democratic party.
It's not just that he believes in nothing - that's standard for pundits - but he, very transparently, knows nothing too. He's not an expert in any of the stuff he writes about! And his track record is awful! He started with Iraq (and other shockingly racist neocon-standard stuff) which was, just from an amoral standpoint, an expensive unpopular mistake; almost all his favoured small Obama reforms were undone or never happened, his open borders stuff is now way more toxic than anything he is currently decrying, he insisted that Biden wasn't too old, and Kamala's anti-left campaign was the winning strategy... And he just keeps failing upwards, and right now, watching him get the administration and campaign he wanted, with him personally having the WH's ear, and seeing it all explode in his face... and he's blaming others. Shameless fecking hack.
It's just insane how much being born rich can carry you. You can never fail.
edit - see also - Megan McArdle, another Manhattan trust fund kid, and this hilarious summary of her track record, written after she made her final upwards move. Highlights - pro-Iraq-war, of course, and, she's an economics blogging "expert", who said, in 2007, that there is no subprime mortgage problem.
Though after seeing Yglesias debase himself and abandon his 2019 stances even more silently than Kamala, I guess Megan should be commended for having an ideology and bending facts to fit in with that!
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"Its a big club, and you ain't in it." -George Carlin
It was just PR.
What a useless exercise though. Harris has just run for president, so of course she is top of mind for most people.
All that is showing is current name recognition.
I don't think these polls mean much because of how vague the questions are phrased. They aren't distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration which makes it impossible to really take anything useful out of the polling results. Many people believe legal immigration should be increased but illegal immigration should be decreased.
When you're looking at one cohort in 2020 with COVID fresh on their minds, most respondents could easily be thinking the questions refer to legal immigration. In 2024, a different cohort of respondents could easily be primed by all the rhetoric in the 2024 campaign to think of illegal immigrants when asked the same vague question. From talking to many people across many states in the last 10 years, I don't think there has been a shift in general but these lazy polls show a change because they aren't digging deep enough and distinguishing views between legal and illegal immigration. Generally, I'd say most people support more legal immigration and most people do not support more illegal immigration.
The distinctions between legal and illegal immigration are made in the Democracy Fund study that I linked to and quoted in my post. They also ask the same people, "a longstanding panel of voters who have been interviewed periodically since [the survey] was launched by YouGov in December 2011". The shifts are real.
I'm not talking about most people, though. I'm just talking about Democrats. The line that is coming out is that 'activists' force Democrats to adopt positions that are 'unpopular', giving us the simple solution of 'reject activists.' But the reality is more complex than that: people who identify and vote for Democrats are the ones who adopt these broad positions or attitudes.
I'm not talking about most people, though. I'm just talking about Democrats. The line that is coming out is that 'activists' force Democrats to adopt positions that are 'unpopular', giving us the simple solution of 'reject activists.' But the reality is more complex than that: people who identify and vote for Democrats are the ones who adopt these broad positions or attitudes.
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Yeah, that one study asks two questions about undocumented immigrants but neither the Yougov or Gallop polls make that distinction which renders those two pretty meaningless. The one meaningful question - "Undocumented immigrants make a contribution to American society" - show a curve from 39% Dems agreeing in 2012 rising to 75% agreement peak in 2020 and now dropping to 61% this year. From second term Obama, Democrats might say they make a contribution because their experiences were mostly positive during those years. That has changed in the last few years because while there has always been broad support for legal immigration among Democrats, there has been a shift that people now see affecting their day to day lives with the potential abuse of the asylum system and the view that some Democrat run cities' policies are too lenient on undocumented immigrants to the detriment of citizens. General attitudes remain the same but specifics will change year to year - for instance, people I know have similar attitudes to immigration across the last 10 years but they might think Biden lacked a cohesive border plan to manage things c.2024 thus would say Trump might be better on that single issue this time around.
The reality is the border and immigration (illegal) was a bigger issue this year than it has been in 15+ years. The Biden Admin + Harris' campaign had no clear policy or plan on immigration and thus had no compelling talking points. Their entire strategy seemed to be to just say Trump forced a veto of the immigration bill. That was an inept approach. You had leftists trying to say the Biden immigration policy was the same as Trump which was completely inaccurate and on the other side you had Trump claiming the Dem policy was just all open borders, which is also very inaccurate. But since Biden/Harris had no clear plan and no clear talking points, they could be painted as the worst of both worlds by different people.
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I would argue that if the Yougov and Gallup polls are going in the same direction as the more detailed Democracy Fund study then they must be a little meaningful
.But anyway, I think we are in broad agreement: the situation has changed, and so have people's attitudes and opinions. IMO that is an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of doing politics. The idea that it can be avoided because it's the fault of "fringe" people (who implicitly have no electoral value) strikes me as a "free lunch" and there's been too many of those in the last decade.