What's missing in most of analyses of the defeat (such as this one) is the magnitude of the negative campaigning mode used by Republicans against Democrats. Faced with such a barrage, Democrats have tried two strategies that did not work.
The first is to go high when they go low. That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all …
What's missing in most of analyses of the defeat (such as this one) is the magnitude of the negative campaigning mode used by Republicans against Democrats. Faced with such a barrage, Democrats have tried two strategies that did not work.
The first is to go high when they go low. That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was, but felt no compunction doing this all out against a woman (whether white or black).
The second is to respond quickly and forcefully against all attacks. This certainly worked in the states where the Democrats invested heavily (the so-called swing states) but even there it proved insufficient to turn the tsunami of negative campaigning.
A third strategy would be to go as low as the Republicans, but I wonder how low most people are willing to go without being such a pathological person (a person with no sense of shame or guilt) as Donald Trump is.
The big danger, here, if Democrats don't find a different way to do things, is to discourage anybody from becoming a public official.
The ridiculous aspect of the argument that Biden resigning earlier would have opened up the way to a more viable Dem candidate is precisely the hubris that makes one think than an earlier resignation (and selection) would not also have given more time to the Republicans to wage an efficient shit show against the new figure.
Going for Harris at the last minute sort of minimized the degree to which the efficiency of the Republican way of doing politics since at least Willie Horton. Trump way of campaigning is no different from that of Lee Atwater, it is just Lee Atwater on steroids. The problem is at this game of only throwing shit in the fan, you have to be quite a pig to want to be in politics.
I think this is a weakness inherent to female candidates - voters don't like it when they "go low". Traditionally, going low is the VP candidate's job, but Tim Walz is just not a go-low kind of guy, as shown clearly in the VP debate. Maybe that is a lesson for the future: When you put a woman at the top of the ticket, you need a running mate who is not afraid to be as nasty as it takes to destroy the opponent, even if he destroys his own political future in the process.
"That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was"
You remembered things very differently than I did. Remember when Obama was a Muslim Marxist from Kenya? He won in 2008 because any Dem would have won in that environment, and won in 2012 because Romney sounded like an out-of-touch plutocrat at a time when the economy still wasn't the best. The attacks just fell flat because the working-class voters that decide every election thought that Obama was more relatable. The fact of the matter is, Trump is just better at relating. Despite his wealth, he learned how to talk like his working-class voters. Candidate quality and environment both matter. And this might sound preposterous, but Trump's candidate quality isn't bad at all, and he was running in a favorable environment for him.
I have no idea what the right strategy should or could be going forward.
This election was about (1) inflation, (2) incumbency, and (3) immigration. I’m pretty sure there was no one that we could have run (who were “real” candidates) could have won this election.
What I’m most concerned about though is I’m not clear how the Dems win power going forward (not 2028 or in presidential) but actual power by getting the senate. In 2030 we will do another census where ny and California will loose 7 electoral college votes to Florida and Texas. The “blue wall” is expected to lose a single electoral vote for each state. It looks in 10 years to be pretty ugly for Dems and I have no idea how they actually break through with these voters.
What's missing in most of analyses of the defeat (such as this one) is the magnitude of the negative campaigning mode used by Republicans against Democrats. Faced with such a barrage, Democrats have tried two strategies that did not work.
The first is to go high when they go low. That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was, but felt no compunction doing this all out against a woman (whether white or black).
The second is to respond quickly and forcefully against all attacks. This certainly worked in the states where the Democrats invested heavily (the so-called swing states) but even there it proved insufficient to turn the tsunami of negative campaigning.
A third strategy would be to go as low as the Republicans, but I wonder how low most people are willing to go without being such a pathological person (a person with no sense of shame or guilt) as Donald Trump is.
The big danger, here, if Democrats don't find a different way to do things, is to discourage anybody from becoming a public official.
The ridiculous aspect of the argument that Biden resigning earlier would have opened up the way to a more viable Dem candidate is precisely the hubris that makes one think than an earlier resignation (and selection) would not also have given more time to the Republicans to wage an efficient shit show against the new figure.
Going for Harris at the last minute sort of minimized the degree to which the efficiency of the Republican way of doing politics since at least Willie Horton. Trump way of campaigning is no different from that of Lee Atwater, it is just Lee Atwater on steroids. The problem is at this game of only throwing shit in the fan, you have to be quite a pig to want to be in politics.
I think this is a weakness inherent to female candidates - voters don't like it when they "go low". Traditionally, going low is the VP candidate's job, but Tim Walz is just not a go-low kind of guy, as shown clearly in the VP debate. Maybe that is a lesson for the future: When you put a woman at the top of the ticket, you need a running mate who is not afraid to be as nasty as it takes to destroy the opponent, even if he destroys his own political future in the process.
"That only works when Republicans are not willing to go all out against you. They were afraid to do that against a man, however black he was"
You remembered things very differently than I did. Remember when Obama was a Muslim Marxist from Kenya? He won in 2008 because any Dem would have won in that environment, and won in 2012 because Romney sounded like an out-of-touch plutocrat at a time when the economy still wasn't the best. The attacks just fell flat because the working-class voters that decide every election thought that Obama was more relatable. The fact of the matter is, Trump is just better at relating. Despite his wealth, he learned how to talk like his working-class voters. Candidate quality and environment both matter. And this might sound preposterous, but Trump's candidate quality isn't bad at all, and he was running in a favorable environment for him.
I have no idea what the right strategy should or could be going forward.
This election was about (1) inflation, (2) incumbency, and (3) immigration. I’m pretty sure there was no one that we could have run (who were “real” candidates) could have won this election.
What I’m most concerned about though is I’m not clear how the Dems win power going forward (not 2028 or in presidential) but actual power by getting the senate. In 2030 we will do another census where ny and California will loose 7 electoral college votes to Florida and Texas. The “blue wall” is expected to lose a single electoral vote for each state. It looks in 10 years to be pretty ugly for Dems and I have no idea how they actually break through with these voters.
Schatz talks like a neophyte who never had to experience such amount of negative campaigning (and therefore thinks he could be immune to that).