I'm leaning toward Democrats sitting out the election or worse defecting to Trump because they thought Biden was supporting genocide in Gaza being a key reason why Harris lost. Racism and misogyny go a long way toward explaining votes for Trump in my book. Add the Gaza story to that (and I believe it…
I'm leaning toward Democrats sitting out the election or worse defecting to Trump because they thought Biden was supporting genocide in Gaza being a key reason why Harris lost. Racism and misogyny go a long way toward explaining votes for Trump in my book. Add the Gaza story to that (and I believe it will be born out) and it makes the whole Democrat postmortem fairly useless along with pundit's opinions on it.
There is that, but also Democrats are pretty lackadaisical voters in general.
And there was a ton of news (likely in their curated Social Media bubbles) that Harris was rocking it, tons of vibes, and exuberance at events, so they likely felt that they didn't need to be inconvenienced to go to the polls, or to read the voter information packets.
Catherynne Valente's Substack, Welcome to Garbagetown had a prescient post on November 4 with this paragraph:
"I trust Democrats’ deep, passionate, and powerful longing to not vote. I don’t understand it, but it’s as reliable as sunrise and the tide and white male comics complaining that their warmed-over take my wife, please jokes are being silenced to millions of views and dollars. Democrats FUCKING LOVE not voting. At the drop of the smallest and most irrelevant novelty hat, Dems seem to start celebrating, throw up our hands and joyfully not the fuck vote because…blue state so it doesn’t matter (yes it does, downballot dingus)/I got stuff to do and it’s a done deal (it isn’t, and we will all have a lot more shit to do if Elon Musk gets to Twitter our economy while RFK leaves the rotting carcass of public health in a park for fun and Trump sells the entire country to Putin for $599 and a kiss)/electoralism doesn’t work (oh my god hold my earrings)/my not voting sends a message to the establishment (they have no way of knowing why you didn’t vote, it could have been because Chipotle had a BOGO deal that day, your message is just a blank, subjectless email sent to no one)if Trump gets in it will accelerate us toward the revolution and people will rise up (he was already in power and there was no glorious leftist revolution, just the breakdown of society and suffering, also a revolution would not turn out with gentle loving progressives in charge)/the candidate isn’t perfect and will win anyway so I can stay pure (they won’t necessarily win anyway and not doing the bare minimum of saying please not fascism though is literally the opposite of political purity) or whatever reason seems fun that day."
"At the drop of the smallest and most irrelevant novelty hat.......joyfully not the fuck vote"
And if you truly thought that Biden was supporting genocide (which I don't), then this would not in fact be a small and irrelevant novelty hat. It would be a huge deal.
"A lot of it was racism and misogyny."
I'm leaning toward Democrats sitting out the election or worse defecting to Trump because they thought Biden was supporting genocide in Gaza being a key reason why Harris lost. Racism and misogyny go a long way toward explaining votes for Trump in my book. Add the Gaza story to that (and I believe it will be born out) and it makes the whole Democrat postmortem fairly useless along with pundit's opinions on it.
There is that, but also Democrats are pretty lackadaisical voters in general.
And there was a ton of news (likely in their curated Social Media bubbles) that Harris was rocking it, tons of vibes, and exuberance at events, so they likely felt that they didn't need to be inconvenienced to go to the polls, or to read the voter information packets.
Catherynne Valente's Substack, Welcome to Garbagetown had a prescient post on November 4 with this paragraph:
"I trust Democrats’ deep, passionate, and powerful longing to not vote. I don’t understand it, but it’s as reliable as sunrise and the tide and white male comics complaining that their warmed-over take my wife, please jokes are being silenced to millions of views and dollars. Democrats FUCKING LOVE not voting. At the drop of the smallest and most irrelevant novelty hat, Dems seem to start celebrating, throw up our hands and joyfully not the fuck vote because…blue state so it doesn’t matter (yes it does, downballot dingus)/I got stuff to do and it’s a done deal (it isn’t, and we will all have a lot more shit to do if Elon Musk gets to Twitter our economy while RFK leaves the rotting carcass of public health in a park for fun and Trump sells the entire country to Putin for $599 and a kiss)/electoralism doesn’t work (oh my god hold my earrings)/my not voting sends a message to the establishment (they have no way of knowing why you didn’t vote, it could have been because Chipotle had a BOGO deal that day, your message is just a blank, subjectless email sent to no one)if Trump gets in it will accelerate us toward the revolution and people will rise up (he was already in power and there was no glorious leftist revolution, just the breakdown of society and suffering, also a revolution would not turn out with gentle loving progressives in charge)/the candidate isn’t perfect and will win anyway so I can stay pure (they won’t necessarily win anyway and not doing the bare minimum of saying please not fascism though is literally the opposite of political purity) or whatever reason seems fun that day."
Yep, this is the Democrats to a 'T'. FWIW, the whole post is worth reading, as well as subscribing to her 'stack: https://catvalente.substack.com/p/election-eve-zen-and-the-art-of-doomscrolling
"At the drop of the smallest and most irrelevant novelty hat.......joyfully not the fuck vote"
And if you truly thought that Biden was supporting genocide (which I don't), then this would not in fact be a small and irrelevant novelty hat. It would be a huge deal.
I should read one of her novels. Her new one looks good.
She has a way with words that you would not expect from someone who has several YA novels under her belt