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.
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.
Do you know any Trump supporters? I mean that sincerely. Because I do, and no, they’re not telling them someone is below them. They’re telling them there’s someone above them who’s keeping them down. It doesn’t help that the new dividing line between R and D is a college education. There are a bunch of rich, racist Trump supporters, to be sure, but blue collar workers without a degree are, on average, not going to be as well off as a college educated liberal.
Do you think that’s how you’ll win back their support?
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.
No, that’s very clearly how you heard what he was saying. If we’re talking about messaging and its effectiveness then you strawmanning his words into inane caricatures won’t help us figure out why his messages work.
Every single message he has put out about illegal immigrants boils down to “they’re bringing drugs and crime, they’re illegally voting, and open border liberals keep letting them in.” Liberals have obsessed for so long about perceiving this as an attack on poor brown people that they forgot it’s also ironically a defense of poor brown people.
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.
He got almost half of the Latino vote, and we are bleeding Latino support. That’s not racism. It means there’s something else happening.
Further, you’ll get no argument from me that they believe lies. But we are seeing record numbers of asylum seekers, many of which are legitimately abusing the system. When we ignore that problem and pretend it’s not happening and that it doesn’t have acute financial impacts on border communities, we abandon our chance to provide a counterpoint to the lies.
“They’re not voting” rings hollow when these folks see reports of arrests for non-citizen voting, and then see this happening. When we pretend these things aren’t happening or downplay them, it not only feeds Trump’s narratives, it also strips us of our ability to be fact checkers.
The people at the bottom of the economic ladder believe and support him. They are not all irredeemable racists. We need to stop disparaging them as such or we will never get them back.
They voted for a rapist with a pack of white supremacists. They are irredeemable and they were never going to vote the other way. Thinking you can win them over is insane.
If you want to write off half of the Latino population as irredeemable, then be my guest. Bernie wouldn’t, and I hope an acolyte will emerge and follow his example. I’ll be right there with them.
Latino has nothing to do with it. They’re humans, and a sizeable portion of humanity is just awful. Trump erases morality and makes them proud of their awfulness. You probably believe that all humans are intrinsically good but that’s wishful thinking.
I think the main thing I can take away from this is I’d be terrible at running a political campaign. I already knew that.
While I can understand how more traditional conservative messages resonate with people, Trump’s are outside my Overton window. I can see the mechanics of how it works, and I can empathize with people who feel like the current system is failing them, but not with those who feel like Trump is going to fix it.
I’m disappointed your comments are attracting downvotes. They are on-topic and well-reasoned.
I appreciate your response and understand your conundrum. It’s hard to make sense of this because his movement seems so abhorrent sometimes.
Consider for just a moment, though, that the downvotes are proving to you exactly the argument I’m trying to make. I’m squarely on the left and despise Trump, but for years the left has cared more about being “right” and punishing people who disagree in life and online, than about being open to diverse people and opinions.
I really hate to have to echo tired right-wing talking points, but the terminally online left is our single most toxic bloc, and they exert huge amounts of control over what topics and opinions are “allowable” online. You get hammered with downvotes and shouted out of the room any time you even try to consider another perspective, even if you do it politely. I can see how someone looking in from the outside would start to doubt our sincerity in arguing for diversity and tolerance. We’re an awfully intolerant lot, all things considered.