Post your election predictions

Verbatim · November 06, 2024, 03:47:45 PM

Quote from: Mordo on November 06, 2024, 03:05:50 PM

Alright, the dust has largely settled, post mortem time on why it went wrong for Kamala:

>The vast majority of exit polls are indicating this was about the economy. Whether you can attribute that to the Biden administration or the post pandemic recovery period is utterly irrelevant to the average voter. It happened under Biden's watch. Voters associated Kamala as the continuity candidate for the current state of economic affairs. She was doomed from the start. The Trump team nailed it on the head by hammering home the simple question of; are you better off now or when I was in charge?

>She lost the POC voting bloc, particularly with males. Latino and black men abandoned her in the droves. I think this is largely down to her west coast elite upbringing just not resonating with POC men. It also doesn't help that she was the Attorney General of California, and if I'm not mistaken, locked a lot of POC men up during her tenure. Not a great image for securing POC votes.

Just genuinely a horrendous pick from the Democrats in hindsight. I'm starting to think she might actually be worse than Hillary.

Of course she was worse than Hillary—let's not forget she was an "also ran" in 2020. She was never considered a serious candidate for anything; when Biden stepped down and the DNC didn't hold a primary, it had the same energy of crossing their fingers and hoping things would just work out.

Quote

>She relied to heavily on vibes and not enough on policy. In retrospect I really think we should have been sounding the alarm bells as her short lived campaign went on. Seriously, I never once heard of a policy position or a concrete step by step plan on how she was going to fix the economy or deal with Gaza if she was to take over. She really just thought coconut memes and brat girl summer tik tok edits were gonna win her the white house.

This is untrue, however. Kamala had several policy positions which she discussed frequently, such as

Expanding the child tax credit, and wanting to cut taxes for middle class families in general
Providing first time home buyers with $25K to help with down payments
ACA expansion
She wanted to stop price fixing by landlords
Protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security
Restoring Roe v Wade

...among others.
You can criticize these policy positions by saying she didn't have a concrete step-by-step plan—but I would argue this is totally irrelevant and wouldn't have made a difference. I think you nailed it on your first and third bullet points. She was doomed from the start. The MAGA cult is literally just too big now, and I genuinely believe that we were going to lose no matter what. But she DID discuss policy and she had several of them, especially compared to Trump who had tariffs, and uh.... uh.... uh.... wanting to glass Palestine?... Wanting to kill minorities?... Trump was the one who lacked policies, but policy literally doesn't matter anymore.

The most salient observation you can make, I think, is that she was a generally lame and uncharismatic woman running against an extremely charismatic cult leader in an increasingly racist and misogynistic country where being a liberal is seen as being soft and weak and uncool (lefties hating liberals so much certainly doesn't help—thanks Hasan Piker, you fucking piece of shit). The democrats have utterly forgotten the concept of charisma—they don't know how to be inspiring anymore. Trump knows how to inspire people with sub 100 IQs, and that's how you win. In this country, that has proven to be an unbeatable strategy.

Mordo · November 06, 2024, 04:04:36 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on November 06, 2024, 03:47:45 PM

Quote from: Mordo on November 06, 2024, 03:05:50 PM
Alright, the dust has largely settled, post mortem time on why it went wrong for Kamala:

>The vast majority of exit polls are indicating this was about the economy. Whether you can attribute that to the Biden administration or the post pandemic recovery period is utterly irrelevant to the average voter. It happened under Biden's watch. Voters associated Kamala as the continuity candidate for the current state of economic affairs. She was doomed from the start. The Trump team nailed it on the head by hammering home the simple question of; are you better off now or when I was in charge?

>She lost the POC voting bloc, particularly with males. Latino and black men abandoned her in the droves. I think this is largely down to her west coast elite upbringing just not resonating with POC men. It also doesn't help that she was the Attorney General of California, and if I'm not mistaken, locked a lot of POC men up during her tenure. Not a great image for securing POC votes.

Just genuinely a horrendous pick from the Democrats in hindsight. I'm starting to think she might actually be worse than Hillary.
Of course she was worse than Hillary—let's not forget she was an "also ran" in 2020. She was never considered a serious candidate for anything; when Biden stepped down and the DNC didn't hold a primary, it had the same energy of crossing their fingers and hoping things would just work out.

Quote
>She relied to heavily on vibes and not enough on policy. In retrospect I really think we should have been sounding the alarm bells as her short lived campaign went on. Seriously, I never once heard of a policy position or a concrete step by step plan on how she was going to fix the economy or deal with Gaza if she was to take over. She really just thought coconut memes and brat girl summer tik tok edits were gonna win her the white house.
This is untrue, however. Kamala had several policy positions which she discussed frequently, such as
Expanding the child tax credit, and wanting to cut taxes for middle class families in general
Providing first time home buyers with $25K to help with down payments
ACA expansion
She wanted to stop price fixing by landlords
Protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security
Restoring Roe v Wade
...among others.
You can criticize these policy positions by saying she didn't have a concrete step-by-step plan—but I would argue this is totally irrelevant and wouldn't have made a difference. I think you nailed it on your first and third bullet points. She was doomed from the start. The MAGA cult is literally just too big now, and I genuinely believe that we were going to lose no matter what. But she DID discuss policy and she had several of them, especially compared to Trump who had tariffs, and uh.... uh.... uh.... wanting to glass Palestine?... Wanting to kill minorities?... Trump was the one who lacked policies, but policy literally doesn't matter anymore.

The most salient observation you can make, I think, is that she was a generally lame and uncharismatic woman running against an extremely charismatic cult leader in an increasingly racist and misogynistic country where being a liberal is seen as being soft and weak and uncool. The democrats have utterly forgotten the concept of charisma—they don't know how to be inspiring anymore. Trump knows how to inspire people with sub 100 IQs, and that's how you win. In this country, that has proven to be an unbeatable strategy.

Yeah perhaps I should have rephrased "policy" with "messaging". I don't doubt she had cogent policies that would have actually benefitted the American people but she just never hammered them home. Winning in politics is 50% policy and 50% brand image it seems.

And yeah, in fairness to her, she literally only had two months to run a campaign, but what you've just listed is the first I'm hearing of most of those policies. Go back to 2020 Biden and he couldn't stop bellowing his actions plan from the rooftops. Her communication strategy was just plain bad.

November 06, 2024, 09:23:10 PM

There was no winning move to make anyway considering we're about 12 years out from the beginning of mass resource collapse and nobody anywhere wants to acknowledge that. But I don't imagine trump'll make things any easier.

I find it hard to believe such a conman ever could have a voter base to begin with, but that's only because I'm forgetting the rule. People are stupid, and you can't underestimate that or foolproof anything against it.

I guess the only upside here is that the US will probably get an acceleration to chaos, which means the faster shit burns down the sooner the cycle will start all over again.

Jono · November 07, 2024, 06:11:09 PM

The entire Central Valley (besides Sacramento) being Red in the 2024 election is shocking to me. Usually its just Kern, Tulare, and Kings counties that are known for being Republican. The further north you go, the more Democrat pro counties you encounter. Would never expect shitholes like Fresno, Manteca, Merced, and Stockton to flip.

alphy · November 08, 2024, 02:28:31 PM

Quote from: Jono on November 07, 2024, 06:11:09 PM

The entire Central Valley (besides Sacramento) being Red in the 2024 election is shocking to me. Usually its just Kern, Tulare, and Kings counties that are known for being Republican. The further north you go, the more Democrat pro counties you encounter. Would never expect shitholes like Fresno, Manteca, Merced, and Stockton to flip.

it shocked me to learn that my home county, san bernardino, voted red. i checked the standings on tuesday night, and saw that it was very close, i think harris was only leading with, like, 52% or something, so i thought to myself dang that's closer than i imagined

next day it was red by a large margin and i was like what in the world

i talked to about it with a friend (who's a bit more into politics than i am) and he was like yeah SB is more red than you think

it genuinely baffled me

Jono · November 08, 2024, 06:05:55 PM

Quote from: alphy on November 08, 2024, 02:28:31 PM

Quote from: Jono on November 07, 2024, 06:11:09 PM
The entire Central Valley (besides Sacramento) being Red in the 2024 election is shocking to me. Usually its just Kern, Tulare, and Kings counties that are known for being Republican. The further north you go, the more Democrat pro counties you encounter. Would never expect shitholes like Fresno, Manteca, Merced, and Stockton to flip.

it shocked me to learn that my home county, san bernardino, voted red. i checked the standings on tuesday night, and saw that it was very close, i think harris was only leading with, like, 52% or something, so i thought to myself dang that's closer than i imagined

next day it was red by a large margin and i was like what in the world

i talked to about it with a friend (who's a bit more into politics than i am) and he was like yeah SB is more red than you think

it genuinely baffled me

I think part of it has to do with people from LA and other areas where the cost of living is insanely high. They're tired of the same old policies and move somewhere else when nothing changes. That's why Nevada and Arizona were important swing states because of all the California transplants.

maverick · November 10, 2024, 02:34:41 PM

So every state has now been called. Kamala lost 6 states that Biden had won, and the popular vote currently seems to have swung roughly 7 points to Trump. This is coming off of a midterm election where democrats historically overperformed. Meanwhile, democratic senate candidates have won in every swing state except PA, and the damage in the House has been minimal.

Do I think this means that Kamala was a singularly bad candidate? Honestly, I don't. Obviously Biden dropping out in the 11th hour and endorsing someone with lower approval ratings than him (at the time) seems questionable, but I'm not sure how much better anyone else would have performed with these conditions. I think that anyone would have been somewhat of a lamb to slaughter and it likely would have been very chaotic to nominate someone besides Kamala. Maybe one of them could have eked out a win through the blue wall, idk.

I don't think there's any silver bullet that would have changed the outcome but they really should have figured out a counterargument on inflation. This is something that has frustrated me for years and I kind of just became numb to it. Everything they tried was far too late and really pathetic. Imagine if Trump presided over record inflation (although we may not have to imagine for too long). He would have immediately become defensive, passed blame onto everyone but himself, and his talking points would become conservative dogma. Just look at voters giving him a pass on the pandemic for how well this can work.

If there's any silver lining to be found here, it's that we consistently see republicans underperforming Trump. And while democrats are on a soul searching mission these next years, I'm sure Republicans will do absolutely no introspection as to why this is the case.

Cheat · November 10, 2024, 03:52:37 PM

My state, MO, is clearly very stupid. We voted yes on Abortion and a minimum wage increase, but voted for Hawley and Trump and what looks like a very very anti-trans governor. Progressive policies and extreme conservative people.

Super Irish · November 11, 2024, 05:49:08 AM

Godspeed Americans

Speedrunning societal regression any%