I think you’re also missing a huge part of it. People don’t care about Gaza nearly as much as people here think, nor do people care about her race or gender much.
You can see a massive shift in betting odds and polls around the time she had an interview where she said she wouldn’t have done anything different than Biden. My general perception is that she didn’t really have a plan, and I think that’s true for the public. I also think the public didn’t like the comparison of Trump with Hitler. Trump, on the other hand, claimed to have a plan for fixing the economy, and I think that resonated with people, especially since the economy was good under Trump. They see the inflation during COVID as Biden’s problem (I personally blame supply chain disruption mostly, and also Trump’s spending), and Harris refused to throw Biden under the bus.
I personally blame Harris’s loss on three things:
- late entry - Biden should’ve dropped out sooner so they could have a real primary
- lack of real difference vs Biden
- running mate choice - should’ve picked Shapiro from Pennsylvania, not Walz
I don’t think her being female hurt her, and it probably helped her appeal to female voters vs Trump, and Obama winning implies race doesn’t matter much either. To me, it comes down to policy and lack of a primary.
SeattleRain@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That is why she lost to though. 15 million blank ballots don’t lie.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 1 year ago
15 million blank ballots is why she lost, but it doesn’t say why those 15 million didn’t show. If you think 15 million people, or even a majority of them, who are largely, older, white, men, did it to protest gaza, I got news for you. It isn’t just the governments, and corporations, that don’t assign value to palestinian life.
SeattleRain@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No they were not largely older white men. And the Gaza issue has a ton of support on the left which would be more readily apparent if it wasn’t so viciously censored by the media and Harris’ own administration.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Everything I see about the statistics of those who previously voted biden, then sat out harris, show the largest single demographic, by far, was older white men. You have anything to counter this? The gaza sentiment, while truly more popular than the powers that be wanted to propose, is a lot smaller, when leveled against the entirety of the non GOP voting population, than progressive venues, especially online ones, want to pretend.
As an example, not a single person in my mom’s big social circle, most of which are not GOP supports, has said one damned thing about the genocide in gaza, and they talk about political issues fairly frequently, even if it is just snipes at someone. Their age/race/economic demographics make the largest portion of those who voted. In the spaces my family live in, down south, people in the their 20s are talking about politics, but gaza isn’t much of a topic, and often when it is, they openly say things to show they need to worry about home, not gaza. The ones who differ are your classic WEIRDs. This same thing holds in a lot of the region I live in, the midatlantic/midwest appalachia region. These people lost her, or at least played a major part in losing her, the election in GA, and PA. They voted mostly based on how bad economic life is for them. They voted stupidly, and are now pissed that they made it worse, but it wasn’t gaza that they gave two fucks about. The one place gaza, likely, truly damaged the harris campaign was MI, because it is second only to India, in muslim population, outside of muslim majority countries.
I think you are the victim of cultural bubble on this one.