My perception was that she ran on "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" and something vague about protecting women's rights.
It's almost like you need more than a couple months to run a serious presidential campaign. Despite being the VP for 4 years, most people didn't know what to expect from her. Almost nobody was enthusiastic about her and she had no real momentum. That's obviously what killed her campaign.
I did. I also knew what she campaigned on during her brief presidential campaign in 2020. I also know her Senate record. I also know what she did as AG and DA. Harris' problem is that her platform was inconsistent with past actions. I'm all for politicians having a change of heart, but they have to be able to articulate what they believed before, what made them reconsider, and how they got to their new position. She failed spectacularly in that task which made her look inauthentic and the GOP seized on that weakness.
Her platform ended up looking like the output of a focus group with the express intent of winning votes rather than having any real policy positions. GP's "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" is pretty spot on.
> Did you look up her platform at all? Or do you insist this because it wasn't spoon fed to you?
I know her actual platform was more detailed than that, but it doesn't matter what I know. The point is it was not communicated effectively. Go out on the streets and ask the common folk what her platform was. Aside from "I don't know", the answers you'll get will be all over the place - mostly just generic DNC talking points. The average liberal/moderate/independent voter was not excited about Harris.
Do you honestly think most voters are researching candidates? Honestly? Of course they aren't. They expect it to be spoon fed to them.
> There was a platform document pretty early on in her campaign.
Good luck insisting voters should RTFM. Professionals don't even RTFM most of the time.
> Meanwhile Trump in 2020 did not have a platform at all and yet the voters didn't give a shit.
Trump lost in 2020, so I'm not sure why this is relevant. But regardless his platform was the same as it was in 2016 and 2024 - "Make America great again," "drain the swamp," these are household phrases. And just as Trump's platform resonated better with voters in 2016 and 2024, Biden's "return to normalcy" platform resonated in 2020 amidst the pandemic. There's more to these platforms than a catchy slogan, but that's the part people remember. It's effective marketing.
Look man, I want the Democrats to put forth a strong candidate and an effective campaign but this whole "blaming the voter" thing is not going to get them there. It's just going to continue alienating the people they need most.
I do agree, but I am so sick and tired of people who insist "Her platform was X" when what they actually mean is "I made no attempt to find out what they offered and instead when Fox News or Twitter or 4chan told me that she wanted to ban being a cis white male I just took that at face value and made no attempt to find out if this was even remotely close to reality, and just started repeating that claim unprompted to other people instead"
I'm so sick of people saying "I have curated an information diet that explicitly excludes anything from a democrat or a liberal or anyone who is even kind of empathetic to their causes and beliefs, but I'm angry that I didn't hear about all the things democrats claimed they were offering" as if they didn't fucking do this to themselves?
Like, at any point, google "Harris platform" and it would have been first link. Ballotpedia has been around for a decade and makes this utterly trivial, even in local elections.
Americans ignore anything a democrat says, while taking blatant lies from a second trump admin at face value. What the actual fuck is the democrat party supposed to do about that? They have no editorial control over Fox News, and certainly don't have any power in Musk's Twitter
"The democrats didn't do good outreach" say people who consistently turn off and ignore any media that even repeats a democrat campaign promise, and have scientifically demonstrated that they will INHERENTLY distrust anything coming from someone with a (D).
My perception was that she ran on "more of the same but also different... nevermind, look at all these celebrities telling you to vote for me!" and something vague about protecting women's rights.
It's almost like you need more than a couple months to run a serious presidential campaign. Despite being the VP for 4 years, most people didn't know what to expect from her. Almost nobody was enthusiastic about her and she had no real momentum. That's obviously what killed her campaign.