But in her defense, on the ignorance front, she knows damn well what habeus corpus means. Trump has taught his minions this power play; to constantly insist that up is down, that black is white, that criminal is patriotic. It’s not even gaslighting. They know that they are lying, and they know that we know they are lying. They don’t even want to convince us, that would in fact undermine the goal, which is force us to agree to whatever prevarication they insist our reality be. Every interaction with their inferiors is entered in bad faith, every lie they make us accept is a victory.
To be fair, Biden had an amazingly effective presidency. It honestly wouldn’t have been bad thing for her to stay the course.
She was in a difficult situation; people wanted more of the same, that is for a daddy to take care of them, and they were also chaffing at the bit about what retrospectively were molehills instead of mountains.
Maybe, but the voters that Kamala lost were not the type that were picking their candidate based on the nuances of policy. They were based on more obvious factors like who I trust and who is in my tribe.
I am even less convinced by the navel-gazing of Democratic strategists today than I was last Fall. The 2024 POTUS election was determined by animal spirits like unhappiness with the economy, and the failure of young American males to compete with their smarter, more disciplined sisters.
The disaffection of young men and women based on their divergent economic prospects is shaping everything else they choose to do, to buy and to support.
This disaffection really hurt Kamala in 2024. While she did well with the female side of the Electorate, she lost a bigger share of the male side. The Democrats need to capture more of this portion of the Electorate than Kamala could possibly win in 2024. It pains me to say it but the data doesn’t lie.
If you shit on a group from Bill Clinton onwards what the hell do you expect. When I was young I had occasion to pay attention to the success of high school students in a working class community. Every year somebody (sometimes a handful) would rise to attend an important college. Some years they went to an Ivy League school or others they got rides to a west coast tech school or maybe MIT. Recently I watched the graduation of a similar high school. There were a few who had money to go to the state school but nobody won a scholarship to an elite college. Nearly everyone is going to community college. My two granddaughters were academically talented but they won scholarships to a teachers college where their grandfather had worked as math professor.
Young men aren’t doing nearly as well as young women. I know at least one young man with a degree who is lucky to have a job as a machine operator in a small machine shop. He is doing better than many. Many young men have just given up and are hooked on drugs. Others have been radicalized.
All the time young people graduating from working class high schools are being called names like racists or misogynists by people on boards like this. Nobody in the Democratic party is trying to figure out what went wrong. Trump isn’t doing anything for those poor working class young people but neither is the Democratic party.
The world went to hell when middle class young people were no longer able to get into an elite school. They knew it and lost all of their hope. We have a lot of work to do.
You have to give people a reason to think voting for you will help them. Just what reason has the Democratic party given to young people to vote for them. What do they promise to do to make young men’s lives better? Shit they don’t even fight for union workers any more.
And here I thought that it was the old folk who needed to get out of the way. Sorry, Bob, but the times are still achanging. Practicing generational politics is fraught with peril. The paradigm keeps changing. We have answers but don’t know the questions except for “what will things look like in November 2026?” I will stand in the doorway to block this change the best I can. I am sure there are many factors which may or may not be significant into the why of these gross statistics, but doubt that any single theory will provide the answer. Besides, we will have new data in 2026.
Interesting: In the 2024 presidential election, approximately 154 million people voted, compared to 158 million in 2020. While the total number of voters was slightly lower in 2024, the voter turnout rate, calculated as a percentage of the voting-eligible population, was 63.9%, a decrease from the 66.6% turnout rate in 2020.
Why I wonder were there less voters in 2024 than in 2020. Let’s ask fElon, he might know.
The latter is manifestly untrue. Democrats are, will continue and have been delivering for all Americans, including poor working class young people for decades now. That’s why those workers have things like health insurance (either Obamacare on their parent’s plans up to 25 or Medicaid), unemployment insurance, etc.
Some specific achievements relevant to poor young workers:
[COVID] Extend eviction freeze
Extends rule requiring overtime pay to workers making under $58,000 annually
Bans most noncompete employment agreements preventing workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own
Student Loan Forgiveness (yes, non-College degree workers can also have student loan debt from technical certificates or other vocational programs)
Passes largest infrastructure improvement bill in history (big work opportunities for young, non-College men in construction)
The Inflation Reduction Act will provide one million solar and wind jobs by 2035 (more construction and manufacturing work for young, non-College men)
Updated federal prevailing wage for first time in decades, raising wages by thousands of dollars (more money for those working on government funded projects)
5.2% pay raise for military and federal workers - largest since carter administration (includes many young people)
Pardons thousands who were convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands (reduce the school to prison pipeline for young workers)
And I could go on, but you get the idea. There is no lack of effort on the Dems side for helping all workers (including poor and young ones).
If there is any failing here, it’s one of branding and exposure. Biden and most Dems concern themselves more with effectiveness than ensuring they get the credit for any policy or program. As a consequence, most people who benefit from these programs aren’t aware of who is responsible for creating them in the first place. That has allowed scammers like Trump and Republicans to take credit for those programs (see all the GOPers who promoted the Infrastructure or IRA funding in their district that they voted against).
This is why the Leopard’s Eating Faces examples are so important - the only way we change this narrative is if voters (including these young, poor, male voters) get a direct taste of Trump/Republican governance directly. It’s not my first choice to do it this way, but all other options have proven not successful in convincing them otherwise.
I am not going to argue that there weren’t things done by Biden that helped all Americans, but if you pay attention to Democratic spokesmen the Democratic party is all about helping women and minorities achieve equality. Helping young white men is the last thing on the minds of the aging elite Democratic leadership. And that perception is, I suspect, why young men of all races, broke so hard for Trump.
To the extent that this is true, why do suppose young women are doing better than young men at finding jobs? Might it be that many jobs today are service jobs that many young men don’t consider taking (waiting tables, for instance) or require further education whether in college (not necessarily for a BA or BS) or in an apprenticeship for a trade? Some young men do become practical nurses, for instance, but very few, and though a tiny number may exist, I’ve never seen a male dental hygienist or a low-level secretary/administrative assistant. While women have been making headway in jobs previously the reserve of men, few men have shown any interest in jobs traditionally taken by women.
Simply not true that Dems don’t fight for union workers anymore or give young men a reason to vote for them, as @noonm gives evidence.
Biden was literally the first sitting President to walk a picket line. Even FDR, who was previously the most pro-union President that even passed the Wagner Act, never did that. Biden and Democrats may have failings, but failing to support unions is not one of them.
In fact, the betrayal here goes the other way. Biden and Democrats bailed out the Teamsters’ failing pension fund, yet the Teamsters’ still couldn’t find the time to endorse Harris:
Some local/regional Teamsters unions did endorse Harris-Walz. Michigan, for instance, and southern California. I’ve thought of their endorsements ever since Trump’s tariffs have threatened/already affected Teamsters’ jobs in both places. I wonder if their union leaders (if not all of their rank-and-file) foresaw the consequences of Trump’s campaign promises about tariffs.
During the campaign last fall, Alex Wagner visited a local UAW meeting where their leaders were urging the maybe 20 or 30 workers to vote Harris-Walz. They gave various reasons, including Obama’s saving the auto industry and the fact that the very plant they all worked in was operating only thanks to Biden’s signing legislation passed by a Dem Congress. The leaders were older men. Alex interviewed two young workers, both of whom were inclined to vote for Trump. One was maybe 25 or a little older and was concerned about inflation and that he couldn’t afford to buy a house for his wife and two young children. The other man looked not too far out of high school and didn’t say much but reiterated the other guy’s economic concerns. Their ignorance lessened my optimism for a Harris win.
Saw the same interview. It convinced me that those two fuckers were never going to vote for a woman President, the one was going to get divorced and the other one never had a date in his life.
My conclusions were and are: 1) these guys are unpersuadable and 2) if you want to win their votes you need to run a tough white guy like JB Pritzker. These guys are deciding who to vote on what I call “vibes and memes.” Rationality isn’t even in the cranium.
Hopefully the party will see the light before the pick another deserving candidate that half the Electorate won’t vote for.
