Current Events > Kamala did not lose because she was a woman or because she was black

(+) Yeah! (+)

Her campaign was fine. Could have been better, but it was absolutely not "terrible".

Garioshi posted...

Because he used politics of division and his opponent did not.

Division like sex and race. Like the time he ran on Haitians are eating pets or Mexico only sends criminals here or need a ban on Muslim countries or when he ran on black jobs. But yeah sure, race wasn't a factor.

A_Good_Boy posted...

Division like sex and race. Like the time he ran on Haitians are eating pets or Mexico only sends criminals here or need a ban on Muslim countries or when he ran on black jobs. But yeah sure, race wasn't a factor.

I never said it wasn't a factor. It's a much smaller factor than nearly everything else about her as a candidate.

Dio posted...

lmao. Only on CE do you get called a MAGA for criticizing Biden/Harris.

Some people here have a weird, cultish reaction to it, yes. Myself and numerous others would say Biden and Harris's support for the Israeli regime was bad because (among other reasons) it risked losing them support and handing the election to Trump, and some CEers contrived to interpret that to mean we wanted Trump to win, which was the exact opposite of what we were saying. Bizarre. And then after the election some of them convinced themselves that they were the ones who got to say "I told you so!!!" even though we were right and they were wrong (and my god I wish we'd been wrong).

Garioshi posted...

I never said it wasn't a factor. It's a much smaller factor than nearly everything else about her as a candidate.

It's the most consistent factor. He entered into politics after attacking Obama's citizenship. It's the longest most consistent factor in every single one of his campaigns. He won elections the longer he could be racist in his campaigns.

Trump should have been a non-starter regardless of what she did or didn't do.

There's a lot of women haters and racists out there. Including women and POC.

She got stuck with an albatross of an admin and President that she felt tied to and that threw her a live grenade with less time and more chaos than anyone has ever had to deal with.

She didn't even attempt to distance herself from that albatross and ran as the status quo candidate at a time of worldwide discontent, alienated the left, and tried to court the right, all of which backfired. She as a youngish black woman let a white billionaire man hijack the change candidate and anti-establishment lanes. That's bad campaigning.

All of these are true. It was always slim chances considering the structural situation and fading popularity of the Democratic Party brand, but she did not run a perfect race by any stretch and was on a clear downward trajectory from the time of the DNC until the end.

SecretBase posted...

Yeah, billionaires and millionaires work.

Do you think having a zinger means you won?

the core issue is and has always been the electoral college. 1 vote should be 1 vote not a percent of a vote depending where you live. Next is the hard cap on reps where smaller states get more power due to distribution. Removing these two anti-democratic parts should have been addressed back during Bush-Gore but the powers in charge have let it be.

name_unknown posted...

the core issue is and has always been the electoral college. 1 vote should be 1 vote not a percent of a vote depending where you live. Next is the hard cap on reps where smaller states get more power due to distribution. Removing these two anti-democratic parts should have been addressed back during Bush-Gore but the powers in charge have let it be.

The electoral college is an anti-democratic piece of shit institution, but Trump won the popular vote in 2024.

There are many roots for that disaster -- Republican being unrepentantly evil, the mainstream media refusing to report any real truths about US politics, and many in the US electorate being total fuckwits are the big three.

Squall28 posted...

Do you think having a zinger means you won?

If this is the only response you have, I think so.

True
she lost because people worship a rapist racist pedophile

I don't think she ran a *perfect* campaign, but it wasn't a campaign riddled with huge missteps either. She didn't have any major or huge gaffes that immediately made you go like "Shit, we're so fucked on election day"

has anyone posted the "por que no los dos" meme yet

Dio posted...

Obama was a gifted orator the likes we'll likely never see again. If we have to rely on another Obama to ever win then we're well and truly fucked.

Obama didn't succeed just due to skill. He identified the weaknesses of conventional campaigning and he intentionally challenged them.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/26/the-relaunch

I asked Obama whether he thought that journalists respect Clinton for being so good at politics. Absolutely. I dont think that he began, at which point Robert Gibbs, his communications director, interrupted to say that the correct word was revere. Obama smiled and added, I think a classic example was when Adam Nagourney writes on the front page of the New York Times an admiring piece about how Hillary has finessed the fact that she voted for the war and gotten people to forget about it. The article, which was co-written by Patrick Healy and published early last August with the headline SLOWLY, CLINTON SHIFTS ON WAR, QUIETING FOES, was hardly admiring. When I asked Nagourney about Obamas contention, he replied in an e-mail, This was a very straightforward and simple story: reporting the fact that Mrs. Clinton had repositioned herself on the war in a significant way, and had done so apparently unnoticed by the press anddare I say?her opponents.

It is often true that political reporting is overly focused on tactics, and, as Obama argues, that coverage of the Clinton campaignits professionalism and organizationhas at times been fawning. Obamas pique at the Times piece was revealing, suggesting a hope that journalists would make the case against Clinton that Obama himself had declined to make; the Philadelphia debate marked the beginning of his realization that neither his surrogates nor the press were adequate substitutes. He had to make the case himself, and so he rolled out his hard-truths theme. The response from Hillary Clinton so far has been scorn. For the life of me, I dont understand what my opponents are trying to achieve, she told the Time columnist Joe Klein. When he asked Clinton about her reluctance to support funding Social Security with higher payroll taxes on the wealthy, she replied, I am not going to support a trillion-dollar tax increase. In explaining why her energy-independence plan is superior to Obamas, she said, Its got to be politically done.

Worse, she initially ran a very impressive campaign and had amazing momentum, only to later decide to fall into the typical Republican-lite approach that Democrats seem to be drawn towards.

SSj4Wingzero posted...

I don't think she ran a *perfect* campaign, but it wasn't a campaign riddled with huge missteps either. She didn't have any major or huge gaffes that immediately made you go like "Shit, we're so fucked on election day"

Most of her missteps was with pretending to be more of the same. Trump populism worked much better.

She also looked extremely ivory-tower corporate. Trump managed to play pretend as a McDonald worker and a garbage man, while she basically kept throwing money at already rich celebrities using DNC electorate money. It came across as extremely tone deaf. Not to mention that the old talking point about taking men and younger generations for granted (but that it seems to be more of a sin of the left than explicitly DNC in general).

I'm still on the belief that many moderates still doesn't like Trump, he just managed to be outhated by the DNC which is still on a tailspin with the defeat. Which explains why his popularity always declines but still manages to win against DNC.

Oh, and the assassination attempt. I don't get it why so many underestimate how much of a impact that did to the elections when a president survives an assassination attempt live and act as a tough guy, and having an victim dying on the attempt.

Trumble posted...

Worse, she initially ran a very impressive campaign and had amazing momentum, only to later decide to fall into the typical Republican-lite approach that Democrats seem to be drawn towards.

And Obama identified the weakness of this approach in 2007. I think it's worth reading that whole piece. Democrats have forgotten how Obama rewrote campaigning and should learn from his success.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/26/the-relaunch

What was notable about Obamas speech at the dinnerone of his finest and most passionatewas not just the roaring choreography from his red-clad supporters but the way that, at 11:30 P.M., he galvanized the entire auditorium, with a succinct description of the difference between his campaign and Clintons: If we are really serious about winning this election, Democrats, we cant live in fear of losing it. Even many of Clintons troops could be seen beating yellow thunder sticks together in appreciation. Obama seemed to be making an argument about the connection between boldness and electability. With Hillary Clinton, he suggested, there is an inverse relationship between the two: she is so polarizing that she is forced to be a milquetoast candidate in order to become an electable one.

Facts

*checks tag for TC*
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/eb67cd00.jpg
/topiclist

I know now that she can't be president. Not because she's black, but because she's a rabbit

mybbqrules posted...

*checks tag for TC*
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/eb67cd00.jpg
/topiclist

I had that tag on them, then I thought I was being harsh and removed it. Then they made that "Ukraine government is bad" topic with the very thinly veiled "everybody should stop funding them in the war" comment, and I wanted to tag them again, especially when they started getting into the "Russia attacking them indiscriminately isn't causing anything" posts.

This topic now tells me... Yeah, they're not a good faith poster.

If somebody's go to, today, is still trying to shit on Kamala, over all else, well... That tells you a lot.

I was going to say that anyway but I thought it over.

There was a real smear campaign.

• KH lied about her height. She is really 5' 4" instead of being tall
• KH lied about working at McDonalds
• KH hustled her way through university and government
• Yada, yada, yada

Any Dem candidate would have been treated the same.

So strike for woman, strike for poc, strike for supporting DNC

HashtagSEP posted...

I had that tag on them, then I thought I was being harsh and removed it. Then they made that "Ukraine government is bad" topic with the very thinly veiled "everybody should stop funding them in the war" comment, and I wanted to tag them again, especially when they started getting into the "Russia attacking them indiscriminately isn't causing anything" posts.

This topic now tells me... Yeah, they're not a good faith poster.

If somebody's go to, today, is still trying to shit on Kamala, over all else, well... That tells you a lot.

I'm not going to apologize for anything I've said because I believe in and stand by every word that I say. That being said, I'd like to make it clear that I am a leftist. Trump is the greatest existential threat that the world has ever faced and for that reason, I want to make sure that we actually learn from the failures of the opposition that failed to keep him out of the Presidency twice instead of pretending that the loss was out of their hands and simply couldn't have been prevented because the voters are stupid or something equally uncontrollable. I am interested in winning.

Garioshi posted...

I'm not going to apologize for anything I've said because I believe in and stand by every word that I say. That being said, I'd like to make it clear that I am a leftist. Trump is the greatest existential threat that the world has ever faced and for that reason, I want to make sure that we actually learn from the failures of the opposition that failed to keep him out of the Presidency twice instead of pretending that the loss was out of their hands and simply couldn't have been prevented because the voters are stupid or something equally uncontrollable. I am interested in winning.

That stance on Ukraine is extremely sus, but youre not wrong about your attitude towards the Democrats as described in this post.

Trumble posted...

That stance on Ukraine is extremely sus, but youre not wrong about your attitude towards the Democrats as described in this post.

That description of my Ukraine topic is a gross mischaracterization to the point that I suspect malicious intent (or a severe lack of reading comprehension), but I have absolutely no desire to relitigate it.

The top-level strategists that failed us this last election, as well as their whole playbook, should be thrown out. They are losers and they do not belong in this new era of populist politics.

Nobody cared about the fact Trump was a convicted felon and attempted to overthrow the government last time.

She could have won but with the above being the case, it was not a surprise that she didn't.

Also, I don't really subscribe to the 'she lost ergo she ran a bad campaign'. To me, that suggests that all parts of a winning campaign were right.

So, being a convicted felon makes for a good campaign, attempting to overthrow the government last time makes for a good campaign, very low participation rallies and events in comparison makes for a good campaign.

You can either say 'the winning campaign was better because it won' and ignore everything that went in to it, or you can say 'the winning campaign was better because it won' and stand by every single thing, and while the first lacks nuance, it is more evidentiary than the second.

Garioshi posted...

Yes, they're called billionaires.

So youre arguing she should have targeted the.wealthy?

Like shedid?

Garioshi posted...

Trump is the greatest existential threat that the world has ever faced

Basicly this.

Trumble posted...

Worse, she initially ran a very impressive campaign and had amazing momentum, only to later decide to fall into the typical Republican-lite approach that Democrats seem to be drawn towards.

As I mentioned recently in another topic, some anonymous person on on social media summed it up very well about a month before the election: 'it was kinda cool those three weeks Kamala campaigned on "Republicans are weird and we're not going back" before deciding to pivot to "Republicans are my friends and they're good and we can do Republican policy even better than they can," the exact same strategy that already lost to Trump.'

I dont think it was overly terrible. I think Biden running when he shouldnt have was a huge factor in getting us to the point of not having enough time. A primary was literally too late to have by the time he actually dropped out so the party had to play the hand it was dealt. I do think her campaign made mistakes, such as sacrificing hype among democrats to court republicans. And I think the online discourse should have been to openly acknowledge those problems and plead with people to vote for her anyway rather than for people to stick their heads in the sand and scream at people to just stop talking about all that.

but the kinds of people who voted against kamala are the kinds of people who are very likely to be racist or sexist or anti-lgbt. maybe not 100% of them, but a significant majority, and the ones who aren't are still guilty by association

There are a bunch of reasons she lost.

Being black and female undoubtedly contributed to it. Various campaign missteps also were probably a factor, as well as a lot of propaganda pushing some young males to vote republican.

But the main reason was probably this:

SecretBase posted...

She lost because the public blamed the party in power for the inflation and wars. The candidate didn't matter.

It may never have been possible for her to win because of this.

However, I don't think this was much of a factor:

HighSeraph posted...

Couldn't have anything to do with a vocal minority calling her a genocidal monster or anything.

Most of America was very much on Israel's side. They just heard about the Hamas attacks and assumed Israel was right without looking into it much. The view that Israel was committing a genocide was very much a minority (and probably still is.

If anything, Trump saying he would go hard on supporting Israel and fighting Hamas probably helped him a little.

There was a lot of reasons like Hollywood, the genocide remark didn't help either and being tied with Biden. Reason why it took some awhile to endorse her like Obama.

She ran a better campaign than Biden and quite frankly they both ran better campaigns than Trump 2020/2024. If the quality of the campaign was the important factor, Trump would have been consigned to history years ago.

Totally not a bad faith topic...

reincarnator07 posted...

She ran a better campaign than Biden and quite frankly they both ran better campaigns than Trump 2020/2024. If the quality of the campaign was the important factor, Trump would have been consigned to history years ago.

This x1000

What I love about people saying Kamala running a bad campaign is, they NEVER talk about what made Trump's campaign great.

The default assumption is Kamala's campaign had to win people over. Why?

Trump was a convicted felon, a known racist, a sexual predator and lead a terrorist attack against America.

Why did Kamala have to win people over? Why were they okay with Trump in the first place?

The answer is AMERICA IS RACIST AND SEXIST.

Sorry there is literally no other explanation.

SecretBase posted...

She lost because the public blamed the party in power for the inflation and wars. The candidate didn't matter.

And then promptly stopped caring

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

So at no point in history has anyone been denied a job because of their race or gender. Every person in the America is successful because of their merit, bias and bigotry do not exist?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Like most Americans you hold Kamala to a standard you don't hold Trump to... hmm, I wonder why. Trust me, we're not friends.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Missing the point the of his question.

Read the rest of hmnuts post. You arent winning over someone that inherently thinks you are inferior.

Hmnuts post isnt the only reason she lost either. Theres multiple reasons. Including the "I need to criticize Democrats more than Republicans" Vanguards who did everything in their power to spread the word that, "Democrats bad."

The, "I hold Kamala/Democrats to a higher standard than Trump/Republicans" vanguard who did their best to make sure non voters and uninformed voters to know Democrats are the same if not worse than Republicans.

I voted for her and held out hope but the instant she lost I was kind of like, well of course she did. Look at what fucking happened.

oh well. at least it wasn't my fault.

She didn't lose *only* because she's a black woman, but America is still regrettably a country where that hurt her chances.

Her defeat was due to a combination of factors, some which were in her control, some of which weren't, including her gender and skin color and being in a country where too many people care about those things.

NCloud posted...

It is objectively the case that the Trump and Biden campaigns were better than hers because Trump and Biden actually won. p

Not how it works.

If both candidates suck ass, one beating the other doesn't make them not suck. One of the trash campaigns still has to win, by default.

If I beat an emaciated cripple's ass that doesn't mean we aren't both still weak as fuck.

Personally, I think the election was lost the moment Biden decided to run again but that aside, I do think it Harris made some foolish decisions in her campaign but I think the writing was on the wall.

That said, given who they were running against Harris could've stood on stage and said fuck each and every one of you who want something different than Biden I'm gonna run the same exact playbook and I'm gonna make Liz Cheney my VP instead and she still would've been the obvious better choice.

Had this been trumps first time running I could buy into how a better campaign strategy might've won. But not only had he run two other times he actually served as president in what probably would've went down as the most corrupt and ineffective administration of all time had he not won this time. We know how he governs and we know what he represents. We, the American people, had all the information we needed and still voted for him, it's inexcusable.

And to be clear, I only vote Democrats in generals for harm reduction purposes (I'm much further to the left) and I have a massive amount of contempt for the Democratic party in general but the blame can't be put solely on them.

hmnut7 posted...

This x1000

What I love about people saying Kamala running a bad campaign is, they NEVER talk about what made Trump's campaign great.

The default assumption is Kamala's campaign had to win people over. Why?

Trump was a convicted felon, a known racist, a sexual predator and lead a terrorist attack against America.

Why did Kamala have to win people over? Why were they okay with Trump in the first place?

The answer is AMERICA IS RACIST AND SEXIST.

Sorry there is literally no other explanation.

How much of his base do you think actually believes those things about him? A chunk of them are still the kind that think global warming is a hoax.

People underestimating how fucking poweful misogynoir really is tells me they never truly listened to Black people's experiences.

hmnut7 posted...

This x1000

What I love about people saying Kamala running a bad campaign is, they NEVER talk about what made Trump's campaign great.

The default assumption is Kamala's campaign had to win people over. Why?

Trump was a convicted felon, a known racist, a sexual predator and lead a terrorist attack against America.

Why did Kamala have to win people over? Why were they okay with Trump in the first place?

The answer is AMERICA IS RACIST AND SEXIST.

Sorry there is literally no other explanation.

If you'd like me to go over exactly why I think Trump won, I'm happy to do so.

1. Institutional bias. This one is obvious, but the Electoral College heavily favors Republicans because they would never win another election otherwise. Gerrymandering is the same deal. Kamala lost the popular vote, but this certainly didn't help.
2. Massive amounts of voter suppression. This one is also undeniable and it's entirely possible that this was a deciding factor if everything else was unchanged. Democrats have won elections despite this voter suppression in the past, so I don't think it's fair to blame the ENTIRE loss on it, but it was particularly aggressive in 2024.
3. Kamala refused to separate herself from Biden. I've already outlined why Biden being railroaded was a HORRIFIC idea for his continued electability. Biden was a historically unpopular President and candidate and it was nakedly obvious to everyone with eyes that Kamala would not and could not criticize the actions of an administration that NOBODY liked. We've all seen the clip where Kamala couldn't think of a single way in which she would be different from Biden aside of putting a Republican in her Cabinet. I'm gonna be real, Biden probably should have resigned as President if this is the best she could manage. The stench of the status quo that nobody liked was all over her. Say what you will about Trump, but he certainly didn't promise that everything would stay the same.
4. Politics of division. I've been hammering it in in this topic, but it is so important in this era of populism. People want an enemy to rally against and Trump gave them plenty. Kamala gave them none aside of Trump, and her rhetoric was nowhere near as polarizing. I've seen plenty of people in this topic balk at the idea of turning a minority into an enemy, but the fact is that billionaires have been raping this country for everything it's worth for the past 45 years. They are the perfect target for someone who is interested in winning. You don't need to delve into racism or lies to get the people riled up about the group of people that is responsible for essentially everything that has made living harder as an American. Kamala wouldn't do this, though, because billionaires own both parties. I don't see another way to do politics of division that doesn't rely on some kind of bigotry. Billionaires have no problem with racism or sexism or anything else as long as it does not threaten their bottom line.
5. Trump framed the debate on every issue and Kamala (and Democrats as a whole) did not make a serious attempt to push back on it. Trump says "We're going to round up all of these criminal murderer rapist immigrants"? Democrats respond with "We need to fix our broken immigration system" while pushing an immigration bill that would make Republicans from just 10 years ago cream themselves. If you're a layman, it sure looks like both sides agree that dangerous, violent illegal immigrants are a problem and Republicans just want to be harsher on the dangerous, violent illegal immigrants than the Democrats. Conceding the framing usually outright concedes the point to the opposition, especially when the framing is a lie. Republicans would go on every single outlet they possibly could to projectile vomit the new talking point of the day into the faces of as many American people as possible, Democrats would make a fifth of the appearances and refuse to plant their feet in the ground and FIGHT. They dropped trans people and DREAMers the second it wasn't politically expedient and from a layman's perspective, it sure looks like they didn't believe in anything.
6. Democratic strategists got to the campaign. There is a very clear line of demarcation between Kamala before she was solidified as the nominee and afterwards. She and Tim Walz were very clearly muzzled despite a few very successful weeks where Republicans were on the defensive for once in their lives. You win against Trump by humiliating him and making him a joke, not by going "this is the most evil guy ever to exist". Not that they actually did that, which still would have been a better strategy than what they did.
7. Israel. I don't believe the administration's support for the genocide was the deciding factor in the election (points 4 and 5 are easily the biggest ones for me), but this is certainly not trivial. Everyone saw Gaza be bombed into oblivion and everyone saw the Biden administration, including Kamala continually weasel out of holding them to any kind of account whatsoever. Even if you're some kind of reprehensible monster that sees nothing wrong with the genocide of 2 million people, ending it and getting the hostages back quickly looks much better for your administration than clearly having no control over it and letting it spiral out of control. Hamas offered the hostages in exchange for not invading Gaza immediately after October 7th; the war continued because Israel wanted it to and because the Biden administration wanted it to. If they leaned on Israel to end the war quickly (entirely in their power), Biden and subsequently Kamala would have absolutely been more popular. All of those pesky anti-genocide protests that everyone is convinced swung the election for Trump would have also disappeared.

There are, of course, many other factors that won the election for Trump, but these are the most principal in my eyes.

Pitbuller_26 posted...

People underestimating how fucking poweful misogynoir really is tells me they never truly listened to Black people's experiences.

If you truly believe this, then I don't want to ever see you pushing support for a black woman for President again. You are unambiguously saying here that they cannot win, and I disagree.