I've been thinking hard about things since it happened. People are not bad, usually. I am aghast at what happened, but I also am disappointed that the overall message from some Democrats is "You idiots elected him. You will see the truth of what we were trying to tell you." Great messaging... insult people. Nice. That will win support.
Trump is so far gone mentally that he has no idea what he is saying. His not keeping promises and flip-flopping every two seconds seems more like a guy who simply can't remember what he said the first time, and has no policy written down to consult, so just wings it and says whatever shit pops in his head.
But the GOP.... Their messaging was basically that Biden made the worst economy in human history. It's actually the best it's been since the 60s. They accused him of setting policies to make things worse. No... he was raising taxes on the rich, lowering them on the poor, implementing policies that would finally get us away from the failed Neo-liberalism that Reagan introduced that moved all the wealth in America from the 99% to the 1%. Yes, inflation hit while Biden was in office. But that wasn't his fault—it hit the entire world—and real data shows that wages increased more than inflation on average. None of what the GOP said was true!
Now I'm no Biden lover. He had great policies, but he has terrible messaging. He loved to say that he was doing what FDR did. But he never said that loud enough for anyone to hear him. FDR had his fireside chats to try to cut through the shit MSM was doing even back then and tell Americans what he was actually doing, but Biden just assumed Americans could figure it out and then he took a nap. Again, Democrats fail. We can't get angry at the working class for believing GOP lies when the Democrats did nothing to show those lies weren't true.
The main Democrat message was "He is a demagogue. He will be an autocrat. Elect him and democracy will end". But the thing is... most people don't believe that. American education teaches that there are enough guardrails to prevent that. Forget that the GOP has been dismantling those guardrails for the past 40 years, there is still this idea that it can't happen in America. Tell people that it can happen, and those people are simply not going to believe you. The Democrats needed a different message, but instead they kept hammering that one and then getting frustrated at people that they didn't seem to understand.
Looking at the election results, Trump got fewer votes than in 2020. Harris got a ton fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. Takeaway: Trump's people voted for him. The Democrat message didn't sway anyone. Democrats, however, didn't show up to vote for Harris.
We got a lot of work to do before the next one (if there is another). Bernie's attack of the Democratic Party after the election was spot on.
Sorry. I guess I'm in a ranting mood this evening :)
No worries! I appreciate your input and it means a lot coming from someone who is looking at it from the outside (sort of). It's pretty clear that the Democrats needed to focus more on the economy and they didn't. That seems to be the one thing that really united everyone. They just want better for themselves and their families. I can respect that. In this case though, the cost might be too high or worse than they hoped. Time will tell...