Kamala Harris Didn’t Lose Because of Racism
Kamala Harris Didn’t Lose Because of Racism
Many Democrats continue to believe that the racism of average Americans — many of whom voted for Barack Obama twice — explains why Donald Trump won. This moralism suits party elites who would rather demonize the public than address growing inequality.
Racism? No. Sexism? Yes.
Yeah and a lot of it was on the part of women. Why do we assume putting up a female candidate will make women inspired? A lot of them believe the role belongs to a man - enough to fuck a party over. So will we keep virtue signaling by putting women candidates in front of the same electorate?
Is it the primary reason? No, I agree.
However it's childish and naive to think both racism and sexism were not significant reasons that America, a deeply racist and sexist country, did not choose a black woman to lead it
A black woman was not the issue
Both parties and their presidental candidates are just puppets like the rest of their parties and do not have the public interests at heart
Kamala held a celebrity filled gala and invited Republicans while the citizens were outside the gathering protesting about inequality, wars, healthcare, wages/employee rights and were not allowed in
In an election where the margin of victory is 1%, it only takes 1-in-50 racists to throw the election.
Sure, Kamala wasn't hugely popular with internet Democrats. Sure, running as a centrist annoyed all the people looking for change. The whole Israel thing. Voters overlooked all of that with Biden in 2020, when he wasn't hugely popular with internet Democrats & came with a 50 year legacy of supporting some atrocious policies.
Good thing they protested Kamala’s event. Now that Trump is in office we don’t have to worry about inequality, wars, healthcare, wages/employee rights OR voting.
Both sides amiright?
Yes, but racism (even subconsciously) was likely a contributing factor to her loss as well, which is what the other person was saying.
The article says it was because Democrats bad for being neocolonialist oppressors.
To my mind, it’s not a super-tight argument against the obvious.
Really just the woman part. Corey Booker, the centrist performative clown could have won. I'd say being corporatist and feeling a lot like Hillary hurt her more than skin color. Either way looks like they cheated so it really doesn't matter
Just a helpful reminder that class relations are real, and that most legacy news outlets have a shared class-interest in de-emphasizing class and income as important electoral issues.
There's a really good reason why democrats will seemingly do just about anything to avoid platforming socialist policies - and it isn't because they aren't popular. They see them as an existential threat to their party, because not only would they lose their primary funding sources if they were to stop protecting donors from wealth re-distributive policies, but they'd also lose their network of private sector allies that enable them to govern at all.
Once you understand the scope of the problem, it's really hard to see the two party system as anything other than good-cop bad-cop neoliberal theater.
If you think of the democratic party as first and foremost a fundraising organization, their actions start to make sense.
Reposting my comment on the usa comm version of this story. In part because I doubt a lot of people will read it, or try anyway.
“Well I tried to read it. It started off inauspiciously with
Within the liberal pundit class, the tendency to attribute Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss principally to racism or misogynoir (hatred of black women) runs deep.
Don’t . . . don’t do that. If you have to define it in the sentence you’re using it in, there needs to be a good reason to use it at all, and per the rest of the article - there isn’t.
Secondly, the author’s thesis is that racism can’t be the reason because the 1996 Crime and Welfare Reform bills disproportionately affected black Americans. (Yeah, like I said, I tried to read it) Also, Harris did better among white voters than Clinton in 92 or Obama in 2012.
So far as I can tell that appears to be the core of the argument. The article concludes that while racism is indeed bad, and trump also bad, Harris lost because of the Democratic Party. Particularly things it did almost 30 years ago.
Just as nineteenth- and twentieth-century biologically grounded race theory functioned to harmonize slavery and Jim Crow with liberal capitalism, the insistence that Trump’s victory over Harris, like Trumpism itself, is an expression of eternal white racism provides cover for the failings of both late capitalism and the Democratic Party.
So, I am reminded once again that Jacobin is a link I am reluctant to click.”
This isn't rocket science. Most Americans were (and are) unhappy with the direction of the country and she was the status quo candidate. She literally said she couldn't think of a single policy difference between herself and Biden, an unpopular president. And the tone-deaf joy campaign—give me a break. People were (and are) angry. A populist was always going to win this election, but she didn't campaign as a populist.
Like most Democrats, she also lacked the courage of her convictions, as evidenced by how quickly she backed away from voicing progressive policies from 2020 like Medicare for All. Or maybe her convictions were more moderate and the progressive positions were the ploy? Who even knows? What few meek ideas she did put forward she quickly backed away from after closed-door fundraisers with rich investors.
I voted for her despite all of this. I wrote letters to swing state voters. But it was a pretty grim march to November, because I saw all of these things way before the election and knew with near certainty that she was going to lose.
It didn't help that she was kneecapped by the Biden campaign:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5191087-harris-trump-biden-harris/
Also sexism.
Primarily sexism.
Americans believe that a key requirement to be President is to have a penis, but they are self aware enough to know that they can't say that out loud. So they will cite any other excuse, but the real reason is that they didnt trust her uterus to not bomb random countries once a month.
I’d go with racism, sexism, not being a cult leader like figure unlike her opponent, and a bunch of people who’ve bought way too far into putting Palestine first over their own nation being convinced it to vote for her.
And, possibly (there’s a lawsuit) an actually rigged election.
I voted for her.
One political pundit blathers on about how the other pundits are wrong about an issue that's no longer important.
Bleah.
Unless you have code and specific, defined ways of vote manipulation, just shut this shit down now.
Kamala Harris didn't lose.
FTFY
She might have won the vote. Trump almost certainly cheated, exactly like he said he would. We should prove that Trump cheated so that we can prevent it from happening again, and so that we can punish the criminals that helped him in order to discourage future acts of treason against America.
But Harris still lost. She and the American public may have been denied a fair and democratic election, but an election happened and the results of that election were that she lost.
We need to focus on the first part, that Trump cheated and that we need to stop that from happening again. The argument about whether Harris was a good enough candidate, or enough people voted for her, or whether it was racism or sexism or some other factor that cost her the election, it's all a waste of time.
America is diseased, and Trump is merely a symptom. This election shouldn't have been close in any state, but the Democrats are so ineffective that it's hard to imagine they're really trying to win.
