Summary
Pennsylvania Democrats are protesting Sen. John Fetterman’s growing alignment with Trump, citing his visit to Mar-a-Lago and votes for Trump nominees.
Critics, including Rep. Summer Lee and local leaders, accuse him of abandoning progressive values and failing to oppose Trump’s policies.
Some see his shift as a strategic move in a GOP-leaning state, but others compare him to former Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema’s alienation from her base.
Discontent among Democratic activists raises questions about a potential 2028 primary challenge.
I didn’t talk about Bernie voters voting for Trump I was talking about democrats sitting out the vote just like they did for Harris.
You can tell from the smaller number of voters who turned out.
Maybe it’s because the Democrats ran a shitty campaign, like they did for Harris.
As evidence: There was no contested primary in 2024, so there wasn’t a bunch of butthurt Bernie Bros sitting at home.
I see a pattern here. Woman doesn’t get elected => they ran a shitty campaign
Counterpoint: Kerry and Gore
My point is that considering how complicated the situation was where incumbent parties were massacred globally, Harris didn’t run a shitty campaign. She made some bold decisions that didn’t pan out. For example, she attempted to bridge the rural vs. urban divide by picking Walz, something that is quite ubiquitous to other modern authoritarian systems such as Türkiye or Hungary. What I would conclude is, rural votes are forever lost to the far right, and trying to appeal to rural voters will not be a viable future approach. Simply saying she did a shit job is not very constructive, and frankly quite unfair.
She also did nothing to energize her base and campaigned with Cheney. Why would someone who protested the Iraq War be enthusiastic about that?
Heck, the one bit of traction they got - calling Trump weird - was stopped because of their consultants.
She did basically have to start from scratch in the middle of a campaign, which was a handicap.
And I also disagree with your rural/urban divide theory. There’s plenty of hippies and anarchists in the boonies. They’re just not gonna turn out for someone reaching across the aisle to their annoying redneck neighbors.
Well, that’s my point.
Then the solution isn’t to frame it as rural vs urban, but left vs right.
Republicans will never turn out to vote for a democrat no matter how bad their candidate is. Reaching out to them, wherever they live, is a waste of time.
I’d say the distinction is justified by the very quantifiable and objective data to support it from many countries and elections. It’s also by design, as rural people’s emotions will be much better controlled by xenophobia in its most literal sense. Also rural people have much smaller networks and thus much more controllable information consumption. This is what right wing conservatives have been banking on.
I entirely agree with this, but it’s also hindsight is 20/20. I don’t think it was an insane idea to run on the idea of cooperation and consistency vs. the chaos of trumpism to convince the “normal conservatives”. Harris’ campaign was highly risk-averse, but again the theme was consistent, vote for us and we won’t fuck shit up like trump would. What the past two general elections showed is that anger appears to be the primary winning force. GOP strategy pounding on grocery pricing was the perfect method, people pay for groceries multiple times a week, so you can remind them how angry they are every time even when Americans’ primary issue (relative to other western nations) are housing and healthcare and the lack of social safety net, whereas Americans have bad diets but don’t starve.
That said if we keep anger to be the driver of elections, it’s only a matter of time to end up with a civil war.
Maybe it’s because Harris and Clinton don’t have dicks.
college educated males was the only demographic where harris gained votes over biden, and that was just a1% gain. But looking at literally every other demoraphic, inclduing ever female demographic, its hard to conclude that Harris lost becase she was a woman.
That certainly didn’t help things, sadly
America is fucked up deep in its core and is beyond saving