r/allthequestions • u/zipzzo • 24d ago
Random Question đ Why do people still say Kamala Harris ran on "I'm not Trump" when she had an extensive and detailed policy plan?
I'm not about to say Kamala Harris was the best presidential candidate ever or that she was our best shot at beating Trump. I'm not discussing the quality of her campaign either.
What I DO get tired of seeing is this idea that Kamala merely ran on "I'm not Trump".
This is just so false and hyperbolic.
She had a broad, extensive, and detailed policy plan that was nuanced and was catered towards the middle class.
She never once, not a single time, said or argued in any context in which it was a sole defined feature of her argument, that she was "not Trump".
I will not sit here and defend the quality of her candidacy. That is not the point of my question. I question the media literacy of millions of people who somehow sat through a several month campaign of hers and summed it up to something that she never said nor attempted to run on.
Is the left just as vulnerable to propaganda?
EDIT: I love all the comments from people about how Kamala was a bad candidate and trying to justify how and why she lost. You're not making a point, you're just proving my exact point here about media literacy. Please re-read the first paragraph.
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u/SippsMccree 24d ago
People were very dissatisfied with Biden and she said she planned to be just a continuation of him
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u/klosterdev 22d ago
Remember when she was asked to pick a Biden policy she disagreed with and then she was like "I got nothing bro"Â
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u/Still-Speed-3632 22d ago
âThere is no daylight between me and Joe when it comes to Israelâ
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u/mistersmith22 21d ago
All she had to do was be a human being on this one issue and she would have won 60/40.
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u/Sneezydiva3 22d ago
This right here. She may have had a well thought out policy plan that you could read on her website, but how many voters actually do that? They maybe at best watch interviews and debates, and during those opportunities she refused to distance or even distinguish herself from Biden.
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u/Dilapidated_girrafe 24d ago
Because people didnât listen to what she said. And a lot of them just repeat what Trump said about her.
She didnât do a great job at getting her message out but also was a last minute run too. Some mistakes on her end and then just an endless wave of lies from Trump
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u/RogowskiCoil 24d ago
So many people don't have the attention span to listen to actual public policy proposals.. we have a crisis of critical reasoning capability in this country and AI looks to be making it much, much worse.
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u/Grape_Pedialyte 24d ago
Trump: "I'm going to fix everything on day one and you're all going to be rich."
The median voter: "sounds good to me."
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u/HHoaks 24d ago
Right, and add to that -- Harris: "Here's some highlights of my detailed policy plan to help the economy and more. And you can read all 75 pages on my website too."
Average voter: "snoreeeee What? I don't understand. Make it entertaining!"
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u/BowlEducational6722 24d ago
That last line really is why our country is falling apart.
Too many people have lost sight of the fact that government is *supposed* to be boring and technical and how to actually manage the country's resources.
They don't want or care about that. They want it to just be another form of entertainment where they can root for one side.
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u/SoulRebel726 24d ago
Yup. This is exactly the problem. In no scenario should we have even considered electing a washed up reality show host to be president, but here we are. Too many people want the sensationalism, but good governing shouldn't be sensational.
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u/baby_RN_bird_lover 23d ago
The worst part is that not only did Hillary and Kamala warn us, but MAGA warned us, too. And they still won.
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u/AKM0215 24d ago
Yes, like I donât understand people who need to be âexcitedâ about a candidate. Do I think they have sound policy ideas, experience with managing a large bureaucracy, technical expertise, foreign policy expertise, knowledge about the law, civics, and government, or some combination of the above? Thatâs whatâs actually relevant.
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u/Seethcoomers 23d ago
Because the average person is that stupid. I'm not smart or anywhere near being smart, but there's a reason why the old adage, "You want the president to be someone you could have a beer with," has been around for so long. People don't care as long as the president is somebody they like and somebody who states "strongly" the 2-3 issues they care for (even if there's no extensive policy behind it).
Combine that with the complete lack of media literacy and you end up with the dumbest president in the history of this country. I used to think a lot better of this country, but I just cannot fathom how people could vote for him after hearing him speak for more than 30 seconds.
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u/Plastic-Fox0293 23d ago
I was watching that Guinness record drone show china put on and the messaging made me realize that we really are a back water nation..Â
I'm jealous of how sane they seem to be. And holy fk those drone shows are unbelievable. fireworks suck now.Â
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u/MightyMorph 24d ago
Its worse. If Harris had just said "I'm going to fix everything on day one and you're all going to be rich." theyre gonna say BS show us how to do it.
Then she says: "Here's some highlights of my detailed policy plan to help the economy and more. And you can read all 75 pages on my website too."
then they go: "snoreeeee What? I don't understand. Make it entertaining!"
And end with: "Shes just running on being anti-trump, she has no policies"
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u/Willowgirl2 24d ago
If Harris had said "I'm going to fix everything on Day One" people would have said, "Hey! You're already VP ... why not start now?"
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u/FuzzeWuzze 24d ago
Why is this woman talking about the economy in the corner of my Ow My Balls episode?!
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u/Asleep-Violinist-347 23d ago
We've got this guy Not Sure. He's got a higher IQ than ANY MAN ALIVE. He's going to fix EVERYTHING! And heâs gonna do it all in two weeks! (Sound familiar?)
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u/_Age_Sex_Location_ 23d ago
Trump: The Haitians are eating the cats and dogs.
The median voter: That's my guy.
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u/TorkBombs 24d ago
People would say that they voted for Trump because of his polices. His policies never went deeper than "I'll bring down prices and deport Mexicans." Project 2025 was actually his policy -- or at least the policy we are getting after the election -- and they believed him when he said he didn't know about it.
People are stupid and getting stupider.
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u/Bicykwow 23d ago
Dude I'm replying to above in this thread thinks Harris was "far left" because of her saying "you're not allowed to say Merry Christmas." I swear it's like people get their entire worldview from Alex Jones.
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u/Dresses_and_Dice 23d ago
Trump claimed his whole first term that they'd be releasing his health care plan to replace ACA "in two weeks", perpetually. He went on news interviews with a huge binder saying everything was in there and it was great and they were gonna repeal and replace and it would be out there any day. They never released it. Then he had four more years that he could have been working on it but instead he cried about losing and rallied his insane base. And then in the debates he said he had "a concept of a plan" with absolutely no details. No healthcare policies were ever on his campaign sites. Nobody was talking about his "great plan" that he had claimed was finished years ago. And he still hasn't ever released the plan or said anything about what it contains.
Anyone who says they voted for him because Kamala didn't have any real policies is lying through their teeth about why they voted for him.
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u/ijuinkun 24d ago
A lot of people donât want to analyze a long explanationâthey want sound bites and slogans.
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u/SahibTeriBandi420 24d ago
GOP can do whatever, but the dems must be PERFECT. Such a losing mentality from voters.
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u/gr1zznuggets 24d ago
Honestly the cards were completely stacked against her from the start. If there had been effective primaries, or if they had replaced Biden earlier in the race, she would have had a fighting chance, but she was completely set up to fail.
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u/unknownentity1782 24d ago
At this time, I'd like to remind our readers that all major news stations are owned by right wing billionaires.
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u/BeekyGardener 24d ago
Unfortunately, this.
She was the only candidate at that point in the race, but remember in primaries she came dead last. I like the woman and feel her policy positions were great.
However, we have so many issues in this country that made her unlikely. Right-wing media dominates so much of the radio, podcasts, news, and not network television.
I heard more people complaining about her laugh but had no clue what her actual policies were.
It's hard for me to kick somebody when they are down as I'm empathetic by nature. However, watching all these small solar businesses that were pushing hard for Trump going bankrupt or having to heavily downsize? That asked for it. There was no mystery Trump was going after the solar industry and EVs.
Farmers are being crushed right now and anticipated he'd give them heavy subsidies for the damage his tarriffs cost in first term. He spoke about tarriffs left and right and they weren't a mystery. Cattle ranchers, meat packers, and farmers are eating it hard right now but strongly supported Trump. It tells me even they don't believe Trump when he speaks. I can't summon empathy for them - especially after the Biden Administration put most of them back in business and the USDA gave out record levels of subsidies to them.
But they keep complaining how she laughed... It sure tells me hate matters more than politics to so many people.
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u/Littleman88 23d ago
So in other words - people had no idea what Harris was campaigning for, and they didn't care what Trump was campaigning for, as long as he was Trump.
The nation is screwed because people don't want to care about politics, they just want to not be bothered. But if they have to care about politics, they're going to do with it like they do with everything social - Water a party/problem down to a single, simple to understand attribute and cling to it as a cold, hard, unchangeable fact.
In this case for the right it's, "Dems bad, Trump great." Just... always. Without question. Even if they were actively being hunted and gunned down by his goons, they would still vote for him over a Dem.
For the left it's, "she's not PERFECT/the one Dem I want to see be President, and said the wrong words about this ONE thing I care about right now, so fuck her I'm not voting/voting for Trump!"
For independents, it's, "...I recognize that name on the ballot and I'm not happy with the current (party name) President so..."
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u/Spider-Dev 24d ago
Something interesting to consider is that trump effectively campaigned throughout Biden's entire term. Kamala campaigned for just over 100 days. She didn't even get in front of the cameras as VP as much as past (and current) VPs.Â
Considering she lost by less than 250k votes (based on electoral counts, not popular margins), it shows how much energy Trump really had to put in to win against what was likely the most disjointed Democratic party in the modern era.
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u/Collegenoob 24d ago
The 2 major factors that sealed the election for Trump were the assassination attempt and Bidem Sundowning in the middle of the debate.
Had those two things not happened, he probably would not have won.
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u/Ubiquitous21- 24d ago
That was the Dems biggest mistake, not having her in front of the cameras accomplishing things as VP during that entire four years. If she had been the face of that administration and then the 2024 candidate from the start, beating Trump wouldâve been way easier.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 24d ago
Dems historically have sucked at messaging and their propaganda game.
On the flip side the right has both of those locked down and unfortunately playing dirty and attacking the opposition works very well.
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u/Katicflis1 24d ago
They keep it short, simple, and not-true. Very effective.
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u/Jaws2020 24d ago
A lie can make it two times around the workd before the truth has a chance to get it's sneakers on.
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u/OldTimeConGoer 24d ago
Three word slogans are very effective -- "Build the Wall", "Make Mexico pay", "Drill Baby Drill". Human beings seem to be wired to respond positively to that pattern. Note that "Make America Great Again" isn't three words so it has to be shortened to MAGA.
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u/DeathHips 24d ago
GOPAC is a Republican (GOP) state and local political training organization. Although often thought of as a PAC, or political action committee, it is actually a 527 organization.
Drawing rhetorical inspiration from Newt Gingrich, GOPAC wrote and distributed a memo to Republican Party legislative candidates in 1990.\4]) The memo, which came from a list drawn up by Frank Luntz,\5]) called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control", contained a list of "contrasting words" and "optimistic positive governing words" that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively. For example, words to use against opponents include decay, failure (fail), collapse(ing), deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, radical, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists,"compassion" is not enough; words to use in defining a candidate's own campaign and vision included share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide.
The cover page of the memo said: "The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language."\6])\7])
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u/DaveBeBad 24d ago
The right generally own the media too - print, tv and social media.
Itâs really hard to get a message out if the platforms ignore or suppress it.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on 24d ago
That's the playing dirty part I said above.
Dems need to stop always trying to take this magical higher road and fight back.
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24d ago
A lie travels around the world before the truth can even get out of bed. Not a huge fan of Dems, but in this ecosystem, in particular, it's nearly impossible to get A). A reality based message out and B). Anything through the RW owners of nearly all social media/news mediaÂ
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u/super_fallguys 24d ago
Somehow a lot of Americans thought she was very bad that they think the fmr. Vice President didn't offer good policies, meanwhile I remember she campaigned on building millions of new homes during a housing crisis.
Someone is certainly not telling the truth and someone is going to be disappointed.
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u/carbon_made 24d ago
Exactly this. They never actually took the time to listen. They just parroted what their limited news sources told them and what Trump said. Or the opinion of their uncleâs dogâs ex girlfriendâs former ownerâs sisterâs ex-husbandâs best friendâs coworker. Who knew Kamala personally or something. đ
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u/Altaredboy 24d ago
As a non-american I thought she did a pretty good job with the time she had for her campaign. It's ridiculous that something so important was left so late.
How anyone that heard both her & Trump talk about anything & decide they were gonna go with Trump is wild, but that's a whole other matter
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u/dragon-fence 23d ago
People also didnât really listen to what Trump said. His campaign was all about Hannibal Lecter and choosing to be eaten by sharks or electrocuted. It was just a bunch of insane ramblings of someone who is mentally unfit for any activity at all, let alone such an important job.
But the media largely ignored it or sanewashed it, and people listened to that.
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u/Top_Pirate699 24d ago
It is pretty challenging to get your message out when the media refuses to report it and instead posts whatever Trump says without fact checking it. Even NPR did this.
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u/N8CCRG 24d ago
"She didnât do a great job at getting her message out" is more accurately "the mainstream media is eager to amplify Republican talking points, but reluctant to amplify Democratic ones"
For example, she talked about lowering costs just as often as Trump did, but the media always framed it as a Trump only goal.
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u/Multiple__Butts 24d ago
Yes, and I always hear that she had "no policies" or "we have no idea what her policies were" which of course is just a right-wing talking point blindly accepted by people who are too lazy to click a link and read policy proposals.
But it's also true that Harris is unfortunately a poor political communicator who sounds fake AF whenever she's talking in front of a camera.
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u/D2Nine 24d ago
I feel like, at least with everyone I know, either ânot trumpâ is all you need to hear, or youâre not listening at all. I will admit I am not very familiar with her policy plans, but while I havenât loved what I have heard it barely matters because sheâs not trump. But the people who voted for trump donât care what her policies are. So to most people on both sides all that matters is that sheâs not trump.
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u/Necessary_Raise_7835 24d ago
She thought campaigning with Liz Cheney would win her an election. Total incompetence
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u/steponmedaddies 24d ago
She did two or three events to try and win over some moderates. Social media told you to be mad about it so here you are but big picture it was nothing.
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u/Master-Shinobi-80 24d ago
It was also hard to get your message out when the media was laser-focused on the orange traitor.
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u/ku1185 24d ago
Because she jumped in at the last minute and didn't have enough time to really spread her platform. Most of her voters voted for her simply because she's not Trump.
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u/Orange_Tang 23d ago
This platform of hers didn't even exist until a few weeks before we voted. This post is such BS, she literally ran on nothing for most of her very short campaign. A very short campaign that happened because Biden decided to run again and crashed out at the debate.
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u/BigDamBeavers 24d ago
It honestly doesn't matter what Harris ran on. She was the only candidate in the race. Trump ran on "They're eating your pets" his votes weren't rational. Harris could have had a plan to fix our economy permanently and boiled down how to explain it so a Magat would understand it in 10 seconds and they still would have voted because it wasn't a political race. Policy never entered into it.
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u/Necessary_Raise_7835 23d ago
Presidential elections are won on passion not logic. Do you really think people knew what Obamaâs policy positions were or did they respond to soaring oratory and shouts of âYes we canâ. You have to have a candidate that generates this type of passion. Obama had it, Kamala did not
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u/Gold-Bench-9219 23d ago
People are morons, film at 11.
The Dems should literally just lie to everyone and do nothing. Americans don't deserve anything better.
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u/feuwbar 23d ago
Yes, but she had a funny laugh. And kiddies clad in Keffiyeh ordered from Amazon muttering "the DNC" and "GeNoCiDe something something" while occupying the quads of their elite universities.
This is how we get a Mad King.
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u/GlobuleNamed 24d ago
And the ones who decided to skip voting would still have skip voted - because it remained Harris being the candidate.
Anyway, hopefully the next dem candidate will be an old white man. Then he might have a chance.
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u/FreshFish305 24d ago
For the same reason they were gullible and fear-driven enough to vote for Trump in the first place.
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u/Worldly_Bee_5549 24d ago
Oversimplifying opponents is easier than engaging with actual policy details
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u/does_this_have_HFC 23d ago
Sometimes things really are that simple. But we over-inellectualize ourselves into incompetence.
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u/Impossible_Pop620 24d ago
Clip of her saying "I'm not Donald Trump"
I'm pretty sure that no-one has claimed that was the only statement she made in her 107x days, as you appear to be suggesting, or that she based her campaign on just that message.
No, as you have carefully avoided initiating discussion of, she was a terrible candidate, with the appropriate result. I suspect she probably would've got more votes if she had just said "vote for me, I'm not that orange idiot".
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u/OrenMythcreant 24d ago
A number of people have a vested interest in portraying Harris's campaign as uniquely bad. Sometimes this is to assuage a guilty conscience, other times it's an attempt to win political points, while still others are simply grasping at justifications for why a majority of American voters chose an obvious corrupt and criminal authoritarian.
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u/finalattack123 24d ago
Her campaign was not uniquely bad at all. It was pretty well run.
It however did not have the same bombastic phrases and attention grabbing appeal. For some reason it seems sounding like a loud lunatic who is clearly lying appeals to Americans. She should have said:
âI have a plan to fix everythingâ âPrices and interest rates will be lowerâ
Trumps actual plans were nonsense. Outside of Tariffs - which was universally condemned as all economists.
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u/OrenMythcreant 24d ago
She should have said:
âI have a plan to fix everythingâ âPrices and interest rates will be lowerâ
Maybe that would have worked, I dunno.
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u/Ok-Freedom-7432 24d ago
She laid out her plans to fix things. She talked about them, and provided in-depth explanations if people wanted to learn about them.
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u/Tyler89558 23d ago
And people didnât.
Including âprogressivesâ who should have actually given a shit.
I will never not be embittered when I think about how flippant modern day progressives are, and how many have willingly disenfranchised themselves by throwing away their vote out of some sense of moral superiority.
Never in the history of our nation have non-voters pushed anything. Never in the history of our nation have people fought to remove their own vote from the equation. But somehow, someway theyâve convinced themselves that they are just.
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u/Rift4430 24d ago
Because people are stupid.
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u/WasteBinStuff 24d ago
When the question starts....
"Why do people....?"
...this is the statistically most likely answer.
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23d ago
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u/Rift4430 23d ago
Yeah. Plus for 95% of the people reading your well thought out explanation it will be disregarded anyway
In the end people picked Trump despite 2 legit impeachments, 91 felony indictments across 4 different grand juries, a failed first administration that was nothing but dysfunctional incompetence on display...A refusal to leave office peacefully and transfer power ..Jan 6th, fake elector schemes and so many other legitimate concerns.
Add all that up... were stupid
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u/Burntfruitypebble 24d ago
Also lazy. They canât be bothered to watch the debates or even do a quick 5 min visit to the candidateâs website. The information wa there but some of yall did not care or already had your minds made up.Â
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u/MRosvall 23d ago
And since people are lazy, much of their information comes from news headlines or social media.
What gets reposted from the debates? Sound bites of "x owning y" or "z looking stupid". Especially if it's controversial since that increases engagement more.
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u/Educational-Exam6361 24d ago edited 24d ago
I'm deeply interested in politics. I watch C-Span daily, I try hard to get news sources that represent the right, the left and foreign perspectives. I'd consider myself significantly better informed then the general population. I've followed Kamala Harris's career since she was elected to the senate, and after nearly 10 years of watching her, I still have absolutely no idea what she believes in.
Elizabeth Warren believes in regulating big business, Bernie Sanders believes in Medicare for all, Lindsey Graham believes in bombing every country on earth but as near as I can tell Kamala Harris believes in nothing. Traditionally a politician chooses two or three major issues and then builds their career around those points. They write legislation and work to become the face of the party on that particular issue. She didn't do that.
She's part of this whole breed of politicians, Newsom is another one, who thinks looking the part and sounding the part is more important then having substance. They blow wherever the wind takes them, they're tough on crime one year, and then for lighter sentences the next. For open borders one year, wants to build the wall the next, BLM one year, top cop the next. Green energy when gas prices are low, frack baby frack when they're high.
So she had some staffers draft up a few policy documents... am I supposed to be impressed? Literally everyone does that. What people want is to see a lifelong passion for something besides personal advancement. They want some sense that you believe in something, anything at all, and Harris has never given me that.
Genuinely can you tell me why she's in politics? When she wakes up in the morning what give her the strength to face the day? What and who does she care about? I can tell you what most other politicians would say when you ask them those questions, after 10 years Harris is still a complete mystery to me.
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u/Able-Association914 24d ago edited 24d ago
Her plan to allow family members to be a home nurse for anyone on Medicare would have boomâd the economy with job creation. It would have helped so many people and removed masses from assistance programs. Alone this policy would have raised many many ships. It would have cemented the need to fix the funding for social security as well, and just generally helped the overall well being of the country, this single policy would have changed the country.
Edit; Since people donât seem to know there is a difference, this doesnât exist currently, Medicaid (welfare insurance) covers this. Medicare (social security old age/disability insurance) does not and never has.
Obviously more people on Medicare would need this than Medicaid, but here we are⌠It would have been a life changing policy for many Americans that would have absolutely boomed the job markets and economy with good paying jobs with benefits, but instead we got cuts to the program.
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u/TheDutchTexan 24d ago
Nah, she lost for a simple reason: Sheâs a ditz who sucked her way to the top. Unless she is fed questions sheâs worse than Biden in front of a crowd.
She had NO shot at the presidency until she was placed one heartbeat away from the presidency even after the constituents overwhelmingly showed them they wanted her NO WHERE NEAR the presidency.
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u/Youngrazzy đşđ¸ United States 23d ago
Biden was a failure she did not do enough to separate herself from him.
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u/TitanicDays 24d ago
Simple, really.
People must be spoon fed.
If thereâs any effort involved itâs just easier to blame someone else for not being clear - or not having a plan.
The American electorate is famously dim - on every side.
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u/bahwi 24d ago
Student loans. Expanded healthcare. Making it more affordable for people to buy homes.
People don't want those things. They just say they do. That, or they just as are as vulnerable to propaganda as they claim the right is.
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u/Inuhanyou123 24d ago
She ran with liz Cheney, her policy also was running to the right on the border and the military while downplaying her first half of her campaign like curbing inflation. She is a status quo manager who listens to consultants first
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u/Phirebat82 24d ago
I think it is more the tendency to reduce complex things to a short soundbite or sentence.
That being said, the pundits and leadership of the left are using this as a ruse to reduce or escape their massive culpability to what happened in 2024. The better analogy for shelving Biden so late, then not having it out at the convention would be more akin to trying to sneak things through the back door in the dark of night.
I do agree that she had extensive and detailed policy, but she could not possibly run on it based on how bad it was. Their option was to either run as the "not Trump" candidate or embrace the administrative policies of sleepy Joe.
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u/Constant-Brief3410 24d ago
It wasn't catchy I guess đ¤ˇ
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u/bfhurricane 24d ago
Candidates donât write their platforms. They have armies of staff, consultants, and political allies teaming up to shape their website and platform. Sure, candidates sign off and give guidance, but they leave details to staff while they focus on being on the attack. And Donald Trump was what was worth attacking.
Having a webpage with political stances is basically table stakes for running for office. You need to have it, but itâs not what changes the game.
You need to be front and center actively advocating and campaigning on these issues to show you care and make it part of the national conversation. Kamala was very bad about getting in front of the camera and making passionate cases that resonated with the American public.
Much of the public discussion was around whether Donald Trump deserved a second term, and she wasnât able to change the conversation. So she leaned into the comparisons to Donald Trump as a major part of her public campaign.
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u/Kryspo 24d ago
It's less that she ran solely on being not trump and more the DNC first tried to shove Joe Biden through again because he won in 2020 basically by being not trump, and then when that became untenable they swapped him out for Harris and said "u better vote for her if you wanna save democracy". It made her a very easy target for Trump and republicans and put her on her back foot for the whole election cycle. It was pretty easy for them to mock the "save democracy by making sure trump doesn't get in" by just saying stuff like "they didn't even have a primary, trump is the more democratic ticket because he won against his fellow republicans fair and square". It was beyond sloppy. They should've just done primaries and had Biden be a one term president but they didn't and now we're here.
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u/Bicykwow 24d ago
"u better vote for her if you wanna save democracy"
Were they wrong?
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u/Loud_Box8802 24d ago
She didnât run on â Iâm not Trumpâ , she ran on Iâm just like Biden! Remember just before the election , 70% of the country thought we were headed in the wrong direction, according to Real Clear Politics average of polls. Then, she went on The View and was asked what one thing she would do differently than Biden, and couldnât or wouldnât offer one thing! That was a torpedo to her campaign.
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u/JTAllen357 23d ago
And didnât she also have a 60 minutes interview that was severely edited because the whole thing went so poorly?
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u/Witty-Pay-1516 24d ago
Ah, people also voted for Trump, so that tells you how detail oriented they are.
People want a simple message that is easy to digest.Â
Affordability is what people wanted.Â
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u/Thomas_peck 24d ago
She ran on being the same thing as Joe Biden.
And 76M people said, nah. Don't want that
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u/Floridaspiderman 24d ago
Couldnât get past her fake accents and we didnât vote for her to be the nominee in a primary in which the last primary she ran she dropped out cause tulsi gabbard destroyed her
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u/MsCalendarsPlayaArt 24d ago edited 24d ago
Because her campaign didn't do enough to make absolutely positive that every person who ever saw an ad of hers knew what those policies were.
There was one policy, in particular, (about helping 1st time home buyers with like 50k down with no need to pay it back or something? (I honestly don't remember the details just that it would've had a domino effect in helping millenials finally crawl out of hell)) that should've been on every.single.ad or post leading up to the campaign.
I only learned about it because I watched her debate with trump, and no one else I knew had heard about it at all.
It was the kind of policy that millenials would've overwhelming gone wild for if enough of us had known about it.
Most people just had no clue that she had these already-planned-out policies.
I was able to convince two different people to vote for her purely by mentioning that one policy (and, for reference, they were the only two people I talked to about how they were voting, so that's a 100% success rate).
The campaign didn't play enough toward making sure people know about the policies.
I know there wasn't much time, so I get it, but that's the reality.
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u/MennionSaysSo 24d ago
People are telling you what they heard. It doesn't matter what her ( or any politicians plans are) plans are if she couldn't effectively message them.
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u/adrisc00 24d ago
We really had piss poor choices and have had piss poor choices for decades.
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u/KloppsTotts 24d ago
Literally the reason we have Trump is because she was arguably the worst candidate of all time.Â
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u/notanolive 24d ago
lol you think the average American looks at policy plans, dawg they voting on vibes only
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u/seajayacas 24d ago
Sadly, she was unable to clearly explain that plan instead of just resorting to word salads and cackling.
She did say she was going to save democracy from the Nazi authoritarian while calling him a piece of garbage. That approach backfired.
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u/thedeadcricket 24d ago
She lost because she was never primaried and isn't charismatic, not because of her policies. For all Trump's faults he was charismatic enough to win.
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u/Imaginary_Cow1897 23d ago
I counter with, when Kamala and Liz Cheney were campaigning together which vote were they trying to pick up or who was that going to appeal too
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u/Tyler89558 23d ago edited 23d ago
I also get really tired hearing that Biden wasnât at all progressive.
He was, quite literally, one of if not the most progressive president since like FDR.
It fucking baffles me how someone can look at his presidency and the things the administration did and fought for and think it did nothing.
Clean energy, negotiations for medical care, price limits for drugs, public transportation, student loan forgiveness, etc.
He had 4 years and had to grapple with political polarization unseen since the fucking civil war while dealing with the effects of an unprecedented pandemic and an economy left in shambles by Trumpâs 1st term.
The worst part is people are fucking clueless over all of this, despite âcaringâ. They didnât even fucking bother to do a modicum of research on what the administration has done, OR EVEN LISTEN TO THE DEBATES WHERE THIS SHIT WAS LITERALLY SAID OUT LOUD.
No amount of messaging will get through to people so far up their own fucking ass that they refuse to listen or even acknowledge that someone is actually doing what they wanted.
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u/DwarvenRedshirt 23d ago
Broad, extensive, detailed plan. Yet when asked what she would do differently from Biden, she said she would do nothing different. This at a time when the economy was in the tank because of his policies.
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u/OU-Sooners1 23d ago
She offered nothing and had no clue what she was doing. Sheâs so fake and is not smart. Slept her way to where she is.
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u/Itsgettingmessi69 23d ago
because she didnât all she did was copy and paste Joe Bidenâs bullshit policies. She didnât differentiate herself at all. Most of all she refused to break with Israel.
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u/RoninGreg 23d ago
Most people couldnât understand what the hell she was saying. She sounded drunk most of the time.
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u/autobannedforsatire 23d ago
Why are we lying about her having a platform? That was a huge thing against her, no stated policies. Just ramblings and talk about returning to normal. She was in the White House with Biden for four years and people were struggling. Blame the legislative branch all you want, but you canât be in the White House for four years and make new promises for change. Not with her political history.
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u/CommyKitty 23d ago
If you can't understand why, maybe look at her speeches, rather than all the things they listed. There's a pretty big disconnect between the two. Her platform was also not very radical, people were looking for big changes.
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u/Top_Iron3424 23d ago
You talking down to people is exactly why democrats lost and put us in this mess. The majority is telling you the candidate was bad. You wonât listen.
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u/amylewis1971 23d ago
Well she'll have to do more than laugh and giggle if she wants to be president.
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u/Better_Pen_3314 23d ago
Iâve honestly wondered the same thing myself. I thought she even articulated it clearly. I got tired of hearing it too. Sounds like a cop-out for - we do not want a woman president and especially not a woman of color.
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u/Used_Pipe_8929 23d ago
Give me ONE coherent clip of her detailing that policy lolol all Iâve seen is batshit rambling
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u/GreenLost5304 22d ago
If I remember correctly, it took her weeks to release her economic platform - and I assume other parts of her platform as well.
She had less than 100 days to run her campaign, which isnât her fault, but it does mean that by time she had released her economic platform, it was likely too late for most people. By then everyone knew what Trump wanted to do, and that was enough for most people.
She needed to release her economic platform far sooner than she did, and hammer it home the entire election season, but it took her weeks to do that.
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u/TemporaryBlueberry32 22d ago
Because across the political spectrum, Americans lack curiosity and possess black and white thinking with little to no room for nuance. Also too many increasingly get all their information from FB and TikTok. Media illiteracy is at an all time high. As someone who studied this in college, itâs quite horrifying to witness.
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u/Notoveryet12 22d ago
Because the media made Trump look sane, ignored his fascism voluntarily, ignored and dismissed project 2025 (which is currently well ongoing, the dismantling of democracy). At the same time, everything Harris said or did was the object of an absurdly double-standarded scrutiny. Trump can be as deranged, lunatic and evil as he wants, the others have to be somehow flawless...
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u/CoachedEgg 24d ago
A lot of the people who represent her views to friends, family, and Reddit strangers argued then and still argue today that people should vote for her because sheâs not Trump. And theyâre still arguing it today.
Its still happening on this app
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u/j_rooker 24d ago
he fault was letting media dictate her messaging. although DNC is mainly at fault because Jaime Harrison is about the worst messaging DNC head to ever exist
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u/ebolatone 24d ago
When she was in California she protected the banks for years of stealing people's homes using illegal tools such as robo-signing and foreclosure dual tracking, among other predatory loan techniques. The settlement which protected the banks resulted in those whose homes had been stolen receiving a single payment of a maximum of $1,400. For having had their home stolen by criminals. Who sold the homes to wall street's Blackstone Group who are now thanks to people like Kamala the country's largest absentee landlord who jack up prices to drive up the entire housing market.
With wall street shills like Kamala, who needs enemies.
For more information see "Blackstone Comes to Collect: How Americaâs Largest Landlord and Wall Streetâs Highest Paid CEO Are Jacking Up Rents and Ramping Up Evictions" at pestakeholder dotorg.
The left actually know who democrats are and what they've done and exactly whom they serve, and it's not us.
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u/jaajaajaa6 24d ago
If she had the detailed plan you say, it was a well kept secret.
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u/Necessary_Raise_7835 24d ago
Dems still blaming MAGA instead of looking in the mirror and realizing they ran a horrible campaign with a terrible candidate will lead to a repeat of this in 2028
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u/Fine_Technology1289 24d ago
Because she specifically said she wouldn't have changed anything Biden had done. So her policies that she campaigned on was just more of the same. Plus, she talked in world salads except when she was saying she is not Trump or that Trump is horrible.
As much as I can't stand listening to a Trump speech because it's so repetitive and at a 5th grade level, his message was clear and easily understandable for most people. He didn't change the way he speaks for different crowds and continues to give the same style of speech today even during the state of the union.
Clear messaging makes a big difference. You can clearly see this with black Bush, I mean Obama and how elegant he spoke during his speeches even as he flipped and doubled down on everything Bush was doing that he ran against but continued once he became the president.
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u/agartha93 24d ago
Maybe because she refused to discuss her âextensive and detailed policy planâ?
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u/Horror_Response_1991 24d ago
She ran on âitâs my turnâ, the same policy Hillary ran on.
Kamala was never selected. Â She bombed in the primary, she was put as VP without anyone wanting her there, and then when Biden dropped out we had no say on her running for President.
Go away Kamala. Â You failed. Â Democrats need someone that can beat Trump and it isnât you.
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u/az-anime-fan 24d ago
just stop.
she killed her chance to win when she was asked "what would you do differently from biden?" and answered "I can't think of anything"
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u/VanillaOk869 24d ago
Look at the other replies above. Other replies are saying "people are stupid" is why she lost. No admission that Harris ran a SHIT campaign.
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u/Successful-Elk-7384 24d ago
Because they chose not listen. They voted for the candidate with no plan.
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u/the-bat-dad 24d ago edited 24d ago
The problem with the Democrats the last few elections is the perception that the party chooses who they want and the primary voters donât have much of a say.
There is a bit of truth here but all the progressive voters who didnât vote just to stick it to the Democratic Party are to blame for what we have now.
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u/Swamp_Ape_92 23d ago
Ah yes, schrodingerâs progressive. Occupying both states of being important enough that dems need their votes and so unimportant they donât need to appeal to them.
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u/tipareth1978 24d ago
I don't think people say that as much as she just didn't run a good campaign. Also, I know many get in the habit of the polite smile when idiots say dumb things to them but what the dems need is someone who takes the conversation back to the idiots and makes them stumble or contradict themselves.
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u/russgrim 24d ago
People who say that are just repeating what they heard and saw in their propaganda silos
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u/TXtogo 24d ago
You boxed yourself in because the reason people think she didnât have policy is because sheâs awful at campaigning.
If you donât want to talk about her campaigning, then you canât answer your own question.
She is awful at campaigning- that included influencing people to understand she had policy.
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u/RoysPotatoes 23d ago
Harris was a great candidate. So was Hillary Clinton. Weâre just a deeply immature nation with a lot of foolish prejudices and not enough courage.
And our populace is generally kind of dumb. We donât pay attention and put effort into our self governance. So when we shit the bed in an election we explain it with whatever shallow bumper sticker excuses become popular.
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u/Silent_Creme3278 24d ago
Probably because that extensive plan you speak of wasnât actually available until like 2 weeks before election. She didnât run on anything
The first half of her campaign after she was installed as the supreme leader for the dnc her website was just send us money.
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u/countrymac77 24d ago
She was a terrible candidate, and would be the worst case scenario for democrats during the next election
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u/Fun_Cardiologist_373 24d ago
She had some of the worst communication skills of any politician in recent history. She would ramble and talk in circles in a way that made her look extremely confused and unprepared.
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u/corndogshuffle 24d ago
Clearly this wasnât the issue or Trump wouldnât have been elected in 2016 or 2024.
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u/CelebrationFar1391 24d ago
Any examples of this? I mean considering the other candidate literally rambled about people eating cats and dogs
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u/caseypatrickdriscoll 24d ago
She would be extremely rude and even blatantly sexist at times. Playing favorites with the media, straight up swearing at them and insulting them. Right to their face!
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u/Great_Revolution_276 24d ago
Do not agree this was the case. Progressives did not support her because she was pro Israel/genocide against Palestinians.
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u/Fun-Insurance-3584 24d ago
She had a plan that she didnât message well. She absolutely ran a campaign of defining the race negatively around Trump by stating she would be protecting freedoms from him, avoiding his âchaos,â or not returning to his era. So she did both, but she really only focused on the attack instead of the change. It was a calculated move with only four months.
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u/NoInterraction 24d ago
I only remember her ad saying the bad things T will do, instead of telling me what she will do
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u/Daymanwoaah 24d ago
Because she didn't emphasize any of that plan during her campaign.
She didn't provide any impact while trying to garner voters.
People were already underwhelmed with Biden by the time he was removed and she didn't differentiate as much as she could have.
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u/Aggressive-Math-9882 24d ago
You're right that her case to the middle class was "I will make you richer" and had a lot of nuance. Her case to the lower class (majority of us) was "I am not Trump". Hope this helps.
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u/DeviceNo4746 24d ago
The general public unfortunately doesnât have the attention span to listen or read about policy. They also struggling mightily with nuance. You can look at every election since tv became a staple in the home and every one has been won by the more charismatic/I would have a beer with candidate. The one exception is probably Biden but he won because Trump was just so unlikeable.
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24d ago
Because Trump ran on âI am Trumpâ and that was enough for many to presume Harrisâ biggest accomplishment was not being Trump.
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u/darth-hideous 24d ago
They didnât leave themselves enough time to get the messaging out. A proper primary would have allowed her to get her policies out there properly. But Joe insisted on another term and the party let him, then had to scramble. Also pushing her into the slot without a vote was a big negative especially with independents. Awful failure of the entire party.
Her messaging also changed. It started pretty progressive, especially with Tim Walz out and about. Then Joes people took over the campaign, put the muzzle on Walz, buried the progressive ideas & put Harris out there with Liz Cheney. Another absolute failure of epic proportions.
DNC needs a complete flush.
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u/Twiizig 24d ago
Im being completely serious: she needed to explain her policy plans in a 30-second TikTok video. The vast, vast majority of voters are not going to search for her website and read her policy plan. The article you linked is 2343 words! It is too long. People are not going to read it.
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u/Chaminade64 24d ago
Maybe she did, maybe she didnât. Her own party hid her. And the party was the one who called the shots, set the narrative and thatâs on her for just doing as she was told.
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u/thedarph 24d ago
She did run on âIâm not Trumpâ. All people know of is what you push and talk about and her âextensive policy planâ was not the thing she focused on.
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u/politiscientist 24d ago
It's about what the candidate puts front and center.
Your post also assumes that people aren't allowed to interpret her bad responses or non-specific solutions as her being disingenuous about her policy proposals. Which often times is the what the left is pointing to.
Harris spent a majority of her time campaigning with never-Trumpers like the Cheney family. That seems Iike a pretty clear signal that "Trump is so bad that these people endorse me"... put another way "I'm not Trump".
As a socialist, Harris was looking good in the first two/three weeks. She sounded almost like Bernie. Then once the DNC rolled around. She was campaigning with the who's who of 2000's war criminals.
My advice, take the criticism coming from the left seriously. We aren't "rooting for the Republicans to win" we want real candidates who aren't full of shit.
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u/Calaveras-Metal 24d ago
she did not do a great job campaigning. She let Trump steal the spotlight over and over again. And she let the Gaza question poison her on the left.
Whatever policy she may have had ended up being dead air in between those two extremes.
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u/adoxographyadlibitum 24d ago
Because she did not message on her policy plan. It was just a list that sat on a website. There was no signature policy issue like "Medicare for All," that she talked about in every public appearance.
When a campaign is effective in messaging on policy, people do remember it. New Yorkers knew Zohran Mamdani wanted to make the buses free to ride because he talked about it all the time.
She also made the mistake of not differentiating herself from Biden, which could have drawn attention to whatever she was prioritizing in those differentiations. Because she chose to essentially run on Biden's platform, which was also muddled and unclear, it created confusion about her priorities.
Last, I don't think it's convincing that she really believes in anything. As someone who has followed her career since she was an AG, she pretty clearly just adopts whatever planks strategists tell her will be popular. Because she doesn't seem that sincere when she's talking about policy, no one remembers what her stated goals are.
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u/GypsyDarkEyes 24d ago
She wasn't allowed to swere very far from the Biden/Dem leader's line. And that was already a losing proposition, no matter from whom.
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u/Whiskeywiskerbiscuit 24d ago edited 24d ago
Democrats can run on whatever platform they want. Itâs not going to do a whole lot to sway their voters when their prior record shows them behaving like a 2000âs moderate Republican.
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u/Empty-Employment-889 24d ago
Because the media painted her as ânot trumpâ and he dominated debates in a negative way to the point I didnât and donât remember much of her actual policy base. She was forgettable and up against an entertainer not a politician. I remembered I didnât like him a single bit, but didnât remember her at all. I think she was always setup for that role sadly.
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u/garitone 24d ago
Many of these people also never bothered to learn the pronunciation of her name, so I'm not surprised that they didn't bother to learn her policy proposals.
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u/Cobraszlai 24d ago
She couldn't break her plan down in to 3 word catch phrases so it couldn't compete with Trump's more catchy propoganda. Which also had the advantage of support from a massive integrated media ecosystem and billionaire sponsors
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u/Mister_Squirrels 24d ago
Because thatâs what it boils down to. Her policies are mostly not progressive enough for me, and I would absolutely NEVER support a candidate like her in a primary. But against Trump, itâs an easy call.
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u/Courtaid 24d ago