[lancebeet]

It's interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections. They continuously seem to pick bad candidates and poor strategies resulting in them losing the election when they seem to have had the general conditions for winning. This time, the elephant in the room is of course the late ousting of Joe Biden, but there were similar issues that (in hindsight at least) were obvious in the Clinton 2016 campaign. This pattern can be seen in other countries as well, where it's clear that one group knows how to play the game while other groups don't, but it's surprising to me that a massive organization like the democratic party wouldn't have streamlined this process.

It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.

[Prbeek]

"interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections" Since 1992, haven't democrats had power for over 20 years as opposed to GOP's 12 ?

[selfmodruntime]

Yea, but the game's changed. The Republican Party has figured out how to rally millions behind charismatic candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if we were in for a couple more years of Republican leadership.

[EricDeb]

it remains to be seen whether they can find the next trump hes unique

[rpmisms]

JD Vance is extremely likeable, and much less polarizing than Trump. The "weird" attack on him died the moment people heard him speak.

[some-guy]

I wouldn't call him "much less" polarizing than Trump, he still is more unfavored than favored: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/jd-v...

[rpmisms]

I would. Unfavored is single-axis. He is more moderate and more likeable, which does not show up on your graph.

[meowster]

Is that just due to his association with Trump?

[vdvsvwvwvwvwv]

A charismatic candidate figured out how to hijack the Republican party more like. Who is the other charismatic candidate up their sleeve?

[StrauXX]

Ron DeSantis comes to mind

[seanw444]

I wouldn't say charismatic, but he's solid. I think people mistake charismatic for blunt. Trump is more blunt than he is charismatic. That makes him appear like less of an NPC compared to other politicians, and people actually like that.

[theshrike79]

Trump literally said "you won't have to vote again".

And if the Project 2025 plan works as they planned it, that's the truth. America will become a single party state and that won't change without a civil war.

They will stack the courts and every appointable position with pro-Trump (not Republican) people who will make sure every election goes their way in the future.

[gitaarik]

If that's possible, first of all why/how, and second, why would the Democrats not do this?

[meowster]

People won't have to vote for him again because he can't be voted for again due to the two-term-limit.

!RemindMe in four years

[user90131313]

Oh people already say civil war? lol.

[theshrike79]

Nah, nobody is saying it, and it's not happening because the party with all the gun-nuts and survivalists won.

I personally can't see any other way out unless Team Donald messes up badly enough to make their own people shun them.

[Cthulhu_]

Charismatic or populist? Same thing in effect, but the latter has a bit more weight / context to politics.

Also if they're having their way, they will break the current system; Trump has said people would never need to vote again if he wins, and Project 2025 aims to give much more power to the president (autocracy): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

[Prbeek]

Given what democrats stand for, you don't even have to be charismatic to push them into a corner. Any candidate who will shout anti trans anti illegal immigrantion talking points will always carry the day

[ericmcer]

You specifically chose a range of dates to make this as dramatic as possible. Could easily say GOP has 24 to 20 since 1980, or 16 to 12 since 2000, or 8 to 4 since 2016.

[sanderjd]

Doesn't this just demonstrate that the parties have both been very competitive in the contemporary era?

[kelnos]

It does, but that doesn't seem to be the argument the commenter upthread was making.

[sanderjd]

Agreed.

[walthamstow]

They regularly win presidential elections by the most obvious definition, the popular vote, but lose them on the EC, which is what actually counts.

The fact remains that more Americans vote Democratic than vote Republican, those votes are just badly distributed for the EC system.

[svara]

It remains to be seen whether that will be true this time around.

[walthamstow]

Sure, but it's true of 7 of the last 8 elections.

[oaththrowaway]

If elections were decided by popular vote campaigns would run differently though

[samatman]

I would say that the most obvious definition of "win Presidential elections" is winning Presidential elections.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

My view since 2016 has been that winning elections in the US is about telling a good story. Whether you're trueful or not doesn't really matter as long as people believe it.

Trump's story is pretty ridiculous, there's no way that his plans on how to fix the economy or the border or the whole department of efficiency thing work anywhere close to as well as he says. Regardless, his demographic believes it.

Kamala's story was a lot weaker, involved a ton of hard truths and concessions about things that people in her base care about such as Gaza. Additionally her story on the border was mostly the same thing as Trump's. If you like the border story, why not go for the guy pushing it harder?

Obama had a pretty good story in 2008 (the whole hope thing). Dems need to get back to that.

[bertjk]

It would have been pretty silly for Harris to campaign on a Hope and Change™ platform, since that would imply she is doing a very poor job as incumbent.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

Well she lost anyway. Bidens policies were generally unpopular, it would have made sense for her to distance herself from them.

[msanlop]

Well Trump is still running on Making America Great Again after having been president

[EricDeb]

great point I agree

[sanderjd]

I don't think "have had the general conditions for winning" is at all accurate this time around. It was clear ahead of time, and much ink was spilled on it, but it's even more clear in hindsight that this cycle was always going to be a giant uphill battle. Incumbent parties all over the world have been and are having the same issue. We're all still going through a hangover from the pandemic.

[zimpenfish]

The Democrats are somewhat hampered by their focus on facts and rationality ("play fair") rather than spouting bullshit, conspiracy theories, and whatever bigotry is currently hot ("win at all costs").

[SpicyLemonZest]

Unironically yes. You have to meet the median voter where they're at, even if you find some of their positions dumb or bigoted. That's why Obama spent the 2008 election cycle pretending to be opposed to gay marriage.

The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.

[selfmodruntime]

> ("play fair")

Which is why they forced an unpopular, unelected candidate? I don't see it.

[ejstronge]

Within the contexts of their written rules…

And maybe you’ve forgotten how the RNC rules were changed to support their candidate?

[selfmodruntime]

> Within the contexts of their written rules…

Well these rules surely benefitted them.

[rightbyte]

It is some sort of tribalism. Believers can't see it. E.g. we gotta remember that people were gaslighting eachother into pretending Biden is not what could charitably be described as about to be senile.

Refusing to see one self as part of the problem, fundamentally.

[Cthulhu_]

They planned poorly with their candidacy; Biden and Harris were the obvious candidates being president and vice-president, respectively, but Biden was too old and they couldn't find a different candidate that wasn't as well known as Harris quick enough.

That said, the Republicans would have the same problem if Trump dropped out or if that bullet didn't miss.

[komali2]

Also by the fact that their unwillingness to turn on their capital sponsors, who don't really care whose in power and whose needs are ostensibly better met by republicans (so long as republicans don't start a trade war...)

Dems will continue to make the mistake of coasting deeper into the right wing, picking up 0 voters in doing so (why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?), meanwhile disenfranchising any left wing voters left in the USA and creating no new left wing voter bloc by presenting a coherent alternative to the reactionaries.

The same mistake is being made by neo liberal parties across the world.

[poincaredisk]

>why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?

I'm always surprised by how bipolar US politics is. There's no place for nuance or third options, it's always one or second extreme. In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing. That's OK, people don't have to only hold extreme opinions.

[a1j9o94]

How is ideological not wanting some level ethnic cleansing?

[komali2]

> In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing.

As this election shows, then, you would vote for Trump, who is "better on immigration." You would tell yourself, as many Trump supporters demonstrate in interviews, that "he wouldn't actually do that."

[lifty]

Did Trump say that he will "deport all brown people"? Or that he will do a "full ethnic cleansing"?

[a1j9o94]

If you're looking for a quote of him saying that word for word, no. But it is not an unreasonable interpretation of the things he has said he wants to do. Especially when he's used language saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and makes up lies about immigrants eating pets.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-plan-mass-dep...

[kelnos]

> ... but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing

That's what Trump's circle wants, though. They want to deport 25M immigrants. Generously, the number of people here illegally is only half that. They don't care if people here legally get caught up in it and deported as well.

Deporting even a couple million people will require mass raids, round-ups, and the construction of concentration camps. It is physically impossible to deport that many people quickly or quietly or efficiently.

They're afraid of losing the white majority, plain and simple. The sad thing is so many non-white people don't see this and voted for him.

[DiscourseFan]

Good thing they'll all cease to exist very soon.

[greatpatton]

The Republican party is also flipping seats in the Senate and the House, yet you seem focused on Harris. It's not that people are voting for other Democratic candidates, the country is simply becoming more conservative as people leaning on left are simply not voting.

[bantunes]

The Dems exist to give you an illusion of choice. This has gone down exactly as planned, or why do you think rich donors play both sides? Do you really think the Dems are this naive and keep messing up without it being on purpose?

The opinion makers know if it wasn't this close there'd be visible backlash.

[SV_BubbleTime]

While I agree there is a UniParty, I also assert that Trump is not in it.

If you think Trump, Vance, Vivek, Tulsi, RFK and the just the same but newer versions of Trump, Cheney, Rove, McConnell, Romney, McCain…

Well… I guess we have four more years to see about that.

[bell-cot]

My impression is that the current-day Dem's are, in "actions speak louder than words" terms, simply not all that interested in winning elections. Stuff like not bothering to do even the most basic of opposition research on George Santos ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santos ). Not carefully checking that Biden's marbles were all still there 12+ months before the election. Their slow and half-hearted (at best) response to the RealPage ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealPage ) rent-jacking scandal. Etc., etc.

[23B1]

Impossible to get a group of people that large to behave strategically.

So you're asking the wrong questions.

What about the democrats ideology is unpopular? Because that is what people are voting on, not strategy.

[corpMaverick]

There is the LGBT. Specially the T part. The right thing is to do is support their rights, and it is very hard not to do the right thing when you know what the right thing is. However, the republicans have weaponized it against the democrats. They call them radical left and they campaign saying things like the want to convert your sons in girls and other awful things. It is an imposible choice because it can cost you the election.

[mnau]

Except both sides disagree on the "right thing."

It's same for both sides. Pro-life stance cost them a lot of votes and could easily cost them election.

[neuralzen]

I think it is because people who think or say "what about me?" hear "what about me?" from others as if it's support of their own view, when really their core issues could be totally different. "Yeah, what about us?"

As opposed to "we need to help everyone, especially highly victimized groups". And then people infight over which groups require more attention vs everyone else.

[_ink_]

The argument of the GOP was, Trump is better because the inflation was lower during his term. How are you supposed to counter this?

[kelnos]

Right, and economics as a field is difficult to understand for most people.

Presidents can't in reality take all that much credit or blame for the economy. A lot of it is out of their hands, and many economic shifts take longer than a presidential term to play out. But of course presidents will try, and succeed, because most people don't understand this.

On top of that, the GOP complains about how much money Biden "printed" during the pandemic, but Trump did his fair share of that in the first year of it as well. They just make dishonest arguments.

I really don't know how you counter this.

[andrewclunn]

What I always find interesting is how Democrats insist their failure is due to a lack of sound strategy. That is of course a strategy in and of itself to NEVER admit that it might be a refutation of their policies or (gasp) their values. Telling yourself you just lost because you didn't "play the game" is a cope. It serves its purpose though, as it allows ardent followers to avoid actual self reflection.

[a1j9o94]

Agree. American's hate out groups and want to punish them. This just shows who people really are.

[itomato]

There is no Democratic Power Play.

There is not the same opportunity to exploit human weaknesses for Gain.

That’s the issue. When Dems control the amygdala they might have a shot.