[PaulHoule]

The odd trouble was that ordinary people saw the Harris campaign as being preoccupied with the issues of a lunatic fringe online plus what conservatives said Harris was preoccupied with.

Harris would have had to kick the lunatic fringe to the curb but didn’t have the will to do so.

[BobaFloutist]

And the lunatic fringe saw her as overly deferential to republicans because there were a few notable republicans that were willing to stand up and say "Actually, I would prefer this democrat over this republican" and she thought that was worth highlighting in her campaign.

There's no winning everyone, that's for sure.

[Braxton1980]

>The odd trouble was that ordinary people saw the Harris campaign as being preoccupied with the issues of a lunatic fringe online plus what conservatives said Harris was preoccupied with.

What made them think that?

[bryanlarsen]

The lunatic fringe is generally randos on social media, not people of authority in the Democratic party. Kamala wasn't in a position to kick them to the curb.

[PaulHoule]

No excuse. It’s results that matter, not process. Defining who she was would have meant being proactive and saying something like “trans folks should be able to use the bathroom but sports leagues can decide who plays”

[eddythompson80]

That doesn't seem to be the attitude when the lunatic fringe on the Republican side occupy social media. I understand why politicians (both democrats and republicans) don't want to denounce any such fringe groups that are cheering for them. Seems to work better for republicans than democrats though

[PaulHoule]

It does. Why that is is a story that has many different parts.

One of them is that there really is an infrastructure to communicate what the Republican party stands for that which is connected to the party on an everyday basis. The absence of the Democratic party that potential supporters are complaining about right now is structural. Baudrillard might say "The Democratic Party doesn't exist"

Secondly the left has to work a lot harder for the right because the left's slogan is "another world is possible" which is a constructive project (you have to prove it, you have to build it) and the right's slogan is "there is no alternative". It's not fair but it's the way it is.

The lunatic fringe of the left also has envy for the lunatic fringe of the right. If somebody says "there are only two genders" they don't really need to justify it or explain it any more than saying that my dad believed that and his mom believed that and... People who say the opposite today expect to be to be a fait accompli and manifestly true because they said it and who could dare disagree with them and punish anyone who says otherwise but that's just a position that would be easy for their enemies to defend but impossible for them -- but they circle their wagons and form some tiny world in which it is true. The attack on JK Rowling for instance shows that they've got Kiwi Farms envy, that they think the highest form of activism is the methods of their enemies. Thus it's not so clear that the lunatic left is really left at all, it's certainly not "inclusive".

[cryptonector]

The Republican party has a grassroots vs. establishment dynamic going on. The Democratic party has no such thing. In the Democratic party the elders decide who's going to run in the primaries and they body out any challengers -- "wait your turn" they get told, and then they do. I'm not talking about presidential elections or even congressional ones. I'm talking about local politics. If you're an outside and you want to run for office you have a much better chance on the R side than the D side.

[Der_Einzige]

Baudillard and all related thinkers are fashionable nonsense and intellectually bankrupt.