Optimistic. As per https://sopuli.xyz/post/18928087 it seems that “Zelensky was somewhat reassured”

Previously I had thought that this guy would just withdraw all support and hand free reign to Russia, but Zelensky is no fool. If he’s feeling it, then I’m very happy indeed to be proven wrong about this point.

Another silver lining - if the US withdraws from NATO, then at least, they can’t block Ukraine from joining…

TIL! Yep, that gives the EU exactly what’s needed to suspend them from Schengen.

So I just answered my own question. I was confused by this,

If those crossing claim asylum, the RCMP cannot send them back to the United States.

Because I thought the Safe Third Country Agreement allowed them to be sent back with no right to be heard for asylum (unless they stuck in and evaded detection for 14 days).

However, according to https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/safe-third-country-agreement-expansion-causes-asylum-seekers-explore-new-routes

Asylum seekers are arriving at airports with tourist visas and petitioning for asylum at immigration offices after their arrival. The number of asylum applications made at airports in Montreal and Toronto have tripled since the beginning of 2023.
Overall, the expansion decreased the flow of asylum seekers coming from the United States directly but has not worked to decrease the flow of asylum seekers into Canada.

So I guess to get into Canada they’d leave the US and fly in from another country somehow.

Hmm. Could they legally kick Hungary out of Schengen without its approval?

Agreements outside of the EU framework - now that is indeed a clever workaround. I seem to recall similar maneuvers during the Greek financial crisis when the UK wouldn’t agree to things.

That’s why I used the word, “unless.” If the words are addressing that point, then they’re meaningful, but as long as they aren’t, they are not.

Ah I think I got your meaning now.

Does it now?

Yes.

There are lots of ways to stop a war, for example, by destroying the other side’s willingness or capability to keep fighting. You know, like Trump said, “finish the job,”

I assume this is just an example and you aren’t seriously suggesting this is what Harris means. Harris has been very clear on the need for an immediate ceasefire.

You’re choosing to interpret it to mean what you want it to mean,

Well, the alternative meaning doesn’t fit with what Harris has said about getting to an immediate ceasefire - you can’t have a ceasefire if you’re trying to kill every last person on the enemy side. That contradiction makes me think I’ve interpreted it correctly.

What you don’t understand is that politicians are most responsive to voters in the lead-up to an election.

I got that. I figured this was an important constraint on Harris being able to speak in support on Gaza in fact - AIPAC withdrawing their support of her.

After they get elected, then they’ve already gotten the votes they needed, so they can focus more on lobbyists and corporate donors.

This is a good point, AIPAC would still be around after the election.

That’s why there is zero chance that she would’ve become more pro-Palestinian when in office, because the voters are far more favorable to Palestine than the donors and lobbyists are.

I think zero chance is too extreme. Consider this,

Obama said in late 2010 that his views on gay marriage were “evolving,” and since then administration officials have pointed to those comments, stressing that Obama is a supporter

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103

Also, the goal wasn’t necessarily to make Harris pro-Palestine, but simply more anti-genocide. As the situation in Gaza worsens, I could see a possibility where from the grassroots a movement of change, going thru e.g. Sanders and AOC, would eventually convince Harris to evolve her position here as well.

Now, as you point out there are powerful forces that would resist that, but the outcome of that battle would not have been a foregone conclusion.

Yes, Clinton got fewer total votes in a lower turnout election, but by every other metric the election was less bad than this one was for Harris, whether we look at the EC or votes compared to the other side.

No need to rehash what I said above, beyond that I’m still waiting for the data.

As for Gaza, there is one very simple and straightforward action that Biden could have taken (or still could actually) or that Harris could have said she’ll do: place conditions on arms shipments

Agreed. Now, my understanding is that Harris as VP can’t actually do this, that authority runs from Biden down to his cabinet secretaries. But she could have made that promise. It’s still not taking action, but maybe it would have been enough.

Refusing to do that is a complete endorsement of Israel’s actions.

So minor disagreement here. You say complete, or 100%, while I’d say like 95% or 97%. Perhaps an immaterial difference.

Words and speeches are completely meaningless unless that is addressed

But your proposal above, for Harris, is just more mere words: “Harris could have said”

all she ever said was essentially, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they could resolve their differences without fighting?"

I think calling for a cease-fire is a mite bit stronger than that, but again perhaps the difference between us is so small as to be immaterial.

"and will keep arming them unconditionally.”

Agreed, definitely a problem. No need to rehash about the Jewish voting bloc stuff - we understand why this was done and we saw first hand that it didn’t work out. So with 20/20 hindsight…

“But of course I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself”

After Oct 7, 2024, I would too. To say otherwise is an insult to the families of the hostages - telling them that they aren’t important enough to protect, that it’s okay for this to happen to them again.

There is no indication that she would’ve been at all willing to take meaningful action.

On here we completely disagree. “I will stop the Gaza war by any means necessary.” seems like a pretty big indication.

Meanwhile,

Trump says he’s about to speak to Netanyahu and says, "Biden is trying to hold him back … he probably should be doing the opposite, actually.

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-trump-cease-fire (link to quote in the “free rein” link on that page)

To be fair, the above is also a really big indication.

What I fear is that he’s technically right - because he’ll use Hungary’s position as an EU member to tear up and otherwise interfere with EU attempts to fund Ukraine (something he’s not able to do to the US) and do it well enough that Ukraine’s position in it’s war of self-defense is seriously compromised.

You do acknowledge the main point afterward though. I think we’re in agreement on it being a mistake for her to not distance herself from Biden and not sufficiently acknowledge people’s economic problems.

Yep. I think there’s still a tiny disagreement here over whether or not Harris could have put enough distance - but we both agree that a primary would have proven it either way and solved the problem with a different candidate if it wasn’t possible, so that’s perhaps immaterial.

The only similarity is, “We’re going to make the economy better going forward” which every politician ever is going to say.

Both Harris and I provided more specific details than that.

No no no. You cut off major parts of what I said.

Space limits on posting. But actually I agreed on those points and didn’t feel the need to respond to them - Harris never said the economy was really and painfully bad outright and never sought distance from Biden.

That’s still completely insignificant, obviously. Individual politicians don’t matter unless they draw in constituencies (and don’t alienate other constituencies), which did not materialize.

Agreed, the latest numbers do suggest that if there was split voting, it was in favor of the Dems downballot and orange voldemort rather than the opposite, like we saw in 2020 for Biden.

I was just pointing out that this did draw in some, but as you said it wasn’t enough.

No, the number did not fall short of that, it’s just that Arizona and Nevada have not been called for Trump yet

Oh, that’s right. I spoke too soon - should have waited for the data.

And Clinton won the popular vote while Kamala lost it.

But from your own wikipedia pages, Clinton wont 65,853,514 votes while the estimate at https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18340229 says “Kamala around 73 million” so Harris objectively did better than Clinton on the popular vote in terms of raw numbers.

The only thing I was wrong about was that it wasn’t just 20 years. We actually have to go all the way back to 1988 to see a result this bad for the democrats, an election where George H.W. Bush won California.

So worst case 2024 will still be better than 1988 in terms of EC numbers. Anyways, if I’m reading https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/president/ it’s still too soon to call - the reason being that it’s mathematically possible for Harris to still win those two (if she won all the remaining votes left to be counted). So still too soon to tell.

This is essentially a conspiracy theory. It’s no different from QAnon people explaining away anything Trump does that they don’t like by saying that he had to say it to appease the deep state and get elected, TRUST THE PLAN. It’s completely baseless cope and every piece of actual evidence clearly contradicts it.

So let me give some quotes here to back this up.

as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, …end the suffering in Gaza,… and ensure the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/4/harris-says-will-end-gaza-war-in-final-election-appeal-to-arab-americans

Kamala Harris says two state solution is the ‘only path’ forward after meeting with Israel’s Netanyahu

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/kamala-harris-says-two-state-solution-is-the-only-path-after-meeting-with-netanyahu-b2586161.html

Harris didn’t have much in terms of actual action, but her position post-Hamas was still for a two-state solution and to put an end to what was happening in Gaza.

The problem is there was no plan for that - but she only had three months to rush a campaign through. So less “TRUST THE PLAN” and more “hope she can figure out a plan once she’s in office.”

It’s not a conspiracy theory because she did actually say these things, but if you’d question if these would end up as broken promises … it seems that the voters who cared about these things shared your questioning.

But even if it were true it doesn’t matter in the context of assessing why she lost, because there was no possible way for voters alienated by her public stance to know that she was lying and secretly on their side.

Again, it wasn’t secret, but was based on the speeches she gave, along with this bit of protestor inspired impromptu: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/harris-appears-to-agree-with-protester-accusing-israel-of-genocide-what-he-s-talking-about-it-s-real/ar-AA1szCVt

Obviously it wasn’t enough, but, it wasn’t kept as a secret.

Democrats have this pathological inability to self-criticize, accept fault, or just awknowledge problems,
It alienates people and speaks to a lack of confidence

Yep, definitely time for someone to look at themselves in the mirror.

brainworms
Everything would make more sense if you ripped them out

Yeah, you can’t actually just rip out brainworms. THat’s not how those are treated. This is how they’re actually dealt with: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/neurocysticercosis#treatment

Likewise, the way forward here would be to patiently educate someone willing.

The problem is that you have these deep rooted lesser-evilist brainworms that don’t actually reflect reality.

I think the way I’ve summed things up do reflect reality. I did make a mistake (due to having insufficient data) about Dems flipping red, which I’ve already acknowledged. Actually, Harris is on track to get most of the popular vote that Biden got in 2020, which was one of the highest periods of turnout on record. It’s just that voters who sat out 2016 and even 2020 turned out over the economy this year for the GOP, along with important single issue voters in swing states (Latinos over immigration and Arabs/Muslims over Gaza) switching sides.

More data is needed. Importantly the gerrymandering by the GOP that started in 2010 and was blessed by the Supreme Court makes me think that we can’t look at 2008 or earlier for precedents. And even comparing to 2012 would be hard since Obama had an incumbency advantage when the plan was still new and not fully implemented.

With limited data, Clinton’s more progressive (I said more progressive, not actually progressive) platform in 2016 failed to excite voters, and even more progressive ones failed in the primaries.

This is why I am such a fan of RCV - instead of having to battle it out in the primary, RCV would allow Dems to safely run more progressive candidates side by side with more moderate ones, allowing voters to say which ones they prefer the most without worrying about “electibility” so much (as this means the less electible candidate’s votes would go to the other Dem to boost that Dem instead of assuring a GOP win).

and stopped looking at things from that perspective and assuming everyone else sees things that way.

Again, look in the mirror.

and Kamala was a particularly bad example of this.

As this is subjective, no citation needed. However, I’d argue that her change from her 2020 platform does in fact represent she is capable of reflecting and changing - she changed her 2024 platform to reflect the more “electible” platform of Biden that won 2020.

And the result was actually a very close election in the battleground states, as per https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4ve004llxo but as you also pointed out.

Voters weren’t the problem here, as nobody ever got a chance to vote for her…because of her bungled campaign.

That’s why I didn’t mention them. Agreed overall - the point is that having to campaign for a primary in 2024 would have exposed the faults along with putting “electability” back into the picture. Exactly how this happens is less important than it does indeed happen.

Democrats won most of the battleground senate races
Democrats… won Michigan and Wisconsin… are ahead in Arizona and Nevada.

I missed this. Conceded, you’re right.

it wasn’t very realistic that the democrats would ever hold either

Yeah, the WV loss was basically certain. Although higher hopes were had in Montana, obviously they didn’t pan out.

it’s just that the senate seats up for reelection were favorable to Republicans.

Yup, I remember this being an issue back in 2018 as well. Seeing that Senate terms are for six years, this makes sense. But that gives hope that 2026 will be more like 2020 with Dems barely retaking the Senate. Though that assumes there are still free and fair elections by then.

Looking just at the senate races, it was a pretty respectable result for the democrats, it could have been a lot worse

Agreed.

this despite the fact that Kamala got the worst result of any Dem candidate since 20 years ago.

You’ll have to explain this. Based on the other speculative posted I referenced earlier, in terms of the popular vote it seems like Harris will have more than Clinton did in 2016 and only be short by a few million compared to Biden. If you look at EC numbers, Harris had more than Clinton, and the 2016 winner and the 2020 winner won by more than 300, while this year the number fell short of that.

It’s definitely a bad&painful result, but I wouldn’t call it the worst.

Many Latinos have conservative social values, but in the past they were willing to look past that because there was a substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats on the issue,

Ah, that makes sense.

It’s not puzzling at all.

The reason it was puzzling is because I had forgotten. It’s a personal bias (my inner circle of friends includes Latinos with very liberal families, but this obviously is due to a selection bias and doesn’t reflect the grouping in general).

That is literally one person. A person who does not in any way reflect a significant constituancy of voters. What a ridiculous argument.

I can give you a longer list if you like, of all the former Republican politicians who have gone on the record for supporting Harris. It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s fair to say it wasn’t enough, but it’s more ridiculous to say it was just one person when we know the real number is at least more than an order of magnitude greater.

Nobody gives a shit about sweet talk, we wanted actual material action.

We’re in agreement here.

The message wasn’t strong enough because it was bullshit.

I have nothing to back this up, but I had a feeling that once Harris was elected, actual action would eventually have been taken. She just couldn’t say anything but empty words prior to election day to avoid losing the Jewish bloc - but based on what we now know of the overall vote, it seems like that was a risk she should have taken.

she could have at least tried to distance herself from it.
Hell, she could’ve said something like

I think the GOP would have had a field day with “before we were merely mitigating the damage” (why didn’t you just fix it? maybe because you don’t know how?)

but now, with your support, we can begin building towards a future that will be brighter than ever. We are going to [policy X, Y, and Z].

That’s exactly what Harris tried to do, as per https://www.npr.org/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5055895/harris-is-signaling-her-campaigns-priorities-the-economy-could-be-key-for-voters (fight price gouging, expand child tax credit, encourage more small businesses) and per https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardmcgahey/2024/09/30/harris-opportunity-economy–closes-the-economic-gap-with-trump/ (the opportunity economy).

Instead the messaging was more along the lines of, “The economy is great, actually, and anyone who says otherwise

You’d be right if you said trying to use this was a mistake, but - I feel she was trying to share in the credit for the good numbers on the economy as per https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/harris-inflation-solid-economy-00183210

Voters care more about their own personal finances. If things are more expensive for them, why do they care that the economy’s numbers look good? Another thing I think a primary would have prevented.

What harm would there be in distancing from Biden? Is it going to hurt B’s future career prospects?

I think at the time the thinking was being too distant from B would cause two problems. First, why didn’t she do anything more as VP? Second, not able to take any credit for the few good things.

Agreed - this makes a lot of sense too. As bad as they have it, they do have a cushion due to the programs you said, and they would have seen Harris as a way to ensure that cushion remained.

In a way that reinforces my original argument (that the top and bottom didn’t really feel the change in the economy as much as the middle did) - but you’re right to bring this up as it’s important to understand precisely why this was the case.

This makes intuitive sense to me. If you’re rich, the economy getting bad like it did wouldn’t have hurt so much - you do pay more but your existing wealth insulates you from most of the actual pain.

And if you’re making under 30k then life was already really tough before the economy got bad, so you went from a painful situation that sucked to a slightly more painful situation that sucked.

It’s those in the middle who went from comfortable to painful.

Edit: why the downvotes !goldteeth@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !theatomictruth@lemmy.world ?

Dahh… I was wondering actually if Biden had offered to pardon that guy like in the last two weeks prior to the election, in return for dropping out of the race.

Vance as a presidential candidate and a rushed new VP pick probably would have lost, and they’d have almost no time to make up for a missed campaign.

Also, pre-MAGA Vance was actually a not-so-unreasonable dude, see https://web.archive.org/web/20140305032241/http://centerforworldconflictandpeace.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html - so even if Vance had won, without the specter of orange voldemort he might have reverted back to his old self.

She did truly so much stuff wrong.

I’m open to the idea that there were other mistakes made, but ideally the list of this should at least be spelled out.

I’ll start. Gaza. Also, https://theintercept.com/2024/11/07/harris-trump-election-immigration-border/

She was a bad candidate who never would’ve won a normal primary, like 2020 showed,

Well, 2020 was not a normal primary, with “electability” being too much of a concern as per https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/electability-eye-beholder-what-hell-do-we-actually-know-about-n1020576

she underperformed downballot candidates all over the place, including Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where democratic senators won or are winning, and which combined make up enough EVs to win (not to mention PA where the senate candidate outperformed Harris but lost by a hair, or NC which elected a democratic governor by a wide margin).

Hmm. This is a good point but I think that there may be another explanation for this. These races wouldn’t have been so tied to Gaza or the immigration/deportation and border issues, so it’s possible Harris took a big it from that while downballot, there wasn’t any hit. And the underperformance isn’t that wide - the GOP won most of the battleground Senate races to take majority control over the Senate.

Losing Arab voters was probably enough to cost her the election, but even with them it’s doubtful she would’ve won.

That statement contradicts itself. Either losing them cost her the election - meaning that having them on board would have saved her and lifted her to a win - or they didn’t, because they weren’t enough to win.

There was a 14 point swing among Hispanic voters compared to last election, likely because of the Democrats pivoting right on immigration

This is another puzzling point. It’s true that there was a shift here - see for example https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/01/31/biden-border-immigration-bills-congress-2024/72399226007/ - but while he’s to the right of where say Obama was, he’s still to the left of orange voldemort. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68428154 and https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-06-18/in-an-immigration-pivot-biden-announces-plan-for-undocumented-spouses as compared to https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/trump-2024-immigration-policy-mass-deportations-stephen-miller/

Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face.

except the moderate republicans who were never going to vote democrat

I mean we know some did, since they told us. Liz Cheney for example voted Harris.

this whole strategy that they tried that you apparently like of dismissing everyone’s concerns

You’d have to list out which concerns got dismissed?

Obviously I don’t agree - dismissing everyone’s concerns does seem like a bad idea - but I also don’t think everyone’s concerns were dismissed. Rather, Harris supported a $15 minimum wage floor - https://ca.news.yahoo.com/harris-voices-support-15-minimum-172336812.html - and there were hopes that this could go even higher once she was elected. She also supported Medicare For All in this election - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/kamala-harris-stands-health-care-issues-vies-democratic/story?id=112159503

Of course one of the most prominent issues was Gaza, but I’d argue that even here the concerns weren’t dismissed, not with Harris saying that she will not be silent on human suffering in Gaza as per https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kamala-harris-tailors-ad-messaging-on-gaza-israel-to-sway-michigan-pennsylvania-voters/ar-AA1toi71 - but this message simply was not strong enough.

Fundamentally, this whole strategy that they tried that you apparently like of dismissing everyone’s concerns except the moderate republicans who were never going to vote democrat is completely self-defeating.

Waiting on final numbers, but from the unsourced estimates in the other post, it seems like this is a false narrative. Rather than former Dems voting red like I first thought, it seems previous non-voters turned out red instead. As to why…

the economy was voters’ biggest concern where Harris’ messaging was very weak.

I think this is the only point where we agree on. I’m seeing elsewhere, e.g. https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-economy-immigration-11db37c033328a7ef6af71fe0a104604 , that this is exactly why some shifted.

But as VP Harris probably couldn’t have divorced herself from the economy.

who never would’ve won a normal primary

So 2020 was not a normal primary, but one held in 2024 wouldn’t have been either. I think we are agreed on this point - had an actual primary taken place, that weakness would have been exposed, and someone other than Harris - who could more easily distance themselves from the most disliked parts and policies of the Biden-Harris administration - could have carried the torch, improving the odds of a win.

I guess they back either other up. Like archive.is is able to take archives from archive.org but the saved page reflects the original URL and the original archiving time from the wayback machine (though it also notes the URL used from wayback itself plus the time they got archived it from wayback).

Ah, that makes sense. So the FediDB info seems to be wrong - I wonder if they got confused by cloudflare as per the other comment in https://feddit.org/post/4529920/2993842 ?

Also, is there a way to let them know to update it? I guess someone could report an issue on github…

Well, based on https://www.arabnews.com/node/2033691/world I can see an argument for them being undercounted in, and thus a tipping point for Wisconsin as well. And if all three are in play then that’s the EC.

But yes - if there was any room on any other issue to improve on, those improvements might have helped in getting the lowest Arab/Muslim populated swing states into play and gotten to a surer EC win.

That confuses me too. I’ve never really understood that. Likewise, /m/news is for US news while world news goes into /m/world and US news isn’t allowed.

Maybe that’s another reason why folks thing it’s US-based - because the magazines are clearly so US oriented. But I’m not sure how that happened.

On the brain bin for example it’s PoliticsUSA - https://thebrainbin.org/m/PoliticsUSA

The other thing is that I recall that kbin.social exploded and got a huge chuck of the exodus - but now that it’s been effectively dead for half a year, those users mostly seem to have vanished.

A fraction clearly did migrate to other mbin and lemmy instances. It seems like the rest did not return to spez’s site from what I’m hearing (“all the posts I’m seeing there are complaining that only bots are active here”) but I’m not sure where they went. But for example, one person I was following seems to have dropped off entirely from the fediverse and all social media.

Why did you think lemmy.world was US based? It’s fully European.

But that’s probably it - folks assume the instance that’s for the whole world is the US-based one and don’t feel the need to make another major US-based one.