politics

Is it the primary reason? No, I agree.

However it's childish and naive to think both racism and sexism were not significant reasons that America, a deeply racist and sexist country, did not choose a black woman to lead it

Just a helpful reminder that class relations are real, and that most legacy news outlets have a shared class-interest in de-emphasizing class and income as important electoral issues.

There's a really good reason why democrats will seemingly do just about anything to avoid platforming socialist policies - and it isn't because they aren't popular. They see them as an existential threat to their party, because not only would they lose their primary funding sources if they were to stop protecting donors from wealth re-distributive policies, but they'd also lose their network of private sector allies that enable them to govern at all.

Once you understand the scope of the problem, it's really hard to see the two party system as anything other than good-cop bad-cop neoliberal theater.

Also sexism.

This isn't rocket science. Most Americans were (and are) unhappy with the direction of the country and she was the status quo candidate. She literally said she couldn't think of a single policy difference between herself and Biden, an unpopular president. And the tone-deaf joy campaign—give me a break. People were (and are) angry. A populist was always going to win this election, but she didn't campaign as a populist.

Like most Democrats, she also lacked the courage of her convictions, as evidenced by how quickly she backed away from voicing progressive policies from 2020 like Medicare for All. Or maybe her convictions were more moderate and the progressive positions were the ploy? Who even knows? What few meek ideas she did put forward she quickly backed away from after closed-door fundraisers with rich investors.

I voted for her despite all of this. I wrote letters to swing state voters. But it was a pretty grim march to November, because I saw all of these things way before the election and knew with near certainty that she was going to lose.

Racism? No. Sexism? Yes.

I’d go with racism, sexism, not being a cult leader like figure unlike her opponent, and a bunch of people who’ve bought way too far into putting Palestine first over their own nation being convinced it to vote for her.

And, possibly (there’s a lawsuit) an actually rigged election.

I voted for her.

Reposting my comment on the usa comm version of this story. In part because I doubt a lot of people will read it, or try anyway.

“Well I tried to read it. It started off inauspiciously with

Within the liberal pundit class, the tendency to attribute Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss principally to racism or misogynoir (hatred of black women) runs deep.

Don’t . . . don’t do that. If you have to define it in the sentence you’re using it in, there needs to be a good reason to use it at all, and per the rest of the article - there isn’t.

Secondly, the author’s thesis is that racism can’t be the reason because the 1996 Crime and Welfare Reform bills disproportionately affected black Americans. (Yeah, like I said, I *tried* to read it) Also, Harris did better among white voters than Clinton in 92 or Obama in 2012.

So far as I can tell that appears to be the core of the argument. The article concludes that while racism is indeed bad, and trump also bad, Harris lost because of the Democratic Party. Particularly things it did almost 30 years ago.

Just as nineteenth- and twentieth-century biologically grounded race theory functioned to harmonize slavery and Jim Crow with liberal capitalism, the insistence that Trump’s victory over Harris, like Trumpism itself, is an expression of eternal white racism provides cover for the failings of both late capitalism and the Democratic Party.

So, I am reminded once again that Jacobin is a link I am reluctant to click.”

One political pundit blathers on about how the other pundits are wrong about an issue that's no longer important.

Bleah.

Unless you have code and specific, defined ways of vote manipulation, just shut this shit down now.

"I have a socialist axe to grind, therefore Trump's victory is a result of his opponent not being a socialist."