The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.
I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. Primaries and the included competition weed out candidates who can't handle attacks.
Democracy works far better than governments that aren't chosen openly by their people. It's an extraordinary strength, not a weakness.
No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people.
Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.
The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.
Roosevelt -> Truman
(not Truman -> Barkley: the exception)
Eisenhower -> Nixon
Johnson -> Humphrey
Nixon -> Ford
Reagan -> Bush
Clinton -> Gore
(not Bush -> Cheney, who retired)
(not Obama -> Biden, who temporarily retired)
Biden -> Harris
That's the reverse: Warren wasn't nominated because she's progressive and beloved by people who care most about diversity.
The centrist Dems supported Harris - Biden's VP - and hate progressives more than they hate Republicans (they do everything to show how they work with Republicans) - look at the NYC mayoral race, where the Dem candidate was opposed or not supported by many Dem leaders.
And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist. They all pretended to have some knock-off version of Medicare For All because it polled so well, only to rugpull the concept as soon as Bernie was booted out.
Dems know how to win, but it's against capital's wishes, so they obey accordingly as controlled opposition via illusory democracy and choice.
I also have to admire the irony of Bernie supporters acting entitled to a coronation / noncompetitive primary after the kinds of things they said in 2016.
Yes, and I think that error had profound consequences. Democrats got so drunk on “demographics is destiny” they thought it was a good idea to shoot at their own side as long as the targets were “old white guys” and “Bernie bros.” For every white guy that left the party, two brown guys and girls would replace them.
That left them completely unprepared for an electoral environment where Trump made huge inroads with minorities and won half of foreign born voters: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... (see pp. 7 and 9).
Democrats, as controlled opposition, intentionally lose in certain scenarios. FFS, they propped up Trump during his first run with their Pied Piper strategy which elevated him from meme-tier gameshow host to frontrunner, as exposed by wikileaks.
Republicans of course are no better. It's a carefully tuned machine of good cop / bad cop, and enough people fall for it to keep the illusion of democracy afloat.
What we functionally have is a uniparty of capital interests which depends on "idpol" types of division and distraction.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.
Inflation and the deficit don't have a 1:1 relationship. For the same dollar of debt, you'll see more inflation from social service spending than you will from tax cuts.
Never forget: the FED did this more than any republican or democrat and their new stated position is to ensure not the enablement of the population but keeping the labor pool 'in their place.'
This, beyond everything else, changed america the most in recent history.
The point I was making was labor has something to lose in any interest rate environment.
The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:
1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.
2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.
The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)
Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.
I've heard Poland has similar issues, FWIW.
For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either.
Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
A couple generally unifying themes:
1. People that for the most part want to be left alone and not messed with 2. People that don’t want to be talked down to
The problem isn't so much differing values in terms of specific policies, but rather a deep chasm of anti-intellectualism that makes them mistrust anyone but their ingroup partisan preachers. Even if you are coming from a place of mostly agreement about some issue, and appealing to values they purportedly have, the minute you start deviating from anything the preachers have said you've immediately put yourself into the "other" camp where their only conclusion is that you "don't understand" or are even trying to trick them.
Those partisan preachers had at least been owned by US business interests, preaching policies that hurt individuals while helping entrenched corporate interests (eg the decades of shipping industry to China). But at this point it seems they've been bought by foreign interests hence the new trend of supporting the wholly destructive policies of trumpism.
My conclusion is that they only use the vague paranoia and blaming "the government" as a group identity bonding mechanism, and that by deviating from their victimhood narrative I was marking myself as an outsider. Even on a politically adjacent topic where it should have been easier to find common ground. But please do tell me another way that I can possibly interpret that interaction.
About your interaction. Just because someone mentions a thought does mean they are ready to take action to fix it. Their real concern may be “isn’t it disappointing that we live on a society where we can be tracked?” rather than “please give me some tips I can use to mitigate the ability to track me”.
Team dynamics are real but they are certainly not uniquely characteristic of what you’re referring to.
I also didn't present it as "you should do this" or worse "it's your fault", as we often see in many ham-fisted HN comments. Rather it was more like hey it is actually possible to defend against this thing we both feel is attacking us. As I said, the problem was they were not interested in the idea that it's possible to avoid surveillance.
what historical examples of this very common pattern did you read up on?
US political parties try to form tents that various subgroups can join under. Usually, some sort of compromise is formed among the various participants. One break down in the Democratic Party tent was over Israel/Gaza, another was over pro-tech/anti-tech. Simultaneously, there were factional wars over redistribution and immigration in both parties. These are two such but perhaps not even the biggest two such things. Inflation and government spending were another. And Biden's competence was also in question.
Every faction is likely convinced their own support is what would have turned the tide because it is somewhat true, except for the property that they're linked. e.g. pro-Gaza positions are also usually anti-tech so depending on how much you aim to get more Gaza supporters you also lose pro-industry people. There are many things like that.
A US politician will therefore try to walk the line of support to get elected. For example, you'll see a substantial change in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's positioning over time. Notably, she is currently actively attempting to reduce housing construction by corporations - a position she has not been historically associated with - because this polls very well among Americans (who, for the most part, believe that building new expensive housing makes all housing cost more).
Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know anything about her. Normally I'm sick of them a month into the campaign. It kind of felt like a snub, as if they were telling me they didn't want my vote. I could imagine someone else using that as the reason to vote for Trump.
That said, I only ever vote 3rd party because I believe they work together to keep each other in power, and that a vote for either is a vote for both.
EDIT to reply: That category, yes, but within that category it makes sense specifically to exclude your subcategory: the ones who would never vote for either me or my opponent. You are essentially irrelevant to my outcomes and I'd be wasting money and time paying attention to you.
In reality, the nonwhite vote share for Trump went up for almost every group in 2024 vs. 2016. "White fragility" was probably not their top concern.
I remember when Roe v Wade was being overthrown and people would talk about how this was how "Men try to control Women's bodies" or something like that. The reality around that time was that the gender differences were a few percentage points[0]. Since then a gender gap has widened[1] but notably among Republicans. Voters for the Democratic party barely differ on abortion attitudes based on gender.
0: http://pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion...
1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/03/12/do-abortion-...
If the Democrats had disclosed Biden's decline and held a primary this likely would have sorted itself out.
For the second time, the party apparatus coalesced around a candidate who was ultimately trounced by someone wrongly considered unelectable.
Even if it was just theatre in the end, having a dramatic primary where the VP won would have made her look stronger and given her a chance to claw back some of the swing voters.
A proper primary would have most likely resulted in a dem president (and most probably Newsom).
I find it difficult to buy that logic. The inescapable conclusion is that a large number of Americans are ignorant, gullible, and cruel.
Low turnout means the party isn’t that excited about their candidate leading
I would have voted for a partially sentient dung heap over Trump, which at the current rate is probably in the cards as a next GOP candidate.
And then for other democrats, the feeling when you have an unpopular president like Biden was seen at the time is to go anti estabilishment. But Kamala was Bidens VP. She couldnt run an anti estabilishment campaign when she was part of the estabilishment.
If there had been a primary, whoever was the candidate, even if it was Kamala herself, would have been much better positioned for the General Election.
Literally every other possible option would have been a nobody with none of the advantages Biden or Harris had and would have only risked splitting the ticket, whereas every Republican was already going vote for Trump. I can't think of a worse way for the Democrats to fail than that... except for the way they actually failed.
And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was and no one seems to care.
Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.
> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.
Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
Kamala squandered a lot of good will and enthusiasm when she needed it the most. When Biden dropped out there was a lot of real excitement about something different.
It really wouldn't have been hard for her to spend time touting some of the best parts of the Biden admin like Lina Khan. But that sort of messaging was unpopular with the donors.
Putting forward actual policies to make things better would have also helped, even if they were just carbon copies of the biden policies. The way she campaigned there was, frankly, really weak. Giving a tax break to home owners and copying Trump's "No tax on tips" line really did not look good.
It was also pretty apparent that while Walz was doing a pretty good job making Trump and Vance look bad, the Kamala team pulled him in for being too alienating. Kamala distanced herself from her own VP pick and instead decided to campaign with Liz Cheney, a well known republican who's father was good ole war crimes cheney. Neither are particularly popular with either Democrats or Republicans.
The Kamala campaign spent a large amount of time trying to win over disaffected trump voters. That was a disaster. No amount of "I'm tough of transnational criminals" would convince a crown that's currently cheering on ICE to cheer on Kamala.
In the end, she did a lot to kill the enthusiasm of the base. She spent just too much of the limited time she had trying to make the case that she is appealing to republicans. Who, of course, all thought she was a super woke radical leftist (she was not).
Gaza was another huge issue that Kamala's campaign ignored and never addressed. A lot of people believe this is why the DNC autopsy hasn't been released as it likely played a large role in the depressed voter turnout for Kamala.
In the end, the problem with her and her campaign is she ran the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook. Far too much time trying to remind people that Trump is bad and far too little time making the case for why she's better.
This isn't all her fault. Biden is a big asshole for running for a second term. There has been leaks that his staff knew full well that he was a train-wreck and that his polling was really bad. I think they thought that the early debate would ultimately prove that he was capable of winning which, as we all know, was one of the biggest train-wrecks of a modern presidential campaign. But also, there's absolutely no chance that Biden didn't know he was dealing with cancer going into 2024. That's not something a President is unaware of. Especially not getting to stage 4. My conspiracy theory was that a major reason he disappeared towards the end of his term is that he was dealing with cancer therapy. It wouldn't shock me to know that he had chemobrain while debating trump.
Had she dropped support for Israel, she would have been president.
And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Edit: man some of you REALLY don't want Israel to be blamed for anything. Anyways, here's one poll clearly showing it was her support for Israel that cost her the most votes: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
Democratic voters would rather have someone opposed to their values in power and make worse the issue they supposedly care about.
I'm american and I've never heard that.
I've only heard her total unwillingness to be interviewed without a script.
Perhaps what one hears varies across the country, of course.
It's been in the news for a while.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
i meant actually "hear" as in from the large number of americans i see weekly.
Are you willing to put money on that?
The job of the voter is to make sure elected officials are held accountable. Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
How does that explain the outcome of Presidential elections that follow term limits? Donald Trump had no meaningful political record prior to the Republican primaries in 2015--and he was pro-Israel in his first term as well.
I remember the pro Palestine groups were threatening to not vote for Kamala if the Dems didn’t push for a cease fire or whatever. All while the other side was Trump.
They didn’t go, “maybe we should do our best to prevent a worse situation“.
Even back then I had a gut feeling something like this would have cost the Dems the election.
Biden and the Democrats erased Palestine. There is nothing anymore that Trump could do about it. He can't resurrect the dead. Everything happened because of Democrats, not Trump.
Voters are very rational. They know that Democrats were the bad guys. It's why they currently have a 17% approval rating.
Let's all focus on removing the rest of the Democrats from power and replace them with true anti-Israel candidates. That's the only hope for a modern society.
It isn't that the people who would have voted for Kamala (if not for her stance on Israel) voted for Trump instead, they just didn't vote at all.
I wish potential voters like that put a little more effort into harm mitigation but history shows they dont.
If it's genocide when Israel does it to others, it must be genocide if done to Israel.
The persons words fit the definition of genocide.
> Don't do it again
Who are you?
But yes, people dislike Biden for a lot of things he didn't deserve to be disliked for, such as inflation which was caused by COVID and Trump and which Biden did a fantastic job of controlling, but which parts of the public simply perceived as "inflation went wild under Biden". Still, even though it's not fair, the message "I will do nothing different from (unpopular incumbent)" isn't great campaign strategy, in my opinion.
It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman.
I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)
The only thing Harris could come up with was, eventually: "unlike Biden, I will have a republican in my cabinet".
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time.
Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.
What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
A principled democratic opponent on the other hand should not succumb to all of this, they should act with integrity etc. traits that also seem to not be pushed by algorithms nowadays. All in all I think it's a lot harder, especially when paired with short attention span of viewers.
As to how to get Republicans to stop voting for evil? I have absolutely no idea and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not sure why anyone thinks the Democrats can conjure great people either. I just think that Republicans are the bigger problem by far.
The only thing the non-Republican voters had to do was show up, hold their nose over whatever bullshit short-coming their rep had (in comparison to "perfect" and whatever it is the Republicans offer to voters), and vote for whichever jerk had a D next to their name. There were only ever two options and U.S. citizens fucked up - through either silence (mostly) or blind support of whatever it is that's happening now.
But it wasn't.
> They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough
Clearly not. They lost.
What's your solution? Shout on Hacker News that "it should have been enough"?
There's just no way to overcome all that every time, at the candidate level.
The right-wing propaganda machine, from Fox to Nick Fuentes to Joe Rogan - even to Twitter - has to be effectively dismantled or countered.
When examining why someone lost you generally don't insinuate that the loser did everything right and the other side are just bad people and that's why they won. That's a recipe for learning nothing and repeating the same mistake over and over again. Which unfortunately seems to be the national policy position.
And that's on Biden and his team, mostly. I do give credit to the party for actually forcing him out. That's a hard thing to do, and it's exactly what R's ought to have done to Trump a long time ago.
I'm a bit confused why you think republicans would toss aside a winning candidate. The party is laser focused on winning. That seems to be sadly a major difference. The DNC seems overly concerned being as milquetoast as possible and to simply assume a moral high ground.
Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff.
In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.
Congress has abdicated their duty of checks and balances. In a functioning government, the executive would have already been removed for not following legally mandated spending.
If you think law will stop this administration then you're not paying enough attention.
Maybe not fast enough, but it happens routinely.
The issue is that SCOTUS decides to use administration to reinterpret precedent.
If you or I knowingly and flagrantly break the law, our understanding isn't that we'll be stopped and nothing else, it's that there will be punishment, that justice will be done.
How are we at a point now where we all know the administration is breaking the law. That they know they are breaking the law. That they can be stopped months or years later, but there is no justice. Not even the hint or thought of justice.
These people should fear the consequences of their actions, but at the moment there are none.
It's been crippled essentially without anything being passed by Congress
However, as someone who has worked at NCAR for many years, I can tell you that the place is a mess. The Table Mesa facility is mostly devoid of employees, with entire floors of offices left in a state of dark decay. Most of the vehicles in the parking lot are people hiking the trails, and days of yucky weather will reveal at most a couple dozen cars in the parking lot, mainly maintenance people. Elementary school groups continue to show up for tours, but the scientists and technical staff have moved to other buildings in town, specifically the Center Green and Foothills Lab clusters.
NCAR has become a mere shadow of its former self, with > 30% of its funding being absorbed by the Directorate and President's offices, with some executive salaries exceeding half a million dollars (not bad for a non-profit). The younger talent have fled, from the engineers up to the upper management, and what remains are aged-out scientists just waiting for retirement. Internal surveys, which seem to be sent out almost weekly, tend to show very low confidence in the leadership. It's a tanker running on inertia, and breaking it up and selling it off may be the best thing for it.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again
--
It's going to take a lot of glue to try to put the United States together again. Breaking things is easy, and the Trump administration absolutely excels at it. The White House, some buildings (some occupied) in Iran, the economy, the cohesion in so far as there still was any left in the country, the scientific community and the reputation of the United States as a dependable ally.
But once broken they are not so easily restored.
Federal policy by wounded ego is still wounded ego.
Another reason widely believed to be a significant factor is that it would benefit Lauren Boebert's district, and Trump wanted to punish her for siding with Democrats in the House on releasing the Epstein files.
The pipeline funding bill had been very bipartisan. It had passed the House by unanimous consent, and whatever the equivalent procedure is in the Senate.
There was an attempt to override the veto. The House vote was 248-177, which failed because a veto override requires 2/3 of the votes. It would have needed 283. All Democrats voted to override. It would have taken 71 Republicans to push it over, which would have been 1/3 of Republicans present. It only got 35, 1/6th of the Republicans.
https://www.notus.org/health-science/trumps-privatization-of...
This is absolutely the biggest pain of today's politics. You can't argue with their dogma even when it agains literally all the facts. Needless to say, both parties are doing it. Just a little bit differently.
A NASCAR track somewhere? A ban on country music? Wearing the red cap? Wife-beater shirts? Diesel pickups with emission controls removed?
Wouldn’t that validate the rhetoric that Democrats have the same methods as the Nazis: Threats, destruction, (racial preference), and social censorship?
Are you using some nonstandard definition of "progressive" and "MAGA", or do you genuinely have the belief that the left wing is closer to the center majority of this country in "culture war" matters than the right wing?
Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos.
What is your idea of democracy that needs to be restored in this country?