If the DNC wanted immigrants to vote for Harris, they should not have messaged that they will build the wall and prosecute immigrants. Instead, they courted racists who obviously decided to vote for Trump promising Hitler style mass deportations.

If the DNC wanted the peace lovers to vote for Harris, they should not have advertised accepting the Cheneys. Instead, they welcomed the architect of the War on Terror with open arms while Trump lied about being a peaceful dove who never caused any wars.

If the DNC wanted the disaffected youth to vote for Harris, they should have promised change. Instead, they promised that nothing will change, that the economy is doing great right now, actually, while Trump represents a sledgehammer to our society. A horrible change that will affect everyone negatively, but he just lied about the negative bit.

If the DNC wanted progressives to vote for Harris, they should have adopted progressive policies. Instead, they aggressively courted “Moderate Republicans” with stuff like promising to put more Republicans in the Harris Cabinet. The people who want more Republicans in positions of power are obviously just going to vote for Republican administration.

The DNC threw away every advantage they had. Their messaging was, “We’re only a little bit better than the Conservatives” and people believed them. The informed voter obviously knows that Trump is 1000x worse than Harris, but most people aren’t well-informed. The DNC failed to understand that and failed to inform the voter base, instead relying on the psychopathic message of, “It votes for the Harris or it gets the Trump again”.

Naww, people don’t like Hitler shit. The average Trump voter has been tricked into supporting stuff like “mass deportation”, but once you ask 'em about specifics, they are not on board.

The problem is that the DNC didn’t call any of this stuff out. The Democrats should have constantly asked, “How are you gonna do mass deportations of 20 million immigrants? Are you gonna kidnap people from their homes? You gonna put them in concentration camps at the border? Tattoo numbers for easy organization?”

The DNC failed in their messaging of calling out the Hitler shit, instead choosing to adopt the Hitler shit. “We’re gonna build the wall to keep bad immigrants out. We’re gonna deport the bad immigrants who are here. We won’t build camps though, only because that would be economically unfeasible.”

The Stay At Home Party is humongous every election. They represent a giant source of potential that the DNC keeps ignoring in favor of trying to sway some Conservatives. The DNC is picking at crumbs when almost half the cake is sitting on the table.

I agree that people are stupid for not understanding how terrible Trump was and will be. However, I think a big problem was that the DNC didn’t provide an attractive alternative to excite these dummies.

There was very obviously support for Harris early on when the DNC made some progressive decisions. Getting rid of Biden was a progressive choice. Choosing Tim Walz was a progressive choice. The DNC was immediately rewarded for these progressive choices with $1 billion in small donor donations.

The DNC got arrogant and decided to aggressively move in a conservative direction. Harris started talking about how she would build the wall and prosecute immigrants. The DNC welcomed the Cheneys with open arms. Harris told interviewers that she would be more conservative than Biden by accepting more Republicans in her Cabinet.

The DNC actively threw away their progressive supporters and gained absolutely nothing in return because the voters they were courting would never have voted for Harris anyway. Racists gonna vote Trump. Moderate conservatives gonna secretly vote Trump. People who want Republicans in a Presidential Cabinet are obviously gonna vote Trump.

If the DNC just focused on stuff like being pro choice or going into detail about fighting price gouging, that would have been much more successful than trying to attract the mythical “Moderate Conservative”.

The DNC has fumbled the bag to an epic degree. You are right that this should have been a slam dunk, easy win for the DNC. Unfortunately, the DNC also thought this race was easily won, so they just stopped trying.

The DNC made overtures toward conservative voters. “We’re gonna build the wall” or “we’re welcoming the Cheney’s into our coalition”. They needed to run on hope and change to activate low propensity voters. Instead, they ran on harm reduction without offering to change things for the better. The message was, “Trump is 100% Hitler, vote for us because we’re only 90% Hitler”.

The least the DNC could have done was lie about doing nice things.

It really doesn’t feel like the Democrats are the least bad option when they keep adopting Republican policies. Sure, they don’t want to kill trans people or conduct mass deportations now, but it sure feels like 4 years down the line I’m gonna be asked to vote Democrat even though Harris or whoever is trying to increase police budgets to “fight rising crime” or something ridiculous.

I keep having to vote for “the least bad option” while the Democratic party only ever courts neo-liberal/conservative voters. It really seems like my options are Fascist Now Party or Fascist Later Party. If the Democrats don’t listen when I vote and don’t listen when I abstain, why should I vote?

I feel like it is not a winning campaign strategy to say, “vote for Democrats because the Republicans are far worse”. Progressive left policies are popular amongst centrist and swing voters, so it isn’t like the Democrats will lose centrists by adopting progressive policies. Everybody likes expanding healthcare. Nobody likes genocide. So if adopting progressive policies attracts voters from all across the spectrum, why are the Democrats only focusing on stuff like, “build the wall” or “stay silent about genocide”?

The anti-genocide people have drawn a line in the sand and decided to stick to that principle. I think it is pretty reasonable to have lines you do not cross with genocide being a pretty understandable one. These people have decided, “if you use our tax dollars for genocide, we will not vote for you”.

You are asking them to, “ignore the genocide stuff and focus on the good stuff”, but unlike Biden, these people have red lines they will not cross.

If you don’t want fascists to come into power, then the Democrats should stop doing fascism-lite. I think it is reasonable for people not to support fascism-lite. They should indeed move further left away from the fascism they are barreling towards.

There are far more people that don’t vote than there are conservative democrats. In fact, non-voters are the biggest chunk of population in this country. Instead of courting the center conservative voters, wouldn’t it make more sense to target non-voters with policies that have been proven to be widely popular?

People like progressive left-leaning policies. Streamlining the citizenship process for immigrants is popular. Fighting price gouging is popular. Not supporting genocide is popular. It seems like getting the couch potatoes excited to vote would have more beneficial results than trying to attract conservative democrats with unpopular neo-liberal conservative policies.

Well, in that case, the Democrats should adopt policies that attract more left leaning voters. Saying stuff like, “I will prosecute migrants” doesn’t make any sense because if that is an important topic to a voter, why wouldn’t they just vote Trump who has promised that and more?

If the problem is, “not enough left leaning votes”, the solution seems like, “attract more left leaning votes”. People in this country love progressive leftist policies like universal healthcare or not funding genocides, no matter their party affiliation. People have not responded well to neo-liberal/conservative policies like means testing school lunches or increasingly stringent border laws.

And yet, the Democratic party continually adopts neo-liberal/conservative policies. It feels like voting Democrat is just, “voting Republican but slower”. The Democratic party has accepted the Republican framing about an imaginary migrant crisis, and that was with a much more firm stance against racism only 4 years ago. Yeah, they would possibly be better on Israel’s genocide than Republicans, but all the actions protesting the genocide have been met with vitriol from the current administration. It seems far more likely that the Democrats would just do the same thing as Republicans, just less loudly.

The Democratic party cannot expect to win simply because, “orange man bad”. They have not shown they will not continue to adopt Republican ideas and policies. If they want people to vote for them, they should do things to attract those voters. They should stop doing things that pushes away voters.

4 years ago, Democrats said the border wall was stupid and bad. They said that Republicans were racist for claiming all Mexicans were drug dealers and criminals. Today, Harris is saying she’s gonna build the border wall, be tough on migrants, and has basically adopted Trump’s policies on immigration.

There is no indication that the Democrats will not be just as bad as the Republicans on Israel in 4 years.

To address your second point “not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump”; why isn’t the opposite true? “Not voting for Trump is a vote for Harris”, follows the same logic, so refusing to vote or voting independent should be net neutral, no?

This election should be a slam dunk victory for Harris. The data shows that adopting leftist progressive policies is popular. Biden dropping out resulted in $4 million in small donor fundraising. Picking Walz resulted in another $2 million. People got really excited when it looked like the Democratic party was making leftist progressive movement.

Since then, the Dems have been aggressively moving towards the center. More lethal military, inciting panic about the border, ignoring Palestine. This has resulted in an extremely tight race as people are no longer excited to vote for Harris.

I want Harris to win. Moving leftward politically will attract more voters. Taking a firm stance on stopping the Israeli government’s genocide is a leftist progressive policy. The bag is right there, she just needs to grab it.

Charter schools and public funding for private education started to be pushed heavily. And then Columbine happened, which made education a very public issue, so more money started getting shoveled at public ed.