Notices by Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social), page 5

One of the most damning indictments of this campaign is that Harris and Democrats failed to convince people Trump is an existential threat.

It didn't help that they were cavorting around with people most Democrats already considered fascists.

Really, nobody except rich white people want to hear that you'll do a bipartisanship and put a Republican on your cabinet. Rich white people love that shit because like the rich white Democratic leadership, they want to believe there is no fundamental, moral difference between the parties that requires them to fight each other. They're all friends! All part of the ruling class.

Which is exactly what most Americans hate about our government.

To put it bluntly, the idea was Democrats could finally run as the "good" conservatives they always wanted to be and the left-leaning, working class, and marginalized members of their coalition would have no choice but to support them against someone like Trump.

Chuck Schumer put it thusly: "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin."

Like, the one thing I will give Biden is his 2020 platform was way better in every respect than what Harris ran on.

Obviously, Harris faced more of an uphill battle as a Black woman.

The polling boost Harris received after Biden stepped aside had less to do with Biden -- although everyone was relieved after his debate performance and years of dogshit polls -- than with the idea there would be a major course change.

And there was, but it was in the wrong direction as far as the Obama and Biden 2020 coalition was concerned, and the Harris campaign did nothing but double down on it.

Biden was by and large a cipher candidate. Despite being Obama's VP, most people didn't feel anything particular about him. They didn't love or hate him. Which made it easier for public opinion to sour on him later.

Virtually anyone could have beaten Trump because they hated him and because of COVID. Biden just happened to have leadership approval as an old white guy with conservative tendencies.

But 81 million people didn't turn out because they liked him personally.

Like, it's true but trivial to say that if only millions more of the people who voted for Biden would have voted for Harris then she would have won.

The real question is why didn't they and what could the campaign have done to turn them out?

And I don't think Democrats want to hear the answers to those questions.

Note: It has nothing to do with Biden.

That's kind of horrifying the more you know about Biden's history in the Senate. This is a guy who loved sucking up to Republicans on segregation and abortion.

And he still tried to keep the Obama coalition going and brought more "let me punch this motherfucker in the face" energy to the election.

In 2020, Biden had a small but significant uptick in white suburban voters, and this was taken as validation of the conservative Democratic philosophy underpinning Biden's worldview and the Clinton 2016 campaign, and it became the central thesis of the Harris 2024 campaign. The idea being that Trump was so abhorrent they could win by turning "moderate" Republican voters.

If you want a quick and dirty answer about this election it's that white people are fucking racist and Americans in general hate the status quo.

An openly trans candidate won an election to the House so Democrats had better not blame us.

If they do, they're truly dead to me.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-mcbride-openly-trans-member-congress-abc-projects/story?id=114785534

And young men, especially young white men, are basically the core reactionary demographic in a culture inching toward greater equality.

There's basically nothing interesting in the exit polling data. We're in the middle of a reactionary backlash to changing cultural mores superimposed against massive economic inequality. We already knew that. We either contain or overpower the fascist wannabes or they drag us down with them.

There is no reconciliation, no redemption, no forgiveness.

White women and Latinos aspiring to whiteness did what they always did and it's just a shame the rest of us have to pay for their selfish short-sightedness.

The secret of Trump's appeal is delusion. His supporters believe Trump will close the borders, remove all the immigrants, tariff imports to the moon, and this will force companies to create millions of middle class jobs with no college requirements, but only for men, while women will be forced to submit to those men in every respect.

It's grotesque. But it's what they think. Meanwhile, the billionaires backing Trump just want to suck up all the wealth remaining in the country.

In many cases, they have done so because of their financial interests or because they didn't want to pick a fight with white conservatives they view as friends and colleagues, or at least as preferable to the poor and marginalized people who are most threatened. Apparently, the only consequences Trump will ever face are at the ballot box and then only if we're allowed to do so.

The fact of the matter is we have been thrown to the wolves by the people who are supposed to protect us.

We will have to vote against Trump in every election until he dies because the people who could have stopped him dead in his tracks have repeatedly failed and refused to do so.

The past 8 years have been an abject lesson in white American bigotry and the fecklessness and complicity of our politicians and institutions in the face of a relentless fascist assault. There is no bottom to the depravity of Trump and his supporters and seemingly nothing he and his billionaire allies can't get away with. The only cause for hope is Trump remains a deeply repugnant person.

Even the election prognosticators have largely given up. "It will either be extremely close or a landslide." Yeah, thanks, that's helpful. The only person professing any certainty about the outcome is Nate Silver and that's apparently because he bet big on Trump winning and is afraid of losing his shirt.

For what's supposed to be the most consequential election of our lives, I get the feeling neither campaign has really been trying that hard. Trump has been acting a clown, as usual, and his surrogates keep proposing the most insane shit because it doesn't matter to their voters or the media. The Harris campaign has been aimed squarely at white suburban women while taking other voters almost entirely for granted, sending the most tone deaf surrogates possible to talk to Arab voters.