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 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.
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.
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
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).
I would argue that the Democrats could have created a separation between themselves and the other side by saying they would stop selling arms to genocidiers, and thereby secure the crucial anti-genocide vote; anecdotally, many of these folks sat out the election, or wrote in another candidate instead of voting for one of two sides who would let massacres of civilians continue.
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.
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, ...
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-...
That’s frankly remarkable given that people say things like “white fragility” openly. I can’t fathom why white people would want to belong to a party that normalizes that.
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.
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
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...
Democratic voters would rather have someone opposed to their values in power and make worse the issue they supposedly care about.
Are you willing to put money on that?
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.
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.
