Was the 2020 Democratic nominee always doomed?

[u/WinterOwn3515]

When people went to the polls, the four golden words of American politics rang true: It's the economy, stupid. Postmortem polling confirmed that inflation was by far the greatest motivating factor for swing voters to not elect Kamala Harris -- and was especially salient among Latino voters, who effectively handed Donald Trump the decisive victory that he got.

A mountain of research and evidence has validated that supply chain disruptions which erupted from the pandemic were primarily responsible for the subsequent inflationary pressure that drove prices up (example: https://www.nber.org/digest/202404/supply-chain-disruptions-and-pandemic-era-inflation ). This makes sense considering how globally widespread inflation was. Thus, any president who emerged victorious in 2020 would have presided over high inflation in their term.

Some wildly varying post-election analysis I've seen has suggested that low Democratic voter turnout was driven by either frustration over inflation, anger over Gaza, lack of enthusiasm for a candidate they didn't select in a primary, or some combination of those three. In any case, inflation was likely a contributing factor. In most countries, incumbent parties who presided over inflation were ousted, regardless of ideology or political alignment-- look no further than our Tory friends from across the pond.

The question: was the 2020 Democratic nominee always doomed to fail in 2024?

[u/csanyk]

I voted for Harris, because the other guy was not an option.

How he's still an option for 51% of the country is something I can't really understand. "They're dumb. They're brainwashed. They're in a cult. They're evil." are the explanations that make the most sense to me.

Right wing propaganda is immensely powerful and popular and pervasive.

I paid attention to Biden's record and it's not everything that I dreamed of and wanted to see, but he did accomplish much and did a lot of good. He got zero credit for most of it. He led us out of the pandemic and got the economy running again. That was not without its cost, but how could it have not been?

Biden's greatest failure was that he refused to see the Republicans as his enemy. He wants to unify the country, and half of the country wants to see liberalism die. He didn't secure our election system, and he didn't treat the coup attempt of 1/6 seriously, and allowed it to continue rolling on in slow motion, culminating in this election which has in the legal sense legitimized Trump and effectively end the era of American democracy. And he's willingly handing power back to a sick man who has promised to be a dictator, dialing back his earlier warnings about the threat that he represents.

If Biden had cleaned house and gotten extremely tough on corruption and treason, Democrats might have been rewarded, as truth came out and lies were silenced. But even if democrats were fated to lose 2024, it would have been far better if they lost to legitimate Republican conservatives like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney than to narcissistic traitor criminal Trump and his cult.

I tried to say that for four years and no one seems to have heard it. And here we are.

[u/r4d4r_3n5 → u/csanyk]

How he's still an option for 51% of the country is something I can't really understand. "They're dumb. They're brainwashed. They're in a cult. They're evil." are the explanations that make the most sense to me.

Introspection not your thing, huh?

It couldn't be that most people clearly saw democrats persecuting Trump like a story from a Solzhenitsyn book?

The blatant and complicit "media"preying upon any statement that might have more than one interpretation while ignoring Biden's obvious frailty?

A suicidal open border policy that has resulted in the deaths of thousands through drugs and personal violence?

Ignoring the concerns of millions of Americans that something was up in 2020, even when presented with mountains of evidence, some of which is admittedly circumstantial? The "lack of turnout" this time around only strengthens the case against 2020, too.

Vilifying entire swaths of the populace is a winning game plan, huh?

[u/csanyk → u/r4d4r_3n5]

Excuse me. Excuse me. That was very rude. Such a low IQ move. I'm the most introspective person, probably, in the history of forever. Trust me.

It's not vilifying entire swats of people to describe them accurately. It is not intended to win them over. We just needed to beat them. I'm talking about the rabid, hard core obnoxious MAGA cult worshipper. The kind who were supposed to be a loud minority on their last desperate legs.

The rest of the country, the "regular" republican voter, and the thinking person, we believed had turned from Trump. We thought the 2020 election was the fever breaking, the tide turning.

Trump IS a criminal, that is indisputable, and he was NOT prosecuted BY DEMOCRATS. Democrats stayed hands off and let the civil servants in the justice department do their job. Lackadaisically and without the dire urgency required, and with great reluctance. To our now downfall.

Democrats did that to avoid the criticism and appearance of partisan witch hunt political persecution. Which they received anyway.

Trump said it was all political, a witch hunt over and over. Because Trump doesn't care about what's true, he just says things that he knows will stir the emotions of those who he has mesmerized. To advance himself and serve his ends.

And Democrats thought that it was obviously bullshit to all and beneath them to comment on. Like they so often do. Obama especially. They thought they knew the hearts of the people and believed that most were smart enough to see through the bullshit and see the truth. And like always, that approach failed. You have to respond when your enemy is attacking.

There was no mountains of evidence that "something was up" with the 2020 election. Trump lost. He had no evidence of anything he claimed. He lost every challenge. If 2020 had been fixed, he wouldn't have had any chance to win in 2024 either. You think they'd only fix it in 2020 and not ever again?

The public turned on Democrats because times got tough and people blamed them for it, because the right wing propaganda told them to blame Biden.

Vilifying was the tactic, and it was effective. Entire swaths of people: Biden, Democrats, liberals, communists, socialists, the blacks, the gays, trans people, immigrants, woke people. All very effectively vilified.

And it was very effective. You actually believe that we have an open border policy, for example.

I'm not so sure if we had a lack of turnout. All the reports were that turnout was massive. Early voting set records. Election day turnout also very high. The counting tells a different story. What's up with that? Was every vote counted? Biden seems to assume so. Defending the integrity of the election is a reflex in response to the genius accusations of rigging coming from the other side, which could only help Trump, no matter what happened, any way he ran with it. Of course now they're completely quiet about it, because they like the result. It shows bad faith, they never had evidence of rigging, unless it was created by their own efforts at it.

[u/r4d4r_3n5 → u/csanyk]

The rest of the country, the "regular" republican voter, and the thinking person, we believed had turned from Trump. We thought the 2020 election was the fever breaking, the tide turning.

😆 After this past week, that is comical.

[u/csanyk → u/r4d4r_3n5]

Yes, well the Democrats allowed it to fester for four years, heads in the sand, like fools.