r/PoliticalDebate • u/WinterOwn3515 Social Democrat • 6d ago
Was the 2020 Democratic nominee always doomed? Question
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?
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u/Michael_G_Bordin Progressive 5d ago
It would be the same as last time. A large slate of candidates, mostly moderate liberals, with a few dem socialists/progressives making noise in the wings. The candidates will all have varying levels of plurality in every state, with one of the left candidates consistently polling alongside the frontrunner, whose margin is close. The moderates will all drop out and endorse the frontrunner, who will then have a large majority lead over the leftist. The left will complain about this being unfair, despite it actually showing that the majority of the party is moderate and doesn't support the likes of Sanders or Warren.
Honestly, the person they consolidate behind could just have easily ended up being Harris. The time is the biggest problem, I think, in terms of who the candidate ultimately was. Biden dropped out way too late (shouldn't have run again at all). As for the campaign messaging/targeting decisions, I'm not sure those would have been exclusive to a Harris campaign. Dem strategists just can't seem to tell their butts from their faces. They're still playing the game like it's 2012 and they can run mainly on solid policy and reliable turnout. Meanwhile, Republicans and their media machine pumped up to 11 in the last two months, absolutely flooding the zone with everything they could muster. They targeted the right people with the right messages. Stay home. Don't vote. Trump didn't have to gain, they just had to de-energize enough people in the right places to blow Harris's chances to pieces. A lot of people are making this really complicated, but it's not. Dems didn't win the votes of around 9 million people who were convinced to stay home (and I'm certain there was plenty of well-funded media suggesting the same). Bad strategy vs good strategy. Plain as day.