I have no clear idea, because I didn’t keep up on the campaign, but I am reading some long-winded arguments that don’t always hold water.
There’s the “class” argument, the “POC/Woman” argument, the “shift to the right” argument, the “uncommitted Gaza-supporter spoiler” argument, the “misogyny” argument, the “Latinos” argument, and even the “Asians” argument.
The one I like the best was pushed in a video by Unai Montes-Irueste, which is the “time” argument. She simply didn’t have enough time to contact enough voters to make the votes.
How do you win an election?
Get the most votes in the places that matter the most.
How is that done? I’ve only been a peon volunteer, but my impression is this:
- Establish a strategy to target states, and districts. Dems target cities, mainly.
- Establish a messaging strategy. Generally, positive for most of the campaign, with some negative campaigning that ramps up at the end.
- Execute:
- Get the local Dem Party clubs and county parties to activate their members and base (which includes politicians).
- Do voter registration drives, because new registrants vote for you.
- Have big rallies for these clubs. Celeb appearances matter – but WTF with paying for them?
- Open offices and hire staff:
- Run phone banks
- Run canvassing door to door to help boost enthusiasm from the clubs
- Run phone banks for volunteers
- Run phone banks with targeted outreach, using targeted paid staff
- Run phone banks with your best persuaders (usually good talkers who are old)
- Run texting campaigns to raise money
- Run local rallies where local elected build enthusiasm for voting
- Buy a ton of media, mailers, and social media targeted ads.
The Harris campaign was something like 4 months long.
The Trump campaign started before he even announced, when people were spreading rumors something like two years before election day.
I recall people saying, well over a year ago, that Dems needed to really get behind Biden and boost his reputation against Trump’s attacks. Hindsight is 20/20, and I think they were correct.
The point of a campaign isn’t to have the best endorsements or rallies. It’s to reach the most supporters, and get out the vote. This requires work: education, phone calls, house visits, and lots of door hangers. All this takes time.
What about the issues?
This is going to sound mean, but people mostly don’t care that much. The pundits are, socially, around the top 2% of society, and around the top 25% intellectually. They’re writers. They’re readers. They’re somewhat unusual people.
The LA Times has an online circulation of 500,000 people. This is a paper that covers a county of 11,000,000 people. This is around 5% of that population (and the 500k includes many people outside LA Co). Most voters don’t care that deeply about all these issues. They are watching their news on social media or television, in video form. We are an unserious people.
Gaza? Exit polls said around 5% of voters cared about international issues. That’s all international issues, including Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
Race and Gender? White people claim not to care, as do many POC, but this is a straight up lie. These are two huge issues, but, their impact should be known, and accounted for. I don’t know what value race has, but it seems like a good ethnic candidate inspires people of that race in the opposing party to move around 10% to 20% of their votes to that candidate. I don’t know what gender does, but I suspect it moves a smaller amount, mainly because women are so used to voting for men, and have internalized misogyny. The social construction of gender identity operates differently than race.
Class and the Economy? Hell yes, but this is all twisted, because it’s mainly about white Rust Belt voters, and that’s not as typical of the working class. The working class in America is mainly people of color and women, working in all the cities, not white people facing Rust Belt turmoil. “Working class” is sometimes code for “working class white people”, and sometimes, it’s not. Working class white people actually shifted a little bit away from Trump.
Latinos? Yeah, they contributed to the loss. Insert mean joke about deportations here. So did some of the Uncommitted who went “full Idiocracy” and voted for Trump instead of being uncommitted. Same for Asians, who used to shift left to support Black politicians, but have been drifting rightward ever since, and barely went for Kamala, I think in the mid 50%s. (There’s some racism happening in these groups as well.)
All these things matter, and had an effect, of course, but I think that the argument about not being able to scale up the operations in such a short time holds the most water.
My thinking is also influenced by the outsider candidate Kenneth Mejia’s campaign for Controller of the City of LA. It took two years, but a relatively small spend of something like 100k. He was up against establishment veteran Paul Koretz, who was backed by the local party, local machines, and so forth. With that much time, Mejia bent the odds in his direction, and garnered more votes than even the victorious mayor Karen Bass.
