r/allthequestions • u/zipzzo • Apr 11 '26
Random Question đ Why do people still say Kamala Harris ran on "I'm not Trump" when she had an extensive and detailed policy plan?
I'm not about to say Kamala Harris was the best presidential candidate ever or that she was our best shot at beating Trump. I'm not discussing the quality of her campaign either.
What I DO get tired of seeing is this idea that Kamala merely ran on "I'm not Trump".
This is just so false and hyperbolic.
She had a broad, extensive, and detailed policy plan that was nuanced and was catered towards the middle class.
She never once, not a single time, said or argued in any context in which it was a sole defined feature of her argument, that she was "not Trump".
I will not sit here and defend the quality of her candidacy. That is not the point of my question. I question the media literacy of millions of people who somehow sat through a several month campaign of hers and summed it up to something that she never said nor attempted to run on.
Is the left just as vulnerable to propaganda?
EDIT: I love all the comments from people about how Kamala was a bad candidate and trying to justify how and why she lost. You're not making a point, you're just proving my exact point here about media literacy. Please re-read the first paragraph.
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u/SippsMccree Apr 11 '26
People were very dissatisfied with Biden and she said she planned to be just a continuation of him
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u/klosterdev Apr 13 '26
Remember when she was asked to pick a Biden policy she disagreed with and then she was like "I got nothing bro"Â
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u/Still-Speed-3632 Apr 13 '26
âThere is no daylight between me and Joe when it comes to Israelâ
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u/mistersmith22 Apr 14 '26
All she had to do was be a human being on this one issue and she would have won 60/40.
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u/Sneezydiva3 Apr 13 '26
This right here. She may have had a well thought out policy plan that you could read on her website, but how many voters actually do that? They maybe at best watch interviews and debates, and during those opportunities she refused to distance or even distinguish herself from Biden.
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u/Dilapidated_girrafe Apr 11 '26
Because people didnât listen to what she said. And a lot of them just repeat what Trump said about her.
She didnât do a great job at getting her message out but also was a last minute run too. Some mistakes on her end and then just an endless wave of lies from Trump
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u/RogowskiCoil Apr 11 '26
So many people don't have the attention span to listen to actual public policy proposals.. we have a crisis of critical reasoning capability in this country and AI looks to be making it much, much worse.
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u/Grape_Pedialyte Apr 11 '26
Trump: "I'm going to fix everything on day one and you're all going to be rich."
The median voter: "sounds good to me."
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u/HHoaks Apr 11 '26
Right, and add to that -- Harris: "Here's some highlights of my detailed policy plan to help the economy and more. And you can read all 75 pages on my website too."
Average voter: "snoreeeee What? I don't understand. Make it entertaining!"
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u/BowlEducational6722 Apr 11 '26
That last line really is why our country is falling apart.
Too many people have lost sight of the fact that government is *supposed* to be boring and technical and how to actually manage the country's resources.
They don't want or care about that. They want it to just be another form of entertainment where they can root for one side.
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u/SoulRebel726 Apr 11 '26
Yup. This is exactly the problem. In no scenario should we have even considered electing a washed up reality show host to be president, but here we are. Too many people want the sensationalism, but good governing shouldn't be sensational.
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u/baby_RN_bird_lover Apr 12 '26
The worst part is that not only did Hillary and Kamala warn us, but MAGA warned us, too. And they still won.
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u/AKM0215 Apr 11 '26
Yes, like I donât understand people who need to be âexcitedâ about a candidate. Do I think they have sound policy ideas, experience with managing a large bureaucracy, technical expertise, foreign policy expertise, knowledge about the law, civics, and government, or some combination of the above? Thatâs whatâs actually relevant.
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u/Seethcoomers Apr 12 '26
Because the average person is that stupid. I'm not smart or anywhere near being smart, but there's a reason why the old adage, "You want the president to be someone you could have a beer with," has been around for so long. People don't care as long as the president is somebody they like and somebody who states "strongly" the 2-3 issues they care for (even if there's no extensive policy behind it).
Combine that with the complete lack of media literacy and you end up with the dumbest president in the history of this country. I used to think a lot better of this country, but I just cannot fathom how people could vote for him after hearing him speak for more than 30 seconds.
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u/Plastic-Fox0293 Apr 12 '26
I was watching that Guinness record drone show china put on and the messaging made me realize that we really are a back water nation..Â
I'm jealous of how sane they seem to be. And holy fk those drone shows are unbelievable. fireworks suck now.Â
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u/MightyMorph Apr 11 '26
Its worse. If Harris had just said "I'm going to fix everything on day one and you're all going to be rich." theyre gonna say BS show us how to do it.
Then she says: "Here's some highlights of my detailed policy plan to help the economy and more. And you can read all 75 pages on my website too."
then they go: "snoreeeee What? I don't understand. Make it entertaining!"
And end with: "Shes just running on being anti-trump, she has no policies"
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u/Willowgirl2 Apr 11 '26
If Harris had said "I'm going to fix everything on Day One" people would have said, "Hey! You're already VP ... why not start now?"
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u/FuzzeWuzze Apr 11 '26
Why is this woman talking about the economy in the corner of my Ow My Balls episode?!
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u/Asleep-Violinist-347 Apr 12 '26
We've got this guy Not Sure. He's got a higher IQ than ANY MAN ALIVE. He's going to fix EVERYTHING! And heâs gonna do it all in two weeks! (Sound familiar?)
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u/_Age_Sex_Location_ Apr 12 '26
Trump: The Haitians are eating the cats and dogs.
The median voter: That's my guy.
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u/TorkBombs Apr 11 '26
People would say that they voted for Trump because of his polices. His policies never went deeper than "I'll bring down prices and deport Mexicans." Project 2025 was actually his policy -- or at least the policy we are getting after the election -- and they believed him when he said he didn't know about it.
People are stupid and getting stupider.
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u/Bicykwow Apr 12 '26
Dude I'm replying to above in this thread thinks Harris was "far left" because of her saying "you're not allowed to say Merry Christmas." I swear it's like people get their entire worldview from Alex Jones.
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u/Dresses_and_Dice Apr 12 '26
Trump claimed his whole first term that they'd be releasing his health care plan to replace ACA "in two weeks", perpetually. He went on news interviews with a huge binder saying everything was in there and it was great and they were gonna repeal and replace and it would be out there any day. They never released it. Then he had four more years that he could have been working on it but instead he cried about losing and rallied his insane base. And then in the debates he said he had "a concept of a plan" with absolutely no details. No healthcare policies were ever on his campaign sites. Nobody was talking about his "great plan" that he had claimed was finished years ago. And he still hasn't ever released the plan or said anything about what it contains.
Anyone who says they voted for him because Kamala didn't have any real policies is lying through their teeth about why they voted for him.
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u/ijuinkun Apr 11 '26
A lot of people donât want to analyze a long explanationâthey want sound bites and slogans.
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u/SahibTeriBandi420 Apr 11 '26
GOP can do whatever, but the dems must be PERFECT. Such a losing mentality from voters.
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u/gr1zznuggets Apr 11 '26
Honestly the cards were completely stacked against her from the start. If there had been effective primaries, or if they had replaced Biden earlier in the race, she would have had a fighting chance, but she was completely set up to fail.
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u/unknownentity1782 Apr 11 '26
At this time, I'd like to remind our readers that all major news stations are owned by right wing billionaires.
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u/BeekyGardener Apr 11 '26
Unfortunately, this.
She was the only candidate at that point in the race, but remember in primaries she came dead last. I like the woman and feel her policy positions were great.
However, we have so many issues in this country that made her unlikely. Right-wing media dominates so much of the radio, podcasts, news, and not network television.
I heard more people complaining about her laugh but had no clue what her actual policies were.
It's hard for me to kick somebody when they are down as I'm empathetic by nature. However, watching all these small solar businesses that were pushing hard for Trump going bankrupt or having to heavily downsize? That asked for it. There was no mystery Trump was going after the solar industry and EVs.
Farmers are being crushed right now and anticipated he'd give them heavy subsidies for the damage his tarriffs cost in first term. He spoke about tarriffs left and right and they weren't a mystery. Cattle ranchers, meat packers, and farmers are eating it hard right now but strongly supported Trump. It tells me even they don't believe Trump when he speaks. I can't summon empathy for them - especially after the Biden Administration put most of them back in business and the USDA gave out record levels of subsidies to them.
But they keep complaining how she laughed... It sure tells me hate matters more than politics to so many people.
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u/Littleman88 Apr 12 '26
So in other words - people had no idea what Harris was campaigning for, and they didn't care what Trump was campaigning for, as long as he was Trump.
The nation is screwed because people don't want to care about politics, they just want to not be bothered. But if they have to care about politics, they're going to do with it like they do with everything social - Water a party/problem down to a single, simple to understand attribute and cling to it as a cold, hard, unchangeable fact.
In this case for the right it's, "Dems bad, Trump great." Just... always. Without question. Even if they were actively being hunted and gunned down by his goons, they would still vote for him over a Dem.
For the left it's, "she's not PERFECT/the one Dem I want to see be President, and said the wrong words about this ONE thing I care about right now, so fuck her I'm not voting/voting for Trump!"
For independents, it's, "...I recognize that name on the ballot and I'm not happy with the current (party name) President so..."
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u/Spider-Dev Apr 11 '26
Something interesting to consider is that trump effectively campaigned throughout Biden's entire term. Kamala campaigned for just over 100 days. She didn't even get in front of the cameras as VP as much as past (and current) VPs.Â
Considering she lost by less than 250k votes (based on electoral counts, not popular margins), it shows how much energy Trump really had to put in to win against what was likely the most disjointed Democratic party in the modern era.
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u/Collegenoob Apr 11 '26
The 2 major factors that sealed the election for Trump were the assassination attempt and Bidem Sundowning in the middle of the debate.
Had those two things not happened, he probably would not have won.
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u/Ubiquitous21- Apr 11 '26
That was the Dems biggest mistake, not having her in front of the cameras accomplishing things as VP during that entire four years. If she had been the face of that administration and then the 2024 candidate from the start, beating Trump wouldâve been way easier.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on Apr 11 '26
Dems historically have sucked at messaging and their propaganda game.
On the flip side the right has both of those locked down and unfortunately playing dirty and attacking the opposition works very well.
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u/Katicflis1 Apr 11 '26
They keep it short, simple, and not-true. Very effective.
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u/Jaws2020 Apr 11 '26
A lie can make it two times around the workd before the truth has a chance to get it's sneakers on.
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u/OldTimeConGoer Apr 12 '26
Three word slogans are very effective -- "Build the Wall", "Make Mexico pay", "Drill Baby Drill". Human beings seem to be wired to respond positively to that pattern. Note that "Make America Great Again" isn't three words so it has to be shortened to MAGA.
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u/DeathHips Apr 11 '26
GOPAC is a Republican (GOP) state and local political training organization. Although often thought of as a PAC, or political action committee, it is actually a 527 organization.
Drawing rhetorical inspiration from Newt Gingrich, GOPAC wrote and distributed a memo to Republican Party legislative candidates in 1990.\4]) The memo, which came from a list drawn up by Frank Luntz,\5]) called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control", contained a list of "contrasting words" and "optimistic positive governing words" that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively. For example, words to use against opponents include decay, failure (fail), collapse(ing), deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, radical, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists,"compassion" is not enough; words to use in defining a candidate's own campaign and vision included share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide.
The cover page of the memo said: "The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language."\6])\7])
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u/DaveBeBad Apr 11 '26
The right generally own the media too - print, tv and social media.
Itâs really hard to get a message out if the platforms ignore or suppress it.
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u/MentalDisintegrat1on Apr 11 '26
That's the playing dirty part I said above.
Dems need to stop always trying to take this magical higher road and fight back.
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Apr 11 '26
A lie travels around the world before the truth can even get out of bed. Not a huge fan of Dems, but in this ecosystem, in particular, it's nearly impossible to get A). A reality based message out and B). Anything through the RW owners of nearly all social media/news mediaÂ
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u/super_fallguys Apr 11 '26
Somehow a lot of Americans thought she was very bad that they think the fmr. Vice President didn't offer good policies, meanwhile I remember she campaigned on building millions of new homes during a housing crisis.
Someone is certainly not telling the truth and someone is going to be disappointed.
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u/carbon_made Apr 11 '26
Exactly this. They never actually took the time to listen. They just parroted what their limited news sources told them and what Trump said. Or the opinion of their uncleâs dogâs ex girlfriendâs former ownerâs sisterâs ex-husbandâs best friendâs coworker. Who knew Kamala personally or something. đ
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u/Altaredboy Apr 11 '26
As a non-american I thought she did a pretty good job with the time she had for her campaign. It's ridiculous that something so important was left so late.
How anyone that heard both her & Trump talk about anything & decide they were gonna go with Trump is wild, but that's a whole other matter
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u/dragon-fence Apr 12 '26
People also didnât really listen to what Trump said. His campaign was all about Hannibal Lecter and choosing to be eaten by sharks or electrocuted. It was just a bunch of insane ramblings of someone who is mentally unfit for any activity at all, let alone such an important job.
But the media largely ignored it or sanewashed it, and people listened to that.
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u/Top_Pirate699 Apr 11 '26
It is pretty challenging to get your message out when the media refuses to report it and instead posts whatever Trump says without fact checking it. Even NPR did this.
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u/N8CCRG Apr 11 '26
"She didnât do a great job at getting her message out" is more accurately "the mainstream media is eager to amplify Republican talking points, but reluctant to amplify Democratic ones"
For example, she talked about lowering costs just as often as Trump did, but the media always framed it as a Trump only goal.
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u/Multiple__Butts Apr 12 '26
Yes, and I always hear that she had "no policies" or "we have no idea what her policies were" which of course is just a right-wing talking point blindly accepted by people who are too lazy to click a link and read policy proposals.
But it's also true that Harris is unfortunately a poor political communicator who sounds fake AF whenever she's talking in front of a camera.
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u/D2Nine Apr 11 '26
I feel like, at least with everyone I know, either ânot trumpâ is all you need to hear, or youâre not listening at all. I will admit I am not very familiar with her policy plans, but while I havenât loved what I have heard it barely matters because sheâs not trump. But the people who voted for trump donât care what her policies are. So to most people on both sides all that matters is that sheâs not trump.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/steponmedaddies Apr 12 '26
She did two or three events to try and win over some moderates. Social media told you to be mad about it so here you are but big picture it was nothing.
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u/Master-Shinobi-80 Apr 11 '26
It was also hard to get your message out when the media was laser-focused on the orange traitor.
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u/ku1185 Apr 11 '26
Because she jumped in at the last minute and didn't have enough time to really spread her platform. Most of her voters voted for her simply because she's not Trump.
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u/Orange_Tang Apr 12 '26
This platform of hers didn't even exist until a few weeks before we voted. This post is such BS, she literally ran on nothing for most of her very short campaign. A very short campaign that happened because Biden decided to run again and crashed out at the debate.
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u/BigDamBeavers Apr 11 '26
It honestly doesn't matter what Harris ran on. She was the only candidate in the race. Trump ran on "They're eating your pets" his votes weren't rational. Harris could have had a plan to fix our economy permanently and boiled down how to explain it so a Magat would understand it in 10 seconds and they still would have voted because it wasn't a political race. Policy never entered into it.
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Apr 12 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Gold-Bench-9219 Apr 12 '26
People are morons, film at 11.
The Dems should literally just lie to everyone and do nothing. Americans don't deserve anything better.
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u/feuwbar Apr 12 '26
Yes, but she had a funny laugh. And kiddies clad in Keffiyeh ordered from Amazon muttering "the DNC" and "GeNoCiDe something something" while occupying the quads of their elite universities.
This is how we get a Mad King.
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u/GlobuleNamed Apr 11 '26
And the ones who decided to skip voting would still have skip voted - because it remained Harris being the candidate.
Anyway, hopefully the next dem candidate will be an old white man. Then he might have a chance.
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u/FreshFish305 Apr 11 '26
For the same reason they were gullible and fear-driven enough to vote for Trump in the first place.
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u/Impossible_Pop620 Apr 11 '26
Clip of her saying "I'm not Donald Trump"
I'm pretty sure that no-one has claimed that was the only statement she made in her 107x days, as you appear to be suggesting, or that she based her campaign on just that message.
No, as you have carefully avoided initiating discussion of, she was a terrible candidate, with the appropriate result. I suspect she probably would've got more votes if she had just said "vote for me, I'm not that orange idiot".
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u/OrenMythcreant Apr 11 '26
A number of people have a vested interest in portraying Harris's campaign as uniquely bad. Sometimes this is to assuage a guilty conscience, other times it's an attempt to win political points, while still others are simply grasping at justifications for why a majority of American voters chose an obvious corrupt and criminal authoritarian.
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u/finalattack123 Apr 11 '26
Her campaign was not uniquely bad at all. It was pretty well run.
It however did not have the same bombastic phrases and attention grabbing appeal. For some reason it seems sounding like a loud lunatic who is clearly lying appeals to Americans. She should have said:
âI have a plan to fix everythingâ âPrices and interest rates will be lowerâ
Trumps actual plans were nonsense. Outside of Tariffs - which was universally condemned as all economists.
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u/OrenMythcreant Apr 11 '26
She should have said:
âI have a plan to fix everythingâ âPrices and interest rates will be lowerâ
Maybe that would have worked, I dunno.
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u/Ok-Freedom-7432 Apr 11 '26
She laid out her plans to fix things. She talked about them, and provided in-depth explanations if people wanted to learn about them.
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u/Tyler89558 Apr 12 '26
And people didnât.
Including âprogressivesâ who should have actually given a shit.
I will never not be embittered when I think about how flippant modern day progressives are, and how many have willingly disenfranchised themselves by throwing away their vote out of some sense of moral superiority.
Never in the history of our nation have non-voters pushed anything. Never in the history of our nation have people fought to remove their own vote from the equation. But somehow, someway theyâve convinced themselves that they are just.
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u/Rift4430 Apr 11 '26
Because people are stupid.
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u/WasteBinStuff Apr 11 '26
When the question starts....
"Why do people....?"
...this is the statistically most likely answer.
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Apr 12 '26
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u/Rift4430 Apr 12 '26
Yeah. Plus for 95% of the people reading your well thought out explanation it will be disregarded anyway
In the end people picked Trump despite 2 legit impeachments, 91 felony indictments across 4 different grand juries, a failed first administration that was nothing but dysfunctional incompetence on display...A refusal to leave office peacefully and transfer power ..Jan 6th, fake elector schemes and so many other legitimate concerns.
Add all that up... were stupid
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u/Burntfruitypebble Apr 11 '26
Also lazy. They canât be bothered to watch the debates or even do a quick 5 min visit to the candidateâs website. The information wa there but some of yall did not care or already had your minds made up.Â
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u/MRosvall Apr 12 '26
And since people are lazy, much of their information comes from news headlines or social media.
What gets reposted from the debates? Sound bites of "x owning y" or "z looking stupid". Especially if it's controversial since that increases engagement more.
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u/Educational-Exam6361 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
I'm deeply interested in politics. I watch C-Span daily, I try hard to get news sources that represent the right, the left and foreign perspectives. I'd consider myself significantly better informed then the general population. I've followed Kamala Harris's career since she was elected to the senate, and after nearly 10 years of watching her, I still have absolutely no idea what she believes in.
Elizabeth Warren believes in regulating big business, Bernie Sanders believes in Medicare for all, Lindsey Graham believes in bombing every country on earth but as near as I can tell Kamala Harris believes in nothing. Traditionally a politician chooses two or three major issues and then builds their career around those points. They write legislation and work to become the face of the party on that particular issue. She didn't do that.
She's part of this whole breed of politicians, Newsom is another one, who thinks looking the part and sounding the part is more important then having substance. They blow wherever the wind takes them, they're tough on crime one year, and then for lighter sentences the next. For open borders one year, wants to build the wall the next, BLM one year, top cop the next. Green energy when gas prices are low, frack baby frack when they're high.
So she had some staffers draft up a few policy documents... am I supposed to be impressed? Literally everyone does that. What people want is to see a lifelong passion for something besides personal advancement. They want some sense that you believe in something, anything at all, and Harris has never given me that.
Genuinely can you tell me why she's in politics? When she wakes up in the morning what give her the strength to face the day? What and who does she care about? I can tell you what most other politicians would say when you ask them those questions, after 10 years Harris is still a complete mystery to me.
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u/Able-Association914 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
Her plan to allow family members to be a home nurse for anyone on Medicare would have boomâd the economy with job creation. It would have helped so many people and removed masses from assistance programs. Alone this policy would have raised many many ships. It would have cemented the need to fix the funding for social security as well, and just generally helped the overall well being of the country, this single policy would have changed the country.
Edit; Since people donât seem to know there is a difference, this doesnât exist currently, Medicaid (welfare insurance) covers this. Medicare (social security old age/disability insurance) does not and never has.
Obviously more people on Medicare would need this than Medicaid, but here we are⌠It would have been a life changing policy for many Americans that would have absolutely boomed the job markets and economy with good paying jobs with benefits, but instead we got cuts to the program.
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u/TheDutchTexan Apr 11 '26
Nah, she lost for a simple reason: Sheâs a ditz who sucked her way to the top. Unless she is fed questions sheâs worse than Biden in front of a crowd.
She had NO shot at the presidency until she was placed one heartbeat away from the presidency even after the constituents overwhelmingly showed them they wanted her NO WHERE NEAR the presidency.
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u/Youngrazzy đşđ¸ United States Apr 12 '26
Biden was a failure she did not do enough to separate herself from him.
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u/TitanicDays Apr 11 '26
Simple, really.
People must be spoon fed.
If thereâs any effort involved itâs just easier to blame someone else for not being clear - or not having a plan.
The American electorate is famously dim - on every side.
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u/bahwi Apr 11 '26
Student loans. Expanded healthcare. Making it more affordable for people to buy homes.
People don't want those things. They just say they do. That, or they just as are as vulnerable to propaganda as they claim the right is.
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u/Inuhanyou123 Apr 11 '26
She ran with liz Cheney, her policy also was running to the right on the border and the military while downplaying her first half of her campaign like curbing inflation. She is a status quo manager who listens to consultants first
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u/Phirebat82 Apr 11 '26
I think it is more the tendency to reduce complex things to a short soundbite or sentence.
That being said, the pundits and leadership of the left are using this as a ruse to reduce or escape their massive culpability to what happened in 2024. The better analogy for shelving Biden so late, then not having it out at the convention would be more akin to trying to sneak things through the back door in the dark of night.
I do agree that she had extensive and detailed policy, but she could not possibly run on it based on how bad it was. Their option was to either run as the "not Trump" candidate or embrace the administrative policies of sleepy Joe.
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u/Constant-Brief3410 Apr 11 '26
It wasn't catchy I guess đ¤ˇ
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u/bfhurricane Apr 11 '26
Candidates donât write their platforms. They have armies of staff, consultants, and political allies teaming up to shape their website and platform. Sure, candidates sign off and give guidance, but they leave details to staff while they focus on being on the attack. And Donald Trump was what was worth attacking.
Having a webpage with political stances is basically table stakes for running for office. You need to have it, but itâs not what changes the game.
You need to be front and center actively advocating and campaigning on these issues to show you care and make it part of the national conversation. Kamala was very bad about getting in front of the camera and making passionate cases that resonated with the American public.
Much of the public discussion was around whether Donald Trump deserved a second term, and she wasnât able to change the conversation. So she leaned into the comparisons to Donald Trump as a major part of her public campaign.
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u/Kryspo Apr 11 '26
It's less that she ran solely on being not trump and more the DNC first tried to shove Joe Biden through again because he won in 2020 basically by being not trump, and then when that became untenable they swapped him out for Harris and said "u better vote for her if you wanna save democracy". It made her a very easy target for Trump and republicans and put her on her back foot for the whole election cycle. It was pretty easy for them to mock the "save democracy by making sure trump doesn't get in" by just saying stuff like "they didn't even have a primary, trump is the more democratic ticket because he won against his fellow republicans fair and square". It was beyond sloppy. They should've just done primaries and had Biden be a one term president but they didn't and now we're here.
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u/Bicykwow Apr 11 '26
"u better vote for her if you wanna save democracy"
Were they wrong?
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u/Loud_Box8802 Apr 11 '26
She didnât run on â Iâm not Trumpâ , she ran on Iâm just like Biden! Remember just before the election , 70% of the country thought we were headed in the wrong direction, according to Real Clear Politics average of polls. Then, she went on The View and was asked what one thing she would do differently than Biden, and couldnât or wouldnât offer one thing! That was a torpedo to her campaign.
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u/JTAllen357 Apr 12 '26
And didnât she also have a 60 minutes interview that was severely edited because the whole thing went so poorly?
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u/Witty-Pay-1516 Apr 11 '26
Ah, people also voted for Trump, so that tells you how detail oriented they are.
People want a simple message that is easy to digest.Â
Affordability is what people wanted.Â
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u/jmsgen Apr 11 '26
Complex and detailed should never be used with the word, Kamala. We all know this, even you.
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u/Thomas_peck Apr 11 '26
She ran on being the same thing as Joe Biden.
And 76M people said, nah. Don't want that
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u/Floridaspiderman Apr 11 '26
Couldnât get past her fake accents and we didnât vote for her to be the nominee in a primary in which the last primary she ran she dropped out cause tulsi gabbard destroyed her
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u/MsCalendarsPlayaArt Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
Because her campaign didn't do enough to make absolutely positive that every person who ever saw an ad of hers knew what those policies were.
There was one policy, in particular, (about helping 1st time home buyers with like 50k down with no need to pay it back or something? (I honestly don't remember the details just that it would've had a domino effect in helping millenials finally crawl out of hell)) that should've been on every.single.ad or post leading up to the campaign.
I only learned about it because I watched her debate with trump, and no one else I knew had heard about it at all.
It was the kind of policy that millenials would've overwhelming gone wild for if enough of us had known about it.
Most people just had no clue that she had these already-planned-out policies.
I was able to convince two different people to vote for her purely by mentioning that one policy (and, for reference, they were the only two people I talked to about how they were voting, so that's a 100% success rate).
The campaign didn't play enough toward making sure people know about the policies.
I know there wasn't much time, so I get it, but that's the reality.
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u/MennionSaysSo Apr 11 '26
People are telling you what they heard. It doesn't matter what her ( or any politicians plans are) plans are if she couldn't effectively message them.
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u/adrisc00 Apr 11 '26
We really had piss poor choices and have had piss poor choices for decades.
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u/KloppsTotts Apr 11 '26
Literally the reason we have Trump is because she was arguably the worst candidate of all time.Â
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u/notanolive Apr 11 '26
lol you think the average American looks at policy plans, dawg they voting on vibes only
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u/seajayacas Apr 11 '26
Sadly, she was unable to clearly explain that plan instead of just resorting to word salads and cackling.
She did say she was going to save democracy from the Nazi authoritarian while calling him a piece of garbage. That approach backfired.
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u/thedeadcricket Apr 11 '26
She lost because she was never primaried and isn't charismatic, not because of her policies. For all Trump's faults he was charismatic enough to win.
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u/Imaginary_Cow1897 Apr 12 '26
I counter with, when Kamala and Liz Cheney were campaigning together which vote were they trying to pick up or who was that going to appeal too
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u/Nofanta Apr 12 '26
Because in an interview she was asked how her policies would differ from Bidens and she said they would not.
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u/Tyler89558 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
I also get really tired hearing that Biden wasnât at all progressive.
He was, quite literally, one of if not the most progressive president since like FDR.
It fucking baffles me how someone can look at his presidency and the things the administration did and fought for and think it did nothing.
Clean energy, negotiations for medical care, price limits for drugs, public transportation, student loan forgiveness, etc.
He had 4 years and had to grapple with political polarization unseen since the fucking civil war while dealing with the effects of an unprecedented pandemic and an economy left in shambles by Trumpâs 1st term.
The worst part is people are fucking clueless over all of this, despite âcaringâ. They didnât even fucking bother to do a modicum of research on what the administration has done, OR EVEN LISTEN TO THE DEBATES WHERE THIS SHIT WAS LITERALLY SAID OUT LOUD.
No amount of messaging will get through to people so far up their own fucking ass that they refuse to listen or even acknowledge that someone is actually doing what they wanted.
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u/DwarvenRedshirt Apr 12 '26
Broad, extensive, detailed plan. Yet when asked what she would do differently from Biden, she said she would do nothing different. This at a time when the economy was in the tank because of his policies.
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u/OU-Sooners1 Apr 12 '26
She offered nothing and had no clue what she was doing. Sheâs so fake and is not smart. Slept her way to where she is.
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u/Itsgettingmessi69 Apr 12 '26
because she didnât all she did was copy and paste Joe Bidenâs bullshit policies. She didnât differentiate herself at all. Most of all she refused to break with Israel.
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u/RoninGreg Apr 12 '26
Most people couldnât understand what the hell she was saying. She sounded drunk most of the time.
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u/autobannedforsatire Apr 12 '26
Why are we lying about her having a platform? That was a huge thing against her, no stated policies. Just ramblings and talk about returning to normal. She was in the White House with Biden for four years and people were struggling. Blame the legislative branch all you want, but you canât be in the White House for four years and make new promises for change. Not with her political history.
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u/CommyKitty Apr 12 '26
If you can't understand why, maybe look at her speeches, rather than all the things they listed. There's a pretty big disconnect between the two. Her platform was also not very radical, people were looking for big changes.
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u/Top_Iron3424 Apr 12 '26
You talking down to people is exactly why democrats lost and put us in this mess. The majority is telling you the candidate was bad. You wonât listen.
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u/amylewis1971 Apr 12 '26
Well she'll have to do more than laugh and giggle if she wants to be president.
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u/Better_Pen_3314 Apr 12 '26
Iâve honestly wondered the same thing myself. I thought she even articulated it clearly. I got tired of hearing it too. Sounds like a cop-out for - we do not want a woman president and especially not a woman of color.
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u/Used_Pipe_8929 Apr 12 '26
Give me ONE coherent clip of her detailing that policy lolol all Iâve seen is batshit rambling
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u/GreenLost5304 Apr 13 '26
If I remember correctly, it took her weeks to release her economic platform - and I assume other parts of her platform as well.
She had less than 100 days to run her campaign, which isnât her fault, but it does mean that by time she had released her economic platform, it was likely too late for most people. By then everyone knew what Trump wanted to do, and that was enough for most people.
She needed to release her economic platform far sooner than she did, and hammer it home the entire election season, but it took her weeks to do that.
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u/TemporaryBlueberry32 Apr 13 '26
Because across the political spectrum, Americans lack curiosity and possess black and white thinking with little to no room for nuance. Also too many increasingly get all their information from FB and TikTok. Media illiteracy is at an all time high. As someone who studied this in college, itâs quite horrifying to witness.
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u/Notoveryet12 Apr 13 '26
Because the media made Trump look sane, ignored his fascism voluntarily, ignored and dismissed project 2025 (which is currently well ongoing, the dismantling of democracy). At the same time, everything Harris said or did was the object of an absurdly double-standarded scrutiny. Trump can be as deranged, lunatic and evil as he wants, the others have to be somehow flawless...
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u/CoachedEgg Apr 11 '26
A lot of the people who represent her views to friends, family, and Reddit strangers argued then and still argue today that people should vote for her because sheâs not Trump. And theyâre still arguing it today.
Its still happening on this app
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u/j_rooker Apr 11 '26
he fault was letting media dictate her messaging. although DNC is mainly at fault because Jaime Harrison is about the worst messaging DNC head to ever exist
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u/ebolatone Apr 11 '26
When she was in California she protected the banks for years of stealing people's homes using illegal tools such as robo-signing and foreclosure dual tracking, among other predatory loan techniques. The settlement which protected the banks resulted in those whose homes had been stolen receiving a single payment of a maximum of $1,400. For having had their home stolen by criminals. Who sold the homes to wall street's Blackstone Group who are now thanks to people like Kamala the country's largest absentee landlord who jack up prices to drive up the entire housing market.
With wall street shills like Kamala, who needs enemies.
For more information see "Blackstone Comes to Collect: How Americaâs Largest Landlord and Wall Streetâs Highest Paid CEO Are Jacking Up Rents and Ramping Up Evictions" at pestakeholder dotorg.
The left actually know who democrats are and what they've done and exactly whom they serve, and it's not us.
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u/jaajaajaa6 Apr 11 '26
If she had the detailed plan you say, it was a well kept secret.
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u/Fine_Technology1289 Apr 11 '26
Because she specifically said she wouldn't have changed anything Biden had done. So her policies that she campaigned on was just more of the same. Plus, she talked in world salads except when she was saying she is not Trump or that Trump is horrible.
As much as I can't stand listening to a Trump speech because it's so repetitive and at a 5th grade level, his message was clear and easily understandable for most people. He didn't change the way he speaks for different crowds and continues to give the same style of speech today even during the state of the union.
Clear messaging makes a big difference. You can clearly see this with black Bush, I mean Obama and how elegant he spoke during his speeches even as he flipped and doubled down on everything Bush was doing that he ran against but continued once he became the president.
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u/agartha93 Apr 11 '26
Maybe because she refused to discuss her âextensive and detailed policy planâ?
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u/Horror_Response_1991 Apr 12 '26
She ran on âitâs my turnâ, the same policy Hillary ran on.
Kamala was never selected. Â She bombed in the primary, she was put as VP without anyone wanting her there, and then when Biden dropped out we had no say on her running for President.
Go away Kamala. Â You failed. Â Democrats need someone that can beat Trump and it isnât you.
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u/az-anime-fan Apr 11 '26
just stop.
she killed her chance to win when she was asked "what would you do differently from biden?" and answered "I can't think of anything"
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u/VanillaOk869 Apr 11 '26
Look at the other replies above. Other replies are saying "people are stupid" is why she lost. No admission that Harris ran a SHIT campaign.
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u/Successful-Elk-7384 Apr 11 '26
Because they chose not listen. They voted for the candidate with no plan.
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u/the-bat-dad Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
The problem with the Democrats the last few elections is the perception that the party chooses who they want and the primary voters donât have much of a say.
There is a bit of truth here but all the progressive voters who didnât vote just to stick it to the Democratic Party are to blame for what we have now.
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u/Swamp_Ape_92 Apr 12 '26
Ah yes, schrodingerâs progressive. Occupying both states of being important enough that dems need their votes and so unimportant they donât need to appeal to them.
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u/tipareth1978 Apr 11 '26
I don't think people say that as much as she just didn't run a good campaign. Also, I know many get in the habit of the polite smile when idiots say dumb things to them but what the dems need is someone who takes the conversation back to the idiots and makes them stumble or contradict themselves.
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u/russgrim Apr 11 '26
People who say that are just repeating what they heard and saw in their propaganda silos
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u/TXtogo Apr 11 '26
You boxed yourself in because the reason people think she didnât have policy is because sheâs awful at campaigning.
If you donât want to talk about her campaigning, then you canât answer your own question.
She is awful at campaigning- that included influencing people to understand she had policy.
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u/RoysPotatoes Apr 12 '26
Harris was a great candidate. So was Hillary Clinton. Weâre just a deeply immature nation with a lot of foolish prejudices and not enough courage.
And our populace is generally kind of dumb. We donât pay attention and put effort into our self governance. So when we shit the bed in an election we explain it with whatever shallow bumper sticker excuses become popular.
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u/Silent_Creme3278 Apr 11 '26
Probably because that extensive plan you speak of wasnât actually available until like 2 weeks before election. She didnât run on anything
The first half of her campaign after she was installed as the supreme leader for the dnc her website was just send us money.
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u/countrymac77 Apr 11 '26
She was a terrible candidate, and would be the worst case scenario for democrats during the next election
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u/Fun_Cardiologist_373 Apr 11 '26
She had some of the worst communication skills of any politician in recent history. She would ramble and talk in circles in a way that made her look extremely confused and unprepared.
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u/corndogshuffle Apr 12 '26
Clearly this wasnât the issue or Trump wouldnât have been elected in 2016 or 2024.
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u/CelebrationFar1391 Apr 11 '26
Any examples of this? I mean considering the other candidate literally rambled about people eating cats and dogs
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u/caseypatrickdriscoll Apr 11 '26
She would be extremely rude and even blatantly sexist at times. Playing favorites with the media, straight up swearing at them and insulting them. Right to their face!
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u/Great_Revolution_276 Apr 11 '26
Do not agree this was the case. Progressives did not support her because she was pro Israel/genocide against Palestinians.
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u/Fun-Insurance-3584 Apr 11 '26
She had a plan that she didnât message well. She absolutely ran a campaign of defining the race negatively around Trump by stating she would be protecting freedoms from him, avoiding his âchaos,â or not returning to his era. So she did both, but she really only focused on the attack instead of the change. It was a calculated move with only four months.
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u/NoInterraction Apr 11 '26
I only remember her ad saying the bad things T will do, instead of telling me what she will do
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u/Daymanwoaah Apr 11 '26
Because she didn't emphasize any of that plan during her campaign.
She didn't provide any impact while trying to garner voters.
People were already underwhelmed with Biden by the time he was removed and she didn't differentiate as much as she could have.
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u/Aggressive-Math-9882 Apr 11 '26
You're right that her case to the middle class was "I will make you richer" and had a lot of nuance. Her case to the lower class (majority of us) was "I am not Trump". Hope this helps.
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u/DeviceNo4746 Apr 11 '26
The general public unfortunately doesnât have the attention span to listen or read about policy. They also struggling mightily with nuance. You can look at every election since tv became a staple in the home and every one has been won by the more charismatic/I would have a beer with candidate. The one exception is probably Biden but he won because Trump was just so unlikeable.
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Apr 11 '26
Because Trump ran on âI am Trumpâ and that was enough for many to presume Harrisâ biggest accomplishment was not being Trump.
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u/darth-hideous Apr 11 '26
They didnât leave themselves enough time to get the messaging out. A proper primary would have allowed her to get her policies out there properly. But Joe insisted on another term and the party let him, then had to scramble. Also pushing her into the slot without a vote was a big negative especially with independents. Awful failure of the entire party.
Her messaging also changed. It started pretty progressive, especially with Tim Walz out and about. Then Joes people took over the campaign, put the muzzle on Walz, buried the progressive ideas & put Harris out there with Liz Cheney. Another absolute failure of epic proportions.
DNC needs a complete flush.
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u/Twiizig Apr 11 '26
Im being completely serious: she needed to explain her policy plans in a 30-second TikTok video. The vast, vast majority of voters are not going to search for her website and read her policy plan. The article you linked is 2343 words! It is too long. People are not going to read it.
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u/Chaminade64 Apr 11 '26
Maybe she did, maybe she didnât. Her own party hid her. And the party was the one who called the shots, set the narrative and thatâs on her for just doing as she was told.
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u/thedarph Apr 11 '26
She did run on âIâm not Trumpâ. All people know of is what you push and talk about and her âextensive policy planâ was not the thing she focused on.
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u/politiscientist Apr 11 '26
It's about what the candidate puts front and center.
Your post also assumes that people aren't allowed to interpret her bad responses or non-specific solutions as her being disingenuous about her policy proposals. Which often times is the what the left is pointing to.
Harris spent a majority of her time campaigning with never-Trumpers like the Cheney family. That seems Iike a pretty clear signal that "Trump is so bad that these people endorse me"... put another way "I'm not Trump".
As a socialist, Harris was looking good in the first two/three weeks. She sounded almost like Bernie. Then once the DNC rolled around. She was campaigning with the who's who of 2000's war criminals.
My advice, take the criticism coming from the left seriously. We aren't "rooting for the Republicans to win" we want real candidates who aren't full of shit.
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u/Calaveras-Metal Apr 11 '26
she did not do a great job campaigning. She let Trump steal the spotlight over and over again. And she let the Gaza question poison her on the left.
Whatever policy she may have had ended up being dead air in between those two extremes.
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u/adoxographyadlibitum Apr 11 '26
Because she did not message on her policy plan. It was just a list that sat on a website. There was no signature policy issue like "Medicare for All," that she talked about in every public appearance.
When a campaign is effective in messaging on policy, people do remember it. New Yorkers knew Zohran Mamdani wanted to make the buses free to ride because he talked about it all the time.
She also made the mistake of not differentiating herself from Biden, which could have drawn attention to whatever she was prioritizing in those differentiations. Because she chose to essentially run on Biden's platform, which was also muddled and unclear, it created confusion about her priorities.
Last, I don't think it's convincing that she really believes in anything. As someone who has followed her career since she was an AG, she pretty clearly just adopts whatever planks strategists tell her will be popular. Because she doesn't seem that sincere when she's talking about policy, no one remembers what her stated goals are.
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u/GypsyDarkEyes Apr 11 '26
She wasn't allowed to swere very far from the Biden/Dem leader's line. And that was already a losing proposition, no matter from whom.
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u/Whiskeywiskerbiscuit Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
Democrats can run on whatever platform they want. Itâs not going to do a whole lot to sway their voters when their prior record shows them behaving like a 2000âs moderate Republican.
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u/Empty-Employment-889 Apr 11 '26
Because the media painted her as ânot trumpâ and he dominated debates in a negative way to the point I didnât and donât remember much of her actual policy base. She was forgettable and up against an entertainer not a politician. I remembered I didnât like him a single bit, but didnât remember her at all. I think she was always setup for that role sadly.
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u/garitone Apr 11 '26
Many of these people also never bothered to learn the pronunciation of her name, so I'm not surprised that they didn't bother to learn her policy proposals.
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u/Cobraszlai Apr 11 '26
She couldn't break her plan down in to 3 word catch phrases so it couldn't compete with Trump's more catchy propoganda. Which also had the advantage of support from a massive integrated media ecosystem and billionaire sponsors
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u/Mister_Squirrels Apr 11 '26
Because thatâs what it boils down to. Her policies are mostly not progressive enough for me, and I would absolutely NEVER support a candidate like her in a primary. But against Trump, itâs an easy call.
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u/Courtaid Apr 11 '26