A Pennsylvanian's take on "what went wrong"

[Number9Dream]

I've lived in the Lehigh Valley, PA for 47 years, and I have been voting straight Democratic since I first voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, so I've seen many elections.

I'll start by saying that the people at the top of the Democratic Party need to hear from and start listening to us average, middle-class Democrats. We need change at the top of the Democratic Party. When a sports team under performs against an inferior opponent, the general manager and manager / head coach get fired.

IMHO Trump was a beatable opponent (even after Mr. Biden dropped out). He had done and said SO MANY terrible things, the negative, anti-Trump TV ads could write themselves. I saw only one anti-Trump TV ad since VP Harris had become our candidate. I saw it several times, but the same ad. It was the one linking Trump to Project 2025.

There should have been TV ads hammering Trump for the following, but I never saw a one:

Mr. Obama, in a speech two weeks before election day, pointing out that Trump inherited the great Obama economy, then, by botching the Covid pandemic, brought the economy crashing down. This should have been a TV ad starting one day after the Democratic Convention.

The Republicans torpedoing the Bi-partisan Border Bill.

Jan 6th / His inciting an insurrection... dead and injured police;

Botching the Covid pandemic and the resulting negative economic consequences;

Sam Elliot narration - Draft-dodger Donald - his anti-veteran statements.

Trump's felony and other convictions;

Trump says "climate change is a Chinese hoax"; Then show wildfires, etc.

Ms. Harris' age vs Trump's age > Dementia?

Sam Elliot narration - The biggest "Sore-loser, cry-baby" of all time.

Anti-Semitic guests at Mar-A-Lago & Tucker Carlson;

Many others.

I blame and don't understand the "Let's go easy on Trump" strategy??? Too much counting on the abortion issue.

[John1956PA]

1. Putin's money bought a million yard signs . . .

. . . and paid workers to plant them along the highways.

[Skittles]

3. I didn't see any

and I live in a red state

[John1956PA]

12. The primary targets of Trump's campaign were the swing states.

I read that Trump's campaign spent $400 million in PA. A lot of that was in the form of TV ads.

In PA, political signs are effective. A significant portion of the electorate wants to be on the winning side. As another DUer pointed out in another thread, a landscape of ubiquitous political signs for a particular candidate creates a bandwagon effect which builds off of itself. Harris lost PA by about 130k votes. The large known cash investment by Trump's campaign, plus laundered-in money from Putin, bolstered Trump's chances considerably.

[Skittles]

13. I will never look at PA the same way again

fucking DISGUSTING

[Skittles]

2. EVERYONE KNOW ALL THAT SHIT

THEY CHOSE FASCISM

[dawg]

5. This.

There were plenty of ads. People knew.

[Skittles]

7. repukes are PROUD of a corrupt, sexist, racist piece of utter garbage

PROUD

[Stargleamer]

4. If you saw only one negative ad, then I'm pissed as hell

I think there should have been nonstop negative ads that Trump is accused be 28 women of sexual assault/harassment/rape and was found guilty in a Nee York court of sexual assault.

[kwolf68]

6. Also from PA

And I think we got blitzed by the TV ads. However, running a bunch of different ads not sure is the idea.

The only real ads I saw from Trump was shit about trans-gen and the border stuff. They didn't run a lot of varying ads, just the ones they did run they ran them into the dirt. There were some days Repub ads were 5 or 6 to 1.

[Freddie]

8. Me too

The constant ads about immigrants and trans people in prison. That’s the only good thing about the election being over is we don’t have to watch or hear that garbage anymore.

[Stargleamer]

9. 5 or 6 to 1??

What was the Harris campaign doing with all their campaign money??

JFC!!

[Jit423]

10. Yes, too much counting on the abortion issue when white women mostly know they can get the medical attention they need

for almost anything if they are at the top of the economic ladder and so can their daughters. Those at the bottom of the economic scale have no place to turn except to protected rights by the government. The don't understand the position they are in with respect to "Karens"

I refuse to put this at the feet of the Kamala who ran an almost flawless campaign for the three months she had. I agree to the max about the messaging though. Obama gave the Dems four perfect ads that they missed or refused to produce. I don't expect Kamala to have the time to dig into campaigning at the ad level. That was for her campaign folks to do. I kept wanting to hear more about the COVID debacle and the impact it had going forward into the Biden administration but that never materialized.

Tim Waltz in his concession speech has laid the groundwork for the midterm and for moving forward. We need to build on it.

I say this going forward, the global situation shows signs of being a bigger factor than it is now. I foresee America becoming more isolationist and endangered.

[Metaphorical]

11. Let's be honest

The economy is in BETTER shape, inflation has slowed, but people are comparing how much things cost today compared to their wages, and they latter have not kept pace. Most people are not macro-thinkers. They look at how much they're paying vs. how far their paychecks go, and the Democrats were in power as this erosion took place. It it the D's fault? No. There were many reasons for the inflation, Trump among them, and I think Biden did everything he could to get inflation under control. Yet many, if not most, people ARE worse off today. Talking about the economy is not going to move a lot of needles, because people can see clearly that this is not the case "for them". This was always the problem that we were going to face.

This is Carter in 1980. Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1972, which immediately jumpstarted inflation as everyone rushed into buying oil getting out of the dollar, which the oil producing states then capitalized on, causing a long inflationary spiral that persisted throughout the 1970s. Carter caught the brunt of it (he beat Ford in 1976) and while everyone remembers the Iran Hostage Crisis, what often gets forgotten was how devastating inflation was at the time. Volcker was eventually able to tame it in 1983 under Reagan by raising interest rates. It worked but it also impacted the wealthy, and Volcker was out on his ear shortly thereafter.

This is NOT the only reason that Trump won, but it was a contributing factor that the Democrats really couldn't have done much about. Biden had no alternative - he had to combat the inflation, but most of the inflation, once you factored out supply chain disruptions, had to do with corporate greed. One of the most successful things that the Republicans ever did was to tie 401K plans to the stock market. This makes corporations the good guys, even when in many cases they are corrupt and sleazy, and the corporate media works hard to burnish that image.

It doesn't excuse the way that people voted, but it probably does help to explain why it happened.

[Elessar Zappa]

14. Agree.

I’m coming to the conclusion that it was equal parts economy and misogyny that caused our loss.