In my opinion, Harris had no chance of winning. They really screwed up waiting so long and then picking her. But, let's be real here....it would have been bad no matter who won.
Harris inherited the sh*tty Biden economy.
That was always going to be hard for her.
I think that sunk her more than anything else.
She really had to act like she was going to do something differently, and had a clear, concrete plan to do so.
People said our recovery from COVID was "the best in the world", which may have been true in a numbers sense, but it sure as hell didn't feel like it to the average person. For me personally it felt even worse than the Recession. The Recession wasn't fun but most things were still affordable. I still went out. I still drove my car. In fact during the Recession gas was under $2, and I thought they fixed it again. It was actually under $20 to fill the tank. I thought they understood they overplayed their hand, and that you can't do that $4 a gallon gas sh*t here and expect the country to function as a superpower. I though they understood like, OK, we got a little carried away. If the rich wanted to keep making money, they needed to let regular people have stuff too, they couldn't break the game. In contrast, these inflation years felt like the worst years of my life. It felt like the country was totally broken, and everything I grew up believing about the people who ran it understanding that they couldn't let it get too bad, went out the window. They acted like they couldn't care less about breaking the game anymore, because the economy was working
for them and that's all that mattered. The rest of us could die of inflation and go to hell for all they cared. It was clear that they were not our guardians and caretakers. When Biden said "everything was fine" when it wasn't, it made a lot of people mad. I was, too.
Everything is fine, they said - yeah, for them, for the people that got to establish themselves during the good decades, before today's Sh*t Era that's been going on since the mid '00s or so. The rest of us were left on our own.
I think if Democrats want to win, they have to do the populist stuff too.
They have to actually listen to people's real problems. Things like groceries, housing, education, healthcare. Forget all this performative stuff.
The Dems lost me a long time ago, when it became clear that they were neoliberals too, just not as extreme as the Republicans. I feel like their job is to just get in power and then do nothing, to keep real leftists who would do something, out. They're like the billionaires' defensive line, while Republicans are the offense. Occasionally they'll distract us with some social justice stuff, but won't touch any of the economic issues that a lot of people struggle with. They barely even acknowledge those problems exist at all.
The Republicans aren't going to fix any of that. But people voted for them because they at least pretended to listen and care.
Democrats just say "shut up, stop complaining, everything is fine".
If that's all they've got, they're not going to win, simple as that.
