American gen Z voters share how they feel about Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, why they like or dislike her as a candidate and whether they think she could beat Donald Trump, as the vice-president races towards winning the Democratic nomination for November’s election.
‘I think she’s just what we need’
“I think [Kamala Harris] is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic. The Democrats need a bold move and I think she’s just what we need.
“I hope the Democrats realize what an opportunity this is for them.” Will, 22, construction worker from Portland, Oregon
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God, progressives suck. Conservatives vote. Every election. Doesn’t matter what the polls say. Doesn’t matter what the weather is. Doesn’t matter who is running. They fucking VOTE. That’s why a small minority is able to run roughshod over the interests of the majority: the majority doesn’t fucking vote!!
That’s because their party reflects their voters’ will. More than two-thirds of Democrats said that they didn’t want Joe Biden for a second term, but they forced him through the nomination process anyway, without any challenge or debate. Meanwhile, the Republican party elites didn’t want Trump on 2016 or 2024, but when their voters chose him, they accepted it. They didn’t make back room deals with the other candidates to make Jeb the nominee, like the Democrats did for Biden.
And then Democrats convinced Biden to not run for a second term. Sounds like the party did in fact listen to the voters’ will, and that’s being reflected in the excitement that we’re seeing across the board.
And you know what? I wish Republicans made backroom deals. I wish they recognized Trump was a significant threat and aligned to go against him.
Yeah, but the Democrats also propped Biden up through the primary and kept any real challengers from entering the race, then only abandoned him once it became clear that he had no chance of winning. It shouldn’t take the President displaying signs of cognitive decline on national television to get the party to listen to its own voters.
And while I agree that it would be better if the Republicans hadn’t enabled Trump, I don’t think cutting back-room deals to give their preferred candidate the nomination would be better than just not supporting him. GOP politicians were happy to denounce Trump before the primary, and they could have held their ground afterwards. The options don’t have to be, “fall in line,” or, “rig the primaries.”
I think a lot of Democrats were actually unaware of how bad Biden was, even within the party apparatus. It sounded like his close advisors were seriously sheltering him.
Just goes to show that you need advisors and friends who aren’t just going to blindly support and defend you, but will also call you out on your shit
The polls, plus stingy donors, convinced Biden not to run.
Of course, Lemmy-ites will insist that polls don’t matter and you can just scream at people to vote if you’re at a fund raising disadvantage when you need to close the gap.
When Republicans make backroom deals, you get a 5-4 SCOTUS majority halting the recount process in Florida.
We’re somewhat lucky that Trump was on such shit terms with Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp in 2020.
No. It isn’t. And no, it doesn’t.
They vote no matter what. They vote even if they hate the candidate. Even if they hate the platform. They vote out of a sense of moral obligation that progressives entirely lack.
Their party works against their interests. I know it, you know it, and anyone who looks at it critically for half a second knows it. And yet they still vote.
There was that interesting research ten years back about the pillars of conservative and progressive morality. I seem to recall conservatives having five nearly universal core values, while progressives had only three of those. Conservatives value tradition and loyalty on an equal level with eg fairness and truth. Liberals still value tradition and loyalty, but they are not core values, and so things like truth take a higher priority. Conservatives literally don’t care about the facts when they feel like their loyalty is tested.
I didn’t say their party reflects their interests, I said it reflects their will. Sure, the Republican policies screw over the working class, but Republican voters want candidates that will blame their problems on welfare recipients and immigrants, and they get it. They want religious zealots who will merge religion and government, and they get it. They want regressive social policies, and they get them. Meanwhile, Democratic voters ask for universal healthcare and get Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan. They want the BBB plan, with universal pre-K and the expanded child tax credit, and they get an infrastructure deal.
Republicans tell their politicians what they want, and their politicians go out and get it, or at least try. Democrats tell their politicians what they want, and their politicians tell them why they can’t have it. That’s why turnout is different.
We have lots of research on this subject. I am not stating personal opinions. This is the reason that voter disenfranchisement favours conservative voters.
Voter disenfranchisement? As in, laws that restrict voting? Then which is it? Progressives don’t show up or progressives are disenfranchised?
You guys are both right. Democrats ignore progressives to their detriment, and republicans line up dutifully to elect people who that truly represent who they are (i.e. hate-filled war mongers that want to punish women, minorities, LGBT, and democrats for being different).
I mean… Even when we do have a primary, most of the left just stays home. It doesn’t help that most people just can’t be bothered.
I don’t know that that’s true. It’s kinda hard to find data on progressive vs. centrist turnout, but generally, turnout for primaries has been going up, not down, and it was definitely young progressive voters that gave Obama the victory over Clinton.
Your own link shows 28.5% of eligible voters, most would imply more than half, so I don’t know what your argument is. It doesn’t matter if it’s highest it’s ever been if it’s still pathetic.
Yeah, but, “most of the left stays home,” also implies centrists or conservatives vote in higher numbers than the left, which doesn’t appear to be true. Voters are more invovled in primaries than they have been in years, and the left and right seem to be voting at about the same level. Like, yeah, voter apathy is really bad in this country, but it seems pretty bipartisan, so it’s not a left-specific problem.
I don’t think it would imply that and it wasn’t my intent. My complaint is with the left, I couldn’t give a shit how many of the other side votes in their primary. The level of self righteous moral purity is ungodly high on the left, and yet even though 75% of our party is constantly whining about the candidate of one political position in the party only ~30% are actually voting in the primary. It’s getting old. We can have any fucking candidate we want in most primaries, we just have to show the fuck up when it matters.
In Bernie’s first presidential campaign he did much better in caucuses, because he was good at political maneuvering, but the states with a strait up vote, he lost most of them. That says everything you need to know about the left wing of the party, all talk, low energy action.
I honestly think it’s more accurate to say Republican voters reflect their party’s will (or more accurately Trump’s will). Trump can say and do anything and Maga voters will fall in line behind him no matter what. Even if what he says or does goes against what Republicans have historically been in favor of. Like when he sunk Nafta for his own terrible plan. He runs a cult of personality and the republican party had to either nominate him or be abandoned by their enflamed base.
Dems should have absolutely nominated Bernie. But if Bernie started spouting hateful rhetoric like Trump does he wouldn’t have a base anymore.
Idk. I think Bernie would have made a better President, but I still question whether he’d have made a winning President. Americans are easily Red Baited, and I could see Republicans cowing a lot of moderate liberals with “He’ll turn American into Venezuela!” scare stories and some sudden sharp drops in everyone’s retirement funds on the eve of the election.
In 2020, Biden was absolutely the safe path to victory, even if he was a corporate shill and genocidal enabler through his time in office.
This implies that progressives are the majority which, as a progressive, I highly doubt.
If you look at the Republican parties platform 70% of America is to the left of it
Turnout has varied enormously over the last twenty years. Conservatives are riding the same waves as the rest of us. A lot of that is built into home ownership. We’re seeing a more migrant population that needs to constantly re-register and re-engage with the local political establishment after every change of address. Republicans are no longer the home-owning majority, now that the college demographic has shifted over to the liberal side of the spectrum. And Democrats are no longer the freshly migrant urbanites of the post Jim Crow era, fleeing the brutality of the Dixiecrat states.
Dems have eclipsed Republicans on voter registration, they consistently out-compete on turnout, and they’ve had a number of wave elections in off-years precisely because they’re more consistent at voting than their Republican peers.
No. Gerrymandering, vote caging, and strategic disenfranchisement at the county and state level are why small minorities are able to run roughshod over the interests of the majority. States like Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas have absolutely batshit insane maps, with a handful of districts packed to the gills full of liberal voters while conservatives are spread thinly across the remainder. Wisconsin just broke the GOP gerrymander that’s kept the state legislature locked firmly red with barely 40% of the popular vote.
That’s been a clever stopgap against popular governance in the short term, but its also a dangerous game when a suburban cohort shifts or defects on razor thin margins.
When Dem wave years happen, you can see thousands of seats flip overnight. But without that supermajority of voters, you’ll see those same seats collapse red again. That was the story of 2008 -> 2010 and 2016 -> 2018 -> 2020. Suddenly influxes of Democrats would appear for a cycle only to get obliterated in time for Republicans to recement their gerrymanders.
Consequently, the Republican strategy has been to run out the clock on incoming Dem administrations, confident that they’ll be back in control as soon as the wave passes. Democrat strategy has been to… fuck around for the two years they have a significant majority and then bitch at voters when the moment passes.