Could "conscience votes" cost Harris the election?

[probinson]

Here's an interesting article on how Democrats in Michigan and PA will be casting "conscience votes" that could greatly hurt Harris' chances in those critical states.

Sonia Rosen, a voter in Pennsylvania, told me she felt “mocked” by Harris’ approach to Democratic voters, a majority of whom, polls show, want to see a permanent cease-fire in place, as Harris continued to support Israel as it expanded its war into Lebanon. Her plan as of now is to vote for Jill Stein. “I can’t endorse a candidate who is promising to kill more Arabs,” she said. “Every single day, we’re looking at average people—children, parents—with their faces blown off. We are watching it unfold. It’s painful to watch this happening day in and day out. And it’s painful to watch people so cavalierly dismissing the lives of Arabs as if we don’t count.”​

​

She feels disgusted when other Democrats urge her to consider Harris as the lesser of two evils: “It is an impossible task to ask me to have to vote for someone who is actively contributing to a genocide of people like me, that directly affects friends and family. I’m not going to do that.”​

​

On potentially delivering the White House to Trump, she said, “We had him once, and he was awful then. But I think it’s worse for the long term, strategically, to allow the Democrats to do whatever they want and still vote for them. That’s how we got a Democratic Party that is so far to the right, and endorsed by Dick Cheney.”​

​

One of the Biggest Questions of the Election Is About to Be Answered. It Doesn’t Look Good for Kamala Harris.

One Democratic pollster sounded the alarm months ago. No one listened.

slate.com

​

 

[RDKirk]

I don't think the Israel situation (or the Ukraine situation) were significant players in the election in themselves. If anyone thinks any US president is going to abandon Israel, they haven't paid attention...that's not going to happen. Trump isn't going to force Israel into a negatively existential situation, either. But I don't think those issues were "put him over the edge" issues, because they don't affect life in the US with sufficient directness.

There are three factors I think really mattered:

1. The culture war that has been heavily fought for the last quarter century. I've written here before that the Democratic Party has been captured by Critical Theory neo-Marxists who are directly waging a war in which Anglo-American culture itself is the "tool of the Oppressor" that must be abolished. But a whole lot of people--including a whole lot of non-white people--see Anglo-American culture as one in which they can find success and don't want it abolished for some vague, ultimately Marxist "utopia." Those people see the cultural status-quo as something they can successfully negotiate. The Harris official campaign tried to downplay the culture war in some respects (but was also tone-deaf in some respects), but that culture war was always a part of the election race. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Harris tried to downplay the "first woman, first person of color" aspect, but she was tone-deaf in how she made being a woman and being a person of color the face of her campaign...and that fed into the culture war. I have said before, when a woman is elected president, it will most likely be a conservative woman because "Only Nixon could go to China." It's not because she's a woman or even because she's not white, but because she's a liberal woman, it seems too likely she will give away the store.

2. The economy. It was the Bill Clinton campaign that first said, "It's the economy, stupid" to George HW Bush, but the Harris campaign didn't pay enough attention. The state of the economy feels worse to average people than the Democratic Party wants to acknowledge, and the sitting president always carries that baggage. In the last 150 years, it's only been twice that a sitting vice president has won the presidency (Johnson and the elder Bush), and that's because their sitting presidents had been on a successful economic roll. It would have been politically tough within the party, but Harris needed to throw Biden to the wolves on the economy and wash her hands of it as best possible.

3. Herself. Bluntly, nobody really wanted Harris. The Democratic rank-and-file voters didn't want Harris. That had already been demonstrated in the 2020 primaries, in which she came dead last. It was ultimately an error for Biden to select her as VP, and it was all too clear why he did so. But that also was a belly-wound for the Democratic Party going forward, because it would put their least-desirable candidate a front-runner for the 2024 election (there being a presumption in 2020 that Biden would be a one-term president). Biden clearly thought so himself...which is why he chose to run. But that proved to be another mistake on Biden's part, dropping out too late for the DNC to feasibly field anyone other than Harris. I think when the dust settles, it will be found that Harris lost largely because of poor Democratic voter turnout and the inability to convert independent voters to her cause...no confidence and a lack of enthusiasm.

I lump the immigration issue in with both the culture war and the economy. If there weren't a perceived danger to the existing culture and the economy was otherwise bustling for the average person, immigration wouldn't be a critical election issue. The Latino vote for Trump may be smarter than we think, and IMO it's a natural inclination for Latinos anyway.

I don't think the abortion issue was such a significant single issue either, except as part of the culture war, and I think we see the mass support of white women for Trump as evidence of that. The bulk of white women voted first for culture, choosing to negotiate the abortion issue later.

 

[DaisyDay]

Yes, the Gaza genocide that the USA facilitated absolutely cost Harris votes.

Will Jared Kushner get the ocean side, beachfront development rights there?

 

[essentialsaltes]

3. Herself. Bluntly, nobody really wanted Harris. Not even her major supporters in the party really wanted Harris.

If we had had Democratic primaries in 2024, who do you think the top 2-3 contenders would have been that are obviously better than Harris?

 

[durangodawood]

Here's an interesting article on how Democrats in Michigan and PA will be casting "conscience votes" that could greatly hurt Harris' chances in those critical states.

Sonia Rosen, a voter in Pennsylvania, told me she felt “mocked” by Harris’ approach to Democratic voters, a majority of whom, polls show, want to see a permanent cease-fire in place, as Harris continued to support Israel as it expanded its war into Lebanon. Her plan as of now is to vote for Jill Stein. “I can’t endorse a candidate who is promising to kill more Arabs,” she said. “Every single day, we’re looking at average people—children, parents—with their faces blown off. We are watching it unfold. It’s painful to watch this happening day in and day out. And it’s painful to watch people so cavalierly dismissing the lives of Arabs as if we don’t count.”​

​

She feels disgusted when other Democrats urge her to consider Harris as the lesser of two evils: “It is an impossible task to ask me to have to vote for someone who is actively contributing to a genocide of people like me, that directly affects friends and family. I’m not going to do that.”​

​

On potentially delivering the White House to Trump, she said, “We had him once, and he was awful then. But I think it’s worse for the long term, strategically, to allow the Democrats to do whatever they want and still vote for them. That’s how we got a Democratic Party that is so far to the right, and endorsed by Dick Cheney.”​

​

One of the Biggest Questions of the Election Is About to Be Answered. It Doesn’t Look Good for Kamala Harris.

One Democratic pollster sounded the alarm months ago. No one listened.

slate.com

​

A D party seen as neglecting Israel will lose more votes and support than theyd gain from Arab Americans. So the long term strategy of putting your Trump in the White House is a failure both ways: the worst of the 2 options now for Palestinian prospects, and no effect on the future.

 

[durangodawood]

A D party seen as neglecting Israel will lose more votes and support than theyd gain from Arab Americans. So the long term strategy of putting your Trump in the White House is a failure both ways: the worst of the 2 options now for Palestinian prospects, and no effect on the future.

Really this was just about which party was "holding the bag" of being in power when election time intersected with this horrible war.

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

I think the news media constantly lying. Made Trump win. Corporations keeping their products cost high. Which Trump values the rich. There's no good reason Trump is president. He should have never been allowed to be president in the first place. We should have made stricter laws, when it comes to people being president.

 

[probinson]

A D party seen as neglecting Israel will lose more votes and support than theyd gain from Arab Americans.

That seems a fair assessment. The article I posted said that many of these people were casting their conscience votes for Stein. I haven't checked the numbers in all the states, but in Michigan, even if every single Stein vote had gone for Harris instead, she still would have lost.

 

[probinson]

I think the news media constantly lying. Made Trump win.

I actually agree with this statement, but almost certainly not in the way you mean it.

 

[durangodawood]

That seems a fair assessment. The article I posted said that many of these people were casting their conscience votes for Stein. I haven't checked the numbers in all the states, but in Michigan, even if every single Stein vote had gone for Harris instead, she still would have lost.

Yes. The spoiler effect wasnt big enough..... unlike Nader conscience votes in FL 2000, which arguable did usher in Bush and Iraq War II.

That must have been a bitter outcome for those Nader voters. They got to have a "clean conscience" in the voting booth at the cost of thousands of American lives and probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

 

[RDKirk]

If we had had Democratic primaries in 2024, who do you think the top 2-3 contenders would have been that are obviously better than Harris?

I think my opinion of who was "better than Harris" in terms of being able to win are different from what the DNC's opinion of "better than Harris" would be...and different from what the rank-and-file Democratic voter's opinion of "better than Harris."

I suspect that Harris was the DNC's choice based on her race, gender, and ability to swallow Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory. I think the voter's best choice would have been Sanders in 2020. I would have like to have seen Yang reviewed again and perhaps some newcomers for 2024. However, I also think the DNC had made it clear in 2020 that none of the 2020 candidates except Harris would be acceptable to the committee, and they probably chilled the pool for anyone else to dive in.

 

[RDKirk]

A D party seen as neglecting Israel will lose more votes and support than theyd gain from Arab Americans. So the long term strategy of putting your Trump in the White House is a failure both ways: the worst of the 2 options now for Palestinian prospects, and no effect on the future.

I think I agree, if I understand you correctly. As I said earlier, no president in the foreseeable future is going to abandon Israel or force them into a situation they see as critical to their existence. Trump is not going to force a ceasefire that would cause Netanyahu to assert that the US had abandoned Israel to destruction.

 

[durangodawood]

I think I agree, if I understand you correctly. As I said earlier, no president in the foreseeable future is going to abandon Israel or force them into a situation they see as critical to their existence. Trump is not going to force a ceasefire that would cause Netanyahu to assert that the US had abandoned Israel to destruction.

Yes exactly.

Tho additionally, I think Netanyahu is crafty enough to play games with the timing of the war for some political effect or other.