As a phone bank volunteer, I hoped to counter the Republican attacks and half-truths, but people really believed them, says journalist and podcaster Oliver Hall

Summary

Gender bias played a significant role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, with many voters—often women—expressing doubts about whether “America is ready for a female president.”

Some said they “couldn’t see her in the chair,” or questioned if a woman could lead, with one even remarking, “you don’t see women building skyscrapers.” Though some voters were open to persuasion, this often became a red line.

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

Harris was viewed in conflicting ways, seen as both too tough and too lenient on crime, as well as ineffective yet overly tied to Biden’s administration.

Ultimately, Hall believes that Trump’s unique appeal and influence overshadowed Harris’s campaign efforts.

  • @lemmingthelemmers
    -6•11 days ago

    They lost because they lost touch with America.

    You can blame everyone you did in your post because you fail to see the bigger picture.

    The democrats did not let you take place in democracy. There was no primary. Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite. She would never have been elected by voters because she is a hollow shell of catchphrases and memorized talking points.

    She is unrelatable and therefore unelectable. She had no platform except that she was going to keep doing the Genocide Joe walk.

    The only tears that you should be crying was that they were able to get you to vote for them while genociding kids Gaza, effectively saying “yeah I don’t care.”

    • @NightwingdragonEnglish
      2•11 days ago

      The incumbent President was the nominee. Generally, the incumbents don’t hold primaries because the outcome is all but certain, and party leadership has never forced an incumbent to step aside before. By the time Biden dropped out, there was no time for a primary. If we’d have tried dumping Biden, holding a primary in a country of 350 million people, and running a general election campaign in barely 3 months, we’d have been a laughing stock. We’d be infighting for months while Trump was running a general election campaign unopposed. The RNC would be saying “We’re firmly behind Trump. Biden is so bad that the DNC forced him out of the race and all of the other options are so bad that they can’t settle on one.” If you think that the election was a slaughter, that scenario would have made everything exponentially worse.

      • @lemmingthelemmers
        1•10 days ago

        Makes you wonder why it was allowed it to happen at all. It’s not as if Biden wasn’t showing signs of aging the limited times he was seen in public on the first go-round. He should have been primaried again, but it was worth it for them to lose the Whitehouse to Trump 2x. This should be a layup for a major political party to be in opposition of, but old Bernie was too extreme for the corporate warhawk democrats because he wanted to tax the rich.

        Here’s the truth: the democrats don’t give a shit about democracy and they sure as hell don’t give a shit about you.

    • @btaf45
      -1•11 days ago

      Kamala Harris was the chosen one of the elite.

      She was the chosen one of the elected delegates. Just because somebody is elected as a party delegate does NOT make them an “elite”. Fuck that shit. It doesn’t take a lot of money to be a delegate. It mainly just takes a lot of commitment.