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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> What did voters have to see in Harris' team for that to happen?

Biden should have pulled out a lot sooner. When? At least a year before the election. But you can easily make arguments for earlier and earlier all the way back to having been too old to run for President in the first place, despite having had a really good term.

Also Harris needs to fire her consultants, who were still trying to play "fair" in an unfair fight and pulled back on the one attack line which was working: that Republicans are "weird".

Things are unlikely to improve until voters start primarying out anyone still trying to do bipartisan equivocation.

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His approval rating was in “it would be unprecedented if you won” territory early enough that he should have been out in time to have a real primary. Folks who think switching was any kind of a mistake are going on gut and not numbers. The mistake was that he stayed in as long as he did. Even so, switching was better than not, despite still losing.

And yes, it’s so goddamn frustrating that Clinton-era consultants are still given meetings.

Clinton era consultants were the only ones saying the obvious: “it’s the economy stupid”. On the other hand it was the Obama era consultants who were fixated on the massive loser that is identity politics

Democrats are screwed on economic messaging until they join Republicans in dropping neoliberalism. Was never popular, but both parties could stick to it as long as neither "defected". Now one has.

Even when the economy's good, they're going to be hindered on messaging until they drop that.

Meanwhile a bunch of them are running around like "the problem's that we were too nice to trans people!" lol no, the problem is the latent one that's been hanging there waiting to be triggered by one party or the other since the '80s, the one any expert should have been watching for a shift in—or looking to move first on—this entire time.

> Democrats are screwed on economic messaging until they join Republicans in dropping neoliberalism.

I disagree. What we're witnessing today is that while people are happy with many of the fruits of globalization (cheap Chinese junk, cheap flights, ability to travel anywhere, remote work, etc, etc) our politicians have just about done everything in their power to increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.

A Democrat party that could actually deliver on these things (rather than exacerbate the problems as they have done) would fare far better electorally. No need to put in place unpopular, destructive tariffs.

> happy with many of the fruits of globalization

i.e. things from overseas

> increase the price of the things that actually matter: housing, healthcare, childcare, and education.

i.e. things that have large skilled labor inputs within the US and can't be exported, plus housing which half the population doesn't want to be cheaper. This is just "Baumol cost disease". The major component of healthcare, childcare, and education is the wages of other Americans.

Let's not kid ourselves that the election was a fair comparison of economic policies.

The economy was doing fine apart from a transitory inflation spike especially in eggs. Meanwhile the US is now involved in a pointless trade war with Canada before even getting to the budget; people are going to have an economic disaster that dwarfs the price of eggs, because they got invested in identity politics of the right-wing.

I predict the Trump term will be an economic disaster on the numbers, but this will have no effect on people's stuck belief that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic management.

> ...and pulled back on the one attack line which was working: that Republicans are "weird".

Isn't the Democrat brand supposed to be that weird is encouraged? When did they start being against weird people?

Yes, but different kinds of weird. There's dem's "be yourself" kinda weird that supports queer people's right to exist, and there's the GOP "passes laws that require genital inspections of children in the bathroom" kinda weird that Tim Walz was calling out.

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