You can always rely on Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The post mortem is still on-going but there are two conclusions that ring true for me (so far anyway):
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Harris failed to reach middle-Americans: she didn't make many statements about how she was going to tackle inflation and help the average American. Instead she spent WAY too much time trying to secure Republican endorsements.
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As a result, voters stayed home. Many of middle America aren't politically active. In the same way, they don't see themselves being affected by Trump's policies (for right or for wrong). Many of these voters did vote for Obama but couldn't be bothered to vote for Harris.
Trump is the first Republican president to win a plurality of votes what 20 years? Trump ran a campaign of "ImMiGrAnTs ArE tHe PrObLeM!1!1!1". He was so unhinged that voters should have voted against him. The numbers so far show that he won a similar number of votes as he did in 2020 so it's looking like his base came out to vote but Democrats didn't.
Republicans fall in line.
Democrats fall in love.
We need better candidates.
It's like a toxic romantic partner: if I can't make a lot of money doing this one thing, then no one can.
Come to think of it, a lot of late stage capitalism behavior is like a toxic partner.