If the Democrats actually won the presidential elections in 2016 and 2024

[milestogo]

then all this angst about finding a better candidate is for nothing. All this navel gazing is just stupid.

We need to focus on fighting for fair elections because NOTHING ELSE MATTERS if our votes are going into the crapper.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Part 3

?si=niGrgyFmCIkH4ZH0

[Initech]

43. Titus is one of the best politcal podcasters on Youtube!

More people should pay attention to what he is saying!

[Eliot Rosewater]

46. Thank you, several hours of cyber security expert guy explaining

The absolute near impossibility of certain election outcomes last time.

No doubt in my mind what happened.

[MichMan]

56. What does an absolute near impossibility mean?

0.0000001% ?

[angryxyouth]

73. Here is the forensic analysis of PA

https://websites.umich.edu/~wmebane/PA2024.pdf

Malicious anomaly is found in every county

[live love laugh]

79. Musk spent a month there prior to the election according to Trump.

[tinrobot]

2. Absolutely. I ignore all the navel gazing

Our policies are sound. We ARE the majority.

The only thing we can fault ourselves with is not protecting the vote.

[walkingman]

5. I hope we learned that not voting after Bernie lost the primary in 2016 and Palestine protest

in 2024 has dire consequences. Just think - what would the US be like today if Gore won in 2000, Clinton in 2016, and Kamala in 2024....

[Susan Calvin]

11. Speaking of Gore, we also learned that we darn well better

Keep a sharp eye on elections and contest contest contest when there's any hint of malfeasance.

Oh wait, we haven't quite learned that one yet.

[TnDem]

75. One thing Gore did wrong

He didn't take the time to visit his home state for days before the election and Bush did...He lost Tennessee and if he had won, Florida wouldn't have mattered.

[IbogaProject]

19. She got 7 million more than T in 2016

And she didn't campaign hard in either Wisconsin nor Michigan. I know she would have been a competent President. I have come to detest the micro-targeted messaging that the consultants get some of our candidates to do. Bernie for his faults talked about the 2% making the rest of us worse along with pocketbook issues.

[Celerity]

62. Hillary did not get 7 million more votes than Trump in 2016. She won the popular vote by around 2.87 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election

[IbogaProject]

88. Ok the totals closened up from the initial post election numbers

[Celerity]

89. It got closer, BUT in Clinton's favour, as the CA totals finally came in. She was never 7 million up in the popular vote

[IbogaProject]

91. OK thanks for correcting misinformation

And my mistake in repeating it.

[Celerity]

92. All good!

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. And if, as those of us in the reality based community know, Dems indeed lost in 2016 and 2024?

Then finding candidates who inspire voters to show up and vote rather than sit home in despair, apathy and cynicism remains a critical task.

A 5% increase in turnout of young voters, who predictably vote for Dems 2 to 1 over republicans would ensure Dem majorities for decades.

Fighting voter suppression is also critical, and once Dems regain the trifecta, killing the filibuster and ramming through legislation to expand the courts and pass SCOTUS-proof voting rights laws must be a top priority.

[Meadowoak]

18. America is too masyganistic and racist. We will lose unless we run a white man.

[thesquanderer]

31. Tell that to Barack Obama.

I firmly believe a woman can win as well. But they will have to be similarly exceptional. Neither Hillary nor Kamala had that level of communication skills.

[Meadowoak]

48. Trump was payback for Barack Obama.

[Meadowoak]

49. And Trump did?

[thesquanderer]

59. Actually yes... because there are different kinds of communication skills.

Articulating detailed policy? Nope, Trump can't do that. But talking to people in a way that connects with them? Yeah, he actually has a good amount of that. Like it or not, he is basically a charismatic person. It's actually *all* he has, which is why just about the only job he is genuinely qualified for is TV game show host.

So to get back to the earlier point, I think a charismatic woman can win, especially if she's more charismatic than her opponent. If she's up against a man, and neither of them are charismatic, the man probably wins. So even if you don't agree with me that Trump has charismatic communication skills, he'd still have beaten any woman who didn't have those skills.

Summing up (albeit in a simplification):
... if a man and woman both don't have those skills, I'd say the man wins.
... If only the man does, he wins.
... If only the woman does, she probably wins.
... If they both do... that could go either way, though the man would have the edge.

[AZ8theist]

67. What the heck is "masyganistic"??

[CrispyQ]

4. I don't believe the 2024 election was stolen, but Harris was an outstanding candidate & ran an almost flawless campaign,

& all the hand wringing & hindsight advice/criticism infuriated me & it came from every corner. I couldn't believe when Biden came out & said he thought he would have won. I was one of Joe's last defenders & was ambivalent about Harris, until I saw her campaign & the enthusiasm & heard her policy plans. And she did it in three months, something no candidate has ever done. I was totally onboard & didn't think there was a better candidate & IMO, Joe would have lost worse. Much worse. They were going to play that debate video of him standing there with his mouth gaping like a fish, & harped endlessly on his age. I feel the way the party turned on Harris after the election was shameful.

[Random Boomer]

15. Well said!

I remember watching Joe Biden walk out on stage for the debate and my heart sank. All it took was one look and I knew we were in trouble. He looked old and frail, because he WAS old and frail. I don't think he could have managed to both run the country and campaign for the presidency.

Kamala was really our only hope at that point. She won me over, too. I hadn't been impressed with her before, but something had changed, SHE had changed, and for the better, since her last presidential run.

I thought she ran an excellent campaign (much better than Hillary Clinton had run). She firmly and passionately articulated the policies and perspectives I wanted for the party and for the country.

All the criticisms I've heard seem to advise watering down the Dem message, steering away from "divisive" issues, all the pablum that I find most repulsive about politics. The problem is not with the campaign that Harris ran, the problem is with this country. We've allowed it to rot in ignorance, resentments and greed. We've allowed moneyed interests and religious ideology to flourish.

Republicans play the long game, and they play dirty. And 2024 was the culmination of over 50 years of GOP corruption.

[Oopsie Daisy]

17. There's a lot of shame to go around... especially with the saboteurs encouraging the "Uncommitted Movement" *

* it just amazes me that these individuals are still around and celebrated today. They should be hang their heads in shame and slither off into the darkness.

[JustAnotherGen]

53. I blame

Those non voters first for that "Uncommitted" reason, and magpubs next.

[Meadowoak]

20. Harris was a great candidate, unfortunately she energized the other side.

To vote against a black female candidate.

[OMGWTF]

22. Well, I DO believe that the 2024 election was stolen.

There is a lawsuit in Rockland County, NY that is in the discovery phase because a judge looked at the evidence and saw that the case had enough merit to proceed. The suit was brought by a third-party candidate after they received zero votes, even though they knew people had voted for them. Curiously, Kirsten Gillibrand won her Democratic Senate seat in a landslide but in some precincts, Kamala also received ZERO votes. The math ain't mathin'. Besides, T💩p and Eloon bragged about stealing the election numerous times.

The best way we can get back into the world community is to prove that we, the people, voted for Kamala and not this "quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring witness-tampering day-one-dictatoring disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating weather-map-defacing horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 88-count fluorescent tangerine felony factory." -- Jeff Tiedrich, National Treasure

Trial is August 29th.

[Iwasthere]

64. I firmly believe she won

So many in here have totally forgotten what they witnessed last November https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14FZGY7stsx/

[reACTIONary]

65. Gee, no one voted for Lyndon LaRouch? I can't believe it!

Some interesting information about the Rockland County, NY, election "anomalies"....

The complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court in December 2024, makes several claims about the election results in Rockland County. First, it alleges that election officials in the county did not accurately record votes cast for Sare, who ran under the Larouche Party.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/12/new-york-lawsuit-2024-election/

[MichMan]

86. Why would someone rig a handful of small precincts in a state that Harris would win easily?

[Dave Bowman]

54. Harris was such an outstanding candidate that I was 100% certain that she would crush the crazy perv.

I was unpleasantly surprised by what happened, to say the least.

[MichMan]

58. I don't believe the Harris campaign was almost flawless

Not only did they have a huge cash advantage with relatively little to show for it, they made several mis steps that were unnecessary.

[tritsofme]

6. There is nothing productive in embracing Trump-style election denialism and similarly delusional conspiracy theories.

[KPN]

28. Yeah, because it only works for Republicans to do that.

[tritsofme]

32. So you think Democratic leaders should intentionally spread false conspiracy theories to rile people up?

Because that’s what Republicans did?

[KPN]

34. No, I think they should be mnore circumspect.

[0rganism]

41. This actually raises an interesting question of how Democrats *should* respond to GOP messaging psyops

I think our positions and candidates suffer from a lack of representation in broadcast media, but this is a long-term situation that's been underway for decades, and it's not about to improve in the next 10 years. Online media represented an opportunity, but the GOP has seized a massive advantage there as well. We're faced with a circumstance where we have qualified candidates with popular policy positions and they have difficulty connecting with voters en masse. Meanwhile, the GOP has entire networks full of propagandists ready to spout off all manner of falsehoods and coordinated daily talking points.

What is the appropriate counter? There might be one, but it's clearly outside my skillset to see it easily. Right now, it looks like the Democrats' strategy involves going for face-to-face engagement that the Republicans prefer to avoid. I think this is excellent activity in itself, directly nourishing small-d democracy, but I doubt it scales up effectively to counter multiple broadcast sources of GOP agitprop.

[OldBaldy1701E]

80. Simple.

Every single time one of them makes any kind of public statement, or that blonde, air-headed spokesperson says something that we know is not true or is just fantasy, we should all laugh. Loudly. Publicly. We should be releasing TikTok's and Facebook posts of groups of Democrats laughing at whatever it was that they said/did. We should be doing this every single time they open their mouths.

Belittle them publicly. Loudly and often. The more stupid and insane the statement/action, the louder and more intense the laughter should be. We should have a 'laugh track' squad that goes from location to location and laughs loudly at these animals.

(A 'laugh track' squad is a group of people that are hired because they have loud or funny-sounding laughs. The producers like such people in live audience situations because the crowd will laugh at that group as much as they laugh at the jokes. The delivery works better when there is always laughter in the crowd. With those funny laughs going off, it makes the crowd laugh even more.)

[Meadowoak]

51. Whatever it takes to win. We can't blow another election.

[tritsofme]

55. You think lying to voters would help us win?

[MichMan]

57. Maybe once

[Meadowoak]

69. It works for the Republicans

[tritsofme]

77. You might be right. I used to think left-leaning voters wouldn't be quite as responsive to lies and manipulation

Compared to Magas.

But with all the recs on this thread and the other big election denial thread, that appears to be an incorrect assumption.

[SocialDemocrat61]

7. Don't forget 2000

Al Gore was robbed!

[Susan Calvin]

12. Yep.

And it could have been corrected at the time. We need to stop playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

[KPN]

36. How? What power did Al Gore have to overrule the Supreme Court? Or even Bill Clinton as President at the time? There

was no way "we" could have pulled that off politically. The Supreme Court ruled that continuing the hand recount was unconstitutional, albeit with a legal argument that re: constitutionally unlawful that I have always found dubious.

[Susan Calvin]

60. Screaming bloody murder for a recount.

Even after the Supreme Court decision. Okay, it might not have worked. But we at least needed to make some noise. A lot of noise.

[czarjak]

78. Just a coincidence that it came down to Florida?

Those Secret Society boys have their ways. Somehow.

[Meadowoak]

21. When the votes were actually counted, Gore won Florida by 880,000 votes.

[KPN]

33. What are you talking about? He didn't even win the national vote by that amount.

He won the national by about half a million.

[Meadowoak]

47. Al Gore in 2000, remember, the supreme Court stepped in

And stopped the count when Bush was up 537 votes? The Miami herald sued for the right to finish the count, Gore actually won Florida by 880,000 votes.

[EdmondDantes_]

90. Citation needed

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/latest-fla-recount-yields-more-confusion/

This article talking about the Herald's findings shows a best case scenario Gore might have won by a full state recount using the most lenient standard. Hardly winning by 880,000 votes. Given the total votes in Florida were 5,963,070 votes, your 880,000 number would have been nearly 15% of the total vote. I think you're misremembering things.

[thesquanderer]

35. not necessarily so...

... see: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies

[Polybius]

84. Lol

I think you added three extra zero's.

[Seeking Serenity]

37. I still believe (personally; I'm not a crusader about it) that

No Republican has legitimately been elected president since 1956.

(And before anyone brings up 1972 or 1984, those were fruits of poisoned trees and thus equally illegitimate.)

But that's just me.

[Polybius]

85. 1988?

[Hope22]

8. Agree!

More than time to get to the bottom of this. As the GOP moves forward with more and more gerrymandering across the nation. It is insane to turn a blind eye.

[Bengus81]

81. Yep...the they go low we go high BS is history. Newsom and other Governors are looking to redraw

and I'm 100% for it. Tired of taking the abuse republicans have handed out for decades. Fight back or die on the vine.

[EdmondDantes_]

9. Given the faulty premise this is founded on the naval gazing is absolutely important

[FirstLight]

10. Why is election tampering treated like a conspiracy theory...?

That's my question.
We've heard the admission from Trumpy himself, we know Musk was involved, we knnow the issues with election sites shutting down was shady AF... there's more but I don't have enough caffeine in my brain...

at first I was worried we wouldn't even HAVE midterms... now we see they's rather rig the game right in front of our eyes and DARE us to try and stop it.
I don't know what the answer is, or who is the organization to shakedown these machines etc...

[reACTIONary]

66. There was no election tampering...

... and there is no evidence that there was.

[Bengus81]

82. If Harris would have garnered the same women's vote that Biden did she would have won.

I think that number was a -8% compared to Biden in 2020. That's huge and people need to always remember she only lost by 2M votes out of 150M+ cast.

[reACTIONary]

87. So what? She didn't.

[Chemical Bill]

70. I read The Conyers Report.

I don't think it's a theory.

[annielion]

13. Computers record and count our votes. What could wrong?

As Elon Musk said “I’m a technologist. I know a lot about computers, and the last thing I would do is trust a computer program. Because it’s just too easy to hack. It’s too easy to add just one line.”

If we are to continue to vote using computers for voting, we need legitimate forensic audits following the election. The statistical analysis from the 2024 election indicates high probability of vote manipulation. See ElectionTrustAlliance.org and SmartElections.us.

[Montauk6]

14. Won't get an argument from me...

Messaging can't fix stupid and infantile

[IronLionZion]

16. The GOP ran the worst candidate to ever seek the office

and their idiot voters were into it.

So our choice of candidate is probably not the problem. We have had tremendously clear differences between our side and theirs for the past several elections.

We can work on messaging, ground game, turnout, voter registrations, etc. while their side spews lies.

[sprinkleeninow]

39. I put it together for my personal understanding.

Last edited Fri Aug 1, 2025, 09:29 PM - Edit history (1)

Pres. Biden was considering not running a 2nd term and that changed. He wasn't physically well for the debate and that was on his campaign handlers. If Pres. Biden hadn't entered the race, there would've been a number of candidates of varied personalities and platforms.

Kamala: a female and non-white. 2nd time a woman is denied.

Vote rigging, gerrymandering, computer glitches, questionable voting location staff, drop boxes removed, USPS regarding mail-in ballots, propaganda of lies affecting our side, industrial strength brain-washed voting public selecting a multi-facet damaged candidate for highest critical office TWICE....

I may have missed some points

[Chemical Bill]

71. Good list of problems.

I might add bomb threats.

And can you believe that people think it's ok to take away someone's right to vote because the person missed voting in two elections? I'd rather my tax dollars went to encouraging those people to vote, not denying them the right.

[sprinkleeninow]

72. Thanks for your astute additions. 🫡

[live love laugh]

23. America was Gored in 2020 and it's been downhill since.

I joined DU because of Gore and the thing that makes me angriest is that WE failed to protect our voting system. And now I fear that we are too weakened to do so.

[Celerity]

63. 2000 I think you mean.

America was Gored in 2020 and it's been downhill since.

[chouchou]

24. Reminds me of a story at the Racetrack

"Hey Jimmy..are these races always fair?"
"Well, ricky....you can have someone killed for 5000 dollars, and you don't think they won't fix a horse race for 50,000 dollars?"
There's your answer. Of course the GOP would cheat, lie and steal..

[milestogo]

25. As Joseph Stalin said:

I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.

[Pompoy]

26. Our candidates weren't the problem, look at how many idiots are out there and voting.

You can see them on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, radio talk, people who hate on minorities, women, etc.
Concerned about gun rights and resentments of all kinds over what's best for the country.
They go on about vaccines, our institutions that regulate environmental protections...
Especially men, the majority of men in the US are like that.
Of course the Republicans are gerrymandering, trying to drive down voting in blue areas or voting from certain people.
I wouldn't put it past them to even look for ways to steal votes, but if we believe that is what is happening, then we have lost faith in America itself.
But the problem is that the people are getting what they think they want. They have been trained to distrust main stream media, they aren't very informed.

[LT Barclay]

27. It is time to demand UN observers. We insisted on this with other countries in the 70's and 80's

[Initech]

44. MAGA is setting up franchises.

What happened in places like Poland, El Salvador, Isreal, Argentina, and other countries around the world is no accident. Our MAGA authoritarians deliberately interfered in those elections and got their candidates elected. They must be arrested for their crimes.

[wryter2000]

29. And don't forget 2000

They've been stealing elections since then.

[LymphocyteLover]

30. Exactly! Evergreen!

[Prairie Gates]

38. The really important one was 2000

No 9/11. No Mideast wars soaking us in blood and serving as a massive transfer of wealth to the worst people on the planet. Concerted action on climate change. And don't forget that Clinton left Bush a surplus that he frittered away in tax cuts to the wealthy. Finally, the entirety of the development of tech would have proceeded differently and under some reasonable regulation. The unregulated growth of the tech sector has been a global catastrophe.

600 votes one way or another in Florida and the world is a far, far different place. Our country and future was lost in SE Florida.

[KPN]

40. I don't agree. I've had angst about the direction of this country economic policy-wise for over four decades now, and

that includes angst about the role and effectiveness of our party over most of that time-frame. I know that I am not alone, and the number of those sharing this particular angst has grown with each generation. My angst will be lifted when we secure both free, fair and legitimate "representative" elections, and real results on the economic front that strengthen the middle class and end the relentless aggregation of wealth away from those in the lower 80-90% of our population. That will take new and tougher leadership in my view. Those with their hands on the controls of our party have not produced on the economic front ... and economics affects us all. The dollar is a common denominator as they say.

[Initech]

42. We need to fight the propagandists, they are the real problem!

Bill Burr was absolutely 100% correct when he called Fox and CNN a disease. They are what is keeping this country from having free elections. And right now we're unfortunately stuck with a fucking asshole who's convinced he's just president of Fox News viewers.

[H2O Man]

45. But we didn't.

The Democratic Party's presidential candidates lost in 2016 and 2024. We need to deal with that.

[H2O Man]

52. The same as

"what if JFK Jr. appears at the Dallas pro-felon rally?" We do not need a Q-anon wing of the Democratic Party.

[reACTIONary]

68. Ummm, we didn't. What if doesn't apply.

[The Wizard]

61. I refer to the crapper

as Louis DeJoy's furnace.

[myohmy2]

74. do both...

...it's not too difficult...

...

[Flux]

83. I agree

All the navel gazing is stupid. The DNC needs to come to the 21st century and make a commitment to a 50 state strategy, allow the more progressive wing a voice and presence, and start running an updated policy.