With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
Democratic over-reliance on media shaping to paper over party weaknesses that might have been detrimental to acknowledge in the short term, but which are important in the long term.
Trump's victory is fundamentally a turnout victory, but his margin of victory- including the popular vote- was because Harris underperformed Biden's 2020 performance. This wasn't just in relative terms, but apparently in many cases absolute terms, which is significant because when Trump lost in 2020 he had more actual votes than in 2016 and in 2024.
This difference between 'we have a larger number of votes, but smaller share' and 'we have a smaller number of votes, and a smaller share' has different implications and political compensations. To pick a non-US equivalent, this was the issue with the Corbyn-Labour party in the UK, when Labour Party membership swelled but Corbyn was so politically toxic that Labour was trounced amongst their own historic voting base. When Corbyn was booted, many of those he brought in were lost as well... but this increased relative percentage, despite losing absolute numbers. Increasing the base matters, but not as much as its relationship with how that base change changes the relative standing.
In the last week(s) of polling, there was likely a deliberate effort by the Democrats to try and lead the electorate rather than reflect the electorate. Polls showing things closer than they are both might encourage turnout (we still have a chance!), but can also prevent self-fulfilling doom spirals (don't show up to the polls because you're going to lose which leads to actually losing). In the short term (last week(s) of campaigning) this is understandable / normal, but as a long-term strategy (over months / years) this is detrimental because polities need accurate information to accomodate for reality (such as what more people actually feel over time).
And for the Harris campaign this was a long-term strategy, because it was one well underway in the Harris-Biden strategy when Democrats were pushing against uncomfortable awareness of his age, or inflation, or progressive policy implementation. The Democratic party machine was focused on trying to control the perception of reality, to the detriment of creating a worse reality (that they were out of touch with).
The mechanical means by which this happened are many- overly-strong political alliances with major media groups, the creation of parallel information institutions in X and the Republican social media spheres, the nature of the Democratic centralization of party control in party elders like Biden himself- but ultimately it was a knowledge-acknowledgement issue.
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