{"id":102,"date":"2025-05-20T19:43:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T19:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/?p=102"},"modified":"2025-05-27T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T20:17:00","slug":"so-we-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"So We Lost!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ever since the election last year I have been following the debate on why it turned out the way it did. Why did the Democrats loose and I thought it was time for me to put in my twin cents. First off be clear, I am a Democrat and I\u2019ve been one since 1964. I have voted Republican several times. I also have a BA in Political Science. That said let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First and foremost Trump did not win this time just like he didn\u2019t win last time. Harris and the Democrats lost the election. They lost for basically for two reasons and they had little to do with issues. One reason was a terrible mistake that could have been avoided. The other was not recognizing a fundamental characteristic of the American Electorate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mistake started with President Biden and his deciding to run for reelection. Believe me I understand how hard it can be to except you are getting old and can not do what you used to do. But if not clear to himself it should have been clear to the First Lady and to his personnel staff that he was not going to perform well when having to deal with both Trump and the MAGA-sphere attacks. In all fairness they had telegraphed their strategy in the previous year. So the I mistake was simple to see, changing candidates after the primaries. This never ends well for the candidate(s) involved. For more reasons than I want to go into here. It is enough to say that it one of the classic errors of campaigning that you lure about in Poli-Sci 101. When I heard about it I said to myself it is all over but the shouting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was possible that VP Harris could have won, but only if she would be seen as standing on her own, as her own, unique person. This could only be done if she had gone thru the rough and tumble of an open primary. She didn\u2019t get the chance. So let\u2019s go to the next reason she lost: the unstated issue of her being a woman and the deep unstated problem both men and women have with women in positions of power. We have come a long way in the 60 years I have been aware of the problem but we still have a long way to go. I think we are in the last and most difficult phase of getting over it. The problem is most people don\u2019t think they have a problem with having a woman as President. That\u2019s the problem, it is subliminal. Just beneath our conscious mind. The place we keep all the little things about ourselves that we are ashamed of. Those little things we are ashamed to admit to anyone, even our selves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all have them, myself included, and they can and have been dealt with in an election. The one that always comes to my mind is how JFK dealt with religious bigotry in 1960. Or how Reagan dealt with his age. But they need a lot of planing and prep work that having Harris step-in last minute prevented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why am saying this? Easy! I just want to say recognize what happened:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GET OVER IT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a very long four years ahead of us and if we don\u2019t want eight years of JD Vance there is a lot of work ahead of us. A first on the docket is how to minimize all the damage Trump and MAGA is doing to do as they tear down the \u201cAdministrative State\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since the election last year I have been following the debate on why it turned out the way it did. Why did the Democrats loose and I thought it was time for me to put in my twin cents. First off be clear, I am a Democrat and I\u2019ve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-maga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dontdrinkthekoolaid.lindaniel.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}