With 1st past the post and all of the power wielded by the 2 major parties, it is basically two options, which sucks. But we have had this system for a really long time and the major parties know it and support it, so they ought to be able to navigate it (it they and sincere and competent).
So even though I absolutely disagree with leftists who vote for anyone other than the Democratic candidate in the general election, I share their frustration with the DNC who waste resources trying to flip moderate Republicans instead of energizing the base and courting the left. Hillary Clinton was actually rude and dismissive of the left. And the party stance seems to be “bend over backwards for moderate Republicans but harangue and hector leftists for not being enthused and for not turning out to accept whatever corporate scraps they’re given”.
I, like most Democratic voters are well to the left of the candidates and the party. I suspect that they keep moving to the right to keep the donors happy. I guess they’re trying to thread the needle between donors and the base, but they are not winning enough so whatever they’re doing is shit. I’d say that they’re over indexing on donors but part of why Clinton took over in 2016 is because the DNC was broke and needed someone to come in with big donors and make them solvent.
Lemme finish this sloppy rant by saying that I’m also super frustrated with anyone who isn’t voting - especially young people and people on the left. We can say that we’ll vote if they give us something to vote for, but there isn’t much evidence to support that assertion.
My understanding is that Trump did not outperform his 2020 returns and Harris did not outperform Biden’s 2020 returns. We didn’t get more Trump voters than pat elections, we just got fewer Democratic voters. Why was Democratic turnout so bad? Was it really because Harris was too liberal? I haven’t seen any evidence of that. I suspect that it’s because Harris isn’t very charismatic (compared to candidates like Obama or Bill Clinton). I also suspect that turnout was low because Harris was talking more about maintaining the status quo instead of talking about change. If she was more liberal then maybe more of the base would be motivated to turn out? IDK but I’m sure there will be a million think pieces on the topic 😔