sycasey said:wifeisafurd said:
Not only did Trump easily win the presidential race, taking all 7 battleground states, but riding Trump's coattails Republicans took control of the Senate and the House. 2024 has turned out to be the best GOP showing in the US House popular vote since 1928. I say this to people who argue these are just niche issues, they were used to stereotype Harris when accumulated, and were definitely a factor in her crushing loss.
I would quibble with "easily" as a description here. He won by about 1% of the vote. That's nationally and in the swing states. That means that if the electorate had swung about 1% in the other direction he would have lost. It was just a close race, but in a polarized country with so many of the swing states swinging together, that can be enough to produce a superficially large Electoral College total. In reality the margin was on a razor's edge.
I'm sure this issue was one factor that swayed some votes, and maybe in a close enough race that's enough to make the difference. That's theoretically possible. I'm just really skeptical of pushing this as a major issue when if Harris/Biden/Democrats had better trust on the economy or immigration that would have had a much bigger effect.
It wasn't a landslide, more like a mudslide.
I quibble with your numbers. Harris lost by 1.5% (around 2.3 million votes) of the popular vote which is a lot by today's standards, and the characterization of razor thin margins really doesn't apply either to the electoral college or the massive shift in votes between Biden vs Trump to Harris vs Trump.
What you really seem to be saying is that if 1% of the votes change in the 7 swing states, we have a different election. What is strange about that is it represents a pretty major shift in voting in these states from four years previously. But Biden won a fairly decisive victory and if you change 1% of the vote in the swing states then Biden losses. The reason they are called swing states is because the voting is relatively close and the shift in voting in those states from Biden to Trump in the Harris election is a massive change in voting.
My other quibble is that you take trans athletes as a single issue, apart from a larger out of the mainstream views previously expressed by Harris when she was office in California was a significant factor in Harris's 2024 loss. She tried move towards the middle, but ended up as someone the majority of voters polled to be "too liberal." Even Harris said that was a major factor in her loss.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/kamala-harris-book-trans-athletes-00573966&ved=2ahUKEwiC9_iPs7KWAxVnIkQIHWchCXwQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3XOf4kPK_IizwQVXGmJIiv
I think we have had this discussion before, but the Democratic Party can be its own worse enemy. It is happening again with democratic socialists who often take out of mainstream views which are popular in their deeply blue urban areas and allows them to win primary elections, but will alienate the broader coalitions needed for the Democrats to win competitive races in November.
