They’re part of a wide community that saw a bunch of messaging about how “I will NEVER vote for Kamala Harris because (reason), I just feel like (thought-terminating cliche)”, and got suckered by it. It happened that the reason was “Palestine” and the thought-terminating cliche was, “genocide is a red line for me” or one of the other flavors. I think you’re right that the Palestine audience was pretty small, but the total of all the audiences was absolutely massive. I think that was what cost Harris the election. They just know how to do manipulation of the public on a whole new level.
The messaging was even often contradictory depending on the audience being spoken to. She enabled a genocide, and she betrayed Israel, and she’s soft on crime and crime is everywhere, and she’s a cop who locked up black men for possession of a joint, and she’s even more cruel than Trump on immigration, and she wants to wreck our country with open borders, and she ruined the economy.
Only a tiny fraction of it was ever true, but if you’re the target audience for some piece of it, and got exposed to the messaging every day, it starts to sink in. It’ll resonate with you.
The one thing that’s darkly comic about this whole situation is that Netanyahu hasn’t yet realized what a terrible partner Trump is for anything. He’s going to rush into a full-scale war with Iran, and then ask Trump to be sending all the aircraft carriers and weapons and doing all the agonized diplomacy Biden has been doing for him that always shields him from consequences, basically try to guilt trip the US into winning the war for him. And someday, instead of doing that, Trump’s going to say, “I tried but they wanted me to put it in writing or something, I don’t know, this is hard” and stop returning his calls.
The part that still baffles me is the whiplash message-swap from "she didn't cater to us, so she lost" to "well, there aren't enough of us to make a difference."
Also of note is the trend towards "I voted for her, but I didn't like it" in spaces that I clearly remember seeing full of advocates of voting third party or abstaining. Someone should maybe check to see if all of these mysterious new votes were counted!
They're different people arguing different things lol. The truth is there are a lot of people who want to be heard, so they play up Harris not listening to them and losing because of it. The truth is probably more depressing in that it didn't matter.
Are you saying that Trump will abandon the Israel just like he abandoned the Kurds when it suited him, right when it mattered the most to them after being staunch allies of the US?
There are absolutely more Jewish voters in PA than there are people who abstained in protest over the Palestinian genocide. Michigan has a more concentrated Arab population, but you're right that they aren't why Harris lost.
I mean, Liberals have literally no evidence whatsoever that Palestine abstainers would have made a dent in the 10-15 million votes needed to win, yet that hasn't stopped them from blaming the left in every thread.
I'd be willing to bet that stating "the economy is doing great" while tens of millions of people are significantly poorer than they were 4 years ago was more to blame than anything. People are fed up and want revolutionary change. Trump promised them a revolution. Even if it's in the worst way possible, they still voted for it.
No idea how many abstained, or of those that abstained, how many did so because of the Biden/Harris administration's support for the ongoing genocide.
But 3rd party? Even if 100% of the third party votes —even those who voted Libertarian or for that antivax nutter, who probably would have leaned Trump before Harris in reality anyway—had instead gone to Harris, Trump still would have won both the EC and the popular vote. 3rd party votes probably were a deciding factor in 2016 and they were definitely a deciding factor in 2000. But not this time.
I saw a chart about a poll on this. Supposedly, if the data was correct, almost every swing state would have gone for Harris if people who said they didn't vote because of this issue had voted. Pretty much every poll this cycle was not accurate, so I don't put that much faith in that one either.
This is the fucking problem with the left. Instead of bitching and moaning to the disenfranchised people, either go complain to the leaders or do something else to make a difference. All this in fighting and acting better then others is why we lost.