Who could have guessed that “I’m 100% aligned with the guy who is helping to kill your extended family, but the other guy is probably worse” would result in a negative emotional response.
Although, to be fair to the Democrats, it is difficult, if not impossible, to appeal to every potential voter’s emotions, especially in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s essentially impossible to try and appeal to the emotions of those sympathetic to Palestine without upsetting voters who are sympathetic to Israel, and vice versa.
Yeah, there’s no perfect “everyone loves me” choice for any issue. I do think the salience of the issue was probably different between Muslims and Jews though. “Not giving Israel more free bombs in their time of need” when they’re already dominating the battlefield is a different level of criticality than “is callously killing my family”. Plus, many Jews were also passionately against the genocide. It wasn’t simply a matter of adding up all the Jewish voters and Muslim voters and going with whichever number was bigger.
There was some path that minimized the number of voters so turned off by the choice that they’d abandon the Democrats, and I’m confident where they landed was no where close to that. I’m also confident that getting that one issue right would not have turned the tide and made Harris win, it’s just one of many she failed to handle by charting the path that was “I’m Biden, but reliably able to form sentences”.
Who could have guessed that “I’m 100% aligned with the guy who is helping to kill your extended family, but the other guy is probably worse” would result in a negative emotional response.
Not the Democrats, apparently.
Although, to be fair to the Democrats, it is difficult, if not impossible, to appeal to every potential voter’s emotions, especially in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s essentially impossible to try and appeal to the emotions of those sympathetic to Palestine without upsetting voters who are sympathetic to Israel, and vice versa.
Yeah, there’s no perfect “everyone loves me” choice for any issue. I do think the salience of the issue was probably different between Muslims and Jews though. “Not giving Israel more free bombs in their time of need” when they’re already dominating the battlefield is a different level of criticality than “is callously killing my family”. Plus, many Jews were also passionately against the genocide. It wasn’t simply a matter of adding up all the Jewish voters and Muslim voters and going with whichever number was bigger.
There was some path that minimized the number of voters so turned off by the choice that they’d abandon the Democrats, and I’m confident where they landed was no where close to that. I’m also confident that getting that one issue right would not have turned the tide and made Harris win, it’s just one of many she failed to handle by charting the path that was “I’m Biden, but reliably able to form sentences”.