Pleasant Politics

But gender did play a role. Time and again, voters, very often women themselves, told me that they just didn’t think that “America is ready for a female president”. People said they couldn’t “see her in the chair” and asked if I “really thought a woman could run the country”. One person memorably told me that she couldn’t vote for Harris because “you don’t see women building skyscrapers”. Sometimes, these people would be persuaded, but more often than not it was a red line. Many conversations would start with positive discussions on policy and then end on Harris and her gender. That is an extraordinary and uncomfortable truth.

There's many valid criticism of Harris but this one is by far the stupidest. I wonder how many people had this influence their vote. I don't think she lost the election over it, but it would be interesting to see a number on America's level of misogyny.

Author gave many reasons I saw on social media, especially the top ones she mentioned like economy concerns or that she is a communist which are the opposite of reality.

She concentrated on what people are saying instead of why.

We are living in a world where huge part of population abandoned traditional news such as TV, newspapers and is getting their vote about the world via social media through memes and influencers.

The biggest problem with it is that this unlike traditional media is open to foreign interference. We had report of American bloggers being paid by Kremlin ridiculous amount of money, we have evidence of bots being used to persuade public opinion, astroturfing groups on Facebook and other social media that were traced to Russia.

And we still did nothing to stop it.

Half of America lives in a different reality. And it isn't just America but those efforts are happening also in Europe and other Western countries.

Since this article is based on the phone bank of the Democratic party, I'd be really interested in learning what are the criteria used to populate it, in relation to demographics. Or maybe it's random calls in an area?

If anyone has specifics, could you please share?