Well the entire multiplatform astroturfing campaign from people who call themselves leftists worked! Democrats stayed home instead of voting.
Now Palestine will be completely flattened with 0 resistance at all, and redoubled support and bombs for Israel! Way to go! You really showed your support for Palestine by helping this happen!
They will probably come back saying “it wasn’t our fault, we just pointed out the truth” while they shouted that a vote for Harris was a vote for genocide [so don’t vote for harris] from every platform that they used.
Remember when Biden stepped down? Do you remember how unpopular he was and the massive wave of hope and support for Kamala that showed itself? Well, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen when Kamala glued herself to Biden, and tried to appeal to center right voters? They refuse to make compromises with the left, try to appeal to the center-right, and then blame the left for not voting for them; classic center/lib playbook, the same thing happens in Portugal, same thing happened in 2016 USA elections.
I thought that Democrats would win DESPITE the absolute dog shit campaign, given everything about Trump, but it was still an absolute dog shit campaign by people who claimed this was the most important election of people’s lives, but then dug their hills in ideologically and refused to compromise with people on their left.
If the situation wasn’t so dire, it would be hilarious to see the double think by Dem voters in this thread:
“How can Rep voters not hold Trump accountable despite everything he’s done!”
“It’s not the Dems fault that they lost, despite trying to appeal to the center-right instead of the left; it’s never their fault! It’s the leftists fault for not voting Dem! Kamala did nothing wrong!”
Well, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen when Kamala glued herself to Biden, and tried to appeal to center right voters? They refuse to make compromises with the left, try to appeal to the center-right, and then blame the left for not voting for them; classic center/lib playbook, the same thing happens in Portugal, same thing happened in 2016 USA elections.
The thing is, I strongly agree with you AND the person you replied to because although I’ve been agape at watching Kamala sprint away from the left from essentially the moment her candidacy was announced, and I think Democrat leadership is FAR too in the pocket of corporate interests, and far too welcoming of Republicans, she’s still so very obviously a better choice than Trump that I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I’d have thought that women alone would have pushed Kamala over the top due to the whole Roe v. Wade thing.
In summary - all my grumpiness at the DNC and Kamala for ignoring the left again was still miles short of what would have propelled me to vote for Trump or enable a Trump win.
Same, the difference is i knew that distinction wouldnt bring people out. If you, I’m assuming, a committed voter were reluctant about voting for harris despite everything. What does that mean for people who are fairly indifferent to voting? 😞😭😞😭😞😭
Oh I wasn’t reluctant, there was never any doubt. I just wasn’t happy. But the thing is - the things I was unhappy about don’t matter to the folks who don’t really follow politics. Whatever their reasons were, they weren’t my reasons.
The point is that willingness to vote, dislike of Trump, the strenght of ones principle, even political awareness and other similar things are scales, not just absolutes.
Some people will always vote, some never, others can be convinced or convince themselves with different levels of inducement (be it fear or enthusiasm).
Ditto for dislike of Trump - people are all over from love him to hate him and everything in between.
As for principles, well, some people are inflexible no mater what, most are somewhere in the middle being capable of breaking certain principles in certain conditions and other have a Groucho Marx take on them (“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, well, I have others.”)
And ditto for political awareness: just because all you see and hear is the very politically aware types talking about politics because they’re loudly political, doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot people who think, for example, that “it’s all a show and my vote makes no difference so why should I care?”
Just because you, being at a specific point of those various scales, are very politically aware and could easily be cowed by fear of Trump whom (I assume) you detest to vote Democrat even if they were actively going against your principles (assuming one of them is “people shouldn’t be killed due to their race”), doesn’t mean that many others at different points of those scales ended up not voting for Harris when they could otherwise have voted Democrat if it wasn’t for her making choices that went against their strongly held principles or her campaign strategy of fear rather than hope didn’t work on them because they have mixed feelings about Trump so don’t fear him or think their “my vote makes no difference - they’re all bullshitters who don’t do what they say” so don’t see the point in voting for the other guys because Trump is Bad.
Harris’ actions and campaign strategy did capture the votes of people like you even if you had to hold your nose (which they couldn’t care less about) to vote Harris, but those choices of them stopped from voting Harris plenty of people who sit elsewhere in these scales and would otherwise vote Democrat.
Clealy had she chosen differently she would’ve captured the votes of people not quite at your end of those various scales but by all indications the positions she assumed and campaign strategy moved the peak appeal points in those various scales in such away that it dropped a lot more votes (mainly on the Left, Highly Principled and Distrusting of Politics sides) than the ones it gained from appealing to the other side (mainly Rightwing, Party fanatics and unprincipled or even supporting of the Israeli Genocide).
The Democrat loss is not the fault of voters for being who they are, it’s the fault of the Democrats for chosing a strategy of using the fear of Trump to retain votes whilst breaking some pretty strong principles of many people with their support for mass murderers of children, and not fixing certain things during the years they were in power and then last minute announcing measures for it (which is really not going to convince the people more distrusting of politicians to go out and vote).
In summary - all my grumpiness at the DNC and Kamala for ignoring the left again was still miles short of what would have propelled me to vote for Trump or enable a Trump win.
Yeah, as I said, even I though Kamala would win despite everything because Trump is… well, Trump, and I honestly did not think anywhere near this many people would vote for him again. If yesterday someone had told me he was going to win the popular vote, I would not have come anywhere close to believing them. It’s extremely depressing to see how many people still choose to vote for Trump and back him after everything he has done and said he was gonna do.
This shit exactly. They literally gave us nothing to vote for. All they really had was abortion, but that’s fuckin it? No other decent policy. And now I wonder if they see this outcome do they think they weren’t right wing enough? Stupid.
Harris and Biden put billions of dollars into a renewable energy fund, and Harris was promising a 20 grand subsidy for first home buyers. It’s not nothing. Y’all just chose not to listen.
They think being “right” is more important than the horrifying shit that is to come. It really seems like these so-called “progressives” do not grasp what actual fascism and autocracy looks like. They think this is a good thing because it’ll make the Democratic party rethink their priorities or something, when in reality, we will be lucky if there is a Democratic party or even a real election in 2 or 4 years.
This shit is over, there will be no progressive party now.
A firefighter hacks the door down and reaches their hand out to pull you free and carry you outside.
And you ask “What’s in it for me?”
I truly don’t think you people grasp how meaningless all this text your wasting is.
This happened because people are stupid. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it. They have no, absolutely no concept whatsoever of how bad things are about to get. There’s no world where the citizenship understands what fascism is where Kamala needed to do anything different than she did.
At this point, I truly don’t think it matters. None of this shit matters. The problem is the people.
Ask yourself what do you think is going to happen next election? Answer: The Dems are going to go hard center. If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, etc, AND to prevent a literal Hitler quoting fascist getting in, then the left either will literally never show up, or doesn’t exist. The left is done. No one is going to run a left platform for fucking decades. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
Everything you said has nothing to do with the left, they are basic as shit things that event center and center-right European parties would do. I mean, what does the sentence “did green energy” even mean to you? The US is one of the largest polluters per capita in the world, installing a few solar panels means jack shit. Starting to heavily invest in public transportation, putting forth serious proposals to reduce the use of plastic, etc. would just be a start.
Meanwhile, they were also running on an anti-migration platform, just not as bad as Trump - remember how Democrats were so proud of the fact Trump shot down a Dem proposal that would reduce immigration?
Also, remember when Obama was elected on an anti-war policy in 2008? He even won a Nobel Peace Prize! And remember how Trump was elected in 2016 on a “pull back troops from the Middle East policy”, standing opposite to “Hillary the Hawk”?
Meanwhile, while most of the world condemns Israels actions, and millions of people in the US protest the US involvement in the ongoing genocide, both candidates are in favor of supporting and giving weapons to Israel.
If your argument is “but Biden was so far left”, then you’re a perfect representation of what is wrong with the Dem party and the US in general.
Edit: I almost forgot this beautiful (\s) fucking cherry on top: Dick fucking Cheney endorsed the Dems. And you seriously wanna make the argument they couldn’t have gone more left?
Comparing the democratic party with the left that exists in Europe is asinine. You can’t leap the American Overton window overnight. As much as online leftists like to yap about social policies the reality, as indicated by this election, is that the American Overton window is far different than what you see in Europe and you can’t leap into the same policies overnight.
You think that green energy isn’t left? Debt relief isn’t left? What planet are you on? Do I have to say left [of center]? Jeez.
Yes it’s a start. What do you expect? The entire power grid and entire vehicle fleet to be redone in 2 years? Things take time. And what happens now that the start is undone and we have to start from scratch in, hopefully, another 4 years. This conversation is shaping up to the old classic of you saying “but they didn’t do everything, everywhere, all at once”.
Also, remember when Obama was elected on an anti-war policy in 2008? He even won a Nobel Peace Prize! And remember how Trump was elected in 2016 on a “pull back troops from the Middle East policy”, standing opposite to “Hillary the Hawk”?
Jeez this is some select history. Obama won on “hope”. Trump won because he appealed to the middle class and Hillary did not.
This election shows that Gaza didn’t matter one iota. Ukraine didn’t matter one bit. They didn’t even register, no one cared. Even your own human rights didn’t matter. It came down to inflation, housing, and further on the right xenophobia. Clinton was right “It’s the economy, stupid”.
If your argument is “but Biden was so far left”,
Ah strawman. Well that bad faith means that this will be my last reply. No point in discussing when you make shit up.
I did not say “so far left”. Do a ctrl+f and you won’t find those words. I said: “If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, etc”. If the left can’t show up to support things like that, you’re not going to get anything further left. Not gonna happen. Not how it works. You walk before you run, you test the waters before you take the plunge, and now that we saw it doesn’t get you votes (midterms or next election), guess what fucking direction the Dems are going to sprint to? Yeah the Dems are going to sprint to the center. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
Dick fucking Cheney endorsed the Dems.
Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr maybe it was because even Dick fucking Cheney saw that Trump is a fascist. It wasn’t based on policy, it was Trump’s fascism. I’m having a hard time deciding if you’re just horribly off base or bad faith. Either way, ciao.
Do you remember Putin getting his ass handed to him by civilians with drones, and it’s still going on now. That so many unwilling Russian men have died that he had to suck Kim’s dick for backup troops? We remember what a pussy he is.
Thank you for pointing out how Democrats are cannibalizing their allies, the Left, when we were the only sound ones calling out inadequacies with Kamala’s campaign.
How about the left instead make compromises with reality instead?
Not sure if you noticed, but reality called and the Dems just lost. Turns out they can’t win after refusing to compromise with the left and going after center-right voters. The same shit happened in 2016, but Dems refuse to learn. And, as always, blame the “drama baby leftists who can’t accept reality”, while completely missing the irony.
My excuse? Firstly, I’m from Europe, I can’t vote in American elections; secondly, I’m replying to people making excuses for why Kamala lost, perhaps you should direct your comment at them.
The ones who need to excuse themselves, in order, are: Republicans; their voters; and finally the Dems for not having primaries (twice), not running a winnable campaign, and trying to appeal to the center-right.
Drag doesn’t mean your excuse for not voting. Drag means your excuse for justifying other people’s decision not to vote. They elected a fascist and you’re defending them. There is no excuse.
Blame the Democratic Party for not winning their vote in “the most important election of our lifetimes” and instead trying to appeal to the center right.
To sort of reiterate the point in my original comment, let me ask you two questions. You don’t have to give me the answers, but at least ponder them internally:
What’s your opinion on people who voted for Trump despite everything he’s done, and try to blame all their problems on immigrants and leftists?
Why do you refuse to hold the Dems accountable for their campaign and the policies they run on, and keep trying to throw the blame on other people?
Blame isn’t finite resource. Blame is infinite. Harris deserves all the blame. The voters also deserve all the blame. And people like you who demotivated the voters also deserve all the blame. You are all 100% responsible. And drag still doesn’t care about any of the excuses you’ve continued to give.
And people like you who demotivated the voters also deserve all the blame.
When you make assumptions, you make an ass of you and me both. Here’s the last comment I made on the electoral race, July 25th, after Biden stepped down.
I agree with you, but Kamala will probably still be the most left leaning president the USA ever had by quite a bit (AFAIK), and has a good chance to start shifting the Overton Window; if only by showing the Democratic Party that choosing more left leaning candidates actually gives them better chances of winning.
Since then, I haven’t said anything about it. But sure, if it makes you feel better, just keep on throwing blame everywhere except where it lies, like a monkey throwing feces everywhere. I don’t have to excuse anything.
And I love how Democrats’ first move after losing is to blame said leftists. We were the only ones calling out the bad moves of Kamala’s campaign from the beginning and warning what might happen if she didn’t adopt a Walz ticket (or mostly a Walz ticket).
Democrats did this to themselves. It’s the reason why they kept supporting a corpse of a candidate with Joe Biden for so long until the first presidential debate, and it’s also the reason why Hillary was picked over Bernie in 2016 at the DNC.
Leftists weren’t the issue. Democrats’ own willingness to ignore what was happening right in front of them was the issue.
We were the only ones calling out the bad moves of Kamala’s campaign from the beginning
What would have happened if you hadn’t done that? What would have happened if the average dumbass center left capitalis liberal had heard nothing but praise for Kamala from the left?
She would have won. You had a choice. But you decided to tell the truth even when it cost trans people their lives.
Would you have told the truth to the Gestapo asking if there are Jews in your basement?
The same thing. Voters wouldn’t have shown up because they didnt care and harris had jack shit for them or she actively suppressed their voices.
Lesser evil is a stick not a carrot. You dont get the lazy voters out with sticks. Trumps campaign was all carrots for his base.
You have 20+ million voters from 2020 missing. Where are they? Biden at least had positions in his campaign for the left last time. I was trlling everyone locally to get off their asses and vote regardless. Here i was trlling you political engage if obvious souls where harris was weak and instead of recognizing that hey not supporting something like a genocide is fairly trivial you stamped your feet and argued that we were undermining harris.
News flash: she undermined it herself. I got at least 100 harris people to the polls this year to counteract my jill vote. Not once did i try to get people to not to vote for harris. It was always ‘here are all your options, here is what is likely to happen here locally, and in other states.’
The arabs told you exactly what they were going to do and you didnt listen. I did. Harris told you exactly who she was in 2016/2020, and this campaign and you didnt listen. I did. When people tell you what they’re going to do believe them. But clearly you’re smarter than us russian trolls.
You’ll probably be permabanned from the instance for saying this but obvious pro trump trolls will get a comment deleted once a day so it all balances out /s
Look around. Technocrit is already trying to ragebait, TheOubliette was gloating in another thread, and a bunch of other .ml shitheads are showing up to this thread now. Fucking disgusting, deplorable individuals.
Nah Trump won the popular vote too. This has nothing to do with voters staying at home. Trump won on the economy. I went to the gas station before voting yesterday and a redbull was $4 and a small bag of chips $3. I knew at that point there is a good chance that Trump would win.
I went to the gas station before voting yesterday and a redbull was $4 and a small bag of chips $3. I knew at that point there is a good chance that Trump would win.
I don’t understand any logic that suggests Trump would improve this situation.
Like many things, trumpers are happy to believe it whether the logic is there or not.
I’ve seen real people I know personally, people with degrees and with jobs that affect people’s lives, honestly look forward to the lower gas prices and inflation if he were to get elected.
In think there’s just a lot of ignorance, and people not paying attention to real events and falling back to thinking that voting Republican means you support hard work and white people and saving money, while voting Democrat means you support tax & spend and love lazy minorities.
😮💨 point to the biden policy that would please. Then point to the harris campaign platform stating how she’d fix it. In fact harris took steps to signal she wouldn’t fix it by not committing to Khan.
Neither candidate was going to fix it. So whats next in the list?
And even if neither of them would fix it - how is that a reason to vote Trump?
Edit:
That’s been the logic problem through this entire election.
Yes, Kamala dodged right when many of us wanted her to dodge left. I get that, and it frustrates me as well.
But on ANY issue where they were equally bad policy-wise, how does one look back and forth between Trump and Harris and go “Well, clearly Trump”
Folks act like for any tossup issue between them the obvious advantage is with the racist, convicted felon, rapist, demented, shitbag. Somehow Trump just has to be on the same level as Harris to get the nod, but Harris only does if she miles and miles better on an issue. I just don’t get it.
Under Trump in 2019 inflation was 2.3 percent. It dropped during Covid and then jumped to 7% in 2021. It has been declining ever since to 2.4% today. So a disaster, then a recovery, and people STILL think it was Bidens fault.
Price gouging is what it became and that is slowly getting better. The FTC is taking steps to help. But somehow people think “lets vote for the billionaires! Surely they have a plan to make chips 99 cents again!”. We only need to deregulate and cut corporate taxes (again) and it will all be better for Johnny Six Pack!
I’d argue that 98% of US voters don’t care about Gaza whatsoever. It’s a wedge issue for a very small minority but was unlikely to significantly affect the race in the big picture.
Almost everybody I know bitches about the price of groceries (regardless of where they place the blame) but I only know a couple people in the Real/Outside World who regularly talk about the Gaza genocide.
Mmm now explain to me how you were going to get harris to shift on inflation, a position she already signalled she’d fire the most effective agent we have for it. (Khan).
When you wouldnt even be budged on mass murder? God do i dread the conversations about how to fight inflation effectively due to corporate greed. That is a hard and incredibly nuanced conversation with no clear answer. Gaza is easy in comparison.
You’d just blame us for undermining harris over inflation instead of gaza. The topic doesn’t matter.
You jnow the most effective way to get people to vote? Give. Them. What. They. Want.
For Michigan it was gaza, for Pennsylvania it was inflation. Sadly your too politically unaware and rather just blame others for not seeing reason than challenging your candidate for their shit platform.
And you realize thats the issue right? You bought into lesser evil so hard you gave harris the signal she could shit on arabs, laborers, lgbt+, women and still get their vote instead of putting forward policies that would have got people to show up. Combine that with the prior that trump is so bad a red wave wouldn’t happen and you made a perfect environment for harris to run a shit campaign.
Americans didnt want biden 2.0 they wanted a firebrand who’d gonafter corporations, tackle inflation, bring back the american dream. Houses. Etc.
Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
The democrats are so impossibly spineless that they wait for polls and focus groups for their talking points instead of standing up for their principles (if they really exist).
Dems spent the entire campaign trying to compromise with and convince right wingers acting in bad faith instead of just working towards progressive policies. They once and again let the GOP set the tone for every conversation.
The Dem’s attitude towards the genocide in Gaza is just a piece of evidence that shows their way of thinking: the dog race and politicking is more important that doing the right thing.
So stop blaming the voters and take a deep look into your own values and principles because the nation being obliterated right now in the middle east and the people who stand for them even at great cost to themselves are definitely not to blame.
The difference between them is you are never getting the votes that don’t give a shit about Palestine back from Trump. His voters don’t care. Democratic voters do. When both candidates have the exact same position (and “genocide harder or lighter” isn’t a difference in position, it’s still genocide) then the issue only causes people to not vote, or look at other policies. And then you add in alienating more democrats by going further right and copying their policies. The people who like them will still vote for the republican. The people liking democratic policies will cringe and step aside.
Or maybe, like they normally do, the Democrats failed to rally their base to vote, or didn’t give them enough incentive to get out and vote.
Biden had 4 years to make meaningful progress for the American people, and whether or not he did is irrelevant because Americans don’t feel better off than 4 years ago. Democrats spent the last year screaming about the economy doing amazing, while ignoring all of the polls showing Americans don’t feel that way.
Democrats spent the last year sending weapons shipment after weapons shipment to Israel to bomb Palestinian children, despite polls showing the majority of Americans wanted contingencies on the shipments. And the Democrats instead lectured their constituents about how what they’re seeing and hearing isn’t actually what it is, and it’ll be worse with the other guy!
Democrats spent the last 4 years doing nothing but try to return to the same status quo that isn’t working for the average American anymore. Biden’s hubris took the decision out of the people’s hands, and we were given a candidate we didn’t choose and told to shut up and like it because “fAsCiSm.”
Well, congratulations Democrat Party, we fell to fascism because that’s obviously a better alternative than actually putting forward progressive policies. And whether you like to hear it or not, the Republican voter supporting this fascist movement is doing so because they want change in this country too.
Only difference being, the Republicans are actually “progressing” their party along like their constituents want. Maybe the Democrats should try listening to their constituents for once and, idk, see if that maybe works in their favor for once?
No, the base let themselves very much get rallied.
They had a candidate that said “I’m not going to stop the genocide in Gaza” and one that went “I am fully pro-genocide in Gaza, and I want to burn it all down”. And they all rallied behind the second one. This does tell me, as someone not from the US, one thing: A lot of voters in the US really dislike people from Gaza and want them to die. Fuck you people. Yes, I blame you voters. Fuck you.
No, the Democrats let their base get rallied by the Republicans, I don’t blame the voters at all.
And you’re acting like people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, when it seems more like a lot of people who would have voted Kamala stayed home. And that’s thanks to the Democrats running a centrist platform that didn’t inspire anyone, Biden being a centrist Status-Quo democrat for four years, ignoring the Palestinian Protest Votes during the primaries, refusing to let any Palestinians speak at the DNC but allowing numerous Republicans to, while their best piece of policy to the average American was, “Hey, we’re not Trump.”
I voted Harris, btw, but not because I liked her particularly much, and I think that’s a big part of it. Democrats don’t listen to their constituents, so their constituents stay home due to apathy. That’s on the DNC, not the voters.
And you’re acting like people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, when it seems more like a lot of people who would have voted Kamala stayed home
That’s the exact same thing in a first-past-the-post voting system, sorry. I mean granted, if you wanted to support Trump anyways, you saved yourself the walk. Congrats. But that’s the only difference, you supported Trump either way.
And that’s thanks to the Democrats running a centrist platform that didn’t inspire anyone, Biden being a centrist Status-Quo democrat for four years, ignoring the Palestinian Protest Votes during the primaries, refusing to let any Palestinians speak at the DNC but allowing numerous Republicans to, while their best piece of policy to the average American was, “Hey, we’re not Trump.”
And again it comes down to a singular issue? Again, that’s why I blame the voters: If people so readily toss their intellect aside and become single-issue voters, feeding directly into this us-vs-them polemic that is so prevalent in the far right and the US in general, then they really ought to at least not blame anybody but themselves. It’s easy to ignore a lot of good news if you hyperfocus on a single bad thing and just put your fingers into your ears.
More so if you actually vote to make that single issue you care about worse. But hey, I’m not an american, apparently the majority wants to Genocide Turbo Edition in Gaza.
Democrats don’t listen to their constituents, so their constituents stay home due to apathy. That’s on the DNC, not the voters.
And again, this makes no sense. Hence me blaming voters for their own failings. It’s like with the Brexit, although there at least there was the added thing that nobody expected the vote could ever come out as yes, so most just did not bother to go vote, felt unnecessary. Here, they very much knew that if they don’t go to vote they’re effectively voting for the orange potato fascist. And they still did it. So they’re trump voters now. Stamped and classified. And I blame trump voters.
(edit)
I’ll go a step further: You are a voter ought to actively not want elections to be about marketing. Rather, you should be tracking whether the past electorate has actually improved things.
So, under Biden:
Single families have more money than before.
Cost of living has gone down (despite the high inflation, which came out of Trump’s administration after all, who had a huge bump to cost of living right at the tail end of his administration and yes, we’re still not back to where we were before but c’mon, it got stricly bad under Trump and massively better again under Biden, what magical miracle did people expect after the potato ruined things so much?!)
Violent crime, in particular homicides, are far down.
Green spending is up by a ton. Still less than ideal, but damn did they fund a lot of new green tech, and it shows. Wasn’t it something like 96% of new energy installed last year was green?
Social inequality decreased. (yeah I know this is surprising, which just goes to show how little we care about actual data and what sheep we all are)
Health care went up significantly (after it went down again under Trump)
I mean, how many positive news do people really need? At what point is it okay if I blame the idiotic voters who actively choose to ignore it and listen to the right-wing media feeding them rage bait?
It’s almost as if, and I know this is wild to americans, neither choice would have fixed that you’re a country in north america, either. Maybe some things should not be used as a decisionmaker between these two candidates.
What I will say is that I can very much understand the urge to then not go vote (seems the democrates are missing ~20 mil votes that did not go to the republicans), and it takes actual knowledge of the voting system to know that this is not a useful thing to do in a first-past-the-post system, though it can be in other types. Hence the need to restrain oneself and still vote, just for the least bad option if no good one is available.
Yeah and due to it being FPTP, you officially now like Trump, since that’s how your voting system works. You don’t get to pick “neither”, your name is automatically under the winning candidate as the winner takes all. I understand the reasoning, but it doesn’t work for this system, you have to actively vote for the less-bad option to avoid the more-bad going into office.
Even if you very much do not like less-bad in office, either. That would take an actual system reform to fix though. But hey don’t worry, you’re getting that soon. Just in a very monkey-paw-curls way.
This is the point I’m trying to make too. I don’t even think Americans care about Gaza enough to make such a large difference in votes as we’ve seen last night. I guess the scapegoating must start as soon as possible to avoid enacting any meaningful change in the status quo.
I see the Palestinian issue as a great proxy for inspecting the Democrat mindset even though it’s not itself an election winner. And as they say, they failed the vibe check horribly. It’s not a “single issue” if the mindset applies to every decision they make.
What exactly is wrong with what they said? At the end of the day, democrats support the genocide too. You can’t say “republicans will do it harder hurr durr” and expect people to vote for the one that still is for genocide, but is a little bit shy about it. The end result is the same - the Palestinian state will never exist and the people will be killed. There is no difference if it happens over a year or over three. So that issue is brushed aside, or is the cause of not voting at all.
Then you have the absolutely idiotic move to the right. Saying “the border wall is a good idea” as a democrat? Come the F on.
Want me to add a few more, and you give your takes on those?
Let’s start with a few easy ones:
Bodily autonomy of women.
Gerrymandering
Climate change
Land grabbing
Corporate tax evasion
You make the exact same mistake, too. You let people direct you towards a singular, specific, feels-driven point instead of trying to give an informed vote. Any large-scale politics is always going to be a hybrid vote. You won’t have any even city-wide, nevermind state-wide candidate of any party (over here, I know it’s only two for you folks :P ) where you agree with all of their stances.
But if you let someone train you to ignore the vast majority of stances in favor of just 1-2, I hopefully don’t need to explain to you how you have effectively turned yourself into a voting-drone. You can be trivially led by anger and feeling, not by rational thought and informed vote. And especially on large-scale politics, the problem is not with immediate feels, in particular if people start putting those in power that want ot actively dismantle their own checks and balances. Because then even if they later decide differently, they cannot remove them any more. It’s now too late for that.
It says a lot that everybody commenting is so hyperfocused on Gaza. This is exactly what the right wing wanted. And I blame voters for so readily - and greedily - walking into this “trap” (for lack of a better word, not my primary language).
The same bodily autonomy Democrats failed to enshrine in law at any point in the decades following the initial Roe v. Wade decision? Or the bodily autonomy that Harris and the dems wouldn’t have had the votes to pass anyway even had they won? Or do you mean the bodily autonomy that Biden has done nothing meaningful with since he took office four years ago?
Gerrymandering
What specific policy platform did Harris put forward and advertise to the American people regarding gerrymandering? I don’t recall anything specific beyond “we need to stop it.” Ok, how? How do you plan to do that when, once again, you won’t have majorities in both houses, and SCOTUS is corrupt and you/Biden refuse to do anything about that, either, like pack the court?
Climate change
She reversed her policy on fracking a couple weeks into her campaign, might make voters think you can’t trust her and her commitment to the climate crisis, which Biden has shown to also not be doing great on.
Land grabbing
I’m assuming this is related to housing? Yeah, Harris said she wanted to build 3 million new homes and offer first time homebuyers down payment assistance. This doesn’t address all of the corporate consolidation of housing, and it doesn’t prevent these corporate entities from gobbling up huge amounts of these new homes.
Corporate tax evasion
What has Biden done in regards to this? Have the tax breaks put in place by Trump been reversed? No? Because they have to be undone by Congress? Cool, so what’s Harris’s plan if she doesn’t control both houses of Congress, send me 8 emails a day for the next 4 years begging me for money while not raising the minimum wage in any meaningful way?
I voted Harris, to be clear, but her policies were centrist at best, and that’s why she lost. Regardless of what the stats and polls show, Americans don’t feel better off than four years ago. Americans want change, and if it’s not going to be progress, then I guess it’ll be regress. And the Dems have no one to blame but themselves.
“feels driven point” as if I don’t have coworkers and friends in Gaza who are living through the hell that Israel, and by extension the US put them through. That’s why “she’s not Trump” isn’t a good strategy. Fuck “other stances” - I care about them right now. Saying I should stop and “deal with it” is like walking up to a grieving family and telling them they should “deal with it” that their child is dead. You call it “a trap” you call it “stupid” when in reality it is an important issue to some people, just not you. So keep going on about how people are idiots, when it is 100% on the candidate to say “we need to stop what’s happening there”. And when the polls came back and it turns out “oh hey that gets us votes, lemme say that!” she immediately flipped 180, two days before the election.
People like you like to quote the “First they came…” poem like the first line isn’t “First they came for the Palestinians”.
No, I just feel it’s ridiculous to try make an issue out of Gaza while you’re actively electing a fascist at home.
You know, if my neighbor is gasping for air, I sure would like to help them. Turns out, there’s a good reason they tell you on planes to first put your own air mask on, because otherwise you’re unconscious and can’t help anyways.
Which is what’ll happen now. Because apparently in a choice between 1-worse-99-better and 100-worse-0-better, the latter felt more natural to the majority.
Again, the reason I blame voters is because they let themselves get controlled into caring about such a singular issue, to the point where they have now fucked themselves over because they forgot to look at their own country even for just a second. Which is even more annoying because unlike last time, they had a lot of preparatory time in which to see just how exactly electing Trump will fuck them all up.
That’s he’s also going to make Gaza worse is a given, he has explictly said so. But that’s not what I blame the voters for. I blame them for putting him in power by letting themselves get controlled to only see a single issue.
There is no “control”, there is important things to people. Hell, some things are more important than others. And genocide of your friends is one of those things.
Explain to me - why didn’t they stop the genocide (or at least the arms shipments) to Israel when they are in charge for the last four years. If you are able to do that and not sound like an absolute cynical monster, then we can talk about politics. But you can’t.
Again, you wouldn’t walk up to a gay person and try to convince them to vote for Trump because the border wall was “a good idea” (as Harris put it). They’d call you insane. They’d tell you fuck Trump because he is anti LGBT. That would still be “a single issue” for them. So why are you trying to come in here and be holier than thou, to a different group of people who have a similar dealbreaker about Harris?
You are saying that as if I didn’t have to sit in stunned silence for an entire day already, when one of them lost an entire extended family (uncles and their family) who literally lived nextdoor to them. The bombing took out the wall in their bedroom and hurt their 3 months old child.
If you ever think “I’m an empathetic person”, think about this post, how you used tribal politics to basically say “that thing that happened earlier to them already? It will happen to them again, and it would still happen if ‘my candidate’ won the election”.
Okay… And what did you do here to move the needle on the Gaza issue? Holding your breath and turning blue feels like a moral high ground sure. But what did you actually do?
Wow you’re a straight up asshole. Im sorry but there it is. Not a ‘how can I help’ but a fuck you. Gloriously on full display. And you wanted this person’s support for harris? Bless your heart. Jesus i need a drink.
@[email protected] heres a hug for you and the shit you and your circle have been going through this last year. I’m really sorry for everything that has happened.
Appreciate it. My coworkers are incredible people, you could write a movie about the shit they’ve done. I know that in their place, I most likely wouldn’t be able to give as much as they have to the people around them. They inspire me every day to continue doing what I’m doing, even when it’s hard and often thankless.
I work with people in need and I send humanitarian aid. I’m doing what I am able to do, exhausting my savings and putting my future on the line for them. What did you actually do?
And that’s great on a personal level, but what did it do in terms of this choice where Gaza was not featured but the possibility of a second genocide on your doorstep or the death of the democratic process that protects your right to protest and send that aid at all was being happily speculated on?
Look, you can check my older comments to understand where I’m coming from. I’m open to listening and perhaps we both can learn something from all of this.
The belief that everyone decrying Harris’ stance on Gaza was knowingly or unknowingly participating in enabling a worse stance on Gaza than the still-not-great one we would have gotten with her.
Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we’re getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris’ stance had instead focused solely on how Trump’s stance was objectively worse per his own words.
By not putting the focus on the absolutely 100% guaranteed WORSE stance of the two, people enabled talking points that led, in part, to where we are now.
THAT is why so many of us screaming about harm reduction and the lesser of two evils is SO pissed off about single-issue Gaza voters not putting in for Harris.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. It leads to this.
Elections are about holding your nose and making the best of a bunch of imperfect choices.
Trying to make it anything else from the top down is folly. You have to start from the bottom up. Until that happens, we will never see our way out of a two party system.
You’re still blind you’ve learned nothing. Enjoy your fascism. Its not your fault people didnt vote for harris. Its their fault for not understanding how the system works. 😂 You’re hopeless. Harris lost not because of the genocide, its just an example, she lost because she didn’t give voters a reason to show up for her.
Arabs? Israel has a right to murder your family.
Young people? Sit down im speaking.
Labors? Heres 50k for you to start a business. Wat? I need to afford eggs.
Abortion? Oh wait thats protected already is most of the states in play.
Yup and? When will you learn people need support and not shame if you want them to chill in your backyard? Please go self reflect and that what people who are informing you here to your favored party.
Apparently people who sat out didnt get your memo that they then supported trump by not showing up. Funny how that happens.
Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we’re getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris’ stance had instead focused solely on how Trump’s stance was objectively worse per his own words.
Can you try to put that into words? Like, give me concrete examples of how Trump is worse for Gaza.
A weapon doesn’t kill or hurt less people just because the dealer who sold/gave it away said, “Genocide is bad, okay?”
Those bombs are gonna kill and hurt people no matter if it’s the Dems or the Reps sending them to Israel. There are lots of reasons why Trump is worse, but if you’re a Palestinian it really doesn’t make a difference if the weapon that kills you came from a racist man or a woman who condemns genocide.
Edit:
So many downvotes, so many disagreeing comments, but not a single fucking person has managed to give one concrete example that explains why weapons coming from Trump is so much worse than weapons coming from Kamala, for Palestinians.
Palestinian nº1: Watchout, a bomb!
Palestinian nº2: Don’t worry, the person who send it said that genocide is bad!
Palestinian nº1: Oh, thank God! And thank you, for putting my mind at ease. For a moment I though that bomb had come from a racist, but I’m glad to hear American democracy has been saved by the democratic party! Now I can be blown to pieces with a smile on my face 🙂
Edit 2:
Here’s an article detailing the destruction in Gaza in December 2023, 11 months ago. I feel like some of you need reminding of the current reality, when you can’t even come up with concrete hypotheticals.
Can you try to put that into words? Like, give me concrete examples of how Trump is worse for Gaza.
Because there’s no effing way Netanyahu would have posted anything like this in response to a Kamala win.
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback! Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory! In true friendship,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on social media platform X.
I asked for something concrete that Trump would do that is worse for Palestine. You still haven’t explained how a bomb from the Republicans hurts more than a bomb from the Democrats.
Again, there’s lots of reasons Trump is worse than Kamala, but weapons will kill people no matter who uses them.
He literally said they should “finish the job” but we all know you’re lying and know he said that. I’m thankful for the user tagging feature in boost. I never have to give you benefit of doubt again, wasting my time reading the words of a liar.
Because you fall into the same “but what about?!”-thing modern far right excels at.
You myopically focus on a single issue, trying desperately to use it as a crowbar to dislodge an otherwise sensible point, ignoring that everything is inherently a compromise, in particular in a 2-party system. Hence any voter who is not as easily blinded - and it’s not like Harris wasn’t very open during speeches about how much the right deals in fearmongering and disinformation, going as far as openly mocking people for made-up bullshit stats they’re yelling - would be able to inform themselves and realize that:
Even if they’d like their candidate of choice to act differently about a specific issue in a specific country on the other side of the globe, there are a million other also-important issues that are strictly going to work out better under this candidate.
The candidate that now won has in fact very openly declared that he wants said genocide to accelerate and wants the IDF to “finish the job”.
So, even if we were to just focus on this particular issue, the voters very much vote pro-genocide when they vote for Trump. I love how he’s technically correct though when he says he wants to end the war in Gaza, people are just too stupid to realize how he means it.
But more importantly, and the central point I’m making, you’re under the belief that reaction to a single issue should matter. Any voter who lets this argument slide has inherently lost themselves to the populist and fascist movements as they excel at exploiting this, and in fact stoke this belief whenever they can. Politics on a large scale cannot be judged based on single issues. Because if you try to, you exactly fall into this trap. You automatically end up being barraged by appeals to emotion, constantly, and you’ll let those decide things for you.
Hence, blaming the voters. For not actually engaging with the democratic process, just with hate- and fearmongering and then wondering why that that ended up controlling them when they sought it out themselves.
As I said in another comment, I don’t even think the Palestinian genocide is something the American people cares enough about. I can’t see how this single issue in isolation could have cost Harris the election, especially by such a margin. BUT, it informs how they think. And it shows. The Dems apparently thought that they could win the election by being as far right as they could get away with. It’s their failure for campaigning cowardly and saying always the safe thing that does well in focus groups. Every election they lose is a chance for the Overton Window to move to the right. They tried to capture votes from people from the right of them MUCH harder than from the left of them on almost every issue.
If a voter is already right leaning, especially in the USA, they won’t vote for Fascism Light, they will vote for Fascism Plus.
you’re under the belief that reaction to a single issue should matter
This is certainly not true. I understand the need for compromise but I also understand that there’s stuff one should not compromise about. Otherwise, what makes us different from the fascists if we’re willing to help kill an entire nation “on the other side of the globe” (as if distance makes their lives less valuable) if it serves us here?
I agree with you that voters have not engaged in the process and many failed to do the most basic of civil duties. But when it happens at such a scale something else is afoot. It was Harris’ election to lose and she did.
You seem to have made many false assumptions about me but still, genuinely, thanks for the reply.
You seem to have made many false assumptions about me but still, genuinely, thanks for the reply.
Oh yeah sorry, I should have been clear about this: I wasn’t talking specifically about you, english is not my primary language and it sometimes becomes easier to write that way and I do it automatically. Thank you for not being offended by it. >.<
It’s funny how common this sentiment is though. My dad started voting for the AfD citing similar words. The very same people do not even notice how this trains them in 3-4 steps to be a voter for a fascist party themselves, it’s why it is so genius/scary. They still think they’re doing the right thing, even when actively supporting what breaks their own ability of doing anything to begin with.
Really goes to show how strong a strictly-controlled corporate mass media with an inherent corporate agenda can be. Billionaires enjoy fascist or ultra-right control as it keeps them out of any external checks and balances. And with their influence on media by owning said media, they get to highlight individual issues and hype them up to be as dealbreaking as they want them to be, while burying a long list of individual good things that happens so that people never get into a positive attitude.
There was this fascinating summary a while ago how much the german SPD did to improve the situations specifically for those groups of people who the AfD bemoaned as being “forgotten about” in one of their polemics. And it was curious to see how little you hear about this simply because being a lot of individually small improvements over a certain number of years, there’s nothing big that has to be reported, and giant right-wing media conglomerates can hence easily bury the good news and focus on individual aggro issues instead.
People are also different nowadays because back a few generations ago when things went to shit, people pulled together and dropped their differences. Nowadays when things globally turn bad and hard times come up, everyone segregates and starts blaming everybody else instantly, which again just makes them very vulnerable to fascism.
Cause they voted. Or didn’t. Ultimately the choice is with them and a large majority of people decided that they’ll vote for rapist, racist, authoritarian fuckwit or sit the fuck home because it doesn’t matter who is running the government.
You can talk strategies and blame Democratic party till cows come home but at the end of the day, the people have to choose the least bad option.
First of all, Drag, I voted for Harris, and actually voted Democrat down ballot. So from this trans veterans lips to your ear canals: Drag can go fuck Dragself for calling me a Nazi for having the audacity to criticize the party I’m forced to vote for that doesn’t represent any of my interests.
And that right fucking there is why Democrats lose, and Democrats are to blame: they can’t do anything but give us a candidate to vote against, and not one to vote for.
How many voters do you think they would have pulled running on an actual, progressive platform instead of the status quo bullshit we’re all clearly tired of? Medicare4All, free tuition, free school meals, actually funding social welfare programs, actually enshrining LGBTQ+ and bodily autonomy rights into law, expanding the supreme court to actually reflect the country’s wishes, abolishing the filibuster so progress can potentially start again in the Senate, stopping weapons shipments for the Palestinian genocide (or ffs, even taking a stance on the genocide)?
The Democrats lost, and fascism won, because the Democrats refuse to listen to their base. Dem voters stayed home because their party leadership failed to inspire them, and I’m sick of the people asking for policies that will actually benefit them instead of some billionaire oligarchs (where’s the blame pointed at the millions they funneled into the elections) being blamed for everything. This isn’t even considering the four years Biden had to show the American people any progress, any discernible improvement in their economic lives, and failed to do so.
Just like in 2016: the DNC forced a candidate onto the party they didn’t want, refused to listen to any vocal portions of the party while condescendingly telling them that party leaders know best and they need to fall in line, campaigned on uninspiring centrist policies and a return to the status quo, keep preaching about working across the aisle while being slandered and shit on, and then assume the race is in the bag because the other candidate is a fascist reality star.
And just like in 2016, they lost, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
because the Democrats refuse to listen to their base
I now think there is no base. Doesn’t exist. If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, EVs, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, Pact act, supporting Ukraine, etc, AND to prevent a literal Hitler quoting fascist getting in, then the left either will literally never show up, or doesn’t exist. The left is done. No one is going to run a left platform for fucking decades. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
Because like it or not stopping aid for Israel would have pushed all Israel supporters to Trump. Sadly apparently most Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
I don’t think this is a constructive way of looking at the situation. After all, being quiet about Netanyahu’s abuses wasn’t a winning strategy either. Besides, being scared of Israeli lobbying automatically makes you a bad leader.
Regular people don’t live reading obscure threads on Lemmy so I’m 100% sure that the effects of the comments posted by tankies here are negligible.
My point is that you can’t lose against the worst human being twice and keep blaming the electorate. If they want to lead, the dems have to stand for something instead of complaining about turnout or in general blaming anyone else but themselves. It was THEIR job to get out the vote.
Trump is a monumental POS but the dems prefer to cater to the people who voted for him instead of the people who want legitimate pro-working-class policies.
That you’ve still learned nothing from this experience. The thing we were telling you for the last month.
Harris’ needed to give people a reason to vote for her. In Wisconsin that was stopping the genocide. In Pennsylvania thats fucking reducing the cost of living, inproving wages, etc.
If we’re lucky enough to get out of this with our country in tact next time stfu up about lesser evil and demand your candidate have policies that benefit people.
In short dont be like ‘sit down im speaking’ harris, the lesser evil. And instead be more like ‘yes sir stand up trll me what you need!’
Oh prole, divest yourself from politics its not healthy for you. You lack the ability to reason cause and effect. Someone in this thread has the correct take on the democratic party and their loss and its not you. Find the post about the democrats not being self reflective and how gaza is just a proxy for the root problem with democrats. They’re obsession with data, and focus groups. Its not the voters who are wrong when you dont inspire them to show up.
Why? Does she automatically get all the votes just because she exists? You get votes by doing what your electorate wants you to do. She didn’t do that and this is the result.
Because she is no fascist. If you have the choice between a fascist and a non fascist and you dont vote you support the fascist.
In this case it is even dumber because one side tells Israel to calm it down but sadly still send weapons while the other says Israel is correct, did everything to worsen the relationships between israel and palestine even more and has a fucking settlement named after them.
If you have a choice between someone who is going to kill people you care about or a person that’s going to kill the people you care about, voting for either of them is supporting people who kill people you care about. And it is doing that directly, not through some proxy “oh but Trumps voters will vote, we need people who don’t support what Harris has been doing to vote for her anyways because not voting is supporting fascism”.
One side does fuckall to stop what’s happening in Palestine. They’re letting the Israelis kill Palestinians en masse, displace them and take away their land. That side is currently in power and had every possibility and every leverage available to them to stop it. They didn’t, and now they lost an election because of it.
The new side will still do fuckall to stop what’s happening in Palestine. They will say Israel is correct and will still send arms to them to kill Palestinians.
The result is exactly the same - dead Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
You had the choice between someone who tell the people that do the killing to stop but isnt doing so strong enough and someone who says kill even more people and name a settlement after me, while also openly talking about implementing fascism.
Fuck every single person who didnt vote for Harris, esp. those who did so because of Gaza will regret their decision soon and deserve everything they will get now.
She lost because americans apparently love fascism. Or at least dont care about democracy. The people who didnt vote are on the same level as MAGA.
Edit: I forgot. Same for the people who voted for a third party candidate
They didnt show up fam. We warned you. We told you harris wasnt doing enough. But you insisted that they were at fault if they didnt vote. Well guess what. They didnt vote. And now you’re stuck with the consequences. Thanks i guess.
Harris won my state. thank you. And I’ll have you know she would have killed them just as readily as trump will. I was trying to warn the rest of you harris was going to lose in swingers.
DNC relies on Zionist/Israel first funding, even as most of it went to Trump. Every other oligarch/lobby group allies with Zionism because failure to do so would hurt their interests, if it upset the Zionists who overspend relative to usual Israel aid amounts given each year. Zionism is integral to oil geopolitics by dividing the middle east, and providing war spending opportunities. Do you think tech, farmers or manufacturing can oppose that trifecta of power?
This had nothing to do with Gaza. This election shows Gaza doesn’t matter one iota. Ukraine didn’t matter one bit. Not even your own human rights mattered. This was inflation, housing, and (further on the right) xenophobia. Clinton was right, “it’s the economy stupid” (even though Dems are better for the economy).
Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
Because it’s only one issue out of many that need to be addressed (I didn’t say fixed because IMHO the IDF are doing pretty good work eradicating Hamas, all things considered).
You guys need to take care of your housing, healthcare, gerrymandering, public transport, student loans, separation of religion and government and a truckload of other things that I don’t think Trump has any interest in improving.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump won’t be any “better” in regards to the situation in Gaza and the rest of the middle east.
So the voters that didn’t vote Harris purely because of the Gaza issue are to blame for their short sightedness.
In general I agree, because their campaign definitely could’ve been better and it should’ve been better. But on the other hand this election wasn’t genocide or no genocide, without a significant shift in either political party that would happen regardless. If you really wanted to twist it into “genocide or no genocide” then that vote was “completely support genocide” or “begrudgingly support genocide”.
But really this election was between “full steam straight into fascism” and “chance to not go into fascism”. It’s obvious that if you don’t vote for the latter you either want fascism or don’t care that you’re getting fascism. That is on the voters. They could’ve voted to pass the fascism buck to the next election, but they didn’t. Now America is getting fascism.
You are right. We can’t keep blaming other citizens like ourselves.
There is one group of people that led us to this point: Democrats themselves. And by Democrats, I mean those in power, delegates, podcast hosts, and the ones supposedly “leading” the party. Not the electorate.
They are the ones that wished Biden would be able to make it to a second term, when the first presidential debate clearly showed otherwise. They are the ones that pushed un-Democratic policies in hopes of winning over a base they’ve never captured: Republicans. They are the ones that dropped the ball on one of the greatest feats of Kamala’s campaign that could have sent her over the finish line: Tim Walz and a progressive agenda.
Especially Re: podcast hosts, I follow a couple of “progressive” podcasts and they showed their true colors very clearly when one day they were strongly shilling for Biden and admonishing any differing opinion. Then magically they changed tunes when the situation was inescapable. They came off as strongly disingenuous and spineless.
And why did Donald Trump win the popular vote? Because he gave concessions to his base and catered to their needs and wants? Because a politician actually fought for the interests of their constituents?
What about Democrats? Did they do any of that? Hell no. I blame Democrats.
Well the entire multiplatform astroturfing campaign from people who call themselves leftists worked! Democrats stayed home instead of voting.
Now Palestine will be completely flattened with 0 resistance at all, and redoubled support and bombs for Israel! Way to go! You really showed your support for Palestine by helping this happen!
They will probably come back saying “it wasn’t our fault, we just pointed out the truth” while they shouted that a vote for Harris was a vote for genocide [so don’t vote for harris] from every platform that they used.
So fucking predictable.
Remember when Biden stepped down? Do you remember how unpopular he was and the massive wave of hope and support for Kamala that showed itself? Well, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen when Kamala glued herself to Biden, and tried to appeal to center right voters? They refuse to make compromises with the left, try to appeal to the center-right, and then blame the left for not voting for them; classic center/lib playbook, the same thing happens in Portugal, same thing happened in 2016 USA elections.
I thought that Democrats would win DESPITE the absolute dog shit campaign, given everything about Trump, but it was still an absolute dog shit campaign by people who claimed this was the most important election of people’s lives, but then dug their hills in ideologically and refused to compromise with people on their left.
If the situation wasn’t so dire, it would be hilarious to see the double think by Dem voters in this thread:
“How can Rep voters not hold Trump accountable despite everything he’s done!”
“It’s not the Dems fault that they lost, despite trying to appeal to the center-right instead of the left; it’s never their fault! It’s the leftists fault for not voting Dem! Kamala did nothing wrong!”
The thing is, I strongly agree with you AND the person you replied to because although I’ve been agape at watching Kamala sprint away from the left from essentially the moment her candidacy was announced, and I think Democrat leadership is FAR too in the pocket of corporate interests, and far too welcoming of Republicans, she’s still so very obviously a better choice than Trump that I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I’d have thought that women alone would have pushed Kamala over the top due to the whole Roe v. Wade thing.
In summary - all my grumpiness at the DNC and Kamala for ignoring the left again was still miles short of what would have propelled me to vote for Trump or enable a Trump win.
Same, the difference is i knew that distinction wouldnt bring people out. If you, I’m assuming, a committed voter were reluctant about voting for harris despite everything. What does that mean for people who are fairly indifferent to voting? 😞😭😞😭😞😭
Oh I wasn’t reluctant, there was never any doubt. I just wasn’t happy. But the thing is - the things I was unhappy about don’t matter to the folks who don’t really follow politics. Whatever their reasons were, they weren’t my reasons.
The point is that willingness to vote, dislike of Trump, the strenght of ones principle, even political awareness and other similar things are scales, not just absolutes.
Some people will always vote, some never, others can be convinced or convince themselves with different levels of inducement (be it fear or enthusiasm).
Ditto for dislike of Trump - people are all over from love him to hate him and everything in between.
As for principles, well, some people are inflexible no mater what, most are somewhere in the middle being capable of breaking certain principles in certain conditions and other have a Groucho Marx take on them (“These are my principles. If you don’t like them, well, I have others.”)
And ditto for political awareness: just because all you see and hear is the very politically aware types talking about politics because they’re loudly political, doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot people who think, for example, that “it’s all a show and my vote makes no difference so why should I care?”
Just because you, being at a specific point of those various scales, are very politically aware and could easily be cowed by fear of Trump whom (I assume) you detest to vote Democrat even if they were actively going against your principles (assuming one of them is “people shouldn’t be killed due to their race”), doesn’t mean that many others at different points of those scales ended up not voting for Harris when they could otherwise have voted Democrat if it wasn’t for her making choices that went against their strongly held principles or her campaign strategy of fear rather than hope didn’t work on them because they have mixed feelings about Trump so don’t fear him or think their “my vote makes no difference - they’re all bullshitters who don’t do what they say” so don’t see the point in voting for the other guys because Trump is Bad.
Harris’ actions and campaign strategy did capture the votes of people like you even if you had to hold your nose (which they couldn’t care less about) to vote Harris, but those choices of them stopped from voting Harris plenty of people who sit elsewhere in these scales and would otherwise vote Democrat.
Clealy had she chosen differently she would’ve captured the votes of people not quite at your end of those various scales but by all indications the positions she assumed and campaign strategy moved the peak appeal points in those various scales in such away that it dropped a lot more votes (mainly on the Left, Highly Principled and Distrusting of Politics sides) than the ones it gained from appealing to the other side (mainly Rightwing, Party fanatics and unprincipled or even supporting of the Israeli Genocide).
The Democrat loss is not the fault of voters for being who they are, it’s the fault of the Democrats for chosing a strategy of using the fear of Trump to retain votes whilst breaking some pretty strong principles of many people with their support for mass murderers of children, and not fixing certain things during the years they were in power and then last minute announcing measures for it (which is really not going to convince the people more distrusting of politicians to go out and vote).
Yeah, as I said, even I though Kamala would win despite everything because Trump is… well, Trump, and I honestly did not think anywhere near this many people would vote for him again. If yesterday someone had told me he was going to win the popular vote, I would not have come anywhere close to believing them. It’s extremely depressing to see how many people still choose to vote for Trump and back him after everything he has done and said he was gonna do.
This shit exactly. They literally gave us nothing to vote for. All they really had was abortion, but that’s fuckin it? No other decent policy. And now I wonder if they see this outcome do they think they weren’t right wing enough? Stupid.
Harris and Biden put billions of dollars into a renewable energy fund, and Harris was promising a 20 grand subsidy for first home buyers. It’s not nothing. Y’all just chose not to listen.
They think being “right” is more important than the horrifying shit that is to come. It really seems like these so-called “progressives” do not grasp what actual fascism and autocracy looks like. They think this is a good thing because it’ll make the Democratic party rethink their priorities or something, when in reality, we will be lucky if there is a Democratic party or even a real election in 2 or 4 years.
This shit is over, there will be no progressive party now.
You’re trapped in a burning building.
A firefighter hacks the door down and reaches their hand out to pull you free and carry you outside.
And you ask “What’s in it for me?”
I truly don’t think you people grasp how meaningless all this text your wasting is.
This happened because people are stupid. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it. They have no, absolutely no concept whatsoever of how bad things are about to get. There’s no world where the citizenship understands what fascism is where Kamala needed to do anything different than she did.
At this point, I truly don’t think it matters. None of this shit matters. The problem is the people.
Ask yourself what do you think is going to happen next election? Answer: The Dems are going to go hard center. If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, etc, AND to prevent a literal Hitler quoting fascist getting in, then the left either will literally never show up, or doesn’t exist. The left is done. No one is going to run a left platform for fucking decades. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
Everything you said has nothing to do with the left, they are basic as shit things that event center and center-right European parties would do. I mean, what does the sentence “did green energy” even mean to you? The US is one of the largest polluters per capita in the world, installing a few solar panels means jack shit. Starting to heavily invest in public transportation, putting forth serious proposals to reduce the use of plastic, etc. would just be a start.
Meanwhile, they were also running on an anti-migration platform, just not as bad as Trump - remember how Democrats were so proud of the fact Trump shot down a Dem proposal that would reduce immigration?
Also, remember when Obama was elected on an anti-war policy in 2008? He even won a Nobel Peace Prize! And remember how Trump was elected in 2016 on a “pull back troops from the Middle East policy”, standing opposite to “Hillary the Hawk”?
Meanwhile, while most of the world condemns Israels actions, and millions of people in the US protest the US involvement in the ongoing genocide, both candidates are in favor of supporting and giving weapons to Israel.
If your argument is “but Biden was so far left”, then you’re a perfect representation of what is wrong with the Dem party and the US in general.
Edit: I almost forgot this beautiful (\s) fucking cherry on top: Dick fucking Cheney endorsed the Dems. And you seriously wanna make the argument they couldn’t have gone more left?
Comparing the democratic party with the left that exists in Europe is asinine. You can’t leap the American Overton window overnight. As much as online leftists like to yap about social policies the reality, as indicated by this election, is that the American Overton window is far different than what you see in Europe and you can’t leap into the same policies overnight.
You think that green energy isn’t left? Debt relief isn’t left? What planet are you on? Do I have to say left [of center]? Jeez.
Yes it’s a start. What do you expect? The entire power grid and entire vehicle fleet to be redone in 2 years? Things take time. And what happens now that the start is undone and we have to start from scratch in, hopefully, another 4 years. This conversation is shaping up to the old classic of you saying “but they didn’t do everything, everywhere, all at once”.
Jeez this is some select history. Obama won on “hope”. Trump won because he appealed to the middle class and Hillary did not.
This election shows that Gaza didn’t matter one iota. Ukraine didn’t matter one bit. They didn’t even register, no one cared. Even your own human rights didn’t matter. It came down to inflation, housing, and further on the right xenophobia. Clinton was right “It’s the economy, stupid”.
Ah strawman. Well that bad faith means that this will be my last reply. No point in discussing when you make shit up.
I did not say “so far left”. Do a ctrl+f and you won’t find those words. I said: “If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, etc”. If the left can’t show up to support things like that, you’re not going to get anything further left. Not gonna happen. Not how it works. You walk before you run, you test the waters before you take the plunge, and now that we saw it doesn’t get you votes (midterms or next election), guess what fucking direction the Dems are going to sprint to? Yeah the Dems are going to sprint to the center. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr maybe it was because even Dick fucking Cheney saw that Trump is a fascist. It wasn’t based on policy, it was Trump’s fascism. I’m having a hard time deciding if you’re just horribly off base or bad faith. Either way, ciao.
Do you remember Putin getting his ass handed to him by civilians with drones, and it’s still going on now. That so many unwilling Russian men have died that he had to suck Kim’s dick for backup troops? We remember what a pussy he is.
I think you might be replying to the wrong person.
Thank you for pointing out how Democrats are cannibalizing their allies, the Left, when we were the only sound ones calling out inadequacies with Kamala’s campaign.
Democrats truly will never learn.
How about the left instead make compromises with reality instead?
Fuck that noise, drama baby leftists who can’t think past tomorrow cost us this election.
Not sure if you noticed, but reality called and the Dems just lost. Turns out they can’t win after refusing to compromise with the left and going after center-right voters. The same shit happened in 2016, but Dems refuse to learn. And, as always, blame the “drama baby leftists who can’t accept reality”, while completely missing the irony.
Drag doesn’t care what your excuse is.
My excuse? Firstly, I’m from Europe, I can’t vote in American elections; secondly, I’m replying to people making excuses for why Kamala lost, perhaps you should direct your comment at them.
The ones who need to excuse themselves, in order, are: Republicans; their voters; and finally the Dems for not having primaries (twice), not running a winnable campaign, and trying to appeal to the center-right.
Drag doesn’t mean your excuse for not voting. Drag means your excuse for justifying other people’s decision not to vote. They elected a fascist and you’re defending them. There is no excuse.
Blame the Democratic Party for not winning their vote in “the most important election of our lifetimes” and instead trying to appeal to the center right.
To sort of reiterate the point in my original comment, let me ask you two questions. You don’t have to give me the answers, but at least ponder them internally:
What’s your opinion on people who voted for Trump despite everything he’s done, and try to blame all their problems on immigrants and leftists?
Why do you refuse to hold the Dems accountable for their campaign and the policies they run on, and keep trying to throw the blame on other people?
Blame isn’t finite resource. Blame is infinite. Harris deserves all the blame. The voters also deserve all the blame. And people like you who demotivated the voters also deserve all the blame. You are all 100% responsible. And drag still doesn’t care about any of the excuses you’ve continued to give.
When you make assumptions, you make an ass of you and me both. Here’s the last comment I made on the electoral race, July 25th, after Biden stepped down.
Since then, I haven’t said anything about it. But sure, if it makes you feel better, just keep on throwing blame everywhere except where it lies, like a monkey throwing feces everywhere. I don’t have to excuse anything.
Most of the leftists I know voted for Kamala.
And I love how Democrats’ first move after losing is to blame said leftists. We were the only ones calling out the bad moves of Kamala’s campaign from the beginning and warning what might happen if she didn’t adopt a Walz ticket (or mostly a Walz ticket).
Democrats did this to themselves. It’s the reason why they kept supporting a corpse of a candidate with Joe Biden for so long until the first presidential debate, and it’s also the reason why Hillary was picked over Bernie in 2016 at the DNC.
Leftists weren’t the issue. Democrats’ own willingness to ignore what was happening right in front of them was the issue.
No, half of the piece of shit racist dumbass pieces of shit Americans did this. They hate black people, and they hate women.
Fuck Putin, by the way.
What would have happened if you hadn’t done that? What would have happened if the average dumbass center left capitalis liberal had heard nothing but praise for Kamala from the left?
She would have won. You had a choice. But you decided to tell the truth even when it cost trans people their lives.
Would you have told the truth to the Gestapo asking if there are Jews in your basement?
The same thing. Voters wouldn’t have shown up because they didnt care and harris had jack shit for them or she actively suppressed their voices.
Lesser evil is a stick not a carrot. You dont get the lazy voters out with sticks. Trumps campaign was all carrots for his base.
You have 20+ million voters from 2020 missing. Where are they? Biden at least had positions in his campaign for the left last time. I was trlling everyone locally to get off their asses and vote regardless. Here i was trlling you political engage if obvious souls where harris was weak and instead of recognizing that hey not supporting something like a genocide is fairly trivial you stamped your feet and argued that we were undermining harris.
News flash: she undermined it herself. I got at least 100 harris people to the polls this year to counteract my jill vote. Not once did i try to get people to not to vote for harris. It was always ‘here are all your options, here is what is likely to happen here locally, and in other states.’
The arabs told you exactly what they were going to do and you didnt listen. I did. Harris told you exactly who she was in 2016/2020, and this campaign and you didnt listen. I did. When people tell you what they’re going to do believe them. But clearly you’re smarter than us russian trolls.
Cheers.
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You’ll probably be permabanned from the instance for saying this but obvious pro trump trolls will get a comment deleted once a day so it all balances out /s
Yup. I spent the last month or so tagging them, and I have not seen a single one today.
Look around. Technocrit is already trying to ragebait, TheOubliette was gloating in another thread, and a bunch of other .ml shitheads are showing up to this thread now. Fucking disgusting, deplorable individuals.
Nah Trump won the popular vote too. This has nothing to do with voters staying at home. Trump won on the economy. I went to the gas station before voting yesterday and a redbull was $4 and a small bag of chips $3. I knew at that point there is a good chance that Trump would win.
Yeah price gouging by companies because of what they got away with during a shitty handling of covid under trump is a great reason to bring him back.
He is back because Americans are stupid and gullible. It really is that simple.
Oh yeah, people are fucking stupid. Inflation started under Trump.
it really is that simple. inflation is a global problem and many Americans are so stupid that they think he can and will do anything about it.
I don’t understand any logic that suggests Trump would improve this situation.
Yeah, but don’t tell them that or they’ll get upset
Like many things, trumpers are happy to believe it whether the logic is there or not.
I’ve seen real people I know personally, people with degrees and with jobs that affect people’s lives, honestly look forward to the lower gas prices and inflation if he were to get elected.
In think there’s just a lot of ignorance, and people not paying attention to real events and falling back to thinking that voting Republican means you support hard work and white people and saving money, while voting Democrat means you support tax & spend and love lazy minorities.
😮💨 point to the biden policy that would please. Then point to the harris campaign platform stating how she’d fix it. In fact harris took steps to signal she wouldn’t fix it by not committing to Khan.
Neither candidate was going to fix it. So whats next in the list?
They were doing more than Trump will.
https://qz.com/ftc-probe-grocery-price-surge-consumers-inflation-1851611874
And even if neither of them would fix it - how is that a reason to vote Trump?
Edit:
That’s been the logic problem through this entire election.
Yes, Kamala dodged right when many of us wanted her to dodge left. I get that, and it frustrates me as well.
But on ANY issue where they were equally bad policy-wise, how does one look back and forth between Trump and Harris and go “Well, clearly Trump”
Folks act like for any tossup issue between them the obvious advantage is with the racist, convicted felon, rapist, demented, shitbag. Somehow Trump just has to be on the same level as Harris to get the nod, but Harris only does if she miles and miles better on an issue. I just don’t get it.
And she lost the lack of self reflection that has inspired in you is why this will keep happening.
Under Trump in 2019 inflation was 2.3 percent. It dropped during Covid and then jumped to 7% in 2021. It has been declining ever since to 2.4% today. So a disaster, then a recovery, and people STILL think it was Bidens fault.
Price gouging is what it became and that is slowly getting better. The FTC is taking steps to help. But somehow people think “lets vote for the billionaires! Surely they have a plan to make chips 99 cents again!”. We only need to deregulate and cut corporate taxes (again) and it will all be better for Johnny Six Pack!
It has, as voter turnout could be significantly better. It’s not yet clear what it is, but so far it doesn’t look very good.
What in saying is that it probably doesn’t have much to do with Gaza. People voted on the economy.
I’d argue that 98% of US voters don’t care about Gaza whatsoever. It’s a wedge issue for a very small minority but was unlikely to significantly affect the race in the big picture.
Almost everybody I know bitches about the price of groceries (regardless of where they place the blame) but I only know a couple people in the Real/Outside World who regularly talk about the Gaza genocide.
Yeah, people who I thought were progressive went on about inflation and were thinking about not voting.
The big picture in Michigan everyone:
Mmm now explain to me how you were going to get harris to shift on inflation, a position she already signalled she’d fire the most effective agent we have for it. (Khan).
When you wouldnt even be budged on mass murder? God do i dread the conversations about how to fight inflation effectively due to corporate greed. That is a hard and incredibly nuanced conversation with no clear answer. Gaza is easy in comparison.
You’d just blame us for undermining harris over inflation instead of gaza. The topic doesn’t matter.
You jnow the most effective way to get people to vote? Give. Them. What. They. Want.
For Michigan it was gaza, for Pennsylvania it was inflation. Sadly your too politically unaware and rather just blame others for not seeing reason than challenging your candidate for their shit platform.
I’m just the messenger here buddy. I voted for Kamala.
And you realize thats the issue right? You bought into lesser evil so hard you gave harris the signal she could shit on arabs, laborers, lgbt+, women and still get their vote instead of putting forward policies that would have got people to show up. Combine that with the prior that trump is so bad a red wave wouldn’t happen and you made a perfect environment for harris to run a shit campaign.
Americans didnt want biden 2.0 they wanted a firebrand who’d gonafter corporations, tackle inflation, bring back the american dream. Houses. Etc.
But na, its everyone elses fault.
If only Kamala hadn’t been taking all her political queues from MataVatnik everything would be different now.
Shut the fuck up
It hurts you because its true. 🥴
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I’m sure Trump will get right on that and reduce those gas station snack prices for you
I voted for Kamala dipshit
I’m not American.
Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
The democrats are so impossibly spineless that they wait for polls and focus groups for their talking points instead of standing up for their principles (if they really exist).
Dems spent the entire campaign trying to compromise with and convince right wingers acting in bad faith instead of just working towards progressive policies. They once and again let the GOP set the tone for every conversation.
The Dem’s attitude towards the genocide in Gaza is just a piece of evidence that shows their way of thinking: the dog race and politicking is more important that doing the right thing.
So stop blaming the voters and take a deep look into your own values and principles because the nation being obliterated right now in the middle east and the people who stand for them even at great cost to themselves are definitely not to blame.
Because I never saw Trump getting the exact same criticism. Not even when he told Netanyahu, “finish the job.”
Somehow Harris was always worse on Gaza to certain people.
The difference between them is you are never getting the votes that don’t give a shit about Palestine back from Trump. His voters don’t care. Democratic voters do. When both candidates have the exact same position (and “genocide harder or lighter” isn’t a difference in position, it’s still genocide) then the issue only causes people to not vote, or look at other policies. And then you add in alienating more democrats by going further right and copying their policies. The people who like them will still vote for the republican. The people liking democratic policies will cringe and step aside.
Yes. I understand people have stupid, short-sighted reasons to invite in fascism.
This post is a really good example of how the disinformation campaign actually worked on people and created this believe. Fascinating. And terrifying.
Or maybe, like they normally do, the Democrats failed to rally their base to vote, or didn’t give them enough incentive to get out and vote.
Biden had 4 years to make meaningful progress for the American people, and whether or not he did is irrelevant because Americans don’t feel better off than 4 years ago. Democrats spent the last year screaming about the economy doing amazing, while ignoring all of the polls showing Americans don’t feel that way.
Democrats spent the last year sending weapons shipment after weapons shipment to Israel to bomb Palestinian children, despite polls showing the majority of Americans wanted contingencies on the shipments. And the Democrats instead lectured their constituents about how what they’re seeing and hearing isn’t actually what it is, and it’ll be worse with the other guy!
Democrats spent the last 4 years doing nothing but try to return to the same status quo that isn’t working for the average American anymore. Biden’s hubris took the decision out of the people’s hands, and we were given a candidate we didn’t choose and told to shut up and like it because “fAsCiSm.”
Well, congratulations Democrat Party, we fell to fascism because that’s obviously a better alternative than actually putting forward progressive policies. And whether you like to hear it or not, the Republican voter supporting this fascist movement is doing so because they want change in this country too.
Only difference being, the Republicans are actually “progressing” their party along like their constituents want. Maybe the Democrats should try listening to their constituents for once and, idk, see if that maybe works in their favor for once?
No, the base let themselves very much get rallied.
They had a candidate that said “I’m not going to stop the genocide in Gaza” and one that went “I am fully pro-genocide in Gaza, and I want to burn it all down”. And they all rallied behind the second one. This does tell me, as someone not from the US, one thing: A lot of voters in the US really dislike people from Gaza and want them to die. Fuck you people. Yes, I blame you voters. Fuck you.
No, the Democrats let their base get rallied by the Republicans, I don’t blame the voters at all.
And you’re acting like people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, when it seems more like a lot of people who would have voted Kamala stayed home. And that’s thanks to the Democrats running a centrist platform that didn’t inspire anyone, Biden being a centrist Status-Quo democrat for four years, ignoring the Palestinian Protest Votes during the primaries, refusing to let any Palestinians speak at the DNC but allowing numerous Republicans to, while their best piece of policy to the average American was, “Hey, we’re not Trump.”
I voted Harris, btw, but not because I liked her particularly much, and I think that’s a big part of it. Democrats don’t listen to their constituents, so their constituents stay home due to apathy. That’s on the DNC, not the voters.
That’s the exact same thing in a first-past-the-post voting system, sorry. I mean granted, if you wanted to support Trump anyways, you saved yourself the walk. Congrats. But that’s the only difference, you supported Trump either way.
And again it comes down to a singular issue? Again, that’s why I blame the voters: If people so readily toss their intellect aside and become single-issue voters, feeding directly into this us-vs-them polemic that is so prevalent in the far right and the US in general, then they really ought to at least not blame anybody but themselves. It’s easy to ignore a lot of good news if you hyperfocus on a single bad thing and just put your fingers into your ears.
More so if you actually vote to make that single issue you care about worse. But hey, I’m not an american, apparently the majority wants to Genocide Turbo Edition in Gaza.
And again, this makes no sense. Hence me blaming voters for their own failings. It’s like with the Brexit, although there at least there was the added thing that nobody expected the vote could ever come out as yes, so most just did not bother to go vote, felt unnecessary. Here, they very much knew that if they don’t go to vote they’re effectively voting for the orange potato fascist. And they still did it. So they’re trump voters now. Stamped and classified. And I blame trump voters.
(edit)
I’ll go a step further: You are a voter ought to actively not want elections to be about marketing. Rather, you should be tracking whether the past electorate has actually improved things.
So, under Biden:
I mean, how many positive news do people really need? At what point is it okay if I blame the idiotic voters who actively choose to ignore it and listen to the right-wing media feeding them rage bait?
i like how depending on what day it is if i am voting harris i support genocide but if i dont support harris i also support genocide.
It’s almost as if, and I know this is wild to americans, neither choice would have fixed that you’re a country in north america, either. Maybe some things should not be used as a decisionmaker between these two candidates.
What I will say is that I can very much understand the urge to then not go vote (seems the democrates are missing ~20 mil votes that did not go to the republicans), and it takes actual knowledge of the voting system to know that this is not a useful thing to do in a first-past-the-post system, though it can be in other types. Hence the need to restrain oneself and still vote, just for the least bad option if no good one is available.
Hey friend, guess what didn’t win you the election? Your voting strategy under fptp voting.
It only works if people like you. We don’t like you. Cheers. You brought this onto yourself just like the DNC.
Yeah and due to it being FPTP, you officially now like Trump, since that’s how your voting system works. You don’t get to pick “neither”, your name is automatically under the winning candidate as the winner takes all. I understand the reasoning, but it doesn’t work for this system, you have to actively vote for the less-bad option to avoid the more-bad going into office.
Even if you very much do not like less-bad in office, either. That would take an actual system reform to fix though. But hey don’t worry, you’re getting that soon. Just in a very monkey-paw-curls way.
This is the point I’m trying to make too. I don’t even think Americans care about Gaza enough to make such a large difference in votes as we’ve seen last night. I guess the scapegoating must start as soon as possible to avoid enacting any meaningful change in the status quo.
I see the Palestinian issue as a great proxy for inspecting the Democrat mindset even though it’s not itself an election winner. And as they say, they failed the vibe check horribly. It’s not a “single issue” if the mindset applies to every decision they make.
Indeed, this one gets it for all the folks championing lesser evil fptp nonsense.
What exactly is wrong with what they said? At the end of the day, democrats support the genocide too. You can’t say “republicans will do it harder hurr durr” and expect people to vote for the one that still is for genocide, but is a little bit shy about it. The end result is the same - the Palestinian state will never exist and the people will be killed. There is no difference if it happens over a year or over three. So that issue is brushed aside, or is the cause of not voting at all.
Then you have the absolutely idiotic move to the right. Saying “the border wall is a good idea” as a democrat? Come the F on.
Yes, now you mentioned two issues.
Want me to add a few more, and you give your takes on those?
Let’s start with a few easy ones:
You make the exact same mistake, too. You let people direct you towards a singular, specific, feels-driven point instead of trying to give an informed vote. Any large-scale politics is always going to be a hybrid vote. You won’t have any even city-wide, nevermind state-wide candidate of any party (over here, I know it’s only two for you folks :P ) where you agree with all of their stances.
But if you let someone train you to ignore the vast majority of stances in favor of just 1-2, I hopefully don’t need to explain to you how you have effectively turned yourself into a voting-drone. You can be trivially led by anger and feeling, not by rational thought and informed vote. And especially on large-scale politics, the problem is not with immediate feels, in particular if people start putting those in power that want ot actively dismantle their own checks and balances. Because then even if they later decide differently, they cannot remove them any more. It’s now too late for that.
It says a lot that everybody commenting is so hyperfocused on Gaza. This is exactly what the right wing wanted. And I blame voters for so readily - and greedily - walking into this “trap” (for lack of a better word, not my primary language).
The same bodily autonomy Democrats failed to enshrine in law at any point in the decades following the initial Roe v. Wade decision? Or the bodily autonomy that Harris and the dems wouldn’t have had the votes to pass anyway even had they won? Or do you mean the bodily autonomy that Biden has done nothing meaningful with since he took office four years ago?
What specific policy platform did Harris put forward and advertise to the American people regarding gerrymandering? I don’t recall anything specific beyond “we need to stop it.” Ok, how? How do you plan to do that when, once again, you won’t have majorities in both houses, and SCOTUS is corrupt and you/Biden refuse to do anything about that, either, like pack the court?
She reversed her policy on fracking a couple weeks into her campaign, might make voters think you can’t trust her and her commitment to the climate crisis, which Biden has shown to also not be doing great on.
I’m assuming this is related to housing? Yeah, Harris said she wanted to build 3 million new homes and offer first time homebuyers down payment assistance. This doesn’t address all of the corporate consolidation of housing, and it doesn’t prevent these corporate entities from gobbling up huge amounts of these new homes.
What has Biden done in regards to this? Have the tax breaks put in place by Trump been reversed? No? Because they have to be undone by Congress? Cool, so what’s Harris’s plan if she doesn’t control both houses of Congress, send me 8 emails a day for the next 4 years begging me for money while not raising the minimum wage in any meaningful way?
I voted Harris, to be clear, but her policies were centrist at best, and that’s why she lost. Regardless of what the stats and polls show, Americans don’t feel better off than four years ago. Americans want change, and if it’s not going to be progress, then I guess it’ll be regress. And the Dems have no one to blame but themselves.
“feels driven point” as if I don’t have coworkers and friends in Gaza who are living through the hell that Israel, and by extension the US put them through. That’s why “she’s not Trump” isn’t a good strategy. Fuck “other stances” - I care about them right now. Saying I should stop and “deal with it” is like walking up to a grieving family and telling them they should “deal with it” that their child is dead. You call it “a trap” you call it “stupid” when in reality it is an important issue to some people, just not you. So keep going on about how people are idiots, when it is 100% on the candidate to say “we need to stop what’s happening there”. And when the polls came back and it turns out “oh hey that gets us votes, lemme say that!” she immediately flipped 180, two days before the election.
People like you like to quote the “First they came…” poem like the first line isn’t “First they came for the Palestinians”.
No, I just feel it’s ridiculous to try make an issue out of Gaza while you’re actively electing a fascist at home.
You know, if my neighbor is gasping for air, I sure would like to help them. Turns out, there’s a good reason they tell you on planes to first put your own air mask on, because otherwise you’re unconscious and can’t help anyways.
Which is what’ll happen now. Because apparently in a choice between 1-worse-99-better and 100-worse-0-better, the latter felt more natural to the majority.
Again, the reason I blame voters is because they let themselves get controlled into caring about such a singular issue, to the point where they have now fucked themselves over because they forgot to look at their own country even for just a second. Which is even more annoying because unlike last time, they had a lot of preparatory time in which to see just how exactly electing Trump will fuck them all up.
That’s he’s also going to make Gaza worse is a given, he has explictly said so. But that’s not what I blame the voters for. I blame them for putting him in power by letting themselves get controlled to only see a single issue.
There is no “control”, there is important things to people. Hell, some things are more important than others. And genocide of your friends is one of those things.
Explain to me - why didn’t they stop the genocide (or at least the arms shipments) to Israel when they are in charge for the last four years. If you are able to do that and not sound like an absolute cynical monster, then we can talk about politics. But you can’t.
Again, you wouldn’t walk up to a gay person and try to convince them to vote for Trump because the border wall was “a good idea” (as Harris put it). They’d call you insane. They’d tell you fuck Trump because he is anti LGBT. That would still be “a single issue” for them. So why are you trying to come in here and be holier than thou, to a different group of people who have a similar dealbreaker about Harris?
Well you better hug those coworkers in preparation for what’s coming under Trump.
You are saying that as if I didn’t have to sit in stunned silence for an entire day already, when one of them lost an entire extended family (uncles and their family) who literally lived nextdoor to them. The bombing took out the wall in their bedroom and hurt their 3 months old child.
If you ever think “I’m an empathetic person”, think about this post, how you used tribal politics to basically say “that thing that happened earlier to them already? It will happen to them again, and it would still happen if ‘my candidate’ won the election”.
Okay… And what did you do here to move the needle on the Gaza issue? Holding your breath and turning blue feels like a moral high ground sure. But what did you actually do?
Wow you’re a straight up asshole. Im sorry but there it is. Not a ‘how can I help’ but a fuck you. Gloriously on full display. And you wanted this person’s support for harris? Bless your heart. Jesus i need a drink.
@[email protected] heres a hug for you and the shit you and your circle have been going through this last year. I’m really sorry for everything that has happened.
Appreciate it. My coworkers are incredible people, you could write a movie about the shit they’ve done. I know that in their place, I most likely wouldn’t be able to give as much as they have to the people around them. They inspire me every day to continue doing what I’m doing, even when it’s hard and often thankless.
I work with people in need and I send humanitarian aid. I’m doing what I am able to do, exhausting my savings and putting my future on the line for them. What did you actually do?
And that’s great on a personal level, but what did it do in terms of this choice where Gaza was not featured but the possibility of a second genocide on your doorstep or the death of the democratic process that protects your right to protest and send that aid at all was being happily speculated on?
What belief, may I ask?
Look, you can check my older comments to understand where I’m coming from. I’m open to listening and perhaps we both can learn something from all of this.
The belief that everyone decrying Harris’ stance on Gaza was knowingly or unknowingly participating in enabling a worse stance on Gaza than the still-not-great one we would have gotten with her.
Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we’re getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris’ stance had instead focused solely on how Trump’s stance was objectively worse per his own words.
By not putting the focus on the absolutely 100% guaranteed WORSE stance of the two, people enabled talking points that led, in part, to where we are now.
THAT is why so many of us screaming about harm reduction and the lesser of two evils is SO pissed off about single-issue Gaza voters not putting in for Harris.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. It leads to this.
Elections are about holding your nose and making the best of a bunch of imperfect choices.
Trying to make it anything else from the top down is folly. You have to start from the bottom up. Until that happens, we will never see our way out of a two party system.
You’re still blind you’ve learned nothing. Enjoy your fascism. Its not your fault people didnt vote for harris. Its their fault for not understanding how the system works. 😂 You’re hopeless. Harris lost not because of the genocide, its just an example, she lost because she didn’t give voters a reason to show up for her.
Arabs? Israel has a right to murder your family. Young people? Sit down im speaking. Labors? Heres 50k for you to start a business. Wat? I need to afford eggs. Abortion? Oh wait thats protected already is most of the states in play.
It’s like you literally cannot read. Just leave.
Yup and? When will you learn people need support and not shame if you want them to chill in your backyard? Please go self reflect and that what people who are informing you here to your favored party.
Apparently people who sat out didnt get your memo that they then supported trump by not showing up. Funny how that happens.
Can you try to put that into words? Like, give me concrete examples of how Trump is worse for Gaza.
A weapon doesn’t kill or hurt less people just because the dealer who sold/gave it away said, “Genocide is bad, okay?”
Those bombs are gonna kill and hurt people no matter if it’s the Dems or the Reps sending them to Israel. There are lots of reasons why Trump is worse, but if you’re a Palestinian it really doesn’t make a difference if the weapon that kills you came from a racist man or a woman who condemns genocide.
Edit:
So many downvotes, so many disagreeing comments, but not a single fucking person has managed to give one concrete example that explains why weapons coming from Trump is so much worse than weapons coming from Kamala, for Palestinians.
Edit 2:
Here’s an article detailing the destruction in Gaza in December 2023, 11 months ago. I feel like some of you need reminding of the current reality, when you can’t even come up with concrete hypotheticals.
Because there’s no effing way Netanyahu would have posted anything like this in response to a Kamala win.
I asked for something concrete that Trump would do that is worse for Palestine. You still haven’t explained how a bomb from the Republicans hurts more than a bomb from the Democrats.
Again, there’s lots of reasons Trump is worse than Kamala, but weapons will kill people no matter who uses them.
Are you seriously unable to imagine anything worse than whats happening there right now? Read a fucking history book.
I can’t even believe an adult person is trying to make this argument. Please tell me that you’re a child.
ThAts NoT cOncReTe
This asshole is nothing but a fucking piece of shit sealion
Trick go home, drink yourself silly, have some shrooms. You’re not helping yourself here. 🤷 Honestly its painful to watch you.
He literally said they should “finish the job” but we all know you’re lying and know he said that. I’m thankful for the user tagging feature in boost. I never have to give you benefit of doubt again, wasting my time reading the words of a liar.
I said to give me something concrete, you have given me nothing concrete. Israel is not that far from “finishing the job” by themselves.
But what else is to be expected, all you people can say is “you’re a liar/troll”. Keep burying your head in the sand then.
I wonder why people are calling you a liar and a troll. Yeah they’re all wrong. /s
My friend, he wasn’t become president yet. Come back in 6 months when Gaza is nothing but a steaming pile of debris and revisit this conversation.
I have news for you.
That was 11 months ago.
Here we go again with the “it can’t get worse” bullshit. Netanyahu will eliminate the Palestinian people completely.
Because you fall into the same “but what about?!”-thing modern far right excels at.
You myopically focus on a single issue, trying desperately to use it as a crowbar to dislodge an otherwise sensible point, ignoring that everything is inherently a compromise, in particular in a 2-party system. Hence any voter who is not as easily blinded - and it’s not like Harris wasn’t very open during speeches about how much the right deals in fearmongering and disinformation, going as far as openly mocking people for made-up bullshit stats they’re yelling - would be able to inform themselves and realize that:
So, even if we were to just focus on this particular issue, the voters very much vote pro-genocide when they vote for Trump. I love how he’s technically correct though when he says he wants to end the war in Gaza, people are just too stupid to realize how he means it.
But more importantly, and the central point I’m making, you’re under the belief that reaction to a single issue should matter. Any voter who lets this argument slide has inherently lost themselves to the populist and fascist movements as they excel at exploiting this, and in fact stoke this belief whenever they can. Politics on a large scale cannot be judged based on single issues. Because if you try to, you exactly fall into this trap. You automatically end up being barraged by appeals to emotion, constantly, and you’ll let those decide things for you.
Hence, blaming the voters. For not actually engaging with the democratic process, just with hate- and fearmongering and then wondering why that that ended up controlling them when they sought it out themselves.
As I said in another comment, I don’t even think the Palestinian genocide is something the American people cares enough about. I can’t see how this single issue in isolation could have cost Harris the election, especially by such a margin. BUT, it informs how they think. And it shows. The Dems apparently thought that they could win the election by being as far right as they could get away with. It’s their failure for campaigning cowardly and saying always the safe thing that does well in focus groups. Every election they lose is a chance for the Overton Window to move to the right. They tried to capture votes from people from the right of them MUCH harder than from the left of them on almost every issue.
If a voter is already right leaning, especially in the USA, they won’t vote for Fascism Light, they will vote for Fascism Plus.
This is certainly not true. I understand the need for compromise but I also understand that there’s stuff one should not compromise about. Otherwise, what makes us different from the fascists if we’re willing to help kill an entire nation “on the other side of the globe” (as if distance makes their lives less valuable) if it serves us here?
I agree with you that voters have not engaged in the process and many failed to do the most basic of civil duties. But when it happens at such a scale something else is afoot. It was Harris’ election to lose and she did.
You seem to have made many false assumptions about me but still, genuinely, thanks for the reply.
Oh yeah sorry, I should have been clear about this: I wasn’t talking specifically about you, english is not my primary language and it sometimes becomes easier to write that way and I do it automatically. Thank you for not being offended by it. >.<
Learn something from this…?
To what end? For what point? There isn’t an “undo” button on fascism.
It’s funny how common this sentiment is though. My dad started voting for the AfD citing similar words. The very same people do not even notice how this trains them in 3-4 steps to be a voter for a fascist party themselves, it’s why it is so genius/scary. They still think they’re doing the right thing, even when actively supporting what breaks their own ability of doing anything to begin with.
Really goes to show how strong a strictly-controlled corporate mass media with an inherent corporate agenda can be. Billionaires enjoy fascist or ultra-right control as it keeps them out of any external checks and balances. And with their influence on media by owning said media, they get to highlight individual issues and hype them up to be as dealbreaking as they want them to be, while burying a long list of individual good things that happens so that people never get into a positive attitude.
There was this fascinating summary a while ago how much the german SPD did to improve the situations specifically for those groups of people who the AfD bemoaned as being “forgotten about” in one of their polemics. And it was curious to see how little you hear about this simply because being a lot of individually small improvements over a certain number of years, there’s nothing big that has to be reported, and giant right-wing media conglomerates can hence easily bury the good news and focus on individual aggro issues instead.
People are also different nowadays because back a few generations ago when things went to shit, people pulled together and dropped their differences. Nowadays when things globally turn bad and hard times come up, everyone segregates and starts blaming everybody else instantly, which again just makes them very vulnerable to fascism.
Cause they voted. Or didn’t. Ultimately the choice is with them and a large majority of people decided that they’ll vote for rapist, racist, authoritarian fuckwit or sit the fuck home because it doesn’t matter who is running the government.
You can talk strategies and blame Democratic party till cows come home but at the end of the day, the people have to choose the least bad option.
And if they weren’t willing to choose the least bad option, I think that says more about the least bad option than it does about the worst option.
No
So, her failing to be more popular than fascism is the fault of the voting base… Makes sense.
Tell me again how you fail to clear that bar, and how that’s the voters fault?
Yes. The voters preferring fascism over liberalism is the voters’ fault. If the voters weren’t fascists and fascist apologists, Kamala would have won.
Today 71 million fascists, 66 million leftists, and 107 million fascism-apologists decided on the POTUS.
In Nazi Germany, the Jewish survivors had a word for people who didn’t vote against Hitler: Nazis. Drag calls you the same word: Nazi.
First of all, Drag, I voted for Harris, and actually voted Democrat down ballot. So from this trans veterans lips to your ear canals: Drag can go fuck Dragself for calling me a Nazi for having the audacity to criticize the party I’m forced to vote for that doesn’t represent any of my interests.
And that right fucking there is why Democrats lose, and Democrats are to blame: they can’t do anything but give us a candidate to vote against, and not one to vote for.
How many voters do you think they would have pulled running on an actual, progressive platform instead of the status quo bullshit we’re all clearly tired of? Medicare4All, free tuition, free school meals, actually funding social welfare programs, actually enshrining LGBTQ+ and bodily autonomy rights into law, expanding the supreme court to actually reflect the country’s wishes, abolishing the filibuster so progress can potentially start again in the Senate, stopping weapons shipments for the Palestinian genocide (or ffs, even taking a stance on the genocide)?
The Democrats lost, and fascism won, because the Democrats refuse to listen to their base. Dem voters stayed home because their party leadership failed to inspire them, and I’m sick of the people asking for policies that will actually benefit them instead of some billionaire oligarchs (where’s the blame pointed at the millions they funneled into the elections) being blamed for everything. This isn’t even considering the four years Biden had to show the American people any progress, any discernible improvement in their economic lives, and failed to do so.
Just like in 2016: the DNC forced a candidate onto the party they didn’t want, refused to listen to any vocal portions of the party while condescendingly telling them that party leaders know best and they need to fall in line, campaigned on uninspiring centrist policies and a return to the status quo, keep preaching about working across the aisle while being slandered and shit on, and then assume the race is in the bag because the other candidate is a fascist reality star.
And just like in 2016, they lost, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
I now think there is no base. Doesn’t exist. If the left doesn’t show up after Biden did green energy, EVs, IRA, student debt relief, non-compete clauses being banned via FDA, Pact act, supporting Ukraine, etc, AND to prevent a literal Hitler quoting fascist getting in, then the left either will literally never show up, or doesn’t exist. The left is done. No one is going to run a left platform for fucking decades. Because the left never shows up, or doesn’t exist.
If the Democrat party didn’t want Kamala as you claim then who did they want?
Nobody fucking cares that you voted Democrat dude, you’re still a fucking idiot.
Treating politics as reality show entertainment is fault of the voting base, yes.
Democracy requires informed voters and Americans have shown to be anything but that.
Because like it or not stopping aid for Israel would have pushed all Israel supporters to Trump. Sadly apparently most Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
I don’t think this is a constructive way of looking at the situation. After all, being quiet about Netanyahu’s abuses wasn’t a winning strategy either. Besides, being scared of Israeli lobbying automatically makes you a bad leader.
Regular people don’t live reading obscure threads on Lemmy so I’m 100% sure that the effects of the comments posted by tankies here are negligible.
My point is that you can’t lose against the worst human being twice and keep blaming the electorate. If they want to lead, the dems have to stand for something instead of complaining about turnout or in general blaming anyone else but themselves. It was THEIR job to get out the vote.
Trump is a monumental POS but the dems prefer to cater to the people who voted for him instead of the people who want legitimate pro-working-class policies.
You can blame dems for a lot but to decide not to vote for them because of Gaza is the dumbest possible take
Who is likely to lose? Oh right harris.
Yo! Wisconsin whats up today? How your friends and family in the middle east doing?
Hey Harris have any of that worker love? Protection of american jobs? No? 🥴.
Yo Pennsylvania whats up?
But yes its the voters who are wrong… Who was it that said ‘only winning matters’? Oh right pelosi… Smart. Evil. Lady.
Yes, Democracy lost. Whats your point?
That you’ve still learned nothing from this experience. The thing we were telling you for the last month.
Harris’ needed to give people a reason to vote for her. In Wisconsin that was stopping the genocide. In Pennsylvania thats fucking reducing the cost of living, inproving wages, etc.
If we’re lucky enough to get out of this with our country in tact next time stfu up about lesser evil and demand your candidate have policies that benefit people.
In short dont be like ‘sit down im speaking’ harris, the lesser evil. And instead be more like ‘yes sir stand up trll me what you need!’
You didnt tell me anything. I criticized Harris from the day she was made candidate. I am luckily not american and dont live there though
Yes, the voters are wrong? You think you’re making some amazing point, but really you just look stupid.
Oh prole, divest yourself from politics its not healthy for you. You lack the ability to reason cause and effect. Someone in this thread has the correct take on the democratic party and their loss and its not you. Find the post about the democrats not being self reflective and how gaza is just a proxy for the root problem with democrats. They’re obsession with data, and focus groups. Its not the voters who are wrong when you dont inspire them to show up.
Don’t talk to me like you know me.
Why? Does she automatically get all the votes just because she exists? You get votes by doing what your electorate wants you to do. She didn’t do that and this is the result.
Because she is no fascist. If you have the choice between a fascist and a non fascist and you dont vote you support the fascist. In this case it is even dumber because one side tells Israel to calm it down but sadly still send weapons while the other says Israel is correct, did everything to worsen the relationships between israel and palestine even more and has a fucking settlement named after them.
If you have a choice between someone who is going to kill people you care about or a person that’s going to kill the people you care about, voting for either of them is supporting people who kill people you care about. And it is doing that directly, not through some proxy “oh but Trumps voters will vote, we need people who don’t support what Harris has been doing to vote for her anyways because not voting is supporting fascism”.
One side does fuckall to stop what’s happening in Palestine. They’re letting the Israelis kill Palestinians en masse, displace them and take away their land. That side is currently in power and had every possibility and every leverage available to them to stop it. They didn’t, and now they lost an election because of it.
The new side will still do fuckall to stop what’s happening in Palestine. They will say Israel is correct and will still send arms to them to kill Palestinians.
The result is exactly the same - dead Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
You had the choice between someone who tell the people that do the killing to stop but isnt doing so strong enough and someone who says kill even more people and name a settlement after me, while also openly talking about implementing fascism.
Fuck every single person who didnt vote for Harris, esp. those who did so because of Gaza will regret their decision soon and deserve everything they will get now.
And this reasoning is why harris lost.
She lost because americans apparently love fascism. Or at least dont care about democracy. The people who didnt vote are on the same level as MAGA. Edit: I forgot. Same for the people who voted for a third party candidate
If the electorate votes for the worst human being twice they definitely deserve a freaking hulking heap of blame.
They didnt show up fam. We warned you. We told you harris wasnt doing enough. But you insisted that they were at fault if they didnt vote. Well guess what. They didnt vote. And now you’re stuck with the consequences. Thanks i guess.
The simple answer is you blame people for the things they do. Kind of fucking basic.
Yeah harris should have ran a better campaign with less genocide and more pro labor policies.
What actions have you taken to save lives in Gaza?
If you didn’t vote for Harris, the answer is absolutely fucking nothing of consequence.
Harris won my state. thank you. And I’ll have you know she would have killed them just as readily as trump will. I was trying to warn the rest of you harris was going to lose in swingers.
I think you are overshooting how much average American citizens think about or even give a shit about Gaza.
DNC relies on Zionist/Israel first funding, even as most of it went to Trump. Every other oligarch/lobby group allies with Zionism because failure to do so would hurt their interests, if it upset the Zionists who overspend relative to usual Israel aid amounts given each year. Zionism is integral to oil geopolitics by dividing the middle east, and providing war spending opportunities. Do you think tech, farmers or manufacturing can oppose that trifecta of power?
This had nothing to do with Gaza. This election shows Gaza doesn’t matter one iota. Ukraine didn’t matter one bit. Not even your own human rights mattered. This was inflation, housing, and (further on the right) xenophobia. Clinton was right, “it’s the economy stupid” (even though Dems are better for the economy).
Because it’s only one issue out of many that need to be addressed (I didn’t say fixed because IMHO the IDF are doing pretty good work eradicating Hamas, all things considered).
You guys need to take care of your housing, healthcare, gerrymandering, public transport, student loans, separation of religion and government and a truckload of other things that I don’t think Trump has any interest in improving. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump won’t be any “better” in regards to the situation in Gaza and the rest of the middle east.
So the voters that didn’t vote Harris purely because of the Gaza issue are to blame for their short sightedness.
Okay so blame the arabs in Wisconsin. Got it. Now do Pennsylvania. Why did they go trump. Tell me more mr oracle.
In general I agree, because their campaign definitely could’ve been better and it should’ve been better. But on the other hand this election wasn’t genocide or no genocide, without a significant shift in either political party that would happen regardless. If you really wanted to twist it into “genocide or no genocide” then that vote was “completely support genocide” or “begrudgingly support genocide”.
But really this election was between “full steam straight into fascism” and “chance to not go into fascism”. It’s obvious that if you don’t vote for the latter you either want fascism or don’t care that you’re getting fascism. That is on the voters. They could’ve voted to pass the fascism buck to the next election, but they didn’t. Now America is getting fascism.
They literally voted for it. You can’t say don’t blame the people who chose it. Blame both.
You are right. We can’t keep blaming other citizens like ourselves.
There is one group of people that led us to this point: Democrats themselves. And by Democrats, I mean those in power, delegates, podcast hosts, and the ones supposedly “leading” the party. Not the electorate.
They are the ones that wished Biden would be able to make it to a second term, when the first presidential debate clearly showed otherwise. They are the ones that pushed un-Democratic policies in hopes of winning over a base they’ve never captured: Republicans. They are the ones that dropped the ball on one of the greatest feats of Kamala’s campaign that could have sent her over the finish line: Tim Walz and a progressive agenda.
Yes, thank you for putting it better than me.
Especially Re: podcast hosts, I follow a couple of “progressive” podcasts and they showed their true colors very clearly when one day they were strongly shilling for Biden and admonishing any differing opinion. Then magically they changed tunes when the situation was inescapable. They came off as strongly disingenuous and spineless.
Fucking what? Donald Trump won the popular vote. We blame those people.
And why did Donald Trump win the popular vote? Because he gave concessions to his base and catered to their needs and wants? Because a politician actually fought for the interests of their constituents?
What about Democrats? Did they do any of that? Hell no. I blame Democrats.