You’re in this picture whether you like it or not.
you’re going to be in this photo, you just don’t know it yet.
Don’t worry, as an actual lefty I already know. You’re the one who’d push me into the cart.
How can I push you when I’m in the cart with you?
“Get out of the way! Truck! Truck behind you! Run, it’s not slowing down!! For the love of god, move!”
“I think this guy wants to hit me with a truck” *wet crunching*
What a reasonable and not at all unhinged reply!
I voted for her. The Democrats are still at fault.
Yep, fuck the non voters for their ignorance, fuck the Dems for being a lesser evil in the first place.
Absolutely. It’s a two way street here.
People need to stop turning on each other though. What’s done is done. The left has always been divided but right now we really need to start pulling ourselves together.
The lesser evil is literally the better candidate.
The trump voters and the people who sat out the vote have that on their consciences.
Are we, the Democratic party out of touch?
No, it’s the electorate’s fault!
Nobody is arguing the DNC isn’t out of touch.
however the electorate isn’t much better. Cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Nice try on the strawman though, better than some.
I am not here to argue. I will not engage beyond this post no matter what is said in response because I don’t want to fight.
What matters is policy. Real hard on the ground policy that real normal people can feel and see where they live.
When some wonk gets on MSNBC with a spreadsheet hooting about how much better things are with grocery prices or housing costs, that doesn’t mean anything to someone who’s begging for extra shifts at work so they can make rent. Those are aggregates and averages. If the 200k-500k bracket is doing better while the 13k-45k bracket isnt, the numbers still went up. That looks better in the data. But the people at the bottom are still suffering just as much as ever. They don’t feel or see any improvement because there wasn’t any. Not for them.
The health and performance of the stock market only matters to those on the bottom when it crashes and suddenly they’re paying more for everything. At no other point does it impact them in the slightest. Those record profits aren’t reinvested, they’re not used to reduce the strain on consumers. Its gobbled up by a few dozen shareholders. It benefits nobody else. And if an executive or CEO has the slightest semblance of a soul and wants to help consumers they’re voted out because the only responsibility is to those few dozen shareholders.
Healthcare. The ACA was a grand achievement. They took Romneycare national. Round of applause for all involved. But its still cheaper to do some form of Universal Healthcare. That would be the easiest win in history. And everyone would feel it immediately. It would help 100,000,000 people immediately. People who have been putting off medical treatment for half their lives because of the extortionist expense would immediately seek treatment. They would seek preventative treatment and raise the overall health across the country. Obesity rates drop, drug use plummets, etc.
Marijuana. Literally every person I know and interact with in my daily life uses it. Do you know the number one reason I’ve heard from all of them? Pain management. Again, another easy win that is supported by everyone except the ghouls who were alive when it was called “The Devil’s Lettuce” and propagandized into believing its this terrible thing.
Hard Policy that people can feel and see in their daily lives. You can still court the comfortable liberals who care about the stock market and all that. They’ll be fine no matter who is in office. If they need an abortion it’s a weekend vacay to Zurich or somewhere. But you’re never going to hold any meaningful power again without hard policy. Because for decades now the republicans have cornered the market on grievance politics and reaction. To break through that you need something real. No more vibes based nonsense. It will not work.
I am not here to argue. I will not engage beyond this post no matter what is said in response because I don’t want to fight.
tldr
edit: for the downvoters, how can I take anyone seriously if they’re not going to sit and defend their opinion.
Why would I even waste my time reading their wall of text? They might as well be screaming into the void.
He’s right. He put together a well constructed argument for his position and you simply ignored all of it.
Harris ran a failed strategy of moving to the right and ‘business as usual’ when people want actual progressive policies that will address their material needs.
Neoliberalism will always move to the right and normalize fascist ideology over improving the livelyhood of the working class. Progressive policies are popular with Republican voters too, that’s the correct way to fracture the Republican base into voting Democrat.
Conceding to right-wing policies and disinformation, like on immigration, only alienates more of the Democratic base while bolstering Republican voters support for the Republican party.
Polls on campaign messaging
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
Polls on policy
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
I voted for Harris and told others to do so too. Doesn’t change the fact that it was her campaign strategy that was responsible for the loss of millions in voter turnout. All the evidence and polling show that running on popular progressive policies that represent a change and improve the material conditions of the American public was the right way to boost voter turnout, the fact that she instead went to the right was a calculated decision that completely failed.
At the risk of being a pedant, no reason to think that person is a man. They did articulate the argument tho, for sure. And you did too.
edit: for the downvoters, how can I take anyone seriously if they’re not going to sit and defend their opinion.
You’re mocking someone for posting their reasoning in detail, and then getting upset when people downvote you without giving reasons. What do you want?
What strawman? When is it appropriate to hold DNC leadership accountable for losing the election, again?
The DNC will have its come to jesus moment and maybe come to the wrong conclusions again, but it’s still patently obvious that a massive number of people will vote against their own interests regardless of the arguments anyone made.
Yeah it’s hard to vote in an informed manner with so many obstacles to education. I suspect this problem is about to get a whole lot worse unfortunately.
Why would they? They’ve just shown their complete inability to pivot an iota, for THREE elections. That’s 12 years of nothing learned by the DNC, minimum.
Unless you consider that they don’t care to win. Unless they benefit from losing equally, or more as losers. Does Biden or Harris look particularly pained by this outcome, at all? They look pleased as punch.
The electorate picked the racist rapist trump, that’s what represents America.
To say that a political party should stray further from what the majority of Americans that stepped up to vote for is what is out of touch.
15 million Democrats, progressives, and independents condoned racism are at fault.
Democratic leadership blind and dismissive of the common worker suck and are at fault.
Both can and are true at the same damn time and Democrats and progressives all over the nation fucked us all.
Wow, that is some spectacular thinking.
Honestly, if they do the same things next cycle, I’ll be more inclined to vote green.
Ah yes, a perfect example of what OP was talking about. Good work finding it so we can point and laugh at the people that keep looking for someone to blame for their own choices.
Yeah, and your comment is a great example of the Democrats 2024 outreach strategy: a smug, self-righteous attitude that failed to get you any votes.
Doesn’t make that person wrong. If you need to be properly reached to keep yourself from voting for sweet potato Hitler, I’m sorry but you only have yourself to blame
Did the commenter say they voted for Trump?
The people who voted for Trump over Kamala are not the leftists on lemmy. I’ve actually only seen one or two people say that they’re going to vote for Trump for some leftist reason. The majority of people said they would vote for her anyway, and a minority of people said they were abstaining.
You sound really foolish mischaracterizing your opponents. The democratic party failed. Kamala Harris failed. There was no sabotage. She campaigned a conservative platform of military, border control, unwavering support for Israel and said she was going to maintain the status quo. When asked what she would do differently from Biden her gut response was “nothing”. It was a spectacular failure and highlights every single way that the democratic party has entirely lost touch with reality.
Cost of living has tripled in the last 4 years. Now try telling white working class straight people who weren’t living paycheck to paycheck 4 years ago that you’re going to do everything the same as the guy that came before you. The same guy who broke up the rail workers strikes. No, us trying to explain fascism or project 2025 to them did literally nothing. They don’t understand it and don’t care. They know that their financial situation got worse and that the democratic candidate said they wouldn’t change anything. That’s all they understood. They don’t know what’s fact or what’s fiction, and they think Trump is a brilliant businessman. It doesn’t matter that he’s not if they all think he is.
The DNC failed. Stop trying to defend them for God’s sake. How are they ever going to actually pose a challenge to far right populism or fascism if you relentlessly defend them from all criticism?
Woah chief, I’m not defending anybody and I didn’t ask who anybody voted for. If you can read then you see what I said is exactly what I meant: if you voted for sweet potato Hitler you only have urself to blame, not the democrats. And if you need someone to “reach you” properly in order to not vote for sweet potato Hitler you only have yourself to blame
The democrats fucked this up big time, but I’m not going to blame them for the fact that people are too stupid to not vote for the end of our way of life. That’s a personal responsibility that 70 million Americans failed at
I read that sweet potato line as implying that the commenter themselves had voted for him, my bad.
I do agree that every human being has a duty to not vote for Hitler. I mean, that was supposed to be the point of the post world War 2 Western education system. Didn’t work out for a lot of reasons.
But I also believe that many people don’t understand what “voting for Hitler” even means or that Trump poses a threat to them. They don’t understand politics. They don’t understand the way the capitalist economic system functions. They think of it as some ethereal force that gets worse when you control it and gets better when you don’t. They think rich people are brilliant geniuses who have divine knowledge of the economy that allowed them to become so rich. They don’t get it. The political strategy of progressives has to account for that. The democratic party isn’t a party of progressives. It’s a party with a minority of progressives in it, but beyond them, it is the party of the status quo. The status quo has gotten worse, that much people do understand. And they chose the guy who said he was going to change it. He said he’ll fix it and they believed him.
It sounds like you just don’t understand how politics works.
If you cannot persuade the low information voters, you are failing as a politician. The Democrats, if you believe they wanted to win this, spectacularly failed at the most intrinsic of requirements as a politician: to win over the dullest spoons in the drawer. Society is largely dull spoons. This is the job.
I have seen nothing in the lead up, nor since their catastrophic loss that indicates that Biden, or Harris actually wanted to win. To the contrary, they look happier than they have been in months.
And if you’re a politician and people don’t vote for you, you have no one but yourself to blame. I wish Harris hadn’t run a dogshit campaign, but she did, and I’m not gonna blame voters because she was bad at her job.
You’re entitled to your opinion but I’ll readily blame people who vote for a wannabe facist dictator
People are responsible for their own votes
You can go ahead and blame them, but apparently they heavily outnumber you so I’d get the fuck out of the way if I were you.
Oh, you mean you’ll blame them on lemmy and never associate yourself with one of them in the real world because you live in a nation split into echo chambers. Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m sure that helps.
Harris ran a perfect campaign. If she was running as a (pre-Trump) republican. However, we know that:
- She isn’t a Republican
- She banked on pulling in republican voters, instead of rallying her base
- Republicans will almost always vote for the R instead of policy
- She backed off of every single progressive idea she started with
- She trotted out establishment Democrats to lecture the electorate instead of inspire them
- Tlaib pulled twice the numbers as Harris as the only anti-genocide Palestinian in Congress
It’s Harris and the Democrats. Should people have voted? Yes. Is it understandable why people didn’t want to vote for the person telling them that she’ll be a good republican and support a genocide? Also yes.
I didn’t realize a wealth tax, 25k credit for first time home buyers, support for legalized cannabis, support for trans people, etc were Republican policies.
Are there more things on my progressive checklist? Yes, definitely. Universal healthcare, for one.
Part of being an adult is not being able to get everything you want when you want it.
Part of politics in the US is understanding that some of those things that Harris supported which resulted in a candidate that was not far left enough to get progressives off the couch, are too far left for other voters.
I don’t envy whoever is picking up the pieces at the DNC and trying to determine what the precise amount of leftism is that will get those 10-15 million leftists off the couch without alienating the 60-70 million that did show up.
This is especially true for the Palestine issue. How many of those 10-15 million watching from the sidelines would have shown up for a pro-Palestine candidate? Even if it was 10 million, there would still have been more who would sit this one out or vote Trump, because they’d believe the bullshit that the Palestinians are all terrorists. I truly wish it wasn’t the case, but I fear the post-911 Islamophobia and the imperialist attitudes about support for Israel would have cost a pro-Palestine candidate more votes than they would have gained.
a wealth tax
Did she actually campaign on this, or was it just some white paper she had on her website? There’s a difference between having a policy that you are campaigning on and actually intend to carry out and some vague policy paper a staffer wrote.
25k credit for first time home buyers This was an absolute embarrassment of a policy. Did you see the requirements on it? They presented it as a typical neoliberal bullshit policy. It was filled with so many specific requirements that almost no one would qualify for it. And it was bad economic policy too, as it would simply serve to further inflate the overheated housing bubble.
support for legalized cannabis
You cannot run on something that is one of your severe policy failures. Democrats have been running on the cannabis issue for multiple cycles at this point. They’ve all dragged their feet and slow-walked it for cheap political points.
support for trans people
She’s objectively better on this than Trump, but trying to Third Way it, she screwed herself over. Democrats were vocally supportive of trans rights before any kind of major backlash emerged, but their support was only ever skin-deep. Trans issues were largely absent from the recent DNC.
The Republicans latched onto anti-trans bigotry as one of their major campaign planks, and the Democrats responded by just trying to ignore trans people entirely. They avoided discussing trans people whenever possible, and they never came up with effective responses to Republicans’ main attack points. If you actually believe in trans rights, the correct response to the charge of “you want men in women sports!” is to say, “well trans women aren’t men, and you shouldn’t moronically assume trans women have the same athletic advantages as cis men.” If you actually believe in trans rights and equality, you would say, “the differences between men and women sports performance is almost entirely due to testosterone. Any minor differences that remain are not worth discriminating against people over.” Etc. You know, actually RESPONDING TO and REBUTTING the attacks Republicans make against trans people.
Centrist democrats showed conclusively that their support for trans people was nothing more than shallow political pandering. The Biden administration hasn’t been using all the levers of federal power to protect trans kids from their state governments.
This kind of mealy-mouthed centrism is what cost Kamala the election. She isn’t an enemy of trans people, but she’s also not a real ally. She doesn’t want to actively harm trans people, but she doesn’t have some fundamental belief in the worth of trans rights. It’s just another political football to her. It was beneficial to seem extremely pro-trans in 2020, and now that the conservatives have rallied against trans people, now she’s not so eager to defend trans people. It seems disingenuous and it made her look like someone who would say anything just to win the election.
How many of those 10-15 million watching from the sidelines would have shown up for a pro-Palestine candidate?
No one was expecting her to become a rabidly pro-Palestinian protester. No one expected her to get up at the podium and say, “actually, Hamas did nothing wrong, and the Israelis should be relocated out of Palestine.” People wanted her to make US military aid contingent on Israel meeting human rights guidelines. Israel, despite all the precision weaponry we give them, has a worse civilian:military kill ratio than Hamas. They kill more civilians for every soldier they kill than radical terrorists. Despite all their high-tech weaponry, THAT is how unconcerned Israel has been about civilian casualties. Hamas has done a better job of avoiding civilian casualties than Israel.
Anyway, the polling showed that calling for a cease-fire and other measures would have been immensely popular. This was a completely unforced error on her part. She threw away votes for nothing.
I’m not saying that she didn’t have any liberal centrist ideas like what you listed, but that doesn’t mean she was progressive either. A lot of the policy ideas that were actually good were once on the Republican platform before Reagan.
Don’t forget about how popular Bernie was in 2016 before he was forcibly removed from the democratic nomination by the party establishment or how popular Tlaib, AOC, and Omar have been. Don’t forget about how down-ballot races in this cycle, while brutal to Democrats, didn’t push out many progressives. Progressivism is far more popular than the democratic party is willing to admit or fight on, because the party is owned and controlled by the same class currently oppressing us; the billionaires. If a candidate like Bernie presents a real path, they will force the person out. It’s not strictly an issue with the Overton window.
Here’s the thing about the choice facing people in the election: it doesn’t matter anymore as a matter of the current political reality, because Harris gambled hard on the “good cop, bad cop” aspect of “he’s worse” and lost hard. That statement is 110% true, but it’s horribly ineffective as we saw in 2016 and again in this election. Islamophobia will absolutely increase, and Trump will fund the genocide until all of Palestine is settled by colonists. But once again, don’t forget about how successful Tlaib was in comparison to Harris. We no longer have the opportunity to find out if it would or wouldn’t have affected the campaign, but the indication is there that at least 1 swing state would have gone to Harris with an anti-genocide stance.
You’re only providing half of the argument. The other half of the argument is the fact that if you didn’t support her, then you supported a fascist dictatorship.
And what happened? We got a fascist dictatorship!
Let’s preface with the fact I voted for Harris, and understand where you’re coming from with lesser evil voting.
But the other half of your argument is that with the way that Harris was tacking to the right to try to gain moderate voters, the choice was between voting between fascism now and fascism later down the line.
But if we vote for fascism later then we have time to distance ourselves from fascism.
By sitting at home happy that you did your job and ‘defeated’ fascism, until the next election where your choice is again fascism now and fascism a little less later down the line?
As the Dems keep drifting further and further right. At what point do you put your foot down and demand actual progressive policies? And how do you get those demands to actually be listened to when the party knows you’ll vote for them because “at least we’re not as bad as the other guys. What choice do you have?” Supporting her is a message to the Democratic party that their strategy of slowly becoming more conservative wins elections. And this is the reason that I was very conflicted about voting for her, but just held my nose and did it for the greater good.
That’s because fascism has never and will never be beaten at the ballot box.
ITT Americans trying to justify their apathy at allowing bigotry to rule.
The rest of us across the world are all just aghast at all of you and your lack of duty and never wanting to take personal responsibility.
This. I wish the Democrats would take some responsibility for their choices. But they won’t. Morons.
Eat shit. I did everything I could to raise awareness. I campaigned, I went to places to talk to people in my community. I used proof, even videos of him saying the evil, vile shit that he said. Our community stayed dem, while our state stayed right. Theres only so much you can do when indoctrination and propaganda rule. You can piss in a bowl and freeze it, then put it in your lemonade you fuck-whit. You have no idea how much some of us tried. Fuck you.
If you had actually accomplished any of the deeds you claim, you never would have gotten all butthurt, realizing OP was addressing the people who did nothing but create voter apathy.
The fact that you did get butthurt, says everything.
No, they acted like nobody did anything. Some of us did everything we could. And fuck you for acting like we didn’t do enough. What did you do? “Meh I posted memes on FB and argued with tankies.” Fuck you too.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone who is trying to discuss the election with you in good faith paints you as just another MAGA American. We know some Americans faught tooth and nail to stop this. Now you could be lying just as easily as you could be telling the truth, although I have no reason to think you are lying. So assuming you’re telling the truth, as crushing as a second Trump presidency is for me, someone who doesn’t live in the US, who literally can’t do anything about him, it must be so much more worse for you.
I know you’re tired but your fight against fascism is just beginning, it’s far from over. I hope you can find the strength to keep going. As an outsider all I can do is tell you that some of us see you and know that you’re not well right now. Gandalf put it best;
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Way more than two options here.
I voted for Harris, and I encouraged others to as well. And I think the Democratic leadership royally fucked up here.
The polls kinda sucked in the end, and I think one reason is that folks were embarrassed to admit they were voting for Trump. That to me says that they voted for him not because he’s a racist sexist pig, but in spite of this.
But the polls did afaik get that the economy was hugely important. And the Democrats failed here both in current policy (groceries got more expensive over the course of Biden’s term), and in proposed policy messaging. No one cares about home buyer credits if you can’t afford groceries. (And no, I don’t think Trump has a plan to lower prices aside from shady back room deals that will ultimately cost us big — but voters want something new…)
To be clear, I voted for Biden, I voted for Harris, and I’m pretty scared about the future. But the Democrats need to learn something from this or it’s same story in four years. Maybe the lesson is “we can’t count on the left in this country to vote for us by default,” and maybe the lesson is, “for the love of God raise hell if the cost of living goes up, and do it in a way that appeals to the lowest common denominator.”
I keep hearing about grocery prices, but no one has any explanation of what Biden was supposed to do about it that he wasn’t already doing, or how Trump will handle it better.
If putting a Republican administration in place that will bend over for corporations causes lower grocery prices, doesn’t that just prove that corporate greed was the main driver all along? Why can’t people who voted Trump for these reasons understand that?
If voters keep voting like this, corporations are just going to purposely raise prices whenever someone they don’t like is in power, and the sheep will just fall for it and we’ll never be able to hold these corporations accountable.
I keep hearing about grocery prices, but no one has any explanation of what Biden was supposed to do about it that he wasn’t already doing, or how Trump will handle it better.
Completely agree. I think it’s a “you break it you buy it” situation with voters.
And it’s not based in reason — Biden’s administration was staring down the barrel of a recession, and yet here we are, having completely avoided it. That’s a pretty successful navigation of the economic hand that Biden was dealt, if you ask me. But at the end of the day “groceries more expensive” = “we need someone else in the white house” for a lot of voters, I guess.
I was a naysayer in 2020, I thought the DNC was repeating the mistakes of 2016 by putting up a moderate but I was wrong.
I was practically giddy when I heard that the FTC was finally going after these corporations.
I was thinking that there’s no way they can blame the Dems for what happens in the next two years, but I’m guessing the post-reality anti-facts crew will find a way.
I agree, the Democrats should learn something. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to do anything about it again considering Trump won’t never leave office as long as he lives.
The DNC has run the exact same playbook for 3 elections in a row. If you still think they’re coming to save us, you have more processing yet to do.
Harris was literally campaigning with the Cheney and Clinton families. She made herself the center of a Venn diagram of two of the most politically reviled characters in modern American history. A politically savvy leadership doesn’t make a shit sandwich and then expect people to want to take a bite.
Two things can be true at once.
Everyone who didn’t vote, voted third party or for Trump, or encouraged others to do the same, supported fascism coming into power in this country.
Harris failed her country when it needed her, specifically, most; and the Dem leadership in general failed the country grotesquely in the same manner.
Absolutely!
By your incompetence combined, we are a fascist nation!
Fuck.
Captain Planet: uh, why did you vote IN all of the people I’ve been catching and stopping?
Ah, yes. All of you *checks notes* 4.5 million eligible lemmy users who abstained should be ashamed of themselves. /s
I keep reading all this finger pointing from people that actively spoke against voting for Harris.
Maybe those who
didn’t voteabstained shouldn’t be allowed to complain.I voted for Walz.
Dems suck at winning elections because for 40 years now their strategy has been a losing one of “try being Republican-light.” They’re too corrupted by corporate bribes to right the ship, hopefully it sinks into a sea of conservative ignorance and an actual leftist party can rise from the ashes.
They’re too corrupted by corporate bribes to right the ship, hopefully it sinks into a sea of conservative ignorance and an actual leftist party can rise from the ashes.
And you know what’s really sad about this? They don’t even have to be! Kamala massively outspent Trump. One thing the DNC refuses to learn is that there is such a thing as saturation in campaign messaging. Past a point, past a certain number of commercials, flyers, mailer, door-hangers, text messages, and on and on? At some point it just stops working. At some point you just start annoying people. Hillary massively outspent Trump in 2016, and Kamala massively outspent Trump in 2024. It didn’t matter. Most of those dollars were completely wasted showing ads to voters that were already completely over-saturated with ads.
Maybe you need corporate money for the type of wasteful campaign Kamala ran, but it’s not like she didn’t also raise millions and millions in individual donations. Even in the era of big money politics, it is entirely possible to bring in enough small donations to run a presidential campaign. All that corporate money that Kamala sold her soul for was ultimately spent preaching to the choir or trying to reach the unreachable.
The more right the US shifts, the more it will be controlled by money over masses. Unless by “rise from the ashes” you actually expect a successful overthrow of the US government by a people’s revolution which is pretty laughable in this polarized nation.
The more right the US shifts, the more it will be controlled by money over masses.
I’m curious as to why did you made this statement. Like do you think the US isn’t already fully “controlled by money over masses”?
I legitimately don’t understand what people think America is as a country. All I see everywhere I go in this country is an orgiastic celebration of material wealth and those who have it over all else.
We’ve been controlled by “money over masses” my entire existence. I seriously have zero understanding of what online leftists are even talking about when they talk about solidarity and community. I’ve lived in many different places here and I felt the same sense of individualism and capital above all else everywhere I’ve been.
I’m not saying money doesn’t control politics when Democrats hold office. I’m saying Democrats do more for the masses than Republicans, especially the Republicans that are coming next year. Trump and his cronies are very vocal about having already been sold to the highest bidder.
Oh, gotcha. Well, yeah I think I agree actually.
That would be cool, but I meant more metaphorically. Other parties have come and gone in the history of the US - now is a great time for an actual populist party to rise up and win voters from all political spectra. It isn’t just Dems who are feeling disenfranchised, and a large enough movement could pierce through the media bubbles on both sides to gain momentum.
It’s feasible, albeit pretty idealistic. I’d love to see it happen, but I’m a bit skeptical that the billionaire-owned media will support honest reporting of a candidate that threatens their power.
I’m a bit skeptical that the billionaire-owned media will support honest reporting of a candidate that threatens their power.
I 100% share in your skepticism.
This is where a lot of the online talk about “the DNC” gets me. Like sure, the DNC wants their preferred candidate as an organizing body I’m sure, but the media did everything it could to keep Bernie from winning the nomination as well. I remember people on MSNBC of all places talking about how dangerous nominating Bernie Sanders would be.
They attack it in straightforward ways (calling them “communists”, “socialists”, “Marxists”) in more republican-leaning media, and they attack it in other, less straightforward means in other type of media (calling the plans “stupid”, saying that they’ll “never work” that we “don’t have the money”, or “it’ll cost more in taxes!”).
I just don’t see it at all. I wish I was more hopeful about this stuff but with the individualistic behavior of the American populace, the mass media landscape, and the way the Internet has been sculpted into something palatable or even usable by the oligarchs to get what they want (perhaps even more cheaply than it was in traditional media) I just don’t believe it is possible to win with some “better message”.
The only thing I could see saving this country is a groundswell of old-style civic behavior where people largely tune out or drop off from mass media and social media and start connecting with their neighbors and building actual community. I am not optimistic about that either.
I agree with you with the exception of Bernie’s 2016 campaign. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, was forced to step down after evidence was found of her deliberately favoring Hillary over Bernie prior to the primary. This came after the primary vote of course.
Definitely won’t be televised.
I keep reading all this finger pointing from people that actively spoke against voting for Harris.
I think that’s just your confirmation bias talking
Maybe those who didn’t vote shouldn’t be allowed to complain.
I’ll tell all the convicts, LGBTQ children and… every non-US citizen who’s going to suffer through another Trump term.
Be realistic. I’m being critical of eligible citizens who chose not to vote.
Excellent job modeling both gaslighting and a strawman in the same pointless criticism, btw.
I’m being critical of eligible citizens who chose not to vote.
That’s not what your overgeneralising comment suggests.
Excellent job modeling both gaslighting and a strawman in the same pointless criticism, btw.
I’m not sure you know what these terms mean.
Fair point. I’ve edited my initial comment to address abstainers.
As for my grasp on vocabulary:
gaslighting: to psychologically manipulate (someone) usually over time so that the victim experiences doubts about their own emotional or mental stability
Exhibited in your suggestion that conformation bias is clouding my ability to read.
strawman: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.
Demonstrated by your argument redirecting the focus to those who are ineligible to vote.
Ready to try again? Although you may have a better chance of convincing someone less literate.
Exhibited in your suggestion that conformation bias is clouding my ability to read.
Sorry, that’s not gaslighting. I was suggesting that your confirmation bias makes you cherrypick non-voters among all the people criticizing the Dems. It’s simply absurd to claim that only abstainers criticize the Dems. I did not try to manipulate you.
Demonstrated by your argument redirecting the focus to those who are ineligible to vote.
You said that “those who didn’t vote shouldn’t be allowed to complain”. I felt included, since I didn’t -ote, but I’m not a US citizen. Refusing to steelman your point does not equal strawmanning.
Ready to try again? Although, you may have a better chance of convincing someone less literate.
I’m trembling, when thinking of your literacy. /s 🙄
Stop telling me how great your farts smell.
I see. So you believe it’s not manipulative to attempt to discredit another’s opinion by repeatedly distracting from their point using well-known bad arguments, all without supporting your own opinion?
It’s no wonder Trump won.
“I can’t just run on not being the other guy? I actually have to articulate a platform and get people to like me???”
Add the /s
Oh we’re not even waiting until 2028 to start up the infighting again. How fun. At least we’ll have something to discuss while in line for the showers.
Give and Take. It doesn’t matter. You aren’t selling shit if you aren’t offering what the people want. They wanted a rock to throw in a glass house and Trump promised to be that rock, not the Democrats. Yet, they will never learn this lesson.
lets teach through parable.
A drifter has been walking through a desert for five days without water. if he doesn’t get water in the next hour he will die. he happens upon a small oasis.
the drifter rushes to find water and all he sees is:
- a small murky puddle covered in muck and grime
- a bucket of watery shit
- a camel
- a dried out corpse
he looks at his options and is debating which would be better. he starts to move towards the puddle to drink from it when suddenly the camel begins to relieve itself.
he stops to consider drinking the urine.
you are the drifter. the shit bucket is trump. the puddle is kamala. the piss is stein. the corpse is the abstained voter.
which would you have chosen?
The choice is obvious, we eat the sand in hopes it will quench our thirst. Thats basically what we did.
welcome to corpse town!
population, 20 million.
A murky pond of still water might not be a good choice no matter how thirsty you are. The bacteria in it could kill you. If you’re thirsty and lost at sea, I hope you won’t drink the salt water. That’s the issue with the insistance that people should vote for Harris “to stop trump”. It’s short sighted and does nothing to address the long-term problem of, election after election, being presented two shitty options and told it’s critical that you eat shit instead of voting for the person that will actually fight for your values. Sorry the Democrats keep refusing to learn this lesson, but they are just as much to blame for Trump’s victory as the people who voted for him.
Out of your options above, the camel might actually be the safest option. You’ll at least get some hydration out of it if you don’t cook it to shit.
If you’re an hour away from dying from thirst, then a murky pond of water filled with bacteria, is better than a bucket of shit or camel piss.
bacteria may kill you in days. But you will die of thirst in one hour.
You completely missed the entire point of the exercise. If I make it any dumber, I’ll have to write it in crayon.
You were so close though. Go enjoy your cup of sand.
That’s exactly the reason that people didn’t vote.
There’s no civilization in sight.
Your options are
-
drink the pond water and get dysentery. Struggle to find help while you are slowed down by your illness and shit yourself to death.
-
drink the bucket of shit. Same problem just much quicker
-
drink the camel piss.
It’s sterile,(edit: I stand corrected) and provides some hydration -
just fucking give up because all these choices are dire and no matter what you’re probably going to die because there is no sign of civilization or rescue, or another clean source of water, or things getting remotely better for you.
And you’re yelling at people for not happily slurping up the pond water and subjecting themselves to dysentery. Some people are going to have the fortitude to do whatever it takes for survival. And some people in that situation just give up.
People didn’t vote because of apathy, and no hope that things will get better in the future. Yes Harris is better than Trump. But she’s still a step in the wrong direction. Just because it wasn’t a running long jump towards doom doesn’t mean it’s not making progress in the same direction. You want people to vote for you? Inspire your fucking voter base. Give them something to rally behind. Make them excited. Give them hope. Give them a reason to stand in line for hours to vote after working an 8 hour day. Have strong policies that inspire confidence in your capabilities. Don’t make a large part of your campaign ‘at least I’m better than the other person’. That’s your selling point? Not how good you are. Just how less bad you are.
Piss is not sterile.
Analogy is not good, either. But kudos to anyone still trying to make it work.
Piss is also chock full of concentrated salts and metabolic waste that hasten dehydration. Drinking piss is definitely not an option.
Now you can take the piss and use evaporation distillery to extract the water from the mess, but that takes time and skill and know-how. It’s not as easy as, ya know, drinking piss.
-
Lol, yeah, you’re right. My bad for assuming we would have to make the decision with information that a person would likely have in that scenario, like one has to do in real life… I think you’re still wrong, both in the example you attempted and the point you’re trying to make.
Democrats will need to work on offering people something more than murky water that might kill you if they want to get people to come out and vote for them. And why would I risk a deadly bacterial infection when I have piss available that I am reasonably certain is sterile? I’m honestly not sure why you think that’s not a good course of action, though I’ll admit I’m not a scientist and would be interested to hear a scientist/doctor’s take on this survival scenario.Piss is not sterile.
You’ll jump through any hoop to say the voters should have drank more piss instead of saying the piss should have cleaned itself up
I don’t just mean Gaza, I mean democratic candidates need to find a way to excite rural voters by giving them an actual path to financial stability
Your parable doesn’t even make sense, the election wasn’t lost by educated people refusing to drink piss, it was won by republicans by getting uneducated voters to happily eat shit thinking it’ll give them super powers. (I mean educated on the issues like “what is a tarrif”)
Don’t get pissed dude.
you’re not supposed to drink the camel piss. Hell, you weren’t even supposed to drink the bucket of shit!
You should have drank the pond scum. Would have at least bought you a few days until you get some help for dysentery.
But you decided to eat the sand. You poor dumb bastard, now you’re drier than turkey jerky.
Your own metaphor is a hopeless quagmire.
You DON’T drink the scum. You purify it by pulling only the essential water from the filth, leaving the filth behind.
So even in this mess of a parable, of your own concoction, you’re getting it wrong. The key was for the Harris admin aka the puddle, to understand that humans cannot survive on toxic water. The only way to survive is to remove the pathogens.
Sorry I didn’t really read your story
You should ask the pond to be less scummier
Also I’m not American, and if I was you don’t know who I would have voted for
You poor dumb bastard
Cringe. There’s no other word for it. This makes me cringe. It’s cringe worthy.
It’s amazing how we get convinced to fight each other. The reason the orange felon got elected is that people voted for him. They are at fault that he got elected. Stop bickering amongst each other and call out those who would incite you to do so!
If your candidate loses, its the voters fault. If my candidate loses, its the candidates fault.
if orange is black and black is spaghetti, Halloween is 16 inches away.
see, I can make nonsensical arguments too.
Yes you should have voted for Kamala and yes it’s the Democrats at fault. Both are true.
