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Either you are able to vote on harm reduction alone, knowing that your pick isn’t ideal…
Or you are so ideologically locked in that nothing but “your brand” is enough.
Harris sucks but the vote was to keep MORE, NEW people from being at risk.
Republicans always seem to win with shitty candidates because they understand this intrinsically. They do not care that DJT is an utter buffoon, they care that he will enact the shit they want, and now they’re getting it because they refused to stay home. As the saying goes: Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.
So Republicans backed their guy, just like they did the last two elections, and there was no line that could not be crossed that would convince even a fraction of Republicans to not vote. Meanwhile, virtue signaling lefties desperately tried to convince me for months that I shouldn’t vote for Biden OR Harris because they were both equally culpable for a genocide that is happening halfway across the world, as if Trump would have been any better.
Yeah, we absolutely deserve to be punished for this. We let this happen. If Dems could actually get a solid trifecta in the government, we might have a shot at actually reversing some of the damage that has been accumulating since Reagan, but that requires people to set aside their purity tests and hold their noses at the ballot box. The real elitists are the Democratic base who feel personally slighted at the idea of compromise or harm reduction.
What are the odds Dems win the House?
It’s highly unlikely.
Stop it Patrick, you’re scaring the liberals. Imagine how shocking it must be for reality to prove that the leftists were correct about everything this entire time. Again.
Really weird how leftists have a 100% accuracy rate about all of history going back 150 years, but I’m sure the liberals will take some Ws eventually.
Just keep barreling towards fascism, libs! I believe in you!
To be fair, the Republicans did all these same things and won all three branches, so…
Turns out people who want those things can vote for Republicans. Who offer more of those things!
And the people who did not want those things stayed home.
Republicans had a primary.
This point needs to be driven home over and over and over again. The democrats haven’t held a real primary where the DNC operatives weren’t interfering since 2008! which coincided with the election in a landslide of Obama after he won an extremely competitive primary.
Democrats learned the wrong lesson from that election, they thought it was identity politics that won the landslide. No idiots, it was democracy itself. Of course being the first black man to be president helped him but having an appealing platform that outcompeted everyone else’s (and a better record re Iraq war, he voted against it as senator unlike Clinton) won him the popular mandate that led to the landslide in the general. Against a formidable candidate! John McCain was no joke and I think todays democrats and even progressives would be thrilled to have him as president if he were still alive compared to our current options.
They’ve disenfranchised so many voters with their shenanigans, that it has cost them 2 out of the last 3 elections, and the person they had to beat should have been the most easily defeated candidate in the history of the United States. I would have voted for a literal dog over trump. At least a dog wouldn’t intentionally burn the country to the ground so he could rule over the ashes.
I would vote for a dog over any human let’s be real. Wouldn’t you?!
They would of lost three elections if covid never happened. Biden got in by the skin of his teeth on that one when it shouldn’t of even been close. The fact that this election is a Republican landslide is just fucking embarrassing.
Because right wingers want that and left wingers don’t, that’s some surprising maths.
It shouldn’t have to be repeated so often that maybe Republican voters aren’t who the Democratic party needs to be gearing itself to attract.
“So what you’re saying is we need to move further to the right.”
- Democrats and pundits
I don’t know why everyone keeps insisting that courting the right was a stupid move. I personally know a lot of life long Republicans that got real tired of the MAGA stuff. In this matchup specifically, trying to scoop the conservative-but-not-MAGA vote makes sense by the numbers. Obviously it didn’t pan out, but at least in theory, there should be a sizeable bloc of voters there.
Exactly the message I expect them to take away from this, if 2016 and 2020 are any indication. Zero introspection.
It has always been that we could go left or we go right when things got tough for the masses. It was unlikely that USA was gonna go left, so we had to go right. Either way, capitalism wins.
“Voters voted for the choice furthest to the right because they wanted the choice on the left to be more left”
More like out of 2 right wing options people went for the more right wing option.
Democrats have been moving further left ever since progressives joined them. This “democrats aren’t left enough” talking point is in line with the Russian strategy to polarize American politics more so that we dont get anything done.
Yes. People want a populous movement. In the absence of left-wing populism (like socialist reforms), they will take right win populism (fascism).
Democrats campaigned on making billionaires pay their fair share and addressing health care and student loans etc so socialist reforms. But the majority of voters were still convinced that that would make them worse off unfortunately.
That might have been in the footnotes of the DNC platform, but Kamala said none of that.
Here’s a quote from Stephen Semler’s newsletter:
For example, in this video clip, Stephen Colbert asks Harris, “Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be and what would stay the same?” Harris replies: “Sure. Well, I mean, I’m obviously not Joe Biden. So that would be one change. But also I think it’s important to say with 28 days to go, I’m not Donald Trump.”
First, that doesn’t answer the question. Second, that description applies to literally everyone except for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This is the quality of candidate you get when the Democratic Party chooses one for you.
When it was being discussed who would replace Biden before he dropped out, many black abd female voters were pissed it was even up for discussion considering Kamala was the vice president. They saw it as her job to be next in line after Biden.
If someone else was chosen all those votes would’ve been lost and we would still have lost.
Since we lost anyways, I would have preferred to have an actual primary process, even if it was a very abbreviated one at the convention. Destroying democracy to save democracy never made sense to me.
It’s easy to say that in hindsight.
Many many many people were saying that the entire time. It has been clear to anyone not drinking the Biden kool aid that he hasn’t been as lucid as he used to be, and many people said that if we had debates and Joe Biden won, at least we would have given others a voice. Anyone who supported Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, etc. especially was infuriated there were no debates, just a coronation. Many people were mad that certain states even canceled the democratic primaries. When Biden dropped out, it would have not been that strange for several prominent democrats to throw their hats in the ring - Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, etc. and at least have some sort of debate at the convention.
Did they? If they did, then they did a terrible job of it, since many people didn’t hear that message. The message that everyone heard over and over again is “I’m not trump”. Besides, promising to get rid of student loans as a campaign promise when you just spent 4 years proving that you can’t really deliver on that promise seems unwise.
They did and it was loud and clear and everyone I know that voted republican did so because they thought democrats were bad for the economy and polls showed that.
You’re scapegoating democrats for not doing enough when really there just wasn’t enough voters that supported them because of right wing propaganda.
Key word being, “addressing.” Medicare for All? Nope. They’re going to address healthcare costs. Student loans insanely expensive for the majority of Americans? They already tried addressing it. What are they going to do? Eliminate the filibuster to pass legislation? Stack the Supreme Court?
They’ve been a little better on taxing the wealthy, but raising taxes doesn’t mean much if you believe the revenue is going towards the military industrial complex or, “woke,” agenda, based on your political leanings.
Liberal half measures aren’t going to work anymore. They need a full-blown progressive agenda and the balls to ram it through whatever institution is in their way.
If democrats try to move left and they lose because of it and then people like yourself scapegoat them for not doing enough then they will move further right next time because that’s what the voters vote for.
Your response is an example of letting perfection become the enemy of progress.
WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? We’re two days out from a centrist campaign leading to the largest fucking bloodbath in recent memory, and you’re already trying to find excuses to not try appealing to the left? Rejoin reality, dude.
If we don’t move further right now and instead move left then we might move further right later???
Democrats moved left and there was a “blood bath”. And your take is that we should ignore the polls saying it was because of inflation and move further left. You’re the one that needs to log off lemmy for a while and rejoin reality.
The Democrats moved left? Fucking when? They’ve been moving to the right my entire life, and I’m not young. This election they campaigned with Liz Cheney on arming Isreal, a harsh border policy, and adding Republicans to their cabinet.
And yeah, it was the economy and the inflation; it’s killing the working class. So why did she tailor her message entirely to the middle class? Their economic message was, “inflation is better, the status quo is good, your wrong if you think the economy needs to change.” Then they lost, and your takeaway is, “well, changing to a left-wing economic message would obviously be bad.” Get a grip, dude.
Biden campaigned on similar promises and ideals like resolving student debt and improving the economy. Even personally relevant promises like creating a public health jobs corps (relevant to my degree and field of study). The only thing he sufficiently accomplished were the initial vaccination efforts, but it’s as if we stopped having an actual president into and after 2022: The filthy rich managed to get exponentially richer with this war-supply economy and stock market presidency. My student debt is still a burden in the back of my mind and all of my available graduate-entry jobs are either severely underpaid or shilled out to robots that also vet my applications. Until the war profiteer and stock market billionaires actually pay their fair share (which they should have been a few years ago) or provide citizens with jobs that can sustain a healthy living, any good socialist promises that are made are flat-out lies because senility and flacid mental acuity won’t even be a valid excuse anymore.
Biden tried to do things like forgive student debt and was blocked by republicans and you scapegoat him for it? That’s a good way to make sure no one tries again. But maybe that’s your true intentions.
Biden was actually fairly committed to the student debt forgiveness, but his blind institutionalism meant he couldn’t actually achieve much. He wouldn’t push to remove the filibuster until late into his presidency and refused to discuss stacking the court. He was the wrong man to meet this moment in history, and we’ll be living with his failures for decades.
Democrats never had near enough seats in Congress to actually expand the Supreme Court or remove the filibuster. He said he would support it but if he would’ve said more than that you would be blaming him for not accomplishing that also, even though it was never possible.
There were procedural methods they could have used to eliminate the filibuster, which he refused to even consider for half his term. They would have needed the House to expand the court, but if they had the balls to do it, then they could have run on it. Instead, they tried nothing and got nothing.
People didn’t vote. Significantly less turnout this year than 2020. Further left is more exciting than an idiot chasing endorsement from Republicans.
It’s stupid, but if people weren’t stupid Trump wouldn’t have been a candidate.
2020 had the highest voter turnout in the history of our country because of the pandemic. Without a major motivator like the pandemic, we are not going to hit those numbers again.
So naturally there will be less voter turnout this year.
Democrats and liberals will use any excuse not to consider progress
I know someone who didn’t vote and gave this exact logic.
What logic specifically?
He wanted an actual progressive and refused to vote for a Democrat since the Democrats aren’t embracing progressivism, despite the fact that not voting for a Democrat means there’s a greater likelihood that we end up even further from progressivism.
In short: the exact logic in your comment.
I know many people that voted democrat in 2020 and switched republican this year because they thought inflation was caused by Bidens progressive policies. The polls support my experience:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Primaries happened. Biden won it, Harris likely wouldn’t have, but by the time Joe dipped it was too late to do the process again.
“Primaries” where they strongly discouraged anyone from running if they wanted a future in the democrat party. A primary against someone with brain worms who’s not so secretly a trumper is not a real primary.
Snap elections get held in every civilized country
They could have called one right there
Universal healthcare exists in every civilized country too. America is special… and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Oh, you mean the primary where no one else had universal ballot access? Where there was only one actually viable challenger, Dean Phillips, who the Democrats drove out of politics afterwards? That primary?
Like, FFS, even the pundit class doesn’t pretend that was a serious primary. Stop pretending a ceremonial vote means something.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field? He was the incumbent. It’s practically a given they’ll get the nod with token effort. The last time the incumbent actually almost kinda sorta had a challenge was 1992, it was Bush Sr., and he still shat all over them like 75%/25%. Even Carter in 1980 got the nod and he was polling at like a 28% approval rating at times. Stop pretending that a full primary wouldn’t have just been throwing money into a dumpster.
Now if you want to say Joe should have held to what he was considering in 2019 and not running a second term then we’d be in absolute agreement. His hubris fucked all of us.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field?
In a real primary? Fucking yes, are you fucking kidding me? The man couldn’t get through a single debate against Trump without looking like a dementia patient. You think he was going to make it through the same process that got him elected in 2020? A process he only got through because the party coordinated around him to block Sanders? You’re out of your fucking mind if you think he be the nominee if he had to get on stage with a single primary opponent.
These people are fucking delusional and the gaslighting is out of control. A real primary would of produced a democrat winner in the general.
In a real primary? Fucking yes, are you fucking kidding me?
If Carter got the nod, then Biden 100% would have. Shit, Trump got the nod too in 2020 and his approval rating never broke 50% his entire disasterpiece of a presidency. The only time a elected incumbent didn’t get the nod was Franklin Pierce, in 1852.
A process he only got through because the party coordinated around him to block Sanders?
And that is exactly why he would get the nod. The big money Dem donors have made it abundantly clear that even milquetoast progressive policies simply are not in the cards. They’d do everything possibly including hired gunmen to ensure Bernie didn’t get the nomination.
OK, so, first of all, you gotta stop with the historical parallels, man. There just aren’t any. No one this old ever ran before. Carter wasn’t sundowning during Kennedy’s challenge. If there had been a real primary, then everything that happened during the Trump debate happens a little earlier; Biden shows a severe level of cognitive decline, the entire country goes, “Holy shit, this guy’s trying to sign up for another 4 years?” and we get a new candidate. We know it’s what would have happened in the primary because it’s what did happen in the general.
Second, you’re right, they never would have let Bernie win. My point wasn’t that Bernie would win, but that Biden only won his first primary because they coordinated around him to beat Bernie. They might have been able to win the general if there had been a primary challenger that could at least fake a progressive agenda like Obama did, but we’ll never know.
OK, so, first of all, you gotta stop with the historical parallels, man.
Hence why I also pointed out approval rating, and how Carter had a lower one then Biden and they still let him go again, and how Trump’s was dogshit and he still got the nod too. Unless you’re going to also say candidate approval rating somehow also “doesn’t count”, in which case we may as well stop wasting each others time because we’re clearly never going to see eye to eye on this.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what point you’re even trying to make anymore. Your original point seemed to be, “Yes, we did have a real primary,” and when I pointed out that no one considers what happened in 2024 a legitimate primary your point became, “Well, they would have given it to him anyway, like they did for Carter.” That would seem to invalidate your original point, but it doesn’t really matter, because as I said twice, Carter wasn’t hiding severe cognitive decline from his primary opponent. Now you want to talk about approval ratings while again hiding from that fact.
So, one more time; explain to me how Biden gets through the scrutiny of a primary campaign, with real challengers, without everyone seeing his cognitive decline? Why wouldn’t the thing that forced him off the ticket at the 11th hour force him off the ticket during a primary? Explain it to me or don’t reply.
Liberals hubris has always fucked us.
Not our problem, Democrats decided to run a person no one trusted or liked and instead of listening to voters they kept him in until the donor class spoke up and said no. A real indicator of runs the country.
And that was likely by design, or at least people think it was. Kamala wouldn’t have won the primaries, so the DNC rat fucked another primary to put their chosen candidate on the ballot.
And it’s not like Biden could have been forced out of the race any earlier.
Those are facts. Do not use them. It makes you look like a decent person and nobody likes that.
It happened because fascist enablers didnt vote
110% this. And they still don’t get it.
If only the DNC had given them something to vote for, instead of appealing to fear and guilt
Fear was all that was needed this cycle. Just wait, we will see soon.
To be clear: Harris sucks. Trump is a monster. Avoiding trump was all we needed to care about.
Fear was all that was needed this cycle.
If that was true it would have worked. It didn’t.
Well yeah cause a bunch of silly gooses couldn’t hold their nose to keep an open fascist rapist out. Harris didn’t pass the purity test and now we all live in maralago USA
No. Its the peoples fault for not voting. When the option is fascism or not they shouldnt need anything else. Aside from that Harris had policies which were known and easy to find. There is 0 excuse not to vote when democracy is on the line. Now you never have the chance to vote in a free election again
Threatening and guilting people didn’t work, in fact it failed miserably, and your answer is to double down on it? Congratulations, you’re now the DNC chair.
But they aren’t wrong.
Maybe people should vote every single time then things would improve. But theyre not so they won’t. Congrats on the own goal.
It’s the candidates job to give people a reason to vote. Harris clearly didn’t do a good enough job of that.
The fuck it is.
Someone on reddit (yes I know) put it well so I’ll just copy pasta-
If you pay attention to any of the teaching subreddits you’ll see a common refrain. When students aren’t paying attention it is deemed the teacher’s fault by administration and parents because the teacher should be able to make the class fun or interesting. Those in power don’t hold the students responsible for learning - it is the teacher’s job not only to teach but to make the students want to learn.
It is strikingly similar to the way many people talk about civics. It is the Democrats’ job not only to govern, but to make voters want to vote. But, that is not how it is supposed to work. Everyone has the responsibility to vote. It is only the candidate’s job to convince you to vote for them while you are at the polls.
The idea that a candidate has to make you want to vote in the first place is absolute nonsense. It’s a civic responsibility. People are just too lazy. A student who doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to get an education is shooting themself in the foot. A citizen who doesn’t take the opportunity to participate in an election is shooting themself in the foot.
People shouldn’t wait to be inspired to go vote. They should do it as a matter of course.
Okay, but please explain to me how you intend for students to magically become more willing to learn, or citizens more willing to vote. You fight the battles you can, you don’t just blame the world or people for being the way that they are. Sure, as an individual, you can do better. Maybe eben influence those around you. Now what about the millions of others who have to change their behavior in order to enact change on the country-wide scale? To fight at that scale you have to be in a position of power, and the only people who are in those positions of power in the US who aren’t republicans are democrats. The responsibility lies with the democrats to do whatever it takes to improve voter turnout or fix problems because nobody else has the means and isn’t a republican (and good luck trying to convince them to be less shit). Blaming the people just makes them pissed at you and gets you nowhere.
Funny that the Republicans don’t seem to have this problem
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That’s what they told me in 2008 too. Then Obama won, and spent 8 years acting exactly like Bush. If the Democrats want their credibility back they need to give us more than just fear of the alternative. They failed and we’re all paying the price.
They’ve learned literally nothing since 2016, same tired Playbook over and over, kill progressive campaigns, neuter those that win regardless, blame progressives when nothing materially changes for the populace and they don’t vote for the DNCs annoited candidate. Rinse and repeat
It’s a shame too, Harris would have been ok for a lukewarm neo liberal.
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I did vote, and it didn’t do shit. Turns out lots of people want a platform more robust than “vote for me or die”
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The people screaming about protecting democracy accepted a candidate no one voted for and was installed. Installing her was the only way to get her on the ballot.
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In the eyes of many leftists and left leaning liberals the DNC shifted too far to the right. They openly welcomed right wing support and right wing policy. They deserved to lose.
We are not Democrat, why would we vote for democrats? I can’t speak for everyone else here but I’m a communist, I would never vote for either right wing capitalist owned politician
You are a fascist enabler. You had the choice between fascism and no fascism and chose not to vote. Therefore you picked fascism. Call yourself what you want. You showed that when given the choice you choose to support a fascist.
The only no fascist candidates were green or socialist
Harm reduction. Given 2 choices you pick the one that doesn’t put a target on someone’s back that doesn’t already exist. Then you advocate to remove targets. LGBTQ and immigrants have a fresh target they didn’t last week, due to trump winning.
Total at-risk people is up with trump, and a communist candidate was never an option.
The fascists in this equation are the DNC and RNC. The enablers of fascism would be the DNC and by proxy anyone that voted for them.
The DNC were the party that was against fascism this election. The fascists were Trumpists. The enablers the non voters. They picked fascism over democracy
