Bernie.
Bernie was what got us to vote for Biden. Biden formed a comittee with Bernie and actually adopted a bunch of his ideas. That’s what got the left to vote for Biden.
That and all of us were reeling from the economy after coronavirus.
Meanwhile Harris told the left to fuck off with your Palestinians are human nonsense and tried to get the Liz Cheney constituency (that doesn’t exist).
Ten Million commies in the US - lol - if only.
Flaunting your Dick Cheney endorsement isn’t being insufficiently left. Its political suicide.Covid is the reason democrats won in 2020, but they assumed they won because they’re geniuses. Instead of trying to appeal to voters, they just tried to tell people to vote against trump. Turns out that isn’t enough to motivate people when there isn’t a pandemic raging on that is making people’s lives miserable. Democrats really need to get their act together because 2028 won’t be against trump, so the “anyone but trump” strategy will be even more useless and all that time spent kissing the asses of ghouls like dick cheney just tells people that republicans are okay to vote for.
Biden won by a really thin margin in swing states, the book Lucky went into detail about how close of a call it was, but he interpreted it as some huge popular win because of the high vote totals.
He flipped a couple of historically red states - Arizona and Georgia - for the first time in decades.
Should be noted that Dems still did reasonably well in these states and in downballot races. Same with the Midwest. Dem senators and governors won seats in states Harris lost.
Really makes you think.
Oh dang I didn’t know that about Dem seats in states that Harris lost. Here in PA the people may have voted out a LONG standing Democratic Senator because people showed up for Trump and then went right down the ballot.
Gallego won Arizona against Trump-favorite Kari Lake. He took 90k more votes than Harris.
Josh Stein picked up nearly 400k more votes than Harris in NC, to clinch the governor’s race.
House races were even more tilted. Probably the most glaring case was Rashida Tlalib, who won twice as many votes as Harris in her Deerborn Michigan district
The pandemic of 2024 is corporate profiteering. A great example is Kroger admitting they raised prices higher than inflation for profit.
People generally blame the current administration for that. They are the one that kept trotting out stock market numbers and unemployment numbers, and acting like things are fine.
If they wouldnt even acknowledge the problem, how are they going to attract voters?
Thats not even bringing up gaza, but I dont think either candidate will change that situation in any way. The current administration is signaling they think this is a great opportunity to shake up the middle east for the benefit of western countries, cause colonialism can’t ever die I guess.
All trump ever said was end it, that it should be over already. Thats just as vague as kamala saying she will do everything in her power to end the war. They both could be implying to carpet bomb gaza, but we won’t know until we know right?
Neither candidate talked about why we should allow israel to lobby in our politics either.
Well be lucky if there are elections any more after this term. He already said if he’s elected there won’t be another election. You think he’s joking? This mf isn’t giving up power willingly. And with his sycophantic base, you’d be surprised what he can accomplish.
I’m in literal fear for our country.
There’s no doubt that trump will be bad for the country, but he also says a lot of things like how he’d lock up hillary clinton. At this point all we can do is buckle up and hope for the best.
Yeah well what worries me is how badly he took giving up power last time. The only reason he even SOMEWHAT chilled the fuck out is because he knew he had a chance in 2024 to get it back.
If he gives it up this time it’s gone for good.
You don’t think he’s thought of nothing else this entire time? He’s definitely got plans to turn this bitch into a dictatorship. “I need more generals like Hitler had.”
The signs are all there.
It’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t say it’s guaranteed. Presidents enjoy an immunity that is not afforded to most others. He got impeached twice and has had a bunch of court cases against him but what has that meant? There is no chance in hell that democrats would actually pursue putting him in jail so basically he has no consequences to face. He’ll carry out his second term as president, do all sorts of awful things, and then he’ll leave without democrats pursuing any punishments. If george w bush can escape without being arrested as the war criminal that he is, then trump doesn’t stand a chance at punishment either, so he has no reason to install a dictatorship to save himself.
Speaking of george w bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHVmJlMF_Lg
So yeah, I wouldn’t sweat an explicit dictatorship when the rich already completely control the system. It’s much easier to horde wealth while pretending we have a democracy and the pretense of legitimacy that brings than it is with an overt dictatorship. You can see this with people online making all sorts of excuses for this “democracy” of ours.
True, but also the republicans won’t have a trump to vote for.
He really would be the God-Emperor then, a withered corpse figurehead.
What got people to vote for Biden but not Harris? A dire need. Not voting for Biden meant that Trump stayed in office. Even though the stakes were the same, too many people sat on the couch thinking it was going to happen again and they didn’t have to go.
Negative. That the democratic candidate had a vagina and breasts is why ten million people sat home.
I think it’s a result of the “divide and conquer” game the republicans played. Stichwort Israel and Palestine.
Look, the Democrats have to own this loss, for once, like they should have last time. It is clearly insufficient to try and frighten democratic supporters with a probability of fascism which we’ve never experienced before. It is clearly insufficient to abandon the working class as they have for so long. We should never fund or promote far right candidates in primaries. The media should not provide free coverage for outrage candidates to drive viewershop. It is clearly a mistake to try and court conservative voters, because hardly any have ever crossed over. It was certainly a mistake for Biden to run again, and then to drop out so late, far too late to have a primary.
Maybe the fact she is a minority woman turned people off. I don’t know. It’s a stupid reason not to run women, but that possibility exists.
But it damn sure isn’t the only reason we lost.
It was the promise that he could be negotiated to the left.
Instead Joe gave us a country producing the most oil and gas in world history, no movement on healthcare, etc.
The weather is going crazy because of the increase in fossil fuels Biden presided over.
He broke the deal that he could be brought left on economic/environmental/medical issues.
Kamala promised more of the same.
How can you expect anyone to trust the same deal from the VP that the P didn’t make good on?
Joe didn’t deliver, and Kamala didn’t promise anything new.
Four more years of wildfire.
Yeah, best to go with the guy who says he thinks climate change is a liberal hoax
Ok, one side says it with actions, but the other says it with actions and words.
That sounds like one side being honest.
Drillin’ Joe was sure acting like it was a hoax!
I voted Kamala, but I understand sitting out.
Listen, as a brown person in America, just be honest.
You caea about the genocide of brown people elsewhere, just not here.
It’s OK, the vote is over, you don’t have to deny it anymore, we get it, it’s not like we’re surprised or anything, it’s basically America’s legacy.
The shocking part?
We thought you at least cared about women, but you’re literally no better than the racist sexist fascist neoconfederates that are proud to vote Trump.
Just be honest with your words, your actions already spoke the truth.
You realize the person you replied to already said they voted D…
Right?
But even if they didn’t explicitly state it, the ones who didn’t hold their nose aren’t going to be hanging out on political forums.
Why would they?
They’re politically disengaged because “both parties are the same”.
The way to get them involved is moving the party to the left, not the right like we have been. It’s always a great time to start, and the job is never over.
The billionaires won’t stop buying off both parties, we gotta try to save at least one party.
You caea about the genocide of brown people elsewhere, just not here.
What was Biden doing to stop the killing in his own country?
You’ve got states lawlessly executing innocent men. You’ve got women bleeding out on hospital floors because doctors don’t want to be convicted of doing an illegal abortion. Over a million COVID deaths and counting. The rollback of post-COVID economic relief combined with the spike in inflation has driven up national poverty and thrown thousands more Americans out on the street despite millions of vacant units. Storms are killing Americans. Power failures are killing Americans. Lack of pharmaceuticals are killing Americans. Police violence. Vigilantism. The oppressive heat.
Biden’s been in charge though it all.
Just be honest with your words, your actions already spoke the truth.
Right back atcha.
Ignorant moron.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/us/alabama-hanging-death-dennoriss-richardson/index.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/fbi-civil-rights-investigation-nc-police-shooting-1.6004160
There are hundreds of these investigations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Chauvin was in 2021
Seriously, as a brown person, shut the fucking fuck up! You have no idea what living in this country under republicans is like, you can’t begin to imagine it and you need to take your privileged dick out of your overprivileged ass and realize what many of us are going to have to face now.
Literally have the KKK reforming in anticipation of his inauguration, it’s “good people on both sides” all over again.
Seriously, as a brown person, shut the fucking fuck up! You have no idea what living in this country under republicans is like
Tell it to Eric Adams, a man who took office under the Democratic flag and threw our people directly under the bus. Tell it to Lori Lightfoot, London Breed, John Whitmire - it seems like every Dem mayor has made it open season on the homeless and the vulnerable.
But you don’t want to see this, because you think politics is a spectator sport.
Literally have the KKK reforming in anticipation of his inauguration,
With the blessing of every law enforcement agency in the country, it seems.
Blue Lives Dems don’t seem to mind.
I could not dream of better evidence of a Lemming being a troll than replying to someone saying they’re scared for their life under the current political administration with “you think politics is a spectator sport”.
Dude you have problems.
Trump literally told the proud boys to stand by, called neo-nazis “good people” and I just don’t even get where you’re going.
Politics isn’t a sport, and the fuckers who didn’t vote deserve the blame because people will be hurt.
You’re the one who seems to be trying to make it a game.
… My actions of voting Harris? My actions of working to get others to vote?
It’s time to build a real alternative to America’s legacy of settler-colonialism, starting at a local level.
Yeah, given the choice between racism, mass deportations, mass incarcerations of trans people, and abuse of the office to punish his political opponents, and none of those things, I can definitely understand staying home too. They were really the same on all the other issues, and those are the ones that matter.
I didn’t do it, but I respect holding back in this election to demand a better option in the next one.
I hear the next election will be the most important and pivotal ever!
I hope the choices won’t be corpo trash and fascist dictator.
I hope the next time I’m trapped in a bus with ten other people, and we have a choice between driving the bus off a cliff and turning around and going back into town to get ice cream, I hope it’s a better flavor of ice cream. I voted ice cream this time, even though I hate rocky road. But the next time it better not be.
“But the dems say that every year!” You saw what Trump did the first time he was in office. You’ve seen how directly he can control all three branches of the federal government. You’ve heard what he promised to do this time around. How can anyone with more than six brain cells possibly justify staying home?
Kamala isn’t “getting the wrong ice cream flavor” compared to Trump.
She is still genocide, racism, incarceration, transphobia and the rest which you call Trump.
She just sugarcoats it.
The sugarcoating does make it palatable, but a palatable slavery to the rich is still a slavery to the rich.
I don’t want a country run by a few guys getting rich off of bombing and incarcerating.
If you talk to anyone affected by the proposed policies you’d know there’s a fucking lightyear of distance between the two. Its not sugar coating. You can measure the difference in gallons of human blood.
Gay and trans people are fucked by this. The supreme court is fucked by this. Ukraine is fucked by this. The climate is fucked by this. Immagrants are fucked by this. There’s now a real risk of entire cities in the US having the military used on them if they defy police. I’m sure you saw the people in portland being disappeared in vans during the riots there in 2020.
Every extra person that dies or suffers because of this shit is on the bloody hands of assholes that sat this election out because picking a lesser evil was too hard of a choice for their delicate constitutions.
You are doing all these people a disservice by trying to console them for being cowards and sitting things out. And they are cowards. The only sugar coating going on is to say they are not.
And now we need to toughen them up. Because they chose a more difficult path for everyone.
She is still racism, incarceration, transphobia and the rest which you call Trump.
[citation needed]
I don’t want a country run by a few guys getting rich off bombing and incarcerating.
No one does. But putting Kamala in office would have at least given us an easier conduit towards getting out of it.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
You missed the second part: good men to do nothing, and your candidate to make a bunch of shitty shitty decisions.
Its utilitaritarian philosophy. Its saying if you stand by and do nothing an even worse person will do things in your name. The result of nonvoters here was trump. its rather explicit. By not voting “your guy” is whoever wins, aka Trump. That is the essence of the statement.
critics of acts of utilitarianism raise three strong objections against it. According to these critics, utilitarianism a) approves of actions that are clearly wrong, b) undermines trust among people, and c) is too demanding because it requires people to make excessive levels of sacrifice.
Bystanders have a duty to step in.
Michael Moore called Trump a Molotov Cocktail in 2016.
Project 2025 is going to reshape the federal government. It is structured as a new constitution. It defines the roles and checks/balances of various government agencies at greater specificity than the constitution.
We need to produce a progressive counter constitution that promises something better.
Project 2025 is a specific deal with America.
We need a better offer, and the people need to trust that the person running will enact it.
I agree with all that. I’m just asking you to stop coddling people who have made all our lives worse because they the prospect of voting vexes them. Do you think democrats will come up with better policies because they lost?
We’re now further from a better deal for america than we have been in a while.
Believe Climate Change is real, but insist we can’t do anything to stop it as your base is driven insane by the loaming crisis.
Or deny climate change is happening and use your state agents to suppress dissenting views, so that people aren’t terrified all the time.
These are your only two choices.
Thats how our shitty elections work, yes.
But we all know you don’t give a shit, you probably didn’t even bother to register to vote. Joking about how few extra palestinians would die under trump in that other thread is kind of a giveaway you’re not interested in actually doing anything.
we all know you don’t give a shit
Every accusation is a confession
deleted by creator
Joe didn’t deliver, and Kamala didn’t promise anything new.
Joe delivered the Inflation Reduction Act. It invests hundreds of billions of dollars into various climate initiatives over 10 years. That includes renewable generation, grid storage, EV, and nuclear generation. Then there’s infrastructure investment, which included much needed investments in transit and intercity rail.
Mean is no one going to call out the strategy for like the last month to possibly 3 months was her pandering as hard as she could to Republicans moderate and isolating the leftist Democratic base?
Of course not. Then they would have to learn that they can’t out Republican a Republican.
Are you fucking kidding? Because Biden 2020 was a progressive platform and Harris 2024 was a centrist one. They weren’t even remotely similar. Biden may be a centrist, but he’s very pro-labor, and he could see how important the progressive base was that election, so he literally sat down with Sanders and hammered out a platform that they could get behind. And while I’ve got a lot of problems with Joe Biden, he actually was very committed to that platform. He really wanted BBB to get through and he kept trying to find ways to abolish student debt.
Harris, on the other hand, had a handful of disparate, vaguely left policy positions, like the first-time homebuyer’s credit and legalizing pot, but her campaign was mainly centered on economic opportunity for the middle class. She also committed wholeheartedly to the most right-wing polices of the Biden administration, like arming Israel and cracking down on the border. But worst of all, she made bipartisanship and Republican consensus a huge part of her campaign, promising to add Republicans to her cabinet , campaigning with Liz Cheney, and even praising Dick Fucking Cheney.
TL;DR, Biden campaigned like Obama in 2008, Harris Campaigned like Hillary in 2016. And the results were the same.
Do you even remember 2020? Nobody fucking wanted Biden. He was never progressive. He was literally mocked for telling donors “Nothing will fundamentally change.” People turned out because of how much they hated Trump.
That actually occurred in 2019, not 2020. After Bernie nearly stomped him in the primary, he made a hard pivot to the left in 2020. As I said, he’s a centrist, but he actually does have a strong history of pro-union activism, which made him a fairly credible (though imperfect) messenger for a populous platform.
It’s almost unfathomable how many people failed to show up to vote, if they disliked Trump that much in 2020. What has Trump done to gather support or apathy about this in so many people?
It was more that Kamala did nothing to get them off the couch.
Biden at least promised student loan forgiveness and did try. It was a shit attempt but credit where it’s due he tried and ended up being able to at least forgive a bunch of public service loans. Kamala promised, what? Help to buy a house? Ok sure. Because we can totally afford that with the cost of groceries today.
Maybe we underestimated how much Covid forced/gave everyone time to pay attention to politics. Or perhaps people saw Trump dodge accountability at every turn and disillusionment in the system bred apathy. It could also be online manipulation pushing Gaza as making Harris/Biden just as bad as Trump. Probably all of the above.
I get that but 15 mil people is a lot. Needs looking into imho.
Agreed. There’s a tiny paranoid voice in the back of my head saying that with Trump every accusation is a confession and he made a lot of election fraud accusations.
Trump didn’t do that, Putin did.
So why didn’t he in 2020?
I bet a lot of people saw this as Hillary all over again
I sure did. I was genuinely hopeful when Biden stepped down, and when they announced Walz, I actually got excited. Then they started to try and reach moderate Republicans more and more, and I slowly realized they were doing it again. I felt like I was going insane watching them repeat the strategy that caused them to lose to the same guy in 2016.
Harris hired a lot of Clinton’s advisors.
We really need to purge the democratic advisors of their jobs if the dems ever wanna win again. They suck.
Silver lining, Trump may actually lock them up.
Don’t forget that Biden was the first president to walk a picket line. No other president had ever done that in America’s history. That single action won over the UAW.
Then, Biden fought back against the railroad corporations and won a contract for workers that includes PTO and other basic labor necessities.
Then, Biden reduced fentanyl overdoses, something that no president has done in like 30-40 years.
Couple this with BBB and IRA, you have a much more progressive president than what people give water to it.
Well, I don’t want to give him too much credit. Biden is and always has been a centrist. He has a mixed history on Civil Rights (cause he’s 120 years old), he has a pretty pro-bank history, he’s supported some anti-consumer stuff (like the anti-bankruptcy laws), and he even helped put Clarence Thomas on the bench. And that’s not even touching on his administration, where Gaza and the border will probably be his lasting legacy. But, two things that he’s always been pretty consistent on were unions and infrastructure, and he read the room in 2020 and leaned heavily into those things.
Oh I agree. He likely made all of those concessions because 1) he wanted to rally the base following the 2020 primaries, and 2) to stick it to the establishment Dems. Seems like Biden has grown to be quite the grumpy old man to those in the party.
I agree with you in Gaza and the border. Biden has shown no backbone to Netanyahu, and his administration introduced a border bill that echoed a lot of Trump’s sentiments.
On the whole, it’s hard to make the call on whether Biden or Harris would have been better to run against Trump, but all that matters now is that we continue the message that establishment Democrats got us here by chasing centrism instead of progress. We need to root out a lot of people who actually do the politicking in the party because if those people aren’t out, we’re doomed to make the same mistakes.
Hasan Piker put it well the other day. If this were a game of sports, underperformers would be benched pretty aggressively. If this were a job, underperformers would be put on a performance plan (hopefully) or fired straight up.
There are people consulting Democrats that have failed time and again since 2016, hell even 2008. They need OUT.
all that matters now is that we continue the message that establishment Democrats got us here by chasing centrism instead of progress. We need to root out a lot of people who actually do the politicking in the party because if those people aren’t out, we’re doomed to make the same mistakes.
100% this. On Monday, I’m calling my state and federal representatives and telling them DNC chair Jamie Harrison needs to go. Then I’m gonna start looking for movements that will primary anyone who still thinks incrementalism and centrism are a path forward. From now on, Medicare for All and UBI need to be the bare minimum standard for anyone that wants a D in front of their name.
remember earlier this year when leftists were saying biden never did anything and that he was too old, and started refusing to vote for him and calling for him to drop out, and he did?
remember the six months following that when leftists were complaining that the person they got biden to drop out for wasn’t good enough and how they weren’t going to vote for her?
and now that trump won suddenly leftists are singing biden’s praises and blaming trump’s win on the DNC picking a shit candidate?
I honestly have no clue how you constructed your conception of “leftists”.
Leftists != Tankies != Blue MAGA/Anon != Progressives
Biden did great things while in office. However, the Left has the liberty to continue pushing the current administration to go farther and implement more policies in line with their ideals. This is a force that counters the Right.
Biden did not go far enough on Gaza, and neither did Kamala. The same goes for corporations like those in the Oil & Gas sector that raised their prices following oil demobilization during COVID, as well as those that kept their prices high even years after like those producing consumer goods. Could have gone farther.
When the existing administration makes no concessions to those in the base that voted for that administration but not as their first choice, they have the right to criticize and call out the administration’s failure to represent them.
All of this would be fixed, or at least alleviated if we abandoned our political duopoly in favor of an electoral and congressional system that allowed for more diversity in government. Ranked choice seems to be taking off in many states.
Oh, and Kamala was great at the beginning. She took over for Biden, then chose Tim Walz. But then her administration attached itself to Biden, the person that spawned her campaign since the Democratic base utterly rejected him following the debate, and then went after the Right in hope of gaining more votes, taking their own base for granted.
Now that we have the full scope of Kamala’s campaign, she ran on much more conservative values than Biden did in his campaign leading up to the 2020 election.
This nuance is not something you’ll see in the mainstream media, perhaps not even on Lemmy. But this is the realm that hopefully progressives like me and some Leftists operate in.
Your mindset is honestly the same that many ignorant people share regarding science and the scientific method. Things can be true for different reasons and at different times.
i’m not debating any of that. i’m just kind of mad at leftists for being mad at the DNC for doing exactly what they told them to do.
The meme demanded, pjwestin delivered.
I do what I can. If the question had been asked in good faith, I might have even been nice about it.
I mean, Harris and the Dems didn’t even try, like seriously. Getting Beyonce and all the other celebrities our fellow moronic Americans already see as members of the illuminati is not trying, it’s literally the opposite
I mean, they spent $50m+ in fuckin Ohio! We lost fuckin Georgia while they were jerking off Cheney’s and trying to convince white folks in the suburbs not to be who they are
It’s legit insane to see the party straightup abandon working class demographics. Then again, this is the same party that now literally spends millions of dollars each primary on getting votes for Republican politicians
I was excited when Biden dropped out and Harris got this huge surge as the new young, not actively deteriorating candidate, then more excited when she announced Tim Walz and got a mid western, blue collar surge, and cautiously optimistic when everyone was briefly focusing on how anti-democratic and un-American Project 2025 was, but then started getting worried when all I saw running up to the election was stories about abortion rights and women voting against their husbands and celebrity endorsements.
It feels like Obama successfully ran a campaign of Hope and Change, and since then Democrats repeatedly campaign on maintaining the status quo and just not letting it slide too much further. And while it’s possible to win an election on the basis of ‘I’m at least somewhat competent’, it might not be in the US when so much of the population sees how fundamentally broken wealth inequality is at baseline.
Not discounting anything you wrote here, but it still entertains me when people call the 60 year old Kamala Harris young.
Fuck I would not have guessed that. She looks 10-20 years younger than that
Especially when next to Walz who is, I think, a year younger.
Black don’t crack, she genuinely looks youthful and it really helps that she can speak full sentences and thoughts without issues and/or changing topic like Biden or Trump
In contrast to Biden and Trump she looks 40.
I genuinely thought she was Gen X like my parents. She was a spring chicken compared to the other side.
Compared to Trump and Biden she’s a baby.
Maintaining the status quo is conservatism.
By definition that’s not what the left wants.
started getting worried when all I saw running up to the election was stories about abortion rights and women voting against their husbands and celebrity endorsements.
That surge when she started was all her campaign. The news and dis/info sources were all caught flat-footed.
They cast around for a few weeks testing what stories would “drive engagement”. Scandals? No. VP pick, like - Who’s it gonna be? No. Did she take any of the demented rapist’s baiting? Nope. Dang.
At the end, they settled on those, and that’s why it seemed different. They (corporate news, mostly) had finally wrested a narrative out of the campaign the campaign didn’t disagree with.
It was thin, a little schlocky, but either true or based on the campaigns ads, so - that got stamped on the campaign, and that’s why you remember that specific set of themes.
They tried everything except giving Dem voters what they want…
Which is what exactly? So many captain hindsights here.
How about some actual progressive policy? Not sure how people like you manage to play ignorance for this long.
You’re being hard headed if you want everyone you argue with in the comments to list exactly what they were looking for. How about you go into chat gpt and ask "what are some progressive policies that Democratic voters want that aren’t being reflected by the DNC and you’ll get exactly what you’re facetiously asking us
Let me be more clear: the votes aren’t there. You would like to believe that you as a progressive who is frustrated with Dems for not being progressive enough is a large enough constituency. I would like that to be the case as well. Unfortunately, almost all progressives voted on Kamala (and on HRC before that), and it’s just not enough.
I didn’t want Biden either.
I don’t know if y’all remember this, but the DNC decided to forgo a primary and forced Harris on us. When she ran in 2020 during the primary, she was so unpopular that she dropped out before any votes were cast.
Why did anyone ever think she would win? It’s almost identical to when the DNC put Hilary up against Trump.
You can only fool me with this “lesser evil” bullshit so many times.
And if they will spend the last minutes they had on primaries, first of all you wouldn’t participate in them anyway because you think they all rigged or whatever, and then you would not vote anyway because whoever won on primaries didn’t have enough time to campaign and you just feel like you don’t know enough about them to make a decision.
The levels of bullshit you have to come up with to avoid admitting you just collectively wanted Trump to win is astonishing really.You’re doing a whole lot of assuming there. I absolutely vote in the primaries.
Accusing me of wanting Trump in office is just dead wrong.
This is why the DNC fails. Y’all instantly attack anyone that doesn’t “fall in line” and immediately alienate them.
It’s honestly a bit pathetic that you can’t even hear any criticism of the party.
Hey, good for you, you voted. Most people didn’t.
They wanted Trump to win, or didn’t care who does. They are at fault. They had the ability to change the course of election and chose this way. Even trump supporters are less at fault, they’re in a cult, their brain fell off, they don’t have a choice.
Democratic party cares about opinions of people who vote for them, it’s that simple.
Any criticism of The Party immediately means they want Trump, “no it’s the voters who are wrong”
I vote in all the primaries - and it’s a sobering assessment that pulling “Uncommitted” in 2024 was my most enthusiastic electoral participation since 2008. I still voted for Dem harm reduction for the general - in a swing state thankyouverymuch - but look at where we are. 100% unified neo-fash/nativist government with Trump at the helm.
Why is the Democratic National Committee so afraid of either listening to, or allowing the electorate to participate?
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Obviously, the main reason for record turnout in 2020 was COVID.
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Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn’t even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was “untested” to put it mildly.
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The economic situation was different.
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Regardless of to what degree he was responsible, under Biden the US got entangled in foreign conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine.
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It’s not that there are 10 million commies that liked Biden but not Harris, it’s that us commies believe that you can win over the working class by appealing to material interests.
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Biden didn’t campaign with fucking Dick Cheney
Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn’t even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was “untested” to put it mildly
I believe democrats called bernie Sanders “unelectable” so I feel it’s fair to use that term in this circumstance.
- Trump was a bigot, which is what a majority of Americans wanted.
Weird how so many of you demonize the largest most powerful organization of antifascists in America instead of those who voted to give Trump power. It’s almost like you are trying to sow division in the anti-trump electorate 🤔
largest most powerful organization of antifascists in America
Please do not insinuate that the Democratic Party is Anti-Fascist. They have have adopted Trump’s 2016 border policy, are unconditionally funding a genocide, and will peacefully transfer power to those they acknowledge are fascists. They are not antifascists, they are merely the lesser fascists.
“The Democrats are fascists” is exactly the narrative MAGA espouses. When someone ostensibly anti-MAGA attacks the largest coalition of anti-MAGA forces, that person is pro-MAGA.
So in your mind no one can criticize the DNC’s failure to stop fascism or its concessions to said fascist movemet? Our glorious leadership must be blindly followed no matter how many times they fail or give ground to fascists?
This sort of thinking is why Democrats keep repeating the same mistakes. Any sort of criticism, even if it’s constructive, is treasonous. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Organizations either adapt or die. Rejection of criticism is a suicidal, accelerationist position. When people are so concerned with deflecting blame that they’re incapable of performing an honest, frank assessment of which strategies work and which don’t, then you are destined to fail no matter whether its a political party or anything else. If you’d prefer the Democrats keep doing things that don’t work because you’re afraid of them losing face, then your perspective is worthless.
Twisting of words and arguing against a point someone didn’t make is a common alt-right “debate” strategy. Readers please note that I did not say that members of the Democratic party are above criticism. The person I am replying to continues to blame antifascists for the rise of fascism.
The car just slammed into a wall and it’s backing up and preparing to slam in into the same wall for the third time, and I’m yelling at the driver to turn left so it doesn’t hit the wall again, and your response is like, “Why are you criticizing the driver? You must be trying to distract them so the car crashes!”
Since you’re totally not saying that the democrats are above criticism, since that’s only me “twisting your words,” why don’t you tell me what the democrats did wrong that they could’ve done differently or could do differently in the future to avoid an outcome like this?
Relevant user name
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Biden would not have won if we weren’t also in the middle of the greatest global pandemic in a century that the incumbent Trump administration was handling terribly.
Ok. First. Those votes were not, like, commies or something. Communists broadly (but not universally ) have no faith in electoral politics beyond the ability to demonstrate how useless electoral politics are for the kinds of change they see as required. The missing votes are likely non-explicitly-ideological Americans, and the disenfranchised left wing of the Democrat coalition, who are not revolutionary socialists - they are better described as social democrats. And why so many of them voted for Biden was, at least in significant part three things that you’re pretending don’t exist with this meme.
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Tremendous dislike of Trump… which is actually still true, but he was not currently the president during this election. Trump had just spent the last few months massively fucking up the pandemic response very publicly and got covid immediately prior to the election, which made him look stupid and incompetent.
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Because of COVID policies, voting had literally never been easier. Shit loads of people voted early because it was universally available. Led to highest turnout ever.
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A competitive democratic primary process meant that we had a candidate selection process people could believe in to some degree. Brenie and Biden ran, and Biden won. Bernie voters saw that, looked at the situation and said “This is tolerable because we had a real process, and we can accept Biden as a stop gap under the conditions of Trump needing to be removed, and Biden being a 1 term President”. It wasn’t 2016, where a significant portion of potential Democrat voters saw the DNC’s treatment of Bernie as unfair, and it wasn’t 2024 where Biden decided to run with no true Primary after the deal was “single term president”, then abruptly dropped out (good idea, shoulda done it 2 years earlier) and effectively appointed his successor by decree.
2020 was an anomaly, and as is true of 2020 in most data sets, using it as a comparison point requires many many qualifications, but Trump gained 40000 votes, Harris lost 10 million. Trump did not perform better, Harris lost voter enthusiasm, which hasn’t actually been on the Democrat’s side in presidential elections (which have more non-explicitly-ideological voters) since, like, Obama. It’s not even necessarily that she needed to be “more left”. It’s that she needed to reflect the public’s distrust of the political status quo and promise material gain for working people explicitly at the expense of someone else (Trump chose , for instance, immigrants and the democrats as the bad guys, but Harris could have chosen, say, rich fuckers like Musk) . She needed to be ready to rip up the floor boards, and she wasn’t even ready to say she’d break from fucking Biden (who is broadly unpopular) on policy.
I really, really wish y’all democrats would stop trying to purge your own party of any dissent, because y’all coming out of this with the right lesson will be the difference between a brief period of Republican control, or several elections cycles of Democrats being unviable as a party.
True. Thank you. It’s frustrating seeing the DNC shoot itself in the fucking foot to watch people on Lemmy start swinging on anyone but the people who made and executed the failure of a campaign strategy.
Hey everyone, when you see comments like this from a ““Leftist”” who only ever criticizes “The Dems” for right-wing victories, and never puts the responsibility on the actual, y’know, Trump supporters, that user is a MAGA supporter trying to divide the left and prevent the formulation of a broad antifascist coalition capable of changing the course the GOP has set.
These “non voters” did not actually sit out the election, they are trying to convince you to sit out the next one (or vote third party etc etc). Don’t fall for it! We are in this together.
Ugh. This is such a toxic attitude.
Dissent is a good thing. Criticizing yourself is necessary to prevent rot.
Claiming that anyone that disagrees with the party lines is a Russian or a Trump supporter is insane and smacks of McCarthyism.
This comment is arguing against points I did not make, and continuing to blame the antifascist coalition for the rise of fascism.
I wonder, what was the Democratic party wearing when they lost the election?
But blaming the party and sitting out, or voting 3rd party, everyone knew would lead to Trump winning, just like it did. Not voting for Harris was a vote for Trump, and makes those people just as complicity in his being elected as the people that voted for him. Trying to rationalize it as “Dems need to run a better candidate/campaign/etc” is just cover for not wanting to take responsibility for allowing the man everyone left of the GOP knew was a bad idea, back into power (and with numbers that are going to feed his ego into fascist wet dreams).
Moral of my rant is this - criticism of the party is fine and should be allowed/encouraged, but trying to blame the party for millions of people handing Trump the presidency is a bad faith argument and should be called out as such each and every time. We are all adults, everyone knew the consequences, and we all made a choice. And people need to start owning that instead of blaming the DNC for not being their unicorn party able to 100% represent a **WAY ** more diverse set of ideals than Trumps singular ideology of hate/fear.
/rant
I’m very sick and tired of being punished by the DNC for not falling in line.
Like why did they not make Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire before Trump got into office? How could they have not seen that one coming? Everyone saw that happening apparently except for the DNC.
Same with codifying Roe v Wade. They had many opportunities to codify it and then they supply did not. Now it’s gone.
Same thing with running the oldest presidential candidate of all time. When people started calling for him to step down, the DNC acted like there was so contingency plan for an 80 candidate.
And then it was the same shit when they ran Harris. She was so unpopular in the last primary that she had to drop out before any votes were cast. Then they just skipped the primary and ran her as the candidate anyways. Then she lost.
The DNC acts absolutely hapless.
I think a great deal of the issue on the “left” is that being such a large coalition, with takes all over the place on many topics, is that we have a very hard time getting everyone to fall lockstep behind many things.
The right has no real platform, and thus can just use their wide propaganda network to just spread their new deflection of the day 24/7, and everyone in that network of lies does their part without question.
I watched a good video last night talking about how we need to build a network like the right has to spread the lefts talking points, our victories, and our goals. Because the current media landscape constantly bends themselves in knots to not offend the right instead of calling out their lies and bullshit for what it is. We need to stop giving the disinformation a platform outside of the Rights network.
You could, possibly, potentially, consider that criticism is coming from a direction that outflanks you on leftism? And that it’s frustrated at the constant party/DC Beltway elitism clutching to neoliberalism during democratic apathy and distrust, and not you?
That’s the narrative they espouse, but if you think about it for more than a second, no rational antifascist would attack another antifascist when there are fascists around. It’s all about trying to divide a meaningful antifascist coalition.
Either you are with us, or you are against us
Where have I heard that before? 🤔
Division only occurs as people follow their rational self interest - enforcing orthodoxy and silencing dissent to protect the party that failed us all, will only perpetuate their poor performance electorally. People who cannot afford the luxury of blind fealty will go somewhere else - even if that person is a charlatan grifter who never delivers. You cannot defeat populism with more elitism.
If you interpret an ally trying to help as an attack? Clearly I can’t help you brother
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I really, really wish y’all democrats would stop trying to purge your own party of any dissent, because y’all coming out of this with the right lesson will be the difference between a brief period of Republican control, or several elections cycles of Democrats being unviable as a party.
a brief period of Republican control, or several elections cycles of Democrats being unviable as a party.
a brief period of Republican control
y’all don’t get it do you. It hasn’t sunk in yet.
Don’t worry, you’ll get there. Probably in about six months.
y’all don’t get it do you. It hasn’t sunk in yet.
Don’t worry, you’ll get there. Probably in about six months
Blue conservatives jerking themselves off over what trump will do to the people they dislike is so fucking god damn cringe.
Fuck First-past-the-post voting for making me have to be “allies” with you.
If you actually read Project 2025, I doubt you would feel the same way.
I find people using the word “cringe” as an adjective embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you.
Fuck First-past-the-post voting for making me have to be “allies” with you.
You know what the problem with socialists like you is? You went AWOL on us while we had the fascists on the ropes. Why in God’s name you would make an enemy out of both the fascists and the Democrats, I have no idea. But you guys did it, now we’re all done.
So don’t worry, the feeling is mutual. I really don’t think that we’re gonna have to worry about that after the next six months though.
Be sure to stock up on your Victory Gin and have a double plus good time before they open the “re-education camps”.
It’s funny that even with this much of a massive loss, you diehard democrats find a way to blame leftists. If such a massive margin of loss is the result of leftists, then that would mean leftists are too big of a group to ignore, but ignore is all you and the rest of the democratic party strategists did during the election so that you could instead curry favor with war criminals like dick cheney and telling people that their concerns of genocide don’t matter. Turns out democrats are more scared of leftists gaining any power than they are of project 2025.
I voted for Harris but if “you guys” were really responsible for loosing then we should have given “them” more representation. But hey, at least this way we don’t have to blame Zionists, transphobies, xenophobes, or misogynists. Right?
Say it then. We’re in the period of time where we must critically evaluate the failures of the political machine that delivered this. I’m trying my level best to provide detailed, informative assessment of what I’m seeing without resorting to vitriol or anger, both online and in real life. If you have additional details, provide them. This is the time for vigorous debate, and reassessment, and I see the Democrats as much more of allies than the Republicans, so if you, or any other liberal can get past the phase where you’re upset with the leftists who have broadly provided critical support for the Democratic coalliton, I welcome your input.
the leftists who have broadly provided critical support for the Democratic coalliton
have you not been on lemmy the last six months or are you just blind?
Oh I get it now. You’re saying that “there won’t be a next election”. Careful with the self fufulling prophecies. If you don’t want to succumb to that, I recommend getting involved locally. Whoever you trust electorally will need your help now to build a bulwark for 2026, and getting your hands dirty will help you get over the pessimism.
Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vote-four-years/
no amount of getting involved will stop it from happening.
first major protest will likely be a bloodbath.
would love to be wrong, but I doubt it.
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I’ve heard the following arguments, I’m ordering them in the way I think they effect an election.
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Elon musk buyout and the AI lockdown of social media, and banning of tiktok have all had the effect to fracture democratic/leftist messaging (fault: dems, biden, musk, reddit, people who stayed on x. Affected groups: young people, people who are hard to reach with ads)
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The primary election is basically undivertable campaign time for democrats. The lack of primary campaigns and debates means harris had less time to build support and a base (fault biden, affected groups: everyone).
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Lack of economic excitement around policies and a shutdown of effective messaging on price gouging in favor of saying a former president will surely destroy the country this time. (fault Harris, donors effect, likely low turnout on younger people)
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Lack of demographic excitement around key policies. Latinos: Immigration. Muslims: Israel. (fault biden/harris, effect low turnout in key groups)
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Wasteful campaign spending on republicans: Courting Liz Cheney and buying ads to woo republicans at best wasted money and at worst is a giveaway to telecoms who immediately donated it to republicans(fault Harris, effect waste)
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Covid provided a boost in 2020 that no longer exists
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Mail in voting helped some people vote in 2020. I would say this a tossup however because I do think republicans are able to abuse flaws in mail in systems.
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Harris is a woman. I don’t buy this one because nonvoters seem disengaged rather than hostile.
8 should be way higher. You can be sexist and not like Trump, and not vote because of it. I’d also add high on that list: rampant and nonstop right wing propoganda in all media formats (news, podcasts, YouTube channels, etc.) with no equivalent left leaning alternative. It should come as no surprise that young men are leaning right when casual mysogony and racism flood the content they watch, even when the content itself isn’t strictly political.
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Seriously what did you expect after 4 years of genocide joe?
More importantly I can’t believe libs are still vote shaming (about “commies” lmao) a week after their garbage candidate got blown out.
Never going to learn.
I don’t mean to offend you, but you were divided and conquered.
The Republicans found a topic to divide you on. The left-wing coalition collapsed (while the right wing consolidated) and you were conquered.
