Heaven forbid we try running charismatic candidates like Obama and Bill…
Like, it’s insane to me that everyone seems to be aware of what wins elections, but the people running the Dem party just keep insisting we need to shut up and vote for someone very few people actually want.
Like, we can’t do this without the voters, they’re the irreplaceable part.
We can get different people to run the party, or just coalesce around another.
Democrats need to fall in love. Republicans just need to fall in line.
It’s like you read the meme and went yep, totally their fault. I’m ok with my life gets shittier until I fall in love with a politician. It’s not my fault. I am owed this.
Is there a term for the political version of an incel?
It’s not just the president, you need to vote for house of reps and Senate. Obama only had control for 2/8 years. In that time he got the ACA. The remaining 6 years of Obama the GOP were more than happy to block everything. They even shut down the government. If you need charisma to feed your emotions every 4 years, yeesh.
*Oh I caught on, it’s the thiny veiled Biden bad, hinting he has no charisma and nobody wants to vote for him. “They just have to run someone else nudge nudge. Someone else to run the party wink wink.” Nuts to that, Biden is doing great.
I get people want to fall in line at this point and I have and will vote for Biden, but your head is deep in the sand if you believe Biden’s senility and lack of charisma isn’t hurting him here. The only thing we’re lucky on is that Donald is running again who is for all intents just as senile and far more deranged and far less compassionate.
But Biden doesn’t hold a candle to Obama.
There it is again “senility”. Everyone working with him says he’s sharp, but you just gotta get it in. Would I prefer younger? Sure. But he’s not senile JFC. Lack of charisma? The guy presents absolutely fine and does great work. How much does one need to appeal to emotions.
How much does one need to appeal to emotions.
you haven’t been paying attention, have you? the entire republican platform is an appeal to their emotions. It’s why it’s successful. appeals to emotion are vastly more successful than appeals to logic or reason, even if they’re wrong. Our brains are literally hardwired to consider emotion before reason, to react on emotion before logic; and triggering the emotional response to manipulate people is an entire field of science in neuropsychology. (and probably one of the best funded areas of research…)
This “we need someone charismatic and then we’ll vote” is the emotion for the supposed logical, informed, left wing voter, who votes based on policy (or lack of policy when they protest no vote).
So you just like to scream at people while ignoring human nature,
Okay, good to know. I’m sure it’ll work out fine if you just continue screaming at people…
Funny because I think it’s the other way around, people screaming “but but but charisma! But but but old!”
I thought maybe it was someone else I just told but no it’s you. These are the supposed logical people waiting for the supposed logical platform. But no, they want emotions. Notice that doesn’t add up?
And you’re still trying to sneak it in. Biden is just fine charismatically.
Okay, dude — Just humor me for a second:
- A whopping 66-77% of Americans polled again and again view Biden as too old to be President. So in this respect, I’m just reflecting a widespread concern of what millions upon millions of people see and feel.
- His staff, who must literally kiss ass to maintain the privilege of working a job in the White House and like warfare will give no quarter to any argument the GOP makes no matter how true it is - is NOT a good counter-argument to make. It’s as outlandish as the Republican senators coming out of the meeting yesterday saying Trump is sharp as ever.
- Even the likes of The Daily Show to SNL mocks this aspect of Biden for good reason.
- Blaming for the stutter works only insofar as you’re old enough to remember Biden as VP under Obama in 2008.
NOW, here’s the thing: less time needs to be spent trying to shore up the bullshit argument that Biden is “sharp as ever,” and more about pivoting to Trump’s incoherent rambles and his own age. Acknowledging Biden’s age is actually a great one-two punch to use for anyone on the fence because it gives you a point where both can agree: “Yeah, I agree Biden is showing his age clearly. No differently than McConnell… No differently than Donald (give examples), but I think Biden is at least a more compassionate person… And say, while we’re at it, can we agree we should have an age limit if we already have an age-minimum on the Presidency?” <clinks-beers and everybody laughs.>
This wasn’t about him being old, this was about you saying “senility” and whoever didn’t believe that had was “head is deep in the sand”. But when I call that out, you have to pivot that to old.
Ok I should have said people that meet him say he’s sharp. They are not beholden to him. One guy met him said he remember meeting his mom like a decade prior and remembered her and all the details. Fuck that’s better than I do. Now in case you say “but that’s not work”, but yes also the people that work with him say he’s sharp too. Seems to me you just want to get the ‘senile’ bit out any way you can.
Wow and now you’re trying to ignore that he does in fact have a stutter? Ok that’s about it, you’ve shown you’re dead set on vilification no matter what. Stutters come and go, how prepared you are for a speech, etc. It’s not consistent that never changes one bit.
Thanks for showing the world that your mission is to bad mouth Biden. You sneak in “senile” then pivot when called out. You say everything good must be bootlickers. And you preemptively try to ignore that he has a stutter. I’m probably not going to reply anymore.
Geriatric, old, senile — same thing for all intents of this discussion. Yes, they are head-deep in the sand.
Hell just watch the clips from this Daily Show skit of Biden.. I can tell you three things: (1) Obama never did this, (2) Biden never did this during Obama’s first term in office, and (3) this is clearly a sign of senility no different than McConnell just freezing during a press conference.
Wow and now you’re trying to ignore that he does in fact have a stutter?
Not what I said. Work on reading-comprehension, please. Try again and stop putting words in my mouth.
Also I didn’t “sneak” senile in anywhere — I said it quite in the open, really.
senile /sē′nīl″, sĕn′īl″/ adjective
Relating to or having diminished cognitive function, as when memory is impaired, because of old age.
Being a disease or condition whose cause is primarily advanced age. “senile cataracts.”
No not the same thing.
And attacks. Ciao.
Like. lets talk about what happened.
it’s reasonable to claim that Gore actually won in 2000. There were sixty one thousand votes that had not been machine-counted because of rampant, clearly partisan, bullshit reasons (among them “hanging chad”,). the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual count of those ballots with SCOTUS, lead by Scalia, decided to stay because the recount would give Bush a veneer of “illegitimacy”. (gee. wonder why, ya fucking partisan hack.) To be perfectly clear, Gore lost Florida (and the electoral college) by 570 votes. The decision in Bush V. Gore to stay the manual recount basically handed Bush the win. (and, I might add, cast doubt on the legitimacy of bush’s win. it was handed by a court that had no business ordering that stay. But did anyway, because they’re partisan hacks. I’m not angry, honest.)
Kerry flip-flopped more than a fish out of water, making it hard for independents and centrists to know what his positions actually were. 2 years prior to the election he was, for example, staunchly against gay marriage (and lets be honest, the US was very hostile to gay marriage then. There’s been a massive sea change in that, but it hadn’t happened yet.), but in 2004 signed a letter urging Massachusetts to not outlaw gay marriage. Further, he had the personality of a cold fish. and his running mate was an empty suit with nothing to back it up- who couldn’t even deliver his home State of North Carolina… In short, you had a couple warm bodies running. At the time, Bush was still riding high off 9/11 and the Iraq war and americans were still angry at that; the war wasn’t unpopular yet. Katrina hadn’t happened yet, and Bush was still reasonably popular. So, of fucking course Kerry lost.
Hillary. Where do we begin? her emails? lets start there.
Sure, “HeR EmAiLs” and “LoCk HeR uP” is an idiotic rallying cry of MAGA morons everywhere. But, even so, she conducted official Sec of State business on a personal email routinely. It’s such a great rallying cry because it actually has some teeth. it should be scandalous. Even if she was perfectly not-at-all-corrupt, it looks that way. I- and most everyone else- would be legitimately fired for conducting that level of business off a personal email. it should be 100% unacceptable. Not saying she should have been locked up or grilled the way she was. But seriously. It looked bad. and it played in the news.
Then we got Benghazi. an American ambassador died in a terrorist attack. There’s some things that hindsight says they could have done differently. Republicans latched onto it for political theater, with 10 different investigations and multiple sessions of grilling Clinton, who even then was the presumptive nominee to replace Obama. there was some funding that her office denied, she might not even have been aware that “she” denied it. Hindsight’s a bitch. Anyhow… the republican shenanigans played well in the media.
Oh. “Super Criminals”. Hillary was very unpopular with minority voters- particularly Black and Latinos. sound clips calling for law-and-order tough-on-crime calling black people “super criminals” didn’t help. there was a lot there, especially with her attitude, but in the end they simply didn’t show up for her. Even if you look at women voters, she under-performed compared to Obamma. (i mean, he looks mighty fine in a tan suit… sorry, sorry. couldn’t resist.) Like, how unpopular do you have to be as a woman, to lose women voters from Obama’s election, when you’re running against Donald- “grab them by the pussy”, “When you’re that rich they let you do it”, “Octopus-Arms” -Trump.
Lets also talk about how she boosted trump specifically because he was “a clown” or whatever. She gave us trump and then proceededly arrogantly not campaign in key states.
oh, and there’s more that I just don’t have time to get into… but we got Whitewater, Travelgate, filegate; and shit rolls down hill so lets toss in Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky scandals. Like there’s a lot of smoke there, and there might be a couple fires, or maybe they’re just really not that corrupt as people and it’s all a big missunderstanding. but again, that plays in the media, and it looks bad. Hilary was the definition of The Establishment™️ running against an anti-establismhent candidate. Of fucking course she’s gonna lose, and she really didn’t help matters by fucking around with not campaigning in key swing states because, “naw, it’s fucking trump”.
Yup. so aside from Gore, there’s really rather good reasons to have not liked them, and the DNC idiots thought they new better and ran them anyhow… and we got fucked because of it. blaming voters for your own stupid blunders seems to be a DNC favorite. And they’re doing it again.
You missed basket of deplorables which is likely the exact moment she really lost.
Pokemon Go to the polls. That campaign had a death by 1000 paper cuts. Yet she still won the popular vote.
Hell, she’s STILL out here working to tank democrats in the name of status quo corporatism,
“What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices? Get over yourself.”
Democrats need the boogeyman of Trump but they will 1000% take Trump before they give an inch to the left, but they’ll be happy to blame leftists for their loss after 4 years of telling em to eat a dick.
I’m no Hillary fan, but I thought the consensus was she lost because of Comey’s bullshit October surprise.
Her Basket of Deplorables remark is actually the moment she MOST energized her base and grassroots coalition. That was a blip of authenticity I and many others appreciated.
You know, the people who actually go out and do the door-knocking, phone-banking, fundraising, and pushing back against Uncle Bob and their parents while dragging their friend to the poll out of voter-enthusiasm.
You’re right.
There’s not nearly as much as Trump but it’s still a lot, grrr
Right!?
Young and charismatic. That’s all that is necessary for Dems to sweep elections. Proven time and time again. With a hearty message of progress and love.
It’s that fucking simple.
(signed someone who ultimately voted for Hillary and Biden but they were far from my 1st preference in the primaries).
Edit: Typo.
Young and charismatic might mean higher taxes for the rich and more progressive policies.
The Democratic leadership doesn’t want that. They really like the neoliberal consensus, they like having funding parity with the Republicans. They like being seen as “very serious people “ and they’re deathly afraid of being called socialists.
The problem is that their apparatchiks all came of age, politically, in the 1990s under that same neoliberal golden age. That’s not the world they’re in anymore. They aren’t running against Bush the Elder, and cutting taxes while playing jazz isn’t going to cut it when they’re losing working class votes to fascists.
We saw this play out horribly in the UK: where Labour’s party leaders would rather sabotage their own leader because he was too progressive then risk him winning and give socialism credibility.
The political left really liked the 1990s, but it’s a bygo era and it isn’t coming back.
I agree that the third-way shtick of the Clinton era must go. Watering down reality to appeal to ignorance just doesn’t work.
How long til they all die of old age?
Do we have that long?
Not if Drumpf gets the electoral college majority.
I mean, big nuts that’ll ever happen. There’s no glut of idiots no matter what generation you look at, I’m sure they can just keep appointing cynical self-interested assholes to succeed them whenever they drop.
The last time the Democrats ran a progressive candidate allowed Nixon to sweep every state except a few in that election. I mean, just look at this shit!
So yeah, if anyone is wondering why the Democrats don’t run progressive candidates, this is why! They’ve only moved further to the right since then. Expecting Democrats to run a progressive would likely sweep the whole nation blue, but if you thought tRump was bad, a progressive would be just as bad for monied interests, which have only grown more emboldened and enriched the last 40-45 years.
It will take a lot of time, I’m afraid, to undo the damage Republicans have have done with their shitty ideals and politics, starting largely with Reagan’s racist, homophobic, anti-union, and regulation gutting bullshit!
In fairness I emphasized young and charismatic — was McGovern charismatic? I don’t know about that.
Still, I think this is the exception as opposed to the norm, considering we can point to FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton, and Obama. RFK was setting up to be another obvious front-runner.
It’s a race to the bottom to put forward someone who will water their rhetoric down and cater to ignorance; but of course, some of the country isn’t educated enough to understand why progressive policies must be better — hence why you run someone young and charismatic — hence why Obama swept traditionally red counties that neither Hillary nor Biden picked up.
When the other side are fascists openly running on a platform of doing fascists, needing to feel excited to fall in line and vote against them just makes you a fascist who thinks they can get bribes out of it.
Who cares?
What works is running charismatic candidates.
So why not run charismatic candidates and beat the fascists?
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I can’t control how other people vote, but the party’s can. That’s their job.
I knew the DNC fucked up when they tanked Bernie’s run.
And look what we got.
It’s insane that in my lifetime I’ve seen the Dem party at the point where they’ve completely given up on courting and just yell at people that they have to vote for them.
Like, who the fuck is coming up with this strategy, and why is anyone listening to them?
It just makes zero sense.
YOU DO HAVE TO VOTE FOR THEM
THE OTHER OPTION IS LETTING FASCISM HAPPEN
WE HAVE FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS NOW ACTUALLY BEEN IN A SITUATION WHERE, YES, GENUINELY, YOU DO ACTUALLY JUST HAVE TO VOTE FOR THEM
GOOD PEOPLE DO NOT TO BE MADE TO BE EXCITED BY DOING THEIR DUTY TO PROTECT THE MOST VULNERABLE WHO CANNOT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
YOU DO ACTUALLY JUST HAVE TO VOTE FOR THEM TO NOT BE AN AWFUL FUCKING HUMAN BEING WHO DESERVES SCORN FOR BEING FUCKING AWFUL
When you only have one choice, you don’t have a choice.
Yea obviously we’re at the point where the only non fascist choice is to vote for an unpopular incumbent, but it seems like the choice has been completely removed from the democratic process in the US and you have to wonder how much of it is exactly by design, and whose.
But why are the uncharismatic conservative candidates the only other option when we know for a fact they’re not what Dem voters want?
Why not run someone voters actually like and who will get the most votes?
Why don’t you understand that gets the most votes for the Dem candidate?
Although I would like to thank you for not insulting me this time, we’re making progress. Would all caps help you more? I know it’s easier for some to read so I can do that if you’re doing it so you can read easier.
Depending on what you’re using you can make the text appear larger or a better font too.
Your approach isn’t working. It never works. Because all it does is makes people more defensive, and it divides the DNC even further. it just makes me roll my eyes and think “okay, boomer, time to change your diapers again.” And yes. I know that’s totally ageist of me, but frankly, at this point, I’m tired of it.
Big caps with bold! Listen to meeeeee!
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Tanked his run by counting all the votes not cast for him?
Why am I still surprised that people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming to generals, nevermind primaries think that people who don’t need any convincing not voting for their guy for them is cheating?
No, by obstructing his and his supporters efforts in key primaries, because the DNC knew they wanted Hillary for reasons.
This is a rather unique thing you see on Lemmy I’ve noticed. I mean everyone knows the Democratic Party pulled some bullshit during that primary, but the delusions you see on Lemmy take it so much further. It honestly kind of reminds me of Lost Cause myths. It’s very much in the same vein.
I have legit seen people suggest the very normal and totally socialist thing of counting individual donations instead of ballots as the only legitimate way to run the primary.
The socialists. Wanted to create a literal donor class. That is recognized in party procedures. Because they were that mad that working class black voters identified more with the southern lady than a darkhorse from Vermont who’s not even a party member 99% of the time. Even after a bunch of white liberal arts majors talked at them about how he’s totally down with the culture because he got arrested at a protest one time.
Why not shut the fuck up and vote against the fascists because you’re not a fascist?
Mate…
Do you think you can have this argument with tens of millions of Americans, and it will convince them?
We know what will get enough votes to beat Republicans. But for some reason people just keep repeating that these “moderate” and uncharismatic 70+ year olds have a better shot.
They don’t.
We’re not even arguing if they should have a better shot because of their views.
Because we have literal decades of history to show they’re not what wins elections.
So if all that matter si beating trump, why is this the third election in a row we’re not using the best strategy?
What’s the point of running more conservative candidates than voters want when it makes it more likely the fascists win?
Do you think you can have this argument with tens of millions of Americans, and it will convince them?
Nah bruh. They think they’re arguing against you. That if they abuse you enough that you’ll cow: but if there is one thing we have excellent evidence for, its that abusing or guilting voters into doing what you think they should does not work. Not for Democrats or Republicans.
They are taking the criticisms they should be putting at the feet of the DNC and its associated cheerleaders in media, and blaming the voters. But we all know, they’re just wrong. Like, they’re completely wrong about how voting works, how campaigning works, and how winning elections work.
If they really cared about winning elections, they would bring this criticism to the DNC and demand better candidates; and not budge until they do so. But they actually don’t care about winning the election. They know (I believe) they’ve committed to a losing strategy, and they are setting up the rhetorical case on the back-end so that they have some one to blame for them insisting we do something that isn’t going to work.
Mate how about you stop making excuses for fascists and stop giving them the benefit of being presumed to have a reasonable position that deserves anything but getting called out for their collaborationist shit.
“Tickle my funny bone or I’ll let your kids get sent to camps!”, that’s the mentality you’re trying to argue is fair and reasonable and worth having a debate with as if it’s anything but abject failure of one’s own ability to not be one of the worst kinds of people imagineable.
“Make me excited about not letting the morality police happen!”
“I wanna feel good about preventing contraceptive bans!”
“What am I getting out of preventing them putting machine gun nests on the wall with orders to shoot to kill anyone who approaches?”
Yeah I agree Biden’s boring, I agree Clinton and Gore and Kerry were boring too, doesn’t change that they ran against christofascist candidates, and the supposed not fascists of this country abjectly failed to do their bare minimum duty because “I don’t really feel like it.”
how about you stop making excuses for fascists
Who’s doing that?
I’m saying we need to do what has the best chance to beating the fascists.
Which is run a charismatic candidate who agrees with Dem voters.
You on the other hand, keep insulting people and saying voters need to compromise but politicians don’t.
That’s not democracy. Especially when the DNC has argued in court they can interfere with a primary as much as they want, because the results are non finding anyways.
Think about that.
It means Dem voters never get any day in who represents them.
When the goal is getting more votes than fascists, that’s not a good plan. We need to start out with a popular candidate that most Dem voters already want to vote for. Not pick someone most dont want and then try to breathe literally tens of millions of people into holding their noses.
You just have a bad plan, and I feel like maybe if you just calm down, you could realize that what matters is beating republicans, so we should run candidates Dem voters want.
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^Someone who doesn’t actually want to win elections.
“It’s not our job to campaign or do politics, the Democrats cannot fail, only be failed” - Democrats, totally caring about fascism.
If you need more than “the fascists will win if we lose”, you’re a fucking fascist.
Quit trying to make your wanting to be bribed to not let concentration camps happen some kind of moral cause or “well they should have made me want it more!” realist cynic take.
If you need more than “the fascists will win if we lose”, you are a fucking fascist, and will be treated accordingly when the people who you’re actually hurting have their chance to reap justice for what you let be done to them.
I’d take it more seriously if the Democrats did or treated this as a serious issue. Instead they use it as an excuse to be 99% fascist and use it as an excuse to not campaign or take up popular issues because if they lose, it is because the voters didn’t fight to have 99% fascism instead of 100% fascism.
No!…it’s the voters who are wrong. Better blame theme some more, as that will surely boost our historically abysmal national voter turnout come November.
/s
I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary. And now we have an absolute joke of a Supreme Court that will suck every single nanoliter of jizz from the corporate dick any time day or night.
Blackstone wants democrats to win while Blackrock wants republicans to win. To corporations, the choice between biden and trump is like Coke vs Pepsi because they largely win either way even if they’re a bit disappointed they have to drink Pepsi when they wanted Coke.
No, DNC, you’re not out of touch. It’s the voters who are wrong.
That is really the best way to put my frustrations. IT IS NOT MY FAULT YOU DON’T LIKE ME, ITS YOURS. It is literally a popularity contest and you are worried about losing to a criminal. But sure, we are the crazies, not you. This country has never needed another party so bad.
Who’s the DNC? We need names. Also the voters, i guess?
Key people: Jaime Harrison (Chair) Chris Korge (Finance chair) Jason Rae (Secretary)
Taken from Wikipedia because who actually knows that shit
What the fuck is this shit? Motherfucker, I lived through these elections, and this is some boomer revisionist bull shit.
Al Gore lost because he couldn’t differentiate himself from god-damned George W Bush. He was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Kerry lost because he couldn’t articulate his better vision for America, and was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Hillary lost because she didn’t even try to reach out to the left base. She was too centrist to beat Donald Fucking Trump.
Three ostensibly intelligent leaders who lost their elections to fucking morons because they thought that they didn’t need to try very hard to reach out to progressive voters.
Any one of them would have been a better President than what we got, but the fact that they all lost means they did something wrong. It isn’t the fault of the voters demanding better, it’s the fault of the party failing to meet the demand.
Quit putting up shit candidates assholes!
Yeah seriously; this post sucks.
AOC for President with Biden as VP. It would destroy the Republicans… they’d have strokes within a few days. With Biden as VP all the boomers that actually like Biden will be onboard.
Yeah!
Not saying you shouldn’t do the right thing when the choice is limited, but how about the DNC stops putting its finger on the scale for unpopular establishment candidates?
It’s clear that the ‘safe’ choice can still lose, so why not go for the person the base actually likes instead of another centrist wet napkin who appeals to no one?
People always trying to push Biden bad. This is the candidate that won. He is popular. This is what the base likes.
Everytime the Dems move left they lose. Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton. Bam lost the election. Thanks 3rd party voters. Hillary tried just a tiny little bit with the map room to fight climate change, after hopefully the population warmed up with Obama. Bam lost the election. Thanks protest no-voters!
Imagine what the landscape would be if they won. If you want the Dems to move left, you have to give them victories. Because when they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton.
Gore didn’t lose. had a proper recount been done (including the overvotes,) Gore probably would have won. SCOTUS intervened and stopped recount of the undervotes and Gore never pushed for recounts of the overvotes (which should have been recounted anyhow by florida state law.)
Oh so we had President Gore? We can talk all day about recounts, but we did not have President Gore. Thanks 3rd party voters!
Gore ran to the left? The guy who picked Lieberman as his VP?
Gore the big climate change candidate. Yeah that’s left.
He became the big climate change guy after he lost.
I’d also point out that he only looks like a big climate change guy now. Back in 2000, the right wing hadn’t gone all-in on climate denialism yet. You could easily find Reagan and Bush people who didn’t think it was controversial.
They need the conservative voters in swing states. Do the Dems in swing states get excited about leftists or progressives? Like in 2016 Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. I wish Bernie had gotten to the general and I think the EC is a cancer. But I don’t think going by popular vote is a viable strategy given that we have to deal with that reality.
They need swing voters and yeah that’s what I’m saying. When they lose, they go to the center to find the swing voters.
So how do you get them to go left? By giving them victories. Because when they lose they go to the center.
Because the DNC is conservative. They don’t want a left leaning candidate. That’s not who they intend to represent. They represent money. That is all. They will let the Republicans pull things to the extreme right and then they can hang out right of center and now there is no other choice.
That’s a great conversation to have the next time its relevant.
When will that be?
We couldn’t primary Biden in 2024 if we wanted to. Even the unaligned votes that should be a symbol of “hey, you’re not pleasing your base” were ignored. In 2028, they’ll surely push K-hole as the safe choice because even if Trump dies, you know they’ll put his head in a jar to run him again and clearly his only natural enemy is bland centre-right politics.
Biden’s appeal wasn’t that he was charismatic or brilliant or super-competent… it was that he was a reasonably sincere, respectable human, and he’s proceeded to squander that by failing to handle Gaza gracefully.
Don’t tell me he can’t do anything. Just run the same playbook we subjected Venezuela or Cuba to, and that would get Bibi’s attention.
You act like this is some big Injustice or surprise. Let me ask you a question. When has any party ever primaried an incumbent candidate of their party. Who were the 2019 republican primary candidates? Are the Democrats doing anything to you. Or are you a victim of your misunderstanding. This isn’t a defense of Democrats mind you. It’s just unusual that they’re always held to different/unrealistic expectations.
Also I think it’s important to point out. One of the only people to even remotely seriously push to primary Joe Biden was Dean Phillips. You know the Trump appeaser. Who recently called for New York’s Governor to Pardon Trump. Sure sad I didn’t get to vote for that man LOL. The fact is everyone knew there would not be and didn’t necessarily need to be a primary this year. I hope everyone is ready for 28 though. I’m really hoping for some younger blood now that the boomers are dying out. Honestly I’d like to see Ocasio Cortez make an effort. She’s young and might not make it. But she’s got plenty of time to work at it and hone her skills.
It’s just unusual that they’re always held to different/unrealistic expectations.
Perhaps they’re victims of their branding/positioning.
If a Trump, or even a Romney, says “we can wash our hands of a little genocide in the middle east for political gameplay/economic convenience/religious theories”, that’s pretty much within what people expect of them. The GOP has had a vaguely evil air since at least Nixon, if not McCarthy.
The Democrats, however, try to present themselves as trying to be on the right side of history. While this is no doubt a combination of cynical “this locks in some demographics” and “social justice is still cheaper than actual economic reform”, it means people expect a little higher standards. The bar is unbelievably low here, and he’s still tripping over it.
Okay, so Biden abandons Israel tomorrow. Does the genocide stop? Nope because it was always Congress that authorized and controlled the spending and weapons shipment. Mike Johnson and the Republicans will gleefully fund the genocide in Palestine. And on top of that now we’ve lost all diplomatic influence with israel. They are now all in on the genocide. Worse Biden who’s actually made many overtures trying to bring peace actually working with the system and not viewing things through a childish black and white lens. No longer has any pull to negotiate any peace treaties or ceasefires.
Whether or not abandoning Israel completely would slow the genocide anytime soon. It would ultimately increase the killing. Many countries in the region. Would readily attack Israel without the United States to defend it. So the genocide would switch from innocent Palestinians to innocent israelis. I’m not sure how that’s a better thing. It’s just exchanging alike for alike.
You seem to think this is very simple however. And I’d be interested to get your thoughts on this. Please explain and simple thoughts how you feel the Democrats should handle this. And then explain why them following your actions would have the outcome you claim it will.
I figure we get two things out of it:
- Regaining the moral high ground; we are no longer complicit. This is, to a big degree, playing for a domestic audience, and I think it’s what a lot of protesters are after. Yes, Congress may ultimately cut the cheques, but I’m pretty sure the administration can find ways to tie up delivery of support in red tape.
- Israeli impunity has always been backstopped by the assumption the US would never turn on them. If other countries turn up their nose, it doesn’t have the same meaning. Losing American support would be a huge shock to their political system.
Alternatively, we could go to the point and publically declare what everyone knows-- Netanyahu is fanning the war because once it’s over, his administration is defunct, and his legal problems resume. We could singularly demonize HIM as a warmonger-- personal sanctions, supporting his prosecution for war crimes, or classic Cold War style encouragement of regime change.
Yes, whatever we do, we piss off Israel, but if we don’t take off the kid gloves now, then when? If they finally admit to nuclear weapons by dropping one?
You mean now? The convention hasn’t happened yet.
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What does Bush Jr have to do with this? More seriously, Are you going to publish this somewhere?
So Bush Jr. had the lowest approval rating for a president that won a second term. He ended his second term with one of the lowest approval rating of any president of all time (just a short and curly ahead of Nixon).
Some detail:
Including George W. Bush
Approval Shifts: Mean Shift: 1.91% Standard Deviation: 10.53% Winning Candidates' Approval Ratings: Mean Approval Rating: 50.73% Standard Deviation: 11.14%Excluding George W. Bush
Approval Shifts: Mean Shift: 3.60% Standard Deviation: 9.40% Winning Candidates' Approval Ratings: Mean Approval Rating: 56.35% Standard Deviation: 4.31%Notice how the standard deviation associated with the winning candidate tightens up significantly with out Bush?
I do publish the results of these analyses, here, on lemmy. However, I just have a day job that has prevented me from doing “the rest” of this analysis. This is only one part of a larger analysis I have planned.
Here are the two distributions:
The DNC is bought by big money donors just like the RNC is. Those big money donors would rather see a fascist in charge than a socialist.
History repeats itself once again.
Reminds me of when the army tried to simplify uniforms by measuring a bunch of soldiers for data and making an average size medium, large, and small that ended up not fitting anyone well at at all.
I just want to join in to remind everyone that multiple things can be true at the same time.
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The DNC/Biden can and should be doing better.
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We only have 2 options for president. It will be one of the two main candidates because that is how the system works. Don’t pretend it doesn’t. You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
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We should be pressuring Biden to do more about both Ukraine and Gaza. Ending both conflicts and getting aid to people.
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Choosing to vote for a 3rd party to protest Biden’s response to Gaza/Israel is only going to help Trump in the short term. Yes, long term Biden and DNC may notice their total votes going down, but in the short term it will put Trump in the Whitehouse and now what? What did you accomplish if the DNC realizes they fucked up, but can’t do anything about it because Trump is now a dictator?
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Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won’t compromise on anything. That isn’t how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn’t happen in one election cycle.
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We should have been and should be campaigning and pushing for changes to our system so that we can have better options in the future. We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP). And voting in local level elections to make small changes across the country. Term limits. Campaign finance reforms. Etc etc. because until we get a new system we effectively can’t just vote for who we want or it doesn’t do anything more than a fart in a hurricane.
I see a lot of people who are saying they will not vote for Biden because the Gaza/Israel issue. Which I completely understand. But the two truths you have to accept in doing so is that you will not be complicit in the genocide. But you will be complicit if Trump wins. Both can be true. You decide which one you would rather see. If you don’t want Trump then the only option is a vote for Biden. And until we reform our voting system we don’t have viable 3rd parties and pretending we do is just delusional. Look at every election for the last hundred years and you will see enough proof. It’s not ideal, but it is reality. **Accept it **so we can change it together.
I would add that there ARE things you can do to help stop the genocide, that are not refusing to vote. I absolutely believe that the demonstrations, protest votes, calls to congresspeople, and so on, are part of what’s behind the changes to the US’s Israel policy recently (sanctions on settlers, pause in the weapons shipments, stuff like that - that’s nowhere near enough and no excuse for Biden’s support for Israel during the “war” and before it, but also, nothing ANYWHERE near that has happened in 75 years of consistently war-criminal support by the US for Israel).
All that stuff makes a difference and can help stop the genocide. Refusing to vote does nothing to stop the genocide and risks putting someone in office who is much much worse (actively wants to kill more Palestinians.)
Oh Trump would accelerate the genocide.
He has already said that they’re taking too long and the Gaza strip makes for great beachfront property.
With Biden, at least the Palestinians might get a country of their own.
With Trump? They’ll be buried under the condos overlooked by the Trump Tower.
Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won’t compromise on anything. That isn’t how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn’t happen in one election cycle.
It took fifty years of consistent Evangelical support, along with their advantage of low population density, to get to a point where Roe was overturned.
Politics isn’t slow: It’s glacial.
You will be ok voting for genocide. Gotcha
We JUST explained this all to you, Zoolander. Like a moment ago. Like JUST now.
No, you think you did but you spoke in circles.
Dude just take the L
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You will be okay enabling genocide+. Gotcha.
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Did you reply to the wrong person?
Yes. I meant to do the person above you.
Another idiot to block. Thanks
Ahh the old fingers in your ears method. Favorite tactic of the ignorant and weak.
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Yeah. It could just be that they are a leftist who just doesn’t have much at all of a factual understanding of 20th century history in any respect, and is substituting an overall rosy picture of anything non Western instead of even the broadest of broad strokes of factual statements and understanding
But… it could also be someone who didn’t have a Western education with its notable gaps in what we wanna admit happened, and instead had a different education with a different set of notable gaps on what we wanna admit happened, such that it didn’t even occur to them that praising the USSR’s justice system would be a totally bizarre thing to say from the perspective of being supposedly a Westerner talking to another Westerner.
I have a theory which one it is
I mean this in the kindest way possible:
Do you want to feel good about your choice or do you want your choice to make a small difference?
I want wars and genocides and murders and suffering and death and sickness to be minimal or zero. I want my fellow humans to be happy and healthy and thrive. I want my labor and work to be a positive thing for society and also benefit me fairly. I want to be a part of ensuring the ecosystem doesn’t collapse. I want to learn from others and I want to be able to teach others. And I have a feeling you agree with me on those things.
But I also am approaching this from reality. And I am acknowledging that with our voting system as it is today, you can either vote for 1 of 2 candidates or you don’t care who wins and are complicit with their choices the next 4 years. That is simply reality.
But I also agree with you that ideally we could vote for not-genocide. I want that so badly. But we have to have a viable means to do that first. So let’s work together and push for a system where our voices can be heard and can make a difference. In the meantime I’d rather see Biden in office which gives us a chance for those things vs Trump which has said and demonstrated he will try to end it.
I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m trying to make the point of reality vs ideal. And we aren’t at ideal yet, so we need to work toward it.
Not voting lets Trump do the genocide instead.
Voting is literally the least effective form of civil engagement.
But at least voting for Biden you’re maybe not going to see project 2025 come to pass.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=op0yk50uMlQ
This is their plan if they win, it’s in the open, and it’s the end of Democracy in the United States.
Do you want to not vote? If you don’t vote you might not ever vote again.
Even if you aren’t lgbtq it’s highly unlikely that you don’t know someone who isn’t. They will suffer first.
Know any women? They’ll lose control over their bodies, thier periods monitored by the state
You like having sex? Don’t like getter her pregnant though? Hope that you like pilling out because say goodbye to condoms. Actually that’s a sin to spill your seed so you’re going to jail for that too.
Say that you actually want to have a baby? Maybe you waited to do it, but now you’re having trouble? Say goodbye to invitro fertilization. That’s not God’s way. If he wanted you to have a baby he would have made it happen. Clearly something is wrong with you. You’re defective and must be bad.
Oh, you call God by a different name or don’t believe? Sucks, you’re going to need some corrective education. You Heathen!
It’s literally good to be A Handmaid’s Tale.
But stand by your principles. Maybe it won’t happen here.
But what if it does?
When God Emperor Trump jails his enemies. Suspends the constitution. “Leader for life, I like the sound of that.”
There’s no vote against genocide. You vote for genocide flavor A, genocide flavor B, or you say you don’t care which flavor of genocide you get.
Arguing against voting tor genocide flavor A means you support genocide flavor B, whether you want to admit it or not.
Not voting for Biden supports Trump, who will be even worse regarding Gaza. So either you’re a troll, an idiot, or actively want to make genocide worse?
Which is it?
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You people REALLY need a new bit. This one is old and tired.
Very well said!
We only have 2 options for president.
This kind of thinking is how you end up with only two options.
A third option emerges when enough people say “I am not voting for either of those two”.
You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
Or, it means you’re not okay with either.
We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP).
Canada has FPTP voting and still manages to have four federal political parties.
Australia has ranked ballots and effectively has a two-party system that hasn’t changed in 80 years (though they do sometimes manage to get some independents elected to parliament)*.
I’m not saying the voting system is irrelevant. But the true obstacle to multi-party democracy is the fact that voters think in a polarized two-party way (that you are currently reinforcing).
* This is a description of Australia’s House of Representives. Their Senate uses proportional representation, and does have more than two parties. And technically Australia has three political parties in the House of Representives, but two of them have been in a permanent coalition since 1946 and are often treated as a single entity, with the result that Australians consider themselves to have a two-party system.
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Yeah, it’s totally our fault the Dems have to see how far right they can possibly get away with. And they just “aren’t for us” completely diminishes our issues. This is a problem created by the DNC, it is not created by the voters.
Donald Trump was the DNCs fault for running a centrist, dirty candidate. Not ours for not falling in love with her. Your fucking guilting us into voting for a turd sandwitch is bullshit. Stop sucking.
I have and will vote against Donald Trump, but I am not donating and making calls like I did for Bernie. Biden is a big pile of literally not Donald Trump, that’s all he is.
The fact that you need grassroots help to win an election when you can easily represent a large majority of the voters by just representing the voters is your fault.
I preferred Bernie and was excited for that. But Hillary was winning primaries in swing states that actually matter, like AZ, NV, FL, OH. Are you certain blaming the DNC on that one isn’t to some extent right-wing propaganda? Repubs know how to drive a wedge if they see a popular runner-up.
al gore won that election.
But it was stolen due to 5 hard right justices
Mmmm. Yeah.
Once again Roger Stone is involved in undemocratic activities.
That guy has caused so much damage.
Holy shit… That was a coup!
You’re not wrong
The Democrats could stop dropping out of primaries to back conservative cardboard cut outs.
But no, it’s the voters who are wrong!
Cross reference the states the conservative cutouts are winning in the primaries with whether or not they are swing states and number of EC votes, then get back to us. In 2016, Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. What do you want to happen for that shit, bank it on states like WV (+42 R) suddenly flipping blue?
Because there isn’t an overwhelming swarm of people voting for anyone who isn’t Repub, the Dems have to chase the reliable voters, who are more conservative.
It is the voters who are wrong, by staying home election after election or throwing their votes in the trash instead of pushing against the sliding window.
I don’t like the Dem choices but IDK what the fuck else they are supposed to do once the primaries start. Running the candidate who wins with Dem voters in swing states makes sense as a strategy.
Arizona is not a blue dog state. There is a large gap between a mostly progressive democrat party and a batshit insane republican party.
And it might also have to do with Idaho and South Carolina going first, with everyone else dropping out before super tuesday even happens. Most of the states don’t even get a real choice.
I hate how the primaries do that. That is indeed bullshit. That sets up momentum for the rest of the primaries and they aren’t really swing states. So stupid. All primaries should be on the same day.
While I’m wishing for voting in this country that isn’t dumb as hell: let’s do no primaries at all and STAR voting in the general.
I’m partial to RCV but either would be better.
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. You got the conservative justices because of the electoral college. And because Obama let Mitch McConnell steamroll him into “it’s too close to an election”.
Obama also backtracked from Freedom of Choice Act immediately after entering office, which was a significant blow to the effort of protecting abortion rights.
Do you really think that the fedsoc six would give a shit about a piece of legislation? They were always going to rule against abortion regardless of its legal basis because they are all theocratic fucks. The only thing that is going to save abortion is a rebalancing of the court.
Oh these days never. In 2009 though I think Stevens would’ve swung with Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Breyer and may have been able to cuck Roberts into a majority had there been a challenge.
Which is absolutely why the federalist society waited until they got their court to start their challenges.
All my adult life I had been saying they would never do it because they need the single issue voters to stay mad. I was shocked.
The thing with anger is that it’s an easy emotion, so it’s easy to switch it to something else. They’re right on to being mad about trans and woke.
They’ve got anti trans bullshit for those people now, and they can still get them frothing about states where abortion is still legal to push for a federal ban.
That’s the Democrat’s only gambit. Never make any progress and keep as much rights as possible contingent on the next election to try to force people into accepting lesser evils.
God Obama didn’t “let” him. It was in the hands of the Senate and there was nothing Obama could do. Stuff like you posted is revisionist history, and for what purpose?
So if non-voters in ohio, wisconsin, utah, et. al. would have voted. Right?
Somehow, despite having a majority for only several months out of the last several decades, that is all the Dems’ fault for not trying hard enough or whatever.
Therefore I (definitely not an accelerationist cosplaying as caring about leftism) could not possibly support anyone other than candidates certain to lose the election.
Change the Senate to population proportional seats and eliminate the electrical college. This country would change in a big way in a few years or less. Easier said than done though.
Those one-liners don’t come close to describing the reason voters rejected those candidates.
Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz backstabbing Bernie Sanders had to be a huge part of why people hated her.
ITT: “Yeah but it’s their job to ‘appeal’ to me; it’s not my job to vote for them, and I gotta say ‘not the end of democracy’ isn’t a big selling point for me tbh. Dance for me, candidate! Dance!”
Imagine politicians actually trying to get elected. How absurd would that be?
OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country
Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates
Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.
You can have the best product in the universe, but if you can’t sell it, then it doesn’t matter. When trying to argue a douche is better than a turd, you really need your presentation going. None of the American politicians (except maybe Bernie) are remotely qualified to run a country of any size, so stop trying to make it about who is the most qualified.
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Hahah, man, the world’s a weird place. I love this exchange.
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This is like saying that if you go to a restaurant, and the food tastes like shit, it’s the customers’ fault.
Holy Jesus is this a flawed analogy. I’ll try to fix it for you:
If you go to a restaurant where for some reason every present customer votes for a cook out of a lineup of cooks who each only prepare certain dishes, and out of which only two are consistently popular enough to get the majority of customers to vote for them.
Out of these two, both let the manager pick the dishes. But one only makes meals out of tofu, which isn’t terrible but not worth going out for, and the customers only vote for him because they’re afraid it’s the only choice that will beat the other guy. The other cook just scrapes and serves the sludge off the bottom of the stove but has run a successful decades-long campaign to convince their customers that sludge tastes better than tofu. None of those customers have ever tried tofu so they don’t know better.
Despite the fact that it’s obvious that the issue with this system is overwhelmingly the manager running a shitty restaurant and the cooks pitting the customers against each other, the small but vocal subset of customers who just want a steak are blaming the other customers like it’s their fault.
“The candidate has done nothing to earn my vote, so I’m not voting for them.”
“wtf why aren’t people voting for the candidate I support?! They must just hate everyone and be a fascist since they can’t see the obvious righteousness of my candidate”
These people never realize that this is a two way street. If candidates are going to earn votes, that means their candidate has to earn votes too and not just accept them for granted. They have to build bridges to achieve their goals. You can tell that those burning bridges don’t actually care about their espoused virtues – they just want to be right and stick it to their enemies.
Yeah. Plus the continuation of that conversation tends to go:
“Okay. He raised literally about a trillion dollars via corporate tax increases, which he then spent on climate change and working people, achieving incremental but quite significant results.”
“Yeah but did he OVERTURN CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM? Because if not PROJECT 2025 BECOMES ALL THE DEMOCRATS FAULT”
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
Ironically most of these people also tend to make arguments in favor of Russian imperialism when they talk about how NATO is actually to blame for the war and Ukraine should accept a peace agreement.
Almost as if…
I asked one of them randomly earlier what they think of the war in Ukraine, and they don’t want to discuss it, just keep talking to me about Joe Biden
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While you should vote for the best possible option, I feel like these kinds of posts are constantly shifting responsibility away from Democrats for their own short-comings.
A couple of weeks ago I voted in the European Parliament elections for the option that had, in my view, the best possible agenda: socially progressive, ecologist, economically left-leaning, decent foreign policy and coherent voting records. But the campaign they ran was absolutely terrible, starting by the candidate. Even though she is admittedly an accomplished woman who has had a very solid career, she doesn’t know about the concept of charisma. She wasn’t selected because she was the person who would perform the best in debates or in speeches (and she definitely wasn’t), but rather, because she was an option that would provoke little conflict among the different factions of the coalition. That was the sign that the internal dynamics of the coalition had degenerated and were acting out of their own inertia, rather than seeking the best possible outcome.
Expectedly, we got about half the seats we were aiming for.
The very next day, the leader of the coalition resigned from that position. Even though she’s a great minister (making policy), she’s proven she isn’t good at keeping the aparatus under control in order to achieve good results (doing politics). It’s a painful process, but a necessary one where mistakes and short-comings must be admitted in order to grow into something more virtuous.
Having read US liberals for years, I grow more and more convinced that they’re instinctively hostile to constructive criticism of their party’s aparatus. And, when your country’s voters declare themselves to agree far more with your party’s policies than those of their direct opponent, and yet they can’t bury their opponent into irrelevance, you have to admit that your party is doing electoralism wrong, and must question why.
TIL Dems are responsible for the EC, FPTP instead of proportional representation for Congress, the cap on number of representatives, gerrymandering, the decades of propaganda, Southern Strategy and so on. Thank you for informing me.
Yeah I ultimately do not like their choices. They have to run candidates who will win the swing states because a cult of rabid idiots who have more voting power per person than the rest of us consistently and reliably show up and vote entirely Repub from top to bottom of the ballot.
I mean, sure, fire the heads of the party and put new people in. Fuck 'em. But they aren’t going to be able to win just by running candidates who appeal to the majority of the country, because the majority of the country’s votes are diluted since they reside in densely populated cities. That’s a sickening reality we all have to deal with.
It’s Gerrymandering. That’s the answer to the question: why?
Democrats should try changing their strategy since it’s obviously not working.
