“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him.
Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”
He is an expert, after all. He’s the guy whose 3rd party campaign in 2000 siphoned enough votes from Gore in Florida to flip the state (and the election) to Bush.
And people were saying the same stupid “Bush and Gore are the same” shit in 2000.
Uhhhh, wasn’t that more due to Jeb! ordering the recount stopped? Like, I seem to recall reading that the recount WAS NOT COMPLETED, and the results that they had at that point had to be accepted, which just so happened to favor Bush.
Not saying Nader didn’t siphon votes, but I seem to remember that there was actual skulduggery and not just “3rd party go brr”.
There was a lot going on. The final count used had bush up by 537 votes out of 5.8 million cast. The close margin triggered a recount and Bush dropped to 327 vote lead.
Nadar probably cost the democrats more votes then republicans by greater then that 327. But there were other things that hurt Gore. Some intentional some random.
There were ballot design issues. In areas where the butterfly ballot was used Buchanan (who was also a 3rd party candidate) got way more votes than elsewhere. So if you wanted Gore saw him under Bush and selected the dot below you voted for Buchanan. See below.
Bush. O
/ O Buchanan
Gore. O
In another democratic area the ballot had the presidential race split on the front and back page. 21,000 votes were invalidated because they had multiple selections for president.
There was a large purge of mostly black felon voters. 15% weren’t felons.
Then there were lawsuits trying to stop and start recounts in both state and federal court. The state supreme court ordered recounts while they decided if the recount should be used. Then they decided the recount should be used and set a date it was du. Then the US supreme court stopped the recount. Several days later they decided there wasn’t time for a recount and ordered the Bush ahead by 537 count to be used.
So honestly it probably took all the above to swing the final count to Bush from Gore. I’m guessing if any one had not happened Gore would have been president.
A personal note I live in Florida and that was the first election I voted in. My vote for president has never be closer to making a difference in who was president. It’s shaped my views on elections and voting.
Well yeah, you (and the other poster who referenced the Brooks Brothers Riot) are 100% correct in stating the count ended prematurely, but if Nader hadn’t siphoned away those votes, Gore likely would have had yhe lead throughout the recount and Republicans wouldn’t have been in a position to pick a favorable time to stop.
I blame it more on Gore and the Democrats for not fighting for democracy more. Hopefully it becomes more clear the Supreme Court is an legitimate institution and people point to increasingly inane decisions as a reason not to listen to it.
Agreed. These people are demonstrating the exact behavior that Nader is talking about that put Trump in the Whitehouse in 2016 and now it looks like again in 2024. What the fuck do they expect to happen when running as “diet Republicans” against “Republicans?”
Of course people don’t like to take their medicine and will now lash out and blame everyone else for the mess they’ve caused again.
In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore’s defeat.
However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.
- his wiki
Yeah fuck Ralph Nader for that. He definitely helped Bush win.
They need to fire the leaders of Democratic party. Find new blood and new direction. Swing to the right didn’t help them.
So they did that once, Hillary was all set to take the nomination in 2008 then this young charismatic guy took the nomination. Obama served 2 terms and the Republicans lost their mind over it…
… but maybe the Democrats did too? Because Hillary still thought it was Her Turn in 2016, and there were a lot of machinations to make sure they didnt run a Socialist. Then I distinctly remember all the shenanigans to insure that Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020. And we all know what happened this year. I actually think Harris was a good candidate, I just wish she got the chance to prove it in a meaningful primary. (Edited to add: if she had lost a primary, all it would have meant was that Democrats would have found an even better candidate.)
The Democrats do have a deep bench of Governors and Senators who might make really good Presidents. They even proved that strategy worked in 2008. I wonder why they are so afraid to prove it in a primary.
Disagree, Harris would not have been close to winning at all if there was a primary. Even Tim Walz would have absolutely smoked her in a primary.
While I’m not as sure as you are about that, if it had happened that way I wouldn’t have minded at all. I liked Harris as a candidate, and feel she would have made a fine President. but I also like other Democrats.
We’ll have to watch Walz. His current term ends with the 2026 election, and while he’s not term limited he has already been in office for two terms. This campaign might give him the bug to try again in 2028.
Harris didn’t even win her home state in the primary she actually competed in. She was always the wrong choice.
The only criticism I have with that is the transfer of campaign funds. Harris was able to take control of the war chest immediately. That’s the one justification I can see for giving her the nod.
Yeah that’s really it, I want primaries that feel fair. The staggering of them is one of the least fair elements imo, it’s how none of the people who anyone was excited for won in 2020
If the Dems want to be relevant in the future they need an FDR, not even an Obama will cut it right now. The American people are demanding change, and so it’s going to have to be pretty radical improvements to life or the fascists are going to keep winning. And it needs to be widespread. I’m not saying that they need to start singing the international and calling for us to overthrow the capitalist regime on international women’s day (though, it would be based as hell). But M4A needs to be one of their milder offers and they need to sell people on it. “Life is hard, and corporations have fucked you, the Republicans are telling you to hate your neighbors. We’re going to make this country more competitive for your quality of life, and if the private sector cannot or will not provide you with your needs at an attainable price then we will”
One of the many problems with the Democratic primary was the attitude that we can skip them altogether for incumbents. Dean Phillips got a lot of criticism for daring to challenge Biden, but I have to admit (in hindsight) that he was onto something. If they had staged a debate early in the primary cycle, we might have seen Biden’s decline earlier. Phillips might not have ended up the nominee, but we might have had a more rigorous verring of the eventual nominee.
If there is one reform I want to see in the Democratic party going forward, it’s that all Primaries be contested. we shouldn’t give an incumbent a pass. We should hear him defend themselves in debates before they become the nominee. Heck, have the sitting VP debate the incumbent. Why not?
I agree that it would have been better to have legitimacy, despite the results. Now you have legitimacy, and bad results.
Obama, sadly was a failure. Better than any other president since FDR and Carter, but that’s not saying much. America wanted change and all we got was the ACA from him and a few less terrible trade deals. Obama deported more people than Trump and never fixed the decline in the middle class. I turned 18 when Obama first ran and was so excited for all the “change” and nothing improved sustainably for the average American. He could have solidified himself as the best ever but road the middle too often and now the party is officially dead.
We keep using that line about deportation but the problem is deportation is popular. Speedy removal and asylum in Mexico are popular. It’s easy for people to blame immigrants.
In the same polls Americans support deportations but also legalization of immigrants in about equal measure.
https://www.vox.com/policy/368889/immigration-border-polls-election-2024-trump-harris
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
Republicans have primed Americans into thinking illegal immigrants are criminals bringing in crime and drugs into the country. Which is completely fabricated and untrue. However, since Biden, Democrats have failed to counter message and instead adopted the right wing on immigration. That’s the entire reason we see this contradiction. A genuine counter message would be popular. And it’s essential considering that Trump is going to start mass deportations, which means concentration camps for millions of Americans
I agree, under the heading that if they can cart anyone away that easily, they can cart me away that easily.
Yeah, the concentration camps will absolutely extend to any legal immigrants, and even people that look ‘immigrant passing’. (Not white immigrants like from Canada or Europe of course, it’s all racially motivated). I won’t be surprised if Trump begins to deport political enemies
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https://democrats.org/contact-us/
Their system is so bad they accepted “gofuckyourself@fuckyou.com” as my email so go have a blast. I encourage everyone to do so.
I told them all to resign and congratulated them on chasing the mystical moderate all the way off a cliff.
Implying anyone in the party even knows how to open and read emails received from that form
Thanks for doing that, they’ll probably be sorted out by 2026!
Why would they reject that email address? It’s a valid email?
Idk, sometimes I’ve tried putting fake emails addresses on other sites with a similar format and I get an error that says it isn’t a valid email. I don’t really know enough about validation of those things though, I just assumed there was a way to check past is it xxx@yyy.com
They’ve already started the talking point that they swing too left and that’s why they lost
Fuckers will NEVER learn.
They don’t want to learn. They’re both right wing parties.
Welcome to 'murica
Yeah, courting far left people like Dick Cheney was the problem. Next time they will just run Ivanka Trump and if you’re against her, you are a misogynist.
Just kidding, they won’t run her until she’s at least 60, everyone knows people who are younger than that can’t politics.
I don’t even need to fact check this. They do the same bullshit every time.
What’s the definition of insanity again? The DNC doesn’t appear to know.
Really think they have the ability to see that? Because I don’t. Nor does history. My gut tells me the Dems are going to move dramatically further right after this because “they didn’t appeal enough to the ‘center’” and “they can’t rely on the left to support them”. Our only option might be a leftist coalition committed to not voting dem until they capitulate or we gain enough support to be a viable party.
“they can’t rely on the left to support them”
Worse, they do not want to. That would be bad for their billionaire buddies. The same buddies that funnel untold millions to both parties at the same time, to ensure they get what they want either way.
This is why I’m hoping that all the impending hardships reflect poorly on Trump’s term, and he can merely serve as the Hoover to an FDR-like successor.
Would be great if we avoided all the unnecessary deaths along the way, but we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t insist on learning everything the hard way.
You’ve been subscribed to Hoover facts.
✨ Herbert Hoover was raised as a Quaker. ✨
Yeah, he seems committed to collapsing a strained economy. It’s going to hurt. With any luck he’s going to struggle with his social control problems and focus on doing things that hurt everyone.
They need to fire the leaders of Democratic party. Find new blood and new direction. Swing to the right didn’t help them.
We need better people who won’t vote for Trump.
Seriously though - Biden did win. And your conclusion now is that that they need “new blood”? Biden’s as old-blood as you can get.
I love how everybody is blaming the party rather than the idiots voting for the crazy grandpa. Kamala was the better candidate. The people are broken more than the parties.
Kamala was the better candidate. But that doesn’t mean she was a good candidate. If they want to win then making people choose between a pile of shit and a turd sandwich isn’t the winning move.
If they want to win then making people choose between a pile of shit and a turd sandwich isn’t the winning move.
They were choosing between a competent adult and the first US president to actively try to overturn the results of an election in the United States. A potted plant would be a better option than Trump.
Who do you imagine would have done better? Trump is promising the biggest deportations in US history - you think an ultra-liberal is going to compete with that?? The people of the United States are terrible - they picked this - they are to blame.
Biden barely won. No one should take 2020 as evidence of expertise. That was an embarrassingly nail-biting result.
I mean, he did win tho.
He won against a sitting president that had botched a pandemic so poorly that people seem to have forgotten that he spent the previous 3 years as a national embarrassment and complete buffoon
Kamala wasn’t the better candidate. Biden would’ve done better. They forced the old man out in the middle of a campaign. Kamala never fared well on her own. Stupid Dems thought because Biden lost the debate he’d lose the election. Well Trump lost the freakin debate, but did it matter?! NO! THAT’S why they need to be gone. They got lucky with Biden. They ain’t getting lucky again.
Biden barely beat Trump in 2020 and is now much older and the incumbent who people typically blame all the current issues on. They made the right choice forcing him to step down but he never should have run for a second term in the first place but instead defeat Trump and run a single term like he said he would in 2020. The DNC should have spent the last 4 years grooming someone more appealing to the public instead of trying shift the party to be more like the Republicans.
Yeah, Harris’s campaign was bad, but she at least had a chance. We wouldn’t be as devastated today if Biden was the nominee because we’d all know the result. What would have been much better was actually having a primary rather than needing to tiptoe around his ego for half the campaign.
Kamala wasn’t the better candidate.
What do you do when the nation wants a fascist and you don’t want a fascist? Do you run a fascist just to win? Or do you lose elections?
We’re blaming the wrong people. Trump won by stoking fear, prejudice and outrage. How do you compete with that without feeding it?
Trump lost the debate in a way that spread his message and read like standing up to the liberals to his base. Biden lost in the way that said, “I’m done, let me retire”.
No, watch, they’ll run someone like Gavin Newsom in 4 years.
Ooh is it his turn?
Better not be. He’s 100% a corporate suit.
So guaranteed?
Hahahaha, he’s been lining up a 2028 run for the past few years.
That’s been the talk.
I’ve seen stirring of it.
Paywalled link, but you can see enough: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/emilyhoeven/article/newsom-trump-democratic-party-19893871.php
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Liberals would choose fascism over adopting left wing elements into the party. They’ve made their choice and will now live with it. Repeated failure by leadership to choose a candidate people actually like is what brought us here. Never forget that.
It’s not even the leader itself that matters. Harris was a mediocre politician, but she could have run a better campaign on issues that make people believe in the Democratic party. But instead we ran up to election day wondering if Lina Khan would even keep her job and nightmares of neoliberal policies too limited and too complicated to inspire anyone.
Fuck you, Nader. We wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for you.
Looking purely at vote counts, he isn’t wrong. Trump lost about 3 million votes compared to 2020, whereas the Dems lost 15 million. There’s certainly a lot of blame to lay at the feet of “both sides bad” people who didn’t vote, but either way that’s catastrophically bad turnout for the Dems.
There’s certainly a lot of blame to lay at the feet of “both sides bad” people who didn’t vote
No. Absolutely not.
The Democrats and Republicans have spent 40 years, but more importantly, the last six months making it very clear that losing a badly-needed day’s pay for a worker isn’t worth the time it takes to vote. (Unless you were in Missouri with the $15 minimum wage on the ballot.)
Democrats are the reason that Democrats lose.
It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about the person weighing in.
I don’t want to hear what Jill Stein has to say about it either. Fuck both of them.
And you people downvoting: would you want to hear Newt Gingrich’s take? Even if this is what he said?
You should be saying: “Fuck Kamala Harris”
The Dems knew from day one that the economy was the most important issue to voters, because the vast majority of them are working 2-3 jobs just to barely make ends meet.
So what did they do? They ran a clearly brain-damaged candidate, and when he imploded on live national TV, they subbed in Harris, who spent two months just telling people suffering to be joyful, as if it weren’t only condescending, but terribly bad policy and campaign strategy. Here in Missouri the $15 minimum wage passed overwhelmingly, but Harris decided to cosplay as a moderate Republican and talk about tax cuts that no one actually thought she’d follow through with anyway, because they’ve spent the last four years being ignored by Joe Biden.
And they kept harping on Trump’s weirdness, as if they haven’t already observed that voters do not care how weird he is.
Jill Stein and Ralph Nader didn’t make these crappy political decisions.
The Dems did.
Kamala Harris would not even be an issue if Nader hadn’t spoiled the 2000 election.
Because Gore would have been president and everything would have been different.
So no, fuck Ralph Nader.
Gore lost because George Bush’s brother, Jeb, invalidated a bunch of ballots and stopped a recount as governor of Florida.
Besides that, this argument is absurd as it would be just as valid to say that Gore spoiled the election for Nader and if Gore hadn’t run, Nader would have been elected president instead of George W.
Quit trying to externalize the blame for the actions of the party leadership. These faults should have been clear to you in 2016 when they handed the White House to Trump, and again in 2020 when their candidate only narrowly defeated Trump (especially at a time when Trump had already wrecked the economy and COVID was skyrocketing and this was fresh on everyone’s mind).
You seem to keep insisting that everyone else needs to adjust to meet you in backing candidates that keep losing when maybe you should be the one adjusting to meet others. Sliding further and further right isn’t a winning strategy for Dems and that should be quite obvious by now.
Gore lost by few enough votes that there are a multitude of people who could have acted differently to produce a win. You can pick and choose who you want to blame and everyone is right.
That’s a logical fallacy called an Ad Hominem. Where you don’t argue against an idea, instead attack the person voicing it.
You’re opinion of a person, doesn’t mean anything to their argument. It actually works against finding truth and solutions.
So then yes, you would like to know what Newt Gingrich’s take is as long as it is a valid argument?
You don’t think that maybe some people don’t deserve attention in the first place?
Good ideas deserve attention. It doesn’t matter where they come from.
Your idea here isn’t a good one, and no longer has mine.No one has a right to media attention just because they have a good idea. I assume if a serial killer had a good idea, you wouldn’t want it on all the front pages. Maybe let them tell someone else and have that person bring it up if it’s such a good idea.
Who said the person deserves attention? Even a right to it?
I didn’t.
Maybe blowing up the Democratic party would be best for everyone.
that would only be true if there was something to replace it
Well I’d prefer more than one thing to replace it, but certainly this is one of the rare opportunities to do so.
That’s a mathematical impossibility. Election theory says you can’t do that with first past the post.
Election Theory also says you can never ever change the first pass the post system while working within a two-party system. Thus the only way change it is by breaking the two-party system. Which I agree you can’t do when there are two parties. However while I would never say to do it on purpose, the Democrats have already destroyed themselves on their own. So why not take advantage of it? Without the Democratic party there as a foil the Republican party will break apart as well. So this is a golden opportunity.
I don’t see much downside at this point. They can shamble along like a zombie inside a Republican dominated system at every level. That’s their best case scenario.
Move on from the Democrats. It’s over. They had their chance with Bernie.
After this term Trump cannot be reelected. What will the democratic message be then? Who will be the new boogie man?
The Democratic Party will never change on its own. It is run by neoliberals. Neoliberals are moderate conservatives. They will always shift a little right before shifting a little left.
If the Party is not overtaken by progressives, we will repeat all this bullshit again and again until only far right people remain.
The party needs to be taken over by leftists not progressives. It needs leadership who isn’t afraid of being titled left, those who reject the right as an outward identity.
My concern is numbers. The party needs to appeal to enough people to be successful. The public understands “progress” and “progressive”. The public requires quite a bit of education on “leftist” to be sold. I think this would be the difference between success and failed obscurity.
Unless the R’s hold their constitutional convention and crown Trump Emperor
Eh, even if they do, because I do believe it’s 100% possible they’ll try to end democracy in all but name this cycle, I don’t think Trump will even live out his full term in the next 4 years. The man looks older every rally and photo op. He can’t even open doors.
Vance sucks in all the same ways every neocon sucks, so I don’t think he’ll be a totalitarian aberration like Trump if he’s elected. He doesn’t seem to have that something Trump has. I think he’ll be more like Reagan or Bush. Which is awful, but I think it’s something we can push through at least.
They’ll devour each other competing for the seat of cult leader when he dies.
He’s going to dive into dementia live on TV. No way that man’s ego lets him be hidden away as his brain continues to melt.
By 2028, Republicans will have gone all-in on explicit voter suppression and fully political election boards, they’ll let the corporate overlords for media know they can take the mask off or suffer their wrath, and they’ll have a Supreme Court and federal government to back them up. They don’t need to hide anymore. They made the fascistic push this time and they won, now is time to wield that power.
Acting like there will be an election (e.g. organizing and building political coalitions) will put us in a better position to deal with whatever else happens
Exactly, we need to prepare for a hearts and minds conflict with the concept of fascism and those enacting it. Ideally this will wind up a free election in two years where we make the fascists incapable of legislating. But it may require other forms of resistance.
They would need 6 more states to agree to that. I don’t think we need to worry about that anytime soon unless they just completely abandon law and procedure. At which point it’s a civil war anyways.
You sure about that?
To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.
The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.
Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.
Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.
Everyone needs to take their anger straight to their local DNC office. Get involved and stop letting the centrist status-quo motherfuckers steer the party from the local levels. I’m also a member of my nearest DSA group but, until there’s a viable option for third parties to complete in general elections, we need to hold our noses and trojan horse the Democrats to change them from within.
Yes, the Democratic party is out of touch. They lost due to stubbornness - expecting Muslims to vote for Kamala without her making a plan to end the war in Gaza was a gamble that didn’t pay off.
Now that the election is over, we need to focus our attention on third parties.
Good fucking riddance…
You fucked up a sure thing and let Trump win. There will never be a female president in my lifetime because Trump beats women.
I wonder who the corporations will pay to represent us next time.
It’s also just another piece of the Overton Window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_windowEverything in this election saw a monumental move to the right for everyone … the left (if there ever was any) went to the center, the center went to the right and the right went to the far right
Now right wing or right wing leaning ideas have become the norm and anything that is even remotely left or leftist has become extreme.
America shifted to the right and it brought along everyone, no matter their political leaning along with them.
Good. Whatever follows can’t be any worse than the “we need a strong republican party” dems.
Or my favorite “we shouldn’t hold trump accountable for crimes because we need to beat him at the ballot box”
Hakeem Jeffries should feel like an idiot for that one.
Those same dems who thought that seeking endorsements from Dick Cheney was a good idea?
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Honestly I would be okay with it. They’ve been so ineffective and myopic that I’ve been done with the party as a whole for a while now.
Yeah, I just want a populist progressive party willing to make bold moves that can win
They choose their big money corporate donors over the American people and then are surprised when the American people chose big money over them.
They said that in 2016 too after rigging things against populist grassroots candidates in favour of establishment Democrats and learned nothing.
