- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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So angry this isn’t even satire.
I think it counts as satire, even if the headline is a completely true statement.
Colbert was satire when he just copied what Republicans were saying, with the obvious intentions of “Jesus Christ, do they even hear themselves?”
The Onion can be satire now, and when “No way to prevent this, says the only country where this happens on a regular basis.”
seriously. they’ll have a LOT more believable articles for the next few years.
The reality is even worse. They’re going to “learn” all the wrong lessons. They will shift further to the right, like they always do.
Yep, every time Dems can’t get enough votes from the left to win, because they aren’t “left/pure enough” for them, what they learn is to shift to the right to find votes.
Whereas since voters on the right will always vote for the one with the R by their name even if they don’t think the candidate is “right enough”, their party learns that it doesn’t have to move to the left to find enough votes and stays to the right or moves even further to the right.
…you don’t win over conservatives by offering light-conservatism, but the democratic party have run the same playbook since 1992…
I don’t think you understand their point. Republicans always turn out to vote for their candidate. Then they win (at least a good portion of the time) and they vote in primaries and move the party further right. For any evidence just look at the past 2 decades.
Whereas the left just decides to sit out and therefore Dems lose (or only win at odd times.) They can’t count on leftist/apathetic voters, so they go towards where they think they can get votes (ie. people who always vote and if they do convert enough they are profiting by gaining one vote for them and removing one from Republicans.)
Now everyone here is saying it’s soooo obvious that it’s a poor strategy but is there any introspection on behalf of the left/apathetic? How has withholding your vote or not voting in primaries gone? It’s been done for years and society has moved so, so far away from leftist goals no?
So their point is that it probably is a mix- surely the Dems need to actually run on popular policy and leftists/apathetic need to suck it up, vote in all elections, and vote for the best candidate. Pick your preferred candidate in the primary and then vote for the Democratic candidate in the general, no matter what (well- barring something egregious like…being anything like Trump.) Once Dems actually have power, you can keep pushing left. But if people just sit out, you’re not gonna be counted. Decades of that is proof.
Edit- maybe you mean you can’t win the center over with conservatism-lite. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But someone mentioned Bernie finished behind Harris in Vermont so I don’t know that it’s a maxim.
Republicans always turn out to vote for their candidate
Ever wonder why that’s the case?
Mindless sheep sycophant party that abuses the system to stay relivent VS super-diverse big tent party than “takes the high road” and it is still almost 50/50…tells you where the people actually stand and how badly the broken system empowers the shitty minority. Oh, before “huurrrrddduuuurrrrr but popular vote dduuurrrrrrr”…that is how many people of each ideology VOTED not how many there are. Glad I could clarify the obvious for you smooth brain twits that think you have a point.
The popular vote that trump won in addition to the electoral college? That popular vote? Democrats (the party apparatus) need to come to term with themselves and look in the mirror for answers as to why there’s a second trump term on the horizon.
Read, comprehend, then speak.
Yep, every time Dems can’t get enough votes from the left to win, because they aren’t “left/pure enough” for them, what they learn is to shift to the right to find votes.
And can you blame them? Who do you think is more efficient catering to, the right-wing idiot who went to vote for a rapist felon or the self-proclaimed leftist that didn’t vote to stop fascism because they didn’t like the alternative enough?
These last elections were already “right vs far right”, following ones are 100% going to be even worse. When the right wins, shifting left makes no logical sense.
No of course I can’t blame them because it’s the only thing that makes sense to do. That’s what I saying. I blame the people who won’t vote for Dems if they don’t perfectly align with everything they want or don’t pass their purity test.
Magats took over the Republican party because they consistently voted for whichever R won the primary, even if it wasn’t the one they wanted to win the primary. R’s have always done this, but Magats especially have been turning out to do this since 2008 when gasp! the Black guy won (they started out as the Tea party). On top of that they did a lot of activism. Parading around with their guns was the part they liked best about that. They took a name for their movement; the TEA (taxed enough already) party was a stupid name and they looked like idiots with their teabags, but it worked for them and they eventually got their demagogue.
The Democratic party can be moved to the left with this same strategy. Vote for the more left-leaning or whoever you like best in the primary, then vote for whoever has the D by their name in the general. When they learn that they can actually count on getting enough votes from their base, they’ll stop futilely chasing votes from the right. At the same time you have to do activism and keep the movement growing, which makes sure they clearly know what you want and creates pressure to influence their policies. You don’t give up after one election cycle because it takes time and work…
Ceding your power by not voting doesn’t make politicians care about you–it’s not like boycotting a business that wants to sell you something. Politicians want to please those who vote for them, not those who don’t. Learn from the magats. First you put the politicians closer to your views into power, then keep pressuring them to enact the policies you want. Not sit around and wait for them to enact the agenda you want first and after that you’ll vote for them. Think about how training a dog works.
h
However, I’ve been doing this forever- and the Dems just keep moving further right.
I mean, you have but clearly a ton haven’t. Witness the millions of missing votes this election.
Not sit around and wait for them to enact the agenda you want first and after that you’ll vote for them. Think about how training a dog works.
You deserve kudos for this. Very well put.
At this point you might as well start a third party.
Some kind of Democratic Socialist Party of America maybe.
This way Gore can lose all over again!
Imagine thinking the DNC will ever push another Gore. If they were willing to do that we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
You missed the point.
The only ones that need to learn are the vile pieces of shit that chose to throw their vote away or not even vote. A politician doesnt give them all they want so they sacrifice the planet. Lowest of the low. Same kind of trash as maga
Every single third party protest vote could have gone to Harris and she still would have heavily lost. She managed to even lose the damn popular vote by five million votes, despite Trump having a lower turnout than 2020.
This wasn’t because people voted third party, this was because at a time when incumbents have seen massive pushback across the globe from Covid inflation and Biden was unpopular across the board she ran as completely the same as Biden but even more Right on the border.
At a time when the politically disconnected working class families that make up the record trunout in 2020 were struggling with wage stagnation, erosion of Covid gains, and greedflation eroding their savings and pensions, four more years of the same but we’ll adopt even more Republican policies and look how many rich Republicans like us was never going to get the everperson off the damn couch.
More of the same is not a good platform for ‘progressives’ during economic hardship, even if it was out of their control and less hardship than most peer nations.
Even though Trump is a disaster for many of us, most people got though his first four years just fine, and don’t understand just how much damage he did or how much more he could do if the guardrails failed.
Getting the general public out to vote requires giving them something they want to vote for, and when the biggest thing you can point to doing or wanting to do more of is some clean energy related tax breaks that is a major problem.
Had the Dems impeached Clarence Thomas for his and his wife’s role in Jan 6, had Biden improved the immigration system like promised, had he provided free National Guard abortion clinics on federal land, had he made the FDA make puberty blockers and abortion medicine available by teleheath and mail, or indeed had any major victories in the last half of his term to show, we would not be here. Had they run AOC, Bernie, Waltz, or anyone at all who could articulate a platform beyond four more years of the same, we would not be here. Had Harris focused on how she could use left wing policy to fight the effects of late stage capitalism, we would not be here.
This election was an unforced error of the highest consequences, and one brought about by a political party that was so confident that until he dies of old age every politically disinterested Amarican would be so scared by the threat of Trump that they would maintain an unprecedented level of voter turnout without them having to actually do or promise anything.
Well said. As soon as Harris started parading Biden around on campaign events and talking about “we love you Joe” I knew it was over. It doesn’t matter that a lot of the circumstances were out of his control, to many people Biden’s term is associated with hardship. The Dems had a unique opportunity to sidestep the issue by having Harris position herself as a separate candidate, distancing herself from the Biden administration and pushing a narrative of her having different and new ideas for the country. Instead they tried themselves to the status quo in a moment where the everyman is suffering and it pulled them down like a boat anchor.
It’s a damn embarrassment, and the whole world is left weeping. Fucking hell.
I blame third party AND non voters. They and MAGA are all the same kind of scum who sacrificed your democracy.
Then, you’ll deal with this over and over until America becomes a completely fascist nation. That’ll teach those third party and non-voters. At least you’ll have your moral high ground, right?
America already will be a completely fascist nation thanks to the fascist enabling non voters
Not yet, it’s not completely fascist yet, but with the way you’re acting, there’s not going to be any significant resistance towards the US becoming a completely fascist country since you’re more interested in blaming each other instead of learning from your mistakes and work together to be better. What a defeatist mindset you have.
It will be completely fascist in January. And its thanks to non voters. They deserve all that is coming.
They don’t care so yes it is on them also. Wasn’t it 10million plus less voters then last time.
20 million. And yes they all deserve it.
…i’m not sure that’s how one builds a coalition…
There wont be a coalition with fascists. You had the vote between fascism and no fascism. If you choose that you dont want to vote for either you support fascism.
Enjoy the unfettered fascism, then, since you refuse to even find allies to fight against it.
Luckily I dont live in the US. But I have family there so I think its terrible people who didnt vote ruin their lifes and future like that. Non voters are no allies. They chose fascism. They are the enemies and there wont be another free election thanks to them and all the Maga garbage who are both on the same level
Would you prefer they DID vote for Trump? I voted for Harris because she was the only real option but after what the DNC keeps doing (see: fucking Bernie in the primaries and then not even having a primary this year) I really can’t blame anyone for not voting. The Dems need to have their come to Jesus and remember that the people don’t owe them anything.
I dont make a difference whether they voted for Trump or not. They both picked fascism. Primaries dont mean shit especially if they already have a president a power. It was a mistake to have Biden run again but that doesnt excuse not voting for democracy
Which do you think is better? Dems giving people what they want to earn their vote or trump winning?
Dems cant give people what they want because everyone wants different things.
What do you think is better? Preventing fascism or doing nothing and watching a fascist get into power?
Medicare for all or universal healthcare is incredibly popular. Peace is also popular.
Spectacular example of avoiding the question but answering it with it. You want to watch the fascism
What do you think is better? Preventing fascism or doing nothing and watching a fascist get into power?
I think preventing fascism is better which is why I want a popular candidate because that’s the best way to prevent fascism
We know that Biden’s/Harris’ 2024 Campaign failed to produce enough turnout to win against Fascism. What could they have campaigned on to improve turnout? Universal healthcare is one of the many popular progressive policies, popular for both Democratic and Republican voters, that they could have ran on but decided not to.
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
And this is one of the reasons why people shifted Republican in this last election.
If the Democratic party won’t represent Democratic ideals, then out of either anger or apathy, their base will vote for the party that can do it better, Republicans, or not vote at all.
I agree with a lot of people on Lemmy that the average American is an idiot, and our shortening attention spans coupled with our changing media diets isn’t helping with that, but I see these as features not bugs.
Americans in general like their shiny toys, and one of the best ways to capture their attention is by politicians giving concessions and offering things that will benefit their lives. Think carrots on sticks more than sticks themselves.
I will never stop hanging most of the blame on the Democratic party for leading us to today conclusion after Tuesday.
People didn’t shift Republican in this election. Trump got about the same number of votes as he did against Biden.
no, but everyone wants to pretend that everyone became ultra-super racist idiot trump voters over the course of 4 years because they listened to a lot of joe rogan, rather than listening to a bunch of CNN like good little vote piggies. see one infographic of a bunch of red arrows everywhere and then everyone loses their fucking minds and decides that the only way to win the next election is to become more racist. if only they tack to the right harder, then they’ll win, they just need to be more racist, see, and then it’ll work!
and the problem is that this is exactly the lesson they want to learn. it’s the lesson they have an interest in learning because they are also a right wing party. maybe it’s because there’s just gonna be more posters running around two days after the election because this is the top drama and it’s eating up time they otherwise would’ve spent talking about celebrity drama or whatever, but we can talk for years about how the democrats, anywhere else, would be a center-right party of neoliberal warmongers that are fundamentally unwilling to give positive material concessions to basically any of their voters. as soon as the election gets called, that all vanishes, suddenly they’ve run the most perfect campaign of all time, and really, it was the voters that were at fault, and if anything, they should be more racist. it’s not that the economy sucked, that they didn’t present an enthusiastic, optimistic, or hell, coherent, vision of the future. no, it’s because they just weren’t racist enough.
it’s 2016 all over again. the punishments will continue until morale improves, time is a flat circle, and I keep falling down the stairs.
do’h
Wait, you think the republicans represent democratic ideals better…?
They pretend better
There is no way to read or infer that from their comment without some serious preconceived notions. That person made a statement of fact. They did not say anything about their opinion on the goodness or badness of that statement of fact.
If the Democratic party won’t represent Democratic ideals, then out of either anger or apathy, their base will vote for the party that can do it better, Republicans
That’s where I’m getting that exact sentiment
And you’ll be the bad guy for not wanting to vote for a right wing party.
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Oh c’mon, Kamala was pretty far from Jesus, and Trump and co. are no political masterminds. This was the dems race to lose and they brilliantly pulled it off by exhibiting what can only be described as an active disdain for anything that even smelled like progressive politics. Turns out you can’t win on “the other guy is worse.” They fucked up and lost fair and square.
Look, the Democrats are not good at running campaigns, but I will never let that obscure the fact that OVER 75 MILLION Americans were ready, willing, and able to vote for a proven rapist, convicted criminal, openly racist, riot-starting adult crybaby. Not grudgingly – they went to the polls with a song in their hearts and blood in their eyes! The fucking Democrats didn’t cause that – 12 years of Fox News telling people that DJT was God, and four years of blaming COVID and inflation on desperate economic migrants did that.
Even IF the Democrats have enough of a base to overwhelm those +75m hateboner-stroking bigots, well they knew what’s at stake and STILL stayed home. (No doubt smirking at how cleverly they avoided any moral contagion via the brilliant gambit of continuing to pay taxes but not casting a vote 🙄 .) Regardless of all that, I don’t blame them for Trump’s win either, because there shouldn’t have been +75 million Trump-lovers to overwhelm in the first fucking place.
Yeah, but that’s democracy. Those 75+ million people wanted something, and they voted for it, and they got it. Anything else is irrelevant. There’s no asterisk in the Constitution with a footnote that says the election is invalid if one side consists of hateboner-stroking bigots. If Democrats want something different, then they have to convince enough people to show up and vote for something different. They have to get good at public messaging and at running campaigns. Righteous indignation changes nothing whatsoever.
Well of course the election was still valid. Brainwashed Fox News/X misinformation junkies’ votes count just as much as a good person’s does. More actually, thanks to the high concentration of fools in low-population states and with too many electoral votes. My issue is that a massive propaganda machine is permitted to exist, such that +75 million walking dildos are now convinced that Biden created greedflation and gave all their tax money to dog-eating immigrants, and Fauci should be executed for treason because he forced children to get vaxxed(?).
Dismantling that machine should be job #1 – it should have been since Al Franken wrote Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But I guess it’s fucking impossible to shut off the machine that keeps stamping out Republican and IINO voters. And with at least a hundred years of MAGA rule ahead of us, I suppose it always will be.
Yes, totally agreed, and I feel this discussion circling straight back to the OP point: Whose job is it to dismantle the machine, and counter the misinformation? It’s us; there’s no global referee that we can appeal to. How do we do it? Through the political process, because we don’t want violence and civil war. Since the winner-take-all voting system mathematically leads to two parties, our agent in the political process is the Democratic Party.
So, it’s not the DNC’s fault that the misinformation machine exists, but it is their responsibility to fix it, and we can certainly blame them because they’re really bad at it.
That’s exactly it. It’s hard to admit that almost half the voting population is totally on board with trump–his “flaws” are not a bug, they’re a feature. He increased the size of his base, bringing in millions of Latinos, Gen Z men, and men of all races. It’s not that they simply hate the Dems, it’s that they love what trump is offering. In spite of that it there did exist enough more voters that don’t like trump (it would have taken 5 million more) to stop him, but they either didn’t give a shit or they wanted it to happen (to “punish” the dems). That’s the reality.
And now the Democrats will remain powerless forever. I guess single issue voters can take solace in that little victory. Sadly, they will probably not be replaced by a more progressive party rising up from their ashes, but rather by an emergent faction formed via Republican in-fighting. They will still be conservative, but they’ll wear different colored ties.
So everything will be exactly the same as it is now except libs might be slightly less charitable to the new party?
Yes they well once the supreme court is stacked 7 to 2 they well never have the power to do anything even if elected.
The supreme court is already stacked! Biden could have added more justices and pushed for impeachment of the obviously corrupt ones. He chose to not even try or so much as get out the message that it needs to happen, so as to not appear “partisan”, as if any of their voters actually care about partisanship at this point when it comes at the cost of getting shit done.
weren’t we as well vilifying anyone who criticised her stance on genocide and the brutal genocide in gaza rates much higher than anything you said about trump. add that to her history of being cosy with lobbyists, her controversial career as prosecutor and she will be the classic pro-war neocon we all hate. but majority of us still voted her in name of lesser evil.
in the same way i think a significant chunk of those 75 million think they are voting for lesser evil in name of god, increased crime and inflation.
plus the absolute cringe and elitist approach of dnc to label anyone not unconditionally supporting them as super racist sexist nazi.even now every left sub on .world and reddit is making fun of working class by mocking egg prices and even wishing for trump to deport the muslims and nuke gaza.
i think a significant chunk of those 75 million think they are voting for lesser evil
Oh no. I can assure you they were very deliberately voting for the largest evil they could find.
sigh, if dnc sees this then they will try to hire you as campaign advisor.
this is exactly what the cronies of both parties want, for us to think that other side is pure evil so that they can continue exploiting us while doing all the evil they want.
does this look humane to you ? https://youtu.be/jRQGMJZKjAU
are we really the saint we pretend to be ?
And that is why the right always wins. The left are lazy and take the high ground and think themselves above it. And the right just does shit. And keeps at it till they get it.
That’s not new information. We learned that the first time Trump was elected. We learned it again when Biden was elected, even if Biden managed to narrowly outperform Trump. We’ve known what we were up against. Stop pearl clutching and acting surprised and start being more pragmatic. The Democrats are the one with a platform at the national level, it’s on them to get out their vote and they utterly failed to do that.
those 75 million americans have done exactly the same shit they’ve been doing since like, the year 2000. or beyond. every guy the republicans have ever run has been some variety of racist, scam artist, rapist, or straight dumbass rich guy failson. the next election, if there is one, which there probably will be, they will do the same thing again. the election after that, and after that, and after that. it’s not rocket science. it’s the basic functioning of the system. to get mad at them is sort of like trying to piss into the wind in order to spite it. you just get piss all over yourself. either that, or you face the other direction and break the record in the meaningless pissing contest.
if you don’t offer a material reality to people, a vision of the future, if you don’t offer people anything, they will not come out to vote for you. kamala actually did worse, instead, she decided, hey, we’ll campaign with liz cheney, we’ll say that building the wall is a good idea, we’ll say that we need to be tougher on immigration, have a more lethal military, continue the genocide that’s currently going on, and then change nothing from biden’s famously extremely unpopular administration other than appoint more conservatives to the cabinet in the name of being bipartisan. oh, and small business tax exemptions, and tax cuts for first time homebuyers that haven’t missed a rent payment in the last 2,000 years. the only good thing she campaigned on was price controls for groceries, but then she dropped that like a hot potato as soon as she could.
really inspiring stuff. then, as always, every sensible person on the planet says, hey, this is maybe not a great idea, instead maybe we should’ve had a primary so they could’ve pushed through a candidate that didn’t get less votes than ANDREW FUCKING YANG, noted bipartisan techbro-appealing dumbshit idiot, maybe we should campaign on medicare for all, funding for housing, free college, student debt relief, a stronger FTC, or perhaps she could’ve said hey, we’ll pack the court, we’ll reverse the roe v. wade decision, and then we’ll try to codify roe v. wade and the million other legal decisions that we need to codify in order to guarantee american citizens some basic amount of rights. All of those would be incredibly popular decisions that would present a vision of the future.
she didn’t do any of that, and then she lost, and then somehow the focus is on the people who voted, 2 million less from last time, for trump. it’s insane shit.
Its not even the dems. Its the dnc. Who actually voted for biden or kamala as the person, of all democrats, to be the representative? The two party system has literally led to the death of America.
If it was just the fact of a two party system, why did it take over 200 years to do it?
Every system breaks down, given sufficient time
I protested in front of the DNC this year with the Palestinian supporters.
The DNC is definitely part of the problem. There are establishment Democrats there too that help decide who gets to run the big ticket. We saw it in 2016 between Hillary and Bernie.
Still, as a progressive, I believe the only path forward is to still work within the system we have else we risk fracturing and ceasing organization. We need to lead a new platform within the Democratic party, and that will be much harder given the sentiment Americans have of them as was shown in this year’s election results.
2022 wasn’t half bad though. So there’s still hope.
the system is broken, and continuing to work within it will only lead to more losses. there is no salvaging the democratic party, it is fully co-opted by neoconservatives and billionaire donors who only care about fundraising off of losses. if there is a single lesson you should take from this dogshit election, it’s that. they do not care about you, or your rights, or your life. they care about donations. their dedication is to the bag, first and foremost, above everything else.
Amen
I think the only thing to learn from this is that [vehemently ignores everything the Dems did wrong]
This article is about and for you, fool.
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Fair enough, I ate your onion 😄
In my defense, though, I’ve seen plenty of people make the exact same argument earnestly many times, especially in the last couple of days…
We also want to congratulate our friends in the Republican party, they played a great game and we can’t wait to work with them more.
Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley is excited to see his colleagues at the DNC make the same mistakes over and over.
This is amazing.
“I saw how the DNC ignored voters, I saw how they talked down to people, and that just made my job easy. I go in and say ‘Democrats think you’re dumb, but Republicans think you’re a genius’ and these dopes eat it up like the slop they feed their pigs.
Holy fuck is this even satire anymore? I can literally see a GOP campaign official say that in private.
In private? I can see them saying it on TV and the rubes still voting for them since all they watch is Fox News and they’d never run it.
Trump won Michigan by doing the absolute bare minimum of pretending to care about the core issues Harris actively ignored (cough genocide).
And also paying probably like 50 bucks to spam send this image for two weeks.
“To all those growing skeptical of this party’s strategies and overall agenda, let me just say we hear you loud and clear. Rest assured we will be doing everything short of interpreting that sound into words and responding to those words in any way shape or form.”
This is an all-timer.
And remember, you gotta start repaying the student loans you never used!
100% Spot-On article. The Hard Times nails it again.
I literally see voters saying the Democrats were too left leaning, jfc.
With parties like this, painful collapse is the only way to avoid multigenerational destitution.
There is no saving the United States as a framework. It is far too compromised, with too many methods installed to keep the people willfully ignorant and infighting as the owners suck their life forces dry for profit.
We can limp along and pretend that isn’t the case, but climate change, aka the reality that doesn’t give a shit about our self-delusion and greed worship, will force that collapse sooner rather than later. Reality can’t be bribed, deluded, disappeared, or discredited.
Enjoy living in delusion that a society can function in capitalist competition against itself, the ability to do so is coming to an end.
I literally see voters saying the Democrats were too left leaning, jfc.
I think its important to ask the people saying that to name specific examples of HOW they were too left leaning. People just want to hurt someone now because they are hurt - it doesn’t matter if they are punching left or right, if they perceive something as landing, it makes them feel better.
I am seeing Liberals online blaming minorities for not showing up when the reality is, across the board Dem voters didn’t show up.
If only the consequences only applied to the people causing the issue. We’re all in the blast radius. I hope I live long enough to see hope returning. So far it’s just been a constant decline.
I literally see voters saying the Democrats were too left leaning
Could you elaborate on this? I’m confused as to what those voters mean. Polling suggests that actual left wing ideas (universal health cares, higher minimum wage, etc etc) enjoy broad popular support. For example, Missouri (a deeply red state) passed a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave by ballot measure. Are these voters unaware of what “left wing” means, or are they unaware of public opinion?
I’ve seen a couple of things in this direction as well. Joe Scarborough was complaining that the democrats are too woke, and that that’s why they lost the election. He was clearly advocating for throwing trans people under the bus next cycle. I’ve also heard a liberal buddy of mine say that democrats are moving with the American public, i.e., their right wing policies are a reflection of what the American public wants.
Here on lemmy.world I see it more indirectly. The predominant sentiment is to blame the voters (“you didn’t show up”, “oh you just had to care about the genocide”, “look what you’ve done”). This operates on the false assumption that if the party changes their position to be more left wing (pro-peace, pro-healthcare, whatever) to woo the lost voters, they’d lose even more votes because the American public is so right wing.
Where are you seeing it?
They tried tacking right and they not only lost percentages of their base every day, they lost the election by a landslide. Theres nothing to gain on the right. Thats just a way to stay irrelevant.
Local opinion piece:
https://www.startribune.com/brehm-democrats-have-themselves-to-blame-for-trumps-election/601176736
I read it because of the title, but it’s just some shithead that wants them to move further right:
This red wave wasn’t as much about embracing Donald Trump as it was repudiating far-left progressivism.
[…], and then foisted upon us an equally unqualified and unpalatable hard left alternative.
They are already creating the groundwork for sucking more corporate dick.
How can this be a rejection of the far left when Harris campaigned as a moderate (e.g. Cheney)? If republican voters are going to think Democrats are communist regardless of how moderate the Democrats are, maybe moderating isn’t a good strategy. If the only choice is between right-wing and lite right-wing, right-wing voters will choose the real thing. Even then, Trumpists will still call democrats communists.
Many left polices are popular when they aren’t labelled as left
Thats the fun part, people consider dems “far left” because… Reasons, I guess? This country is so far right just the idea of building more housing counts as communist.
True. Even in California, the affordable housing measure and rent control measures both failed.
This is what gets me. Like it’s been proven to be a bad policy. So when people say it’s bad do people equate that with “leftist ideas are bad”? Like if leftists want support you should lead with ideas that aren’t bad according to actual data. There are plenty of ways to increase housing and do a ton of other stuff that has data backing it as being an effective use of funds.
Same with affordable housing. We had a ballot measure to basically make a big pot of money and “support affordable housing.” How? It certainly makes zero sense to build new housing out of that pot (ie. it’s expensive as fuck.) Do you just subsidize? What are the criteria? And what are you doing to affect the root issue that is lack of actual supply of housing? Are you cutting red tape? Are you removing minimum parking requirements? Are you developing transit and relaxing building codes (ie. higher is good) at certain lengths from transit stops?
I’ve long seen way too many leftist ideas that are more good feeling than good thought. Which is admirable to some extent but it also shows why they fail. Especially when you take into account that it would help the extremely marginalized but you’re also now asking the already poor “middle class” to foot yet more bills for something that they won’t directly see any benefit from.
No it’s not, it’s a great policy, it just needs to be supplemented by incentives to build or direct government building programs.
Depends on how it’s done.
Nawwe, fuck off with that. There’s no reason to believe that graph represents anything except what was in the mind of the person who made it.
Exactly. Every Democrat ever nominated is on the radical left, or is one of the “most liberal,” according to the Republican propaganda machine.
But their base is generally super ignorant of the rest of the world so it works. They have no frame of reference for what left and right really are, or how other societies function and get better results.
But that is asking a lot of them. These are the people who lined up to vote for the ticket with the VP that previously called the nominee America’s Hitler. Asking them to consider the finer points of leftist policies improving human lives on the other side of the world is like getting your dog to switch to Linux. There are just so many basic pieces missing that it’s hard to choose where to start.
Reminds me of that joke about how there are only two races: White, and political. It’s disheartening to see folks (some here on Lemmy) confusing listening to the concerns of brown-skinned people with leftism. The Arab-Americans in Michigan, for a relevant example, are just people with a range of political opinions like the rest of us.
No war but class war, buddy
My man ❤️
Holy shit. They really think Harris was “far left”??
Wait, there was nothing progressive about this campaign except for paying a little lip service to legalizing weed.
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Hardly surprising coming from the Star Trib these days… I knew it was bad when they refused to even endorse a candidate.
Oh they learned their lessons:
- blame minorities
- shift further right
Have they tried committing multiple felonies ? Are they even watching and learning ?
They just vowed not to!
Vowed? Wow.
They ran Harris thinking she would win based on her demographics. The DNC needs to learn that not everyone wants a black/LGBTQ/woman/etc candidate that just runs on their race/gender/sexuality.
They want someone that’s competent that will campaign on policies that will make their lives better. The DNC has moved so far away from the working class that the RNC, the party of wealthy creeps, has them.
They ran Harris because she was the only candidate they could justify shoehorning in without a primary, since she’s VP.
Why they didn’t want to run a primary is a great question. Probably cost and time, and name recognition. Studies show that often the candidate with the most name recognition wins. There’s wasn’t enough time to tell every person in America a brand new person’s name.
But usually VPs don’t do well when they run as president. Imo Dems are just trying to avoid another Bernie Sanders situation - a leftist with an authentic campaign and people who genuinely like them. More than anything, they gotta stop real progress in this country.
Imo Dems are just trying to avoid another Bernie Sanders situation - a leftist with an authentic campaign and people who genuinely like them
100% this is why. They didn’t want any internal pressure for progressive policies or a public platform to voice them.
They lost the general because they refused to hold a legitimate primary. This wouldn’t of happened. They haven’t run a real primary since 2008 and look at how hard Obama won in a landslide after competing in a deep field of qualified and competent candidates.
Even in 2008, it was obvious Clinton was the DNC’s preferred candidate and DNC still had their thumb on the scale. Despite this, Obama still managed to come out ahead. And with a base that was actually excited about their chosen candidate, they turned out to vote and Obama won.
The only lesson the DNC learned from this is that they needed to push their thumb harder on the scales the next time around.
They learned two things: identity politics and weigh the scale down as hard as possible.
They obsessed over identity, to their long term detriment as some of the minority identities they fawned over are shifting their support towards trump.
They ran Harris because she was the only viable option when it was clear that Biden was not. They did not run Harris thinking she would win at all, they ran her out of desperation because the incumbent was flatlining. It was not a choice, and it certainly was not one based on demographics. It was a “Hail Mary” and it failed as it was likely to do from the outset, and everyone who was paying attention knew that, yet had no choice but to hope for the best.
lol, you believe this? I don’t find it hard to believe that they put Biden though a primary, just to have him drop out…
IMO running Harris was the plan from the beginning. You know, which was kind of the problem, hijacking the primary.
To use your own words, you believe that?
This was not a grand conspiracy geez. Biden’s “primary” was perfunctory because we learned you never primary the incumbent. If he didn’t perform badly at the debate he probably wouldn’t have dropped out.
lol, you believe this?
Do I believe that about four months ago the Democratic Party made a desperate move to replace the incumbent candidate and there were very few viable options at the time? Yes, I believe that, because we just went through it about four months ago. It’s pretty much political suicide to withdraw an incumbent candidate. You don’t plan that from the beginning, because that would be a stupid plan. It was very likely “planned” as in “plan B,” but it’s kind of idiotic to think that it was plan A. The primary was not hijacked, the incumbent is always the candidate. Primaries are always a formality for the incumbent party.
lol. And the DNC didn’t shill for Hilary Clinton in 2016 over Bernie Sanders
Nope, that DID happen. But you are ignoring the obvious reality in this case.
Please, you’re ignoring that the very obvious deduction that DNC didn’t want an open primary.
And you’re ignoring history and the way the parties have always worked when they have the incumbent
running token candidates beholden to them is very shady but brilliant strategy by the superpacs :
if they loose: blame it on sexism, racism bigotry to divert the attention from reforms in dnc for progressive leadership. and even if they pretend to be sad about it, the megarich elites and donors get taxcuts and endless price gouging from republicans.
if they win: token candidate passes some token laws which gets either blocked in senate or so poorly implemented that they actually end up giving billions to megacorps for no visible benefit to people. case in point: https://www.atr.org/kamalas-broadband-bust-42-billion-996-days-zero-homes-connected/
She quite specifically DIDNT run on those things, like Hillary did…so…
So every racist and misogynist will say she did anyways.
Including the ones on Lemmy.
I think she, and to a greater extent the policies of the Democratic Party since Carter just cost America the Republic but there is literally nothing a black woman could do to convince some people she’s competent in her own right.
Competent at neoliberal corporate cronyism, mind you. But Harris’s qualifications by herself are rock solid.
If this election cost America the Republic then I would argue the voters cost it.
If you can’t be bothered to vote to save the Republic then it was lost already anyhow.
She quite specifically DIDNT run on those things, like Hillary did…so…
It’s going to be really fun to see them dust off the same exact playbook next time around, I already have two copies of it, I use one to even out the table in my kitchen, and the other I use the pages to pick up my dogs shit in the yard.”
Theyre not the ones that need to learn. Voters need to learn DNC is a bunch of wealthy moderates grifting voters.
What if the DNC privately wins by making sure their candidate loses?
nah pelosi is crying her eyes out as she will have to pay less taxes on all those millions she earns from insider trading & lobbying for big tech.
its a win win for them.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/TY8ysOD2GWwAAAAd/crying-crying-meme.gif
Oh they know how to win. They just don’t want to. The policy decisions that would lock in Dem control for generations to come run counter to the goals of DNC Services Corp. Because they’re a corp.
Democrats have to be deft and diplomatic and do the right things all the time that somehow appeal to all the Americans (including Americans on opposite sides like Palestine supporters and Israel supporters) and they lose if they fumble even a little bit.
Unlike the MAGA party of bigots who can’t lose no matter how much of dipshits they are.
Bro BFFR Dems had Dick and Liz Cheney endorsing her, exactly what part of their base is a war criminal and his nepo baby supposed to appeal to?
Edit to add: this is who they sent to stump for Harris in Michigan and other swing states btw
She also had Taylor Swift, Bernie Sanders, Obama, Mark Cuban, multple military generals endorsing her, among others.
But sure, it was the Cheneys that outweighed everyone else. That’s the problem, not American voters who didn’t think ‘holy shit everyone across the sociopolitical landscape is coming together supporting her, trump is that much of a serious threat’.
Great work👍
You’re in the headline, btw.
It’s insane to me how Democrats keep appealing to the right, when their historically greatest turnout has been galvanizing their base like with Obama.
And yes, a war criminal’s endorsement is more important to me than a pop star’s. One of them actually works in policy.
You’re in the headline, btw.
I’m not American.
And most Trump voters/no voters are going to wish they weren’t either in three or so years.
I’m not American
I…then why are you telling Americans that we’re wrong for thinking the DNC ran a shit campaign?? Like, you’re right, we’re in for a FUCKED time starting January 2025, but did you really expect people to turn out on election night out of an existential threat? Does that happen where you live?
Harris didn’t lose because everyone voted for Trump, Harris lost because the Dem’s voter base felt so unheard by their own candidate regarding their issues that they stayed home, exactly as Bernie Sanders said. The numbers and voter stats are all there for people to read. Harris AND Trump got overall less votes than 2020, but Harris lost the Blue Wall from 2020. Hillary at least won the popular vote, Harris and the 2024 DNC don’t even have that.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, voter turnout correlates to progressives getting in power. The conservatives always have a core base of ~20-30% of voters that will always show up (no really, look up historical voter numbers in your own country), and the DNC have really tried appealing to these people in the US instead of bringing out their own base!
It’s a flawed strategy because it’s shown over and over again that these core voters will always vote through their conservative party lines.
I…then why are you telling Americans that we’re wrong for thinking the DNC ran a shit campaign?? Like, you’re right, we’re in for a FUCKED time starting January 2025, but did you really expect people to turn out on election night out of an existential threat?
You’re right. Too stupid of me to think Americans would hold their noses and vote to keep someone who’s objectively worse for the whole planet out of the oval office.
Does that happen where you live?
No unfortunately, but I live in a third world country full of uneducated population. Again, dumb of me to assume Americans would be any different.
Harris lost because the Dem’s voter base felt so unheard by their own candidate regarding their issues that they stayed home, exactly as Bernie Sanders said
And they’re getting second Trump presidency. Good job riding that high horse. 👍
It’s not a high horse, because I voted for Kamala Harris. But as someone who actually goes here, I knew this was going to be the exact outcome, because this high minded “vote for Trump to save democracy” is what got us in this mess in the first place. It happened in exactly like this 2016, and the Dem’s didn’t learn.
Sure, we can blame the electorate, I’m all for it. But saying that it’s SOLELY the electorate’s fault when the DNC has been trotting out milquetoast candidates one after the other is so disingenuous. Americans keep saying they don’t want two right wing candidates, but no one is listening.
I mean she chose to spend the last weeks essentially campaigning with the cheneys that’s different than just an endorsement when they star in dozens of rallies.
For real, all these people blaming democrats for not winning when billionaires were literally buying votes to not be taxed by democrats. Seems like a campaign.
Well, if anything it proves that Unions work. Unions of billionaire media moguls especially. Many (soft, wealthy) hands coming together, to push in collectively towards a common goal of eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, the EPA, the SEC, and the IRS… it’s kind of beautiful, in its way. (/s)
She also had Taylor Swift, Bernie Sanders, Obama, Mark Cuban, multple military generals endorsing her, among others.
ah yes, taylor swift, noted political figure. surely, that will drive turnout. obama and bernie sanders, yes, great choices, truly, this will save us even when we’re not campaigning on their policies. mark cuban. yes. multiple military generals, very cool.
extrapolate what you actually mean with this train of thought. what do you think the democrats should’ve actually done differently? they’re the ones who’ve lost, what should they have done more? who should they have appealed to? seems like everyone wants to put the emphasis solely on the trump voters and the non-voters, and since the non-voters are non-voters, oh, wowie, look at that, all we have left are trump voters to go after.
shocker. I wonder what the party will head after, with this train of thought? I wonder which direction they’ll go in? surely, they wouldn’t double down, right? surely, they wouldn’t go further after the trump voters, after all the committed registered republican voters that turned out last time switched and… lost them a percentage point in that category, this go around. from 6% to 5%. we should emphasize the trump voters more, we should go after them more, obviously, because they’re the only ones willing to vote!
extract what you’re talking about, extrapolate. if you just run around up in your feels as a non-american, blaming the wind for blowing, then you’re just gonna end up blasting darpanet even harder.
That tiny minority of never trumpers
The same ones they had in 2020 because it turns out only 5% of Republicans know what republicanism is.
exactly what part of their base is a war criminal and his nepo baby supposed to appeal to?
Centrists. There was a reason that when Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006, they didn’t stop being a rubber stamp for Cheney’s war.
I disagree. At the risk of oversimplifying, American voters tend to respect strength of conviction, even if they don’t always agree with the policy, over milquetoast candidates. That’s why Sanders attracted so many voters who went on to vote for the other party’s candidate in the general election. Democrats need to decide what they believe in, and say it long, loud, and proud.
And when they lose they take the high road of blaming themselves. It’s en exercise in self flagellation.
Well, there isn’t going to be a Palestine in not too much longer after Bibi ethnically cleanses it and annexes it to Greater Israel.
That was one example. It easily could’ve been access to abortion, recreational marijuana, affirmative action or any other issue.
The funniest part of this is the idea that there will be an opposition party in anything but a token way after this.
…was there one before?..
Was there a party that did not install SCOTUS justices that were so ideologically conservative that they did things like end national legal abortion and gut the ability of government regulation agencies to regulate?
Yes there was. But that party is not coming back except as a token now because people just didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to vote.
But that party is not coming back except as a token now because people just didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to vote
“The party didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to listen to their voters”
FTFY
Nope. They can’t force anyone to vote for them. People thought not voting was a better plan than stopping the rapist fascist dictator when they only had two possible choices.
There was an absolute mountain of evidence that Trump would be a disaster. They didn’t vote anyway because they knew they weren’t going to get a pony.
Voting for people in a two-party system is the stupidest thing you can do because you will never get your way with any one politician. So you vote against and keep voting against until you get closer and closer to what you want.
Just not voting or voting for third party candidates that will clearly lose against someone who has an automatic 30% of the vote doesn’t stop the worst possible thing from happening and it never will.
If you didn’t vote to stop Trump from getting into office, I blame you. You had warning after warning and your idealism was more important to you.
They can’t force anyone to vote for them.
Yup, which is why you need to give them reason to vote.
Democrats have been parading around “most important election of our lifetime” for fucking years - don’t be surprised that it didn’t work yet again.
The reason why Trump is popular is because there is legitimate pain and struggle in the working class, and he affirmed that pain and struggle (even if he was misidentifying the source of that pain). Telling voters “things are good, actually, and the other guy is gonna ruin it” is just dumb.
Democrats didn’t run on popular policy and they got destroyed because of it.
They had a reason to vote.
Their reason was that a rapist fascist who quoted Hitler and clearly has dementia that promised to deport millions of people and be a dictator on day one only had a 50/50 chance of being president.
And they didn’t care because they didn’t like Kamala Harris much. Was she any of those things? No. But her boss is funding the same genocide in Israel that Trump said to Netanyahu “finish the job” about on national television, so no one better vote for her either!
Sorry, not a good enough reason to not stop Trump. Not a good enough reason to refuse to vote. Not a good enough reason to vote third party.
For fuck’s sake, do you think people voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they thought he would be a terrific president?
do you think people voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they thought he would be a terrific president?
they voted for Biden because he made meaningful concessions to the progressive caucus. He gave Bernie a prominent roll in his campaign and made promises about student loan forgiveness and raising the minimum wage, on top of affirming people’s anxiety about covid and a pledge to address it.
Harris had none of that. She didn’t primary against progressive candidates, didn’t have to address progressive concerns, and when there was vocal opposition to any of her policies she said “excuse me, i’m speaking”. She was more right-moderate than Biden was, even if only because she didn’t face the progressive primary he did.
Who said “things are good actually”?? Seems to me that Harris had plenty of policy proposals that would have resulted in a meaningful improvement to the bottom line of the average American.
Biden has also been better for the average American than trump was. For fucks sake, Trump actually got away with raising taxes on all of us to support his tax cut for the rich, simply because the average person is too low information to grasp the idea of a tax cut that expires!
So yeah, plenty of actual reasons to say that one candidate is better than the other, without needing to be wowed by an actual messiah who can dismantle our fucked up system and solve everybody’s problems.
They repeatedly touted our economic recovery was ‘the best in the G6’.
Even when our economy is ‘good’ it’s shit for most people. That’s the problem with being a neoliberal status quo party: it doesn’t help most of the people they need to vote for them
Regardless of what Biden has done for the average American, his approval rating has been really bad for a while now. It may not be right or fair, but that’s what it is.
Despite Harris not actually being the incumbent, the Republicans managed to associate her with Biden and she more or less embraced it. Then the Republicans were able to frame themselves as the challenger to an unpopular incumbent president and it’s not surprising they did well.
Of course, it didn’t help either that Harris is the VP either. Perhaps if we had a primary and managed to pick another candidate that could distance themselves a bit better from Biden things would be different.
Biden did very early and then learned to not say that again.
Your post is CLASSIC misdirection and misrepresenting what the Dems actually did. IF these elections were fair, and I’ve reason to think they were not, then they got lost on higher gas prices. Which is A PRETTY STUPID AND SELFISH reason to vote for/not care about mass deportations. And they lost it on not attacking trump on the border and on the economy.
So we are now in MAGA election rigging conspiracies? JFC. Trump even won the popular vote.
Look at the 2020 popular vote. Trump got 74 Mio. votes back then and 72 Mio. Now
The Dems went from 81 Mio. to 67 Mio.
The Dems succesfully fucked this up with uninspiring candidates and lack of vision to rally their voters.
There was an absolute mountain of evidence that Trump would be a disaster.
nobody gives a fuck about that. most people aren’t clocked into online politics. they just live under one admin where trump benefits from obama’s policy, things are squeaky clean for the most part, and then they’re chilling, and then they move to living under joe biden where a once in a lifetime (hopefully, haha) pandemic decides to fuck shit up during the transition from one admin to the other, on top of inheriting a much worse economy, and then they attribute that to biden. it’s not a super complicated figure, there, and that’s all on top of biden just not being a very popular candidate to begin with.
if you actually look at the numbers, then the third party candidates had less of an effect for kamala than the third party candidates for trump did. which makes sense, because RFK, at the least, was campaigning on some sort of dystopian vision of the future that his deluded q-anon supporters actually liked, and he had money. jill stein is just grifting like always, basically, no change there, and no change with the lesser known candidates either, really. the bigger story is that a shit ton of the voters stayed home.
everyone wants to shift blame from the democratic party, which has obviously either mishandled this campaign or intentionally lost as a party of controlled opposition, and shift the blame onto the voters. ah, well, it was latino men’s fault for being too socially conservative! ah, it was the third party voters and the leftists! it was the arab americans, who should’ve voted after we funded the bombs that killed their whole entire family! it was trans people, for just being too weird! those are all legitimate explanations I’ve heard people bring up, and I’d classify them all as basically the same, because they all equally have no evidence behind them. the real story is that she had low voter turnout. probably because she was associated with the least popular administration in decades, and refused to distinguish herself from that, and on top of that, campaigned with like, liz cheney. the most she did was offer like, tax exemptions for people starting small businesses, and tax exemptions for people who haven’t missed their rent a single time in the last kajillion years. it’s not rocket science, that’s just not really an inspiring campaign. if they had low voter turnout, that’s probably why, it’s probably not because america is just too racist to vote for a black woman or whatever shit everyone’s bloviating about so they can justify the democratic party turning to the right even more.
I keep seeing this “people let the fascist genocidal dictator get in because they weren’t excited about Harris” excuse as if it is a good one. It isn’t.
it’s not an excuse, we’re just telling you the reality. how do you think hitler got elected?
I agree with Flying Squid. It’s bizarre to think any sane person would now decide that the right strategy is to hate on minorities, or ditch all pretty normal behaviour such as adhere to the FUCKING LAW, NOT LIE (and spare me the #FalseEquivalence, it’s jaywalking Dems vs serial rapist Trump) and listen to effing EXPERTS. Dems should stick to their principles and await the serious shit show which is gonna happen with mass deportations, tariffs and even MORE INFLATION.
