I voted for Kamala…
It’s the Democrats fault.
Yup. They fucked us royally and I’m sort of waiting to see if people organize around this. The DNC needs to go. They’ve known about Trump since 16 and this is the campaign they run? They’re trying to elect him at this point, I don’t know what else to think.
Democrats: here’s a rock and two nickels
Republicans: here’s everything you’ve ever wanted and all the libertarian shit you used to jerk off to.
Liberals after the election: how did we lose??
Republicans: here’s everything you’ve ever wanted and all the libertarian shit you used to jerk off to.
“But I know that he won’t really give them that, and if they’re stupid enough to believe that, we don’t need their votes anyway”
~Every Democrat I’ve argued with since Tuesday
Lmao ditto
Anyone saying that it isn’t the Democrats’ fault is delusional. To win elections, you have to win favor with more people than the opposition, and Democrats failed to do that
Every argument I’ve been in since Tuesday has basically boiled down to “we didn’t try to get more votes because we shouldn’t have to”
I don’t know, at this point I’m starting to ask myself if it’s the Democrats fault if the majority of the people agree with the opposition? If she had won the popular vote and lost the electoral college I might have believed that it was simply appealing more to the Democratic base or appealing to less enfranchised liberals, but she lost the popular vote by a long shot. Not only did she lose, but she lost after the other guy has had 4 years of public attack, federal crimes, rape convictions, Project 2025, and basically promising that Palestinians and Ukrainians will get fucked. Hell, the percentage of women that voted for Trump went up in this election.
If people didn’t turn out because Democrats aren’t appealing to leftist ideals enough I fear the message heard by the DNC isn’t to appeal to even more progressive or socialist ideals, but to adopt even more moderate policies. Just facing the facts, but the political left is an unreliable voter group and it’s extremely entitled. Instead of trying to be a foil to Republican ideals Democrats are more likely to try more moderate options. Think of it as creating an alternative instead of being an opposite, Coke and Pepsi instead of Coke and Sprite. It feels like the needle of America’s social equilibrium has permanently moved to be more conservative.
I think the problem is that Harris was barely appealing to any ideals. If she had run hard on medicare for all and raising the minimum wage, I think she might have gotten the popular vote. Instead, she promised more of the same that we’ve had for the last 4 years.
Eh, I’ll concede that she wasn’t screaming her ideals as loud as possible, but that goes back to my original point. The political left is a fickle voter base. Kamala had good ideas, she had policies, she had been part of the successes made under Biden, but she put most of her focus into attacking Trump. It sounds like the argument being made is that uninformed voters weren’t encouraged enough to vote and more liberal disenfranchised voters didn’t turn out because they didn’t like her policies. If this is the case which makes more sense:
1.) Making some policy changes so they can get people who don’t historically come out to vote to do so or,
2.) Making some policy changes so that people who historically come out to vote will vote for them.
Someone threatening not to vote, when they historically don’t anyways, isn’t much of a threat or motivation.
If the goal of a campaign is to get people to vote for you then they failed spectacularly
I think it was both playing chicken against each other. Dem leadership refused to listen to “progressives”, I E.: things that most Americans wanted, and the voters refused to vote until the Dems listened to them.
So they crashed into each other and now the country is going to burn down.
If these last 10 years have taught me anything, it’s that most Americans are not progressives.
They don’t identify that way but most Americans are in favor of progressive policies when asked
The best example is the minimum wage increase in Missouri that recently got put into law. Sinema killed the federal bill a few years ago but somehow deep, red state Americans are not progressive? People love progressive policies, they just don’t like the words associated with it.
American politicians are not progressive. America has not had a true progressive in decades. Today’s democrat policy has been overwhelmingly stagnant. Status quo plus a tiny tax cut for the working class.
The millions of Democrats who didn’t vote shows a rapidly growing apathy towards the party and their inaction
They had Bernie, but they backstabbed him in two primaries, to please the corporate donors. And maybe there’s the squad, at least two of them are still around.
That’s kind of a difficult thing to determine, when asked almost no one says they are, but if asked about policies, they tend to go for more progressive policies, even people that identify as conservatives will agree with more progressive policies. The people they vote for however, are definitely not progressive… Mostly, there are a few.
Then again, progressive in America is pretty much basic human rights and protecting vulnerable people which should be the minimum.
Exactly this. Americans don’t care about progress, they don’t even care about human rights. They care about the economy. Clinton was right, “it’s the economy stupid”.
I’m actually getting a bit upset at these idealists. They have this childish notion that democracy works in this tit for tat way where politicians “earn” your vote by instating policies that benefit you and that you believe in. Like grow the fuck up already.
Why are y’all so scared of blaming the people in power who failed reaching voters?
why are y’all scared of taking responsibility for allowing a Nazi to gain power when you decided to not vote?
the DNC is out of touch with voters.
that doesn’t absolve the electorate from failing to rally behind a candidate that was the best choice to stop a NAZI REGIME from taking power.
if you didn’t vote, or voted 3rd party, you’re no better than magats.
why are y’all scared of taking responsibility for allowing a Nazi to gain power when you decided to not vote
I voted for Kamala but I still blame the DNC
the issue is two fold
a) they played games with democracy, further accelerating the erosion of whatever little faith remains in our democracy institutions. there should have been a primary, not the underhanded switcharoo we got to witness where for the first time in US history since primaries were a thing… we had a presidential candidate nominated without a single vote
b) while voters are struggling and going through a period of profound insecurity - not only financially but in a very real social sense - they offer more of the same. neoliberal status quo. people are desperate for change and the DNC offers them nothing.
you blame the voters but you do not want to put an ounce of blame on the party that would rather lose an election than offer meaningful change
and installing a Nazi regime that has, on record, stated they will never let go of control is the best answer y’all could come up with?
how is any of that going to make the struggle BETTER?
will unbridled fascism help calm the masses and stabilize the inequalities of the previous democracy?
will it restore and protect the rights of Americans?
you blame the voters but you do not want to put an ounce of blame on the party that would rather lose an election than offer meaningful change
I blame the DNC of being inept! I never fucking said they weren’t!
I can still blame the electorate for allowing a fascist dictatorship to take hold in American government.
Just because you call out a fault doesn’t absolve the other party, both are at fault here. I’m just disappointed that voters ignored all reason and decided to fuck all of us(including themselves), to spite us.
btw, what kind of “meaningful change” can we expect now that sweet potato Hitler is in power?
Voting for a Nazi won’t make things better, but when people are desperate they want change, any change. Weimar Germany was democratic, Hitler and the Nazi party legitimately won the popular vote.
you blame the voters but you do not want to put an ounce of blame on the party that would rather lose an election than offer meaningful change
Uh…
the DNC is out of touch with voters.
What is this, if not shared blame?
i guess the implication is that he puts more blame on the voters, as that is what his comments are mainly focused on.
me personally I don’t blame the voters at all. just like I don’t blame the German public for voting in the Nazis.
humans are stupid herd animals who will elect strongmen when they feel weak and scared.
i believe you can only put blame on people that have autonomy. and the only people with any real autonomy in this country are the elites, which have stuck their fingers in their ears and their heads in the sand for far too long.
the pressure pot is cooking and I think it’s too late to stop it. maybe if we were a little less greedy over the last few decades and a little less focused on the short term, we could have skipped this resurgence of fascism that we’re about to live through
but politicians only care about the next election and corporations only care about the next quarter. we are a short term society and have sacrificed the long term health of our country
Interesting. That’s an angle I’ll have to consider. It seems like democracy with fixed terms and term limits has a similar problem to capitalism: myopia.
How’s that tactic of browbeating and blaming voters working out for ya?
Makes me feel better.
I guess we’ve got, what, the next 80 years to blame each other until the Nazis kill us all?
I did what I had to do, which is vote.
The campaign’s job was to get other people to vote. They failed at their job.
and voters failed at their job. they failed to recognize trump as a fascist and a direct threat to the continuation of our Republic.
Should the DNC have put forward a candidate that was fairly selected with grass roots support among the wider voting population?
No, it’s the voters who are at fault.
do you think there was enough time?
use your fucking brain.
Americans that purposely withheld votes cause this to happen. point. fucking. blank.
when it actually mattered 20 million Americans abandoned their posts to protect democracy. full stop.
when a house is on fire, do you save the stuff or the people first?
Nevermind, you just want to blame the fire dept from not showing up faster.
do you think there was enough time?
Yes. Other countries manage just fine.
Americans that purposely withheld votes cause this to happen. point. fucking. blank.
Maybe they didn’t purposely withhold votes. Maybe they were just not enthusiastic enough about the DNC candidate.
20 million Americans abandoned their posts to protect democracy
This is not democracy. It’s a corporatocracy that’s one candidate away from dictatorship.
when a house is on fire, do you save the stuff or the people first
The house is on fire because the two greedy landlords have refused to do basic maintenance and listen to the concerns of their tenants.
You just don’t get it. You still want to argue about why the house is on fire, instead of trying to save the people in the house.
That’s the problem with ideological extremists. You just can’t admit that your idea sucks.
I’ll admit that the Democrats suck.
Can you admit that your socialist goals were unachievable in the previous political environment?
Wait a second. 🤔 Was that your goal all along?
No, if that was the case, you would be no better than the Nazis.
right?
If the house wasn’t on fire we wouldn’t need to save the people. Your strategy will never save the people in the house. Neither landlord cares about the people, only the companies providing services.
again, you’re trying argue about if or how the house is on fire.
it was on fire!
now it’s burned the-fuck down. People, things, everything has burned.
it’s too late.
The blame falls on people in power not delivering for the working class/poor. There is no better ally for the GOP than modern spineless Dems who center their politics around them. Every third party voter could have voted for Harris and she still would have lost.
The blame falls on people in power not delivering for the working class/poor.
No, I’m pretty sure it was the people who refused to vote. All 20 million of them failed to identify the obvious threat to our democracy and react accordingly.
There is no better ally for the GOP than modern spineless Dems who center their politics around them.
Spoken like a true extremist. Now, the sad thing is, I never considered myself a Democrat. I was something of a hybrid between leftist and Democrat. After this election though, I’m neither. Now I’m an anti-extremist, extremist. And I know I’m not the only one.
Every third party voter could have voted for Harris and she still would have lost.
We all know that’s a lie. 20 million votes to Harris would have swung it greatly in her favor.
But that’s fine. You keep lying, and I’ll keep hating extremists.
Cope all you want. But she made the choice to court Republicans and chase the ghosts of Cheney Era Voters and paid for it. When Trump can position himself as to speaking to working class issues than a Dem.
" hybrid between leftist and Democrat" Yeah a centrists no need to rebrand it.
Greatest campaign strategy known to man. Do nothing, shit talk your base, be surprised when you lose. Classic DNC.
You seem to have confused me for somebody who gives a fuck about the DNC.
I couldn’t give a fucking rat ass about the DNC, the RNC, Independents, Green Party, Tea Party.
I only care that there are Nazis taking over the United States of America in January. I care that 125 to 200 million Americans will pay the price for the negligence of 20 million Americans.
I don’t judge you based off of what your political leaning is.
I judge you based on if you are a fascist supporting boot licking Nazi loving piece of shit.
If you didn’t vote this election cycle, you’re as good as a fucking Nazi to me. If you voted third party, you’re as good as a fucking Nazi to me. If you voted Republican, you are a fucking Nazi to me.
Please, by all means, vote however you want. Vote your conscience. But I’ll still think you’re a Nazi if you didn’t vote for Harris.
Not because you are a Nazi, but because you didn’t actually try to stop the Nazis.
I don’t understand the “we were to small to matter” argument I’ve been seeing. If that’s true, why on Earth would you expect to matter enough to move the Democratic platform, or to shape society after leftists “burn it all down” (whatever that means)?
Great campaign strategy buddy. Why don’t you work as an analyst?
Cool. Nazis taking over America and your memeing a womp womp in response to criticism of your dumbass analysis that has failed twice now. Real big brains you’re working with over there.
Brother I get your mad about the election but your crashing out on a Lemmy comment chain about it.
You go girl! Blame them dumbass voters and learn absolutely nothing from this.
Are you at least aware enough to understand why they refer to guys like yourself as blue MAGA?
Angry man is better than others because he did the right thing.
Good job angry man.
I blame both groups. Both groups are known to be stubborn to the point of short sightedness. Lemmy has a lot of blaming of both at the moment and it’s fair
I voted for her. The Democrats are still at fault.
Yep, fuck the non voters for their ignorance, fuck the Dems for being a lesser evil in the first place.
Absolutely. It’s a two way street here.
People need to stop turning on each other though. What’s done is done. The left has always been divided but right now we really need to start pulling ourselves together.
You’re in this picture whether you like it or not.
you’re going to be in this photo, you just don’t know it yet.
Don’t worry, as an actual lefty I already know. You’re the one who’d push me into the cart.
How can I push you when I’m in the cart with you?
“Get out of the way! Truck! Truck behind you! Run, it’s not slowing down!! For the love of god, move!”
“I think this guy wants to hit me with a truck” *wet crunching*
What a reasonable and not at all unhinged reply!
Are we, the Democratic party out of touch?
No, it’s the electorate’s fault!
Nobody is arguing the DNC isn’t out of touch.
however the electorate isn’t much better. Cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Nice try on the strawman though, better than some.
I am not here to argue. I will not engage beyond this post no matter what is said in response because I don’t want to fight.
What matters is policy. Real hard on the ground policy that real normal people can feel and see where they live.
When some wonk gets on MSNBC with a spreadsheet hooting about how much better things are with grocery prices or housing costs, that doesn’t mean anything to someone who’s begging for extra shifts at work so they can make rent. Those are aggregates and averages. If the 200k-500k bracket is doing better while the 13k-45k bracket isnt, the numbers still went up. That looks better in the data. But the people at the bottom are still suffering just as much as ever. They don’t feel or see any improvement because there wasn’t any. Not for them.
The health and performance of the stock market only matters to those on the bottom when it crashes and suddenly they’re paying more for everything. At no other point does it impact them in the slightest. Those record profits aren’t reinvested, they’re not used to reduce the strain on consumers. Its gobbled up by a few dozen shareholders. It benefits nobody else. And if an executive or CEO has the slightest semblance of a soul and wants to help consumers they’re voted out because the only responsibility is to those few dozen shareholders.
Healthcare. The ACA was a grand achievement. They took Romneycare national. Round of applause for all involved. But its still cheaper to do some form of Universal Healthcare. That would be the easiest win in history. And everyone would feel it immediately. It would help 100,000,000 people immediately. People who have been putting off medical treatment for half their lives because of the extortionist expense would immediately seek treatment. They would seek preventative treatment and raise the overall health across the country. Obesity rates drop, drug use plummets, etc.
Marijuana. Literally every person I know and interact with in my daily life uses it. Do you know the number one reason I’ve heard from all of them? Pain management. Again, another easy win that is supported by everyone except the ghouls who were alive when it was called “The Devil’s Lettuce” and propagandized into believing its this terrible thing.
Hard Policy that people can feel and see in their daily lives. You can still court the comfortable liberals who care about the stock market and all that. They’ll be fine no matter who is in office. If they need an abortion it’s a weekend vacay to Zurich or somewhere. But you’re never going to hold any meaningful power again without hard policy. Because for decades now the republicans have cornered the market on grievance politics and reaction. To break through that you need something real. No more vibes based nonsense. It will not work.
I am not here to argue. I will not engage beyond this post no matter what is said in response because I don’t want to fight.
tldr
edit: for the downvoters, how can I take anyone seriously if they’re not going to sit and defend their opinion.
Why would I even waste my time reading their wall of text? They might as well be screaming into the void.
They’re right. They put together a well constructed argument for his position and you simply ignored all of it.
Harris ran a failed strategy of moving to the right and ‘business as usual’ when people want actual progressive policies that will address their material needs.
Neoliberalism will always move to the right and normalize fascist ideology over improving the livelyhood of the working class. Progressive policies are popular with Republican voters too, that’s the correct way to fracture the Republican base into voting Democrat.
Conceding to right-wing policies and disinformation, like on immigration, only alienates more of the Democratic base while bolstering Republican voters support for the Republican party.
Polls on campaign messaging
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
Polls on policy
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
I voted for Harris and told others to do so too. Doesn’t change the fact that it was her campaign strategy that was responsible for the loss of millions in voter turnout. All the evidence and polling show that running on popular progressive policies that represent a change and improve the material conditions of the American public was the right way to boost voter turnout, the fact that she instead went to the right was a calculated decision that completely failed.
Edit: pronouns
But the left doesn’t seem to care or are not motivated. The right has their shit together and people are voting even if they don’t agree or think everything trump has said. Where the left just seem to say oh I don’t agree with x I’m not voting. Roy vs wade is a great example they kept on pecking at it till they got it and the left bever got it into law thinking this is good enough.
If by left you mean the Democratic Party I agree. It’s important to recognize that the Democratic Party is for the most part running on the platform of neoliberalism. That’s been the case since Third Way Politics. The issue is that, while the Democratic Base is progressive, the Democratic Party is instead still centered on neoliberalism.
That’s an important distinction because neoliberalism is fundamentally at odds with progressive legislation that improves the material conditions of the American public, at the expense of capital accumulation of corporations.
There are only a small amount of progressive Democrats within the Democratic Party, which include Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the rest of The Squad. As a whole, even the Democratic Party works against progressive policy which is exactly why we’ve been seeing this disconnect between the Party and the Base.
Progressive policies and change can only be created and mobilized through grassroots movements. Republican policies, on the other hand, are entirely funded by corporate profits. That includes the entire manosphere, from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation to Fix News to individual conservative content creators like Ben Shapiro.
That’s precisely why we need to organize more. Neither of the two parties have the interest of the working class at heart. Only by creating our own organization like through groups like the DSA and Unions do we have any kind of power to demand progressive policies that will improve our livelyhood and communities
edit: for the downvoters, how can I take anyone seriously if they’re not going to sit and defend their opinion.
You’re mocking someone for posting their reasoning in detail, and then getting upset when people downvote you without giving reasons. What do you want?
after this I won’t respond to you because your opinion is meaningless and doesn’t deserve my attention.
I’m mocking them because the message they introduced their opinion with is the same one above.
I’m sorry that reading long posts is hard for you. But don’t take it out on others. You can say that it was too long without the added abrasiveness.
And here, you’re telling me that my opinion is meaningless. Why do you do that? Almost everyone here has similar values and goals; and yet you’re lashing out at everyone, creating conflict and division. Isn’t that the opposite of what you want?
What strawman? When is it appropriate to hold DNC leadership accountable for losing the election, again?
The DNC will have its come to jesus moment and maybe come to the wrong conclusions again, but it’s still patently obvious that a massive number of people will vote against their own interests regardless of the arguments anyone made.
Yeah it’s hard to vote in an informed manner with so many obstacles to education. I suspect this problem is about to get a whole lot worse unfortunately.
Yes, the number of people on here who claim that withholding their vote to ‘punish the DNC’ and make them learn a lesson is helpful is too high. If the Democrats were going to learn their lesson, they would have done so after 2016. Believing that by not voting, they’ll affect the Democrats’ strategy doesn’t make them leftist, it makes them another flavour of liberal, who thinks establishment electoralism is a pathway to socialism.
A much more effective solution is to organize locally, educating people on real solutions and pushing for change that way, not by blindly assuming the Democrats will reflect on their loss and run a communist candidate next time.
The electorate picked the racist rapist trump, that’s what represents America.
To say that a political party should stray further from what the majority of Americans that stepped up to vote for is what is out of touch.
It represents a large portion, but progressive policies are widely popular. Even in states Trump won there were votes passed to protect abortion access and increase minimum wage.
Most people vote based on vibes, and there were no progressive or positive vibes put forward by the dems this campaign. They signaled a ‘lethal military’, tighter borders, and sought endorsements from prominent Republicans, trying to win votes that would never go to their party anyway, alienating anyone who might have believed in the genuineness of the dems as ‘progressives’.
Eh if the left are not going to bother to vote then who cares and they shouldn’t cater to them. Go more right split the vote at least those people vote. The ones who don’t don’t matter.
Honestly, if they do the same things next cycle, I’ll be more inclined to vote green.
15 million Democrats, progressives, and independents condoned racism are at fault.
Democratic leadership blind and dismissive of the common worker suck and are at fault.
Both can and are true at the same damn time and Democrats and progressives all over the nation fucked us all.
The left: Infighting is why Kamala lost!
Also the left: In this essay I will detail every faction of the left that is guilty of infighting, and why they are wrong…
Ah yes, a perfect example of what OP was talking about. Good work finding it so we can point and laugh at the people that keep looking for someone to blame for their own choices.
Yeah, and your comment is a great example of the Democrats 2024 outreach strategy: a smug, self-righteous attitude that failed to get you any votes.
Doesn’t make that person wrong. If you need to be properly reached to keep yourself from voting for sweet potato Hitler, I’m sorry but you only have yourself to blame
Did the commenter say they voted for Trump?
The people who voted for Trump over Kamala are not the leftists on lemmy. I’ve actually only seen one or two people say that they’re going to vote for Trump for some leftist reason. The majority of people said they would vote for her anyway, and a minority of people said they were abstaining.
You sound really foolish mischaracterizing your opponents. The democratic party failed. Kamala Harris failed. There was no sabotage. She campaigned a conservative platform of military, border control, unwavering support for Israel and said she was going to maintain the status quo. When asked what she would do differently from Biden her gut response was “nothing”. It was a spectacular failure and highlights every single way that the democratic party has entirely lost touch with reality.
Cost of living has tripled in the last 4 years. Now try telling white working class straight people who weren’t living paycheck to paycheck 4 years ago that you’re going to do everything the same as the guy that came before you. The same guy who broke up the rail workers strikes. No, us trying to explain fascism or project 2025 to them did literally nothing. They don’t understand it and don’t care. They know that their financial situation got worse and that the democratic candidate said they wouldn’t change anything. That’s all they understood. They don’t know what’s fact or what’s fiction, and they think Trump is a brilliant businessman. It doesn’t matter that he’s not if they all think he is.
The DNC failed. Stop trying to defend them for God’s sake. How are they ever going to actually pose a challenge to far right populism or fascism if you relentlessly defend them from all criticism?
Woah chief, I’m not defending anybody and I didn’t ask who anybody voted for. If you can read then you see what I said is exactly what I meant: if you voted for sweet potato Hitler you only have urself to blame, not the democrats. And if you need someone to “reach you” properly in order to not vote for sweet potato Hitler you only have yourself to blame
The democrats fucked this up big time, but I’m not going to blame them for the fact that people are too stupid to not vote for the end of our way of life. That’s a personal responsibility that 70 million Americans failed at
I read that sweet potato line as implying that the commenter themselves had voted for him, my bad.
I do agree that every human being has a duty to not vote for Hitler. I mean, that was supposed to be the point of the post world War 2 Western education system. Didn’t work out for a lot of reasons.
But I also believe that many people don’t understand what “voting for Hitler” even means or that Trump poses a threat to them. They don’t understand politics. They don’t understand the way the capitalist economic system functions. They think of it as some ethereal force that gets worse when you control it and gets better when you don’t. They think rich people are brilliant geniuses who have divine knowledge of the economy that allowed them to become so rich. They don’t get it. The political strategy of progressives has to account for that. The democratic party isn’t a party of progressives. It’s a party with a minority of progressives in it, but beyond them, it is the party of the status quo. The status quo has gotten worse, that much people do understand. And they chose the guy who said he was going to change it. He said he’ll fix it and they believed him.
And if you’re a politician and people don’t vote for you, you have no one but yourself to blame. I wish Harris hadn’t run a dogshit campaign, but she did, and I’m not gonna blame voters because she was bad at her job.
You’re entitled to your opinion but I’ll readily blame people who vote for a wannabe facist dictator
People are responsible for their own votes
There’s nothing wrong with blaming them, but we still need to figure out how to get their lazy asses into the booths in 2026, 2028, and beyond.
It’s funny how when she losses it’s a dog shit campaign but nobody was saying that before the election.
Just because you’re not aware of something, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There wetr plenty of people in the media who said the same thing. Hell, you can go through my post history and see how many times I said, “seems like she needs to shift her stance on Gaza,” or, “why the fuck is she campaigning with Liz Cheney?” before the election.
This is voting for your own best interests as a part of a country.
What kind of fool believes that is supposed to require outreach? Would you rather visit an inept doctor because they make you feel more like a big boy by courting your feelings?
If voters must have outreach to not show up, that means they see no difference in their own life between the candidates.
I don’t know what to tell you man, you need to get people excited to go vote for you, otherwise they don’t show up. It’s election 101. Harris didn’t do that for her base, so she fucking lost. You can bitch about voters all you want, but it’s not gonna change reality, so maybe that time would be better spent figuring out why they didn’t show up. Again, I’d start with the fact that she ignored her base for the fucking Cheneys.
I understand where you’re coming from but I think there is an atmosphere tinging the conversation (and there are a lot of threads happening so maybe I’m the one doing that, not trying to be perfect here)
I’m not bitching about voters. I’m saying people are blaming Democrats, or Harris, or whoever they want to, but one side showed up with more people. I see you are continuing that as well by saying she ignored her own base.
More people showed up for what Trump was selling. Harris was certainly not ignoring her base in favor of the Cheneys but I think you mean they relatively to your expectations (?).
If she were leaning more right, then I guess that was the correct choice because that’s who showed up to vote.
I think she did ignore her base, mainly the working class. It’s not just that she campaigned with Cheney and stuck to hard-right positions on Gaza and the border, but her economic message was entirely about opportunity for the middle-class class. Her working-class message had a few good features, like grocery price controls, but they were small measures shunted to the sidelines. It wasn’t a broad economic message like BBB.
The campaign was predicated on a series of incorrect assumptions on who would vote for her. Women? They’ll vote for me because of abortion. Muslims? They’ll vote for me because Trump is worse. Working class? They always go Democrat, I don’t need a strong economic message. PoC? C’mon, like they’ll flip for Trump. Wow, we’ve got so many demographics on lockdown, we should try and flip some conservatives! It’s not like my constituents will be so unenthused by my campaign that they won’t bother to come out.
This, this was the real problem. Something like 5% of registered Republicans voted for her. Dems usually win the popular vote. There are enough of them to win this, but they choose to alienate them.
No, it’s the democrats fault!
Yes you should have voted for Kamala and yes it’s the Democrats at fault. Both are true.
If you voted it’s the Democrats fault. If you didn’t vote it’s your fault.
And the DNCs fault.
Harris ran a perfect campaign. If she was running as a (pre-Trump) republican. However, we know that:
- She isn’t a Republican
- She banked on pulling in republican voters, instead of rallying her base
- Republicans will almost always vote for the R instead of policy
- She backed off of every single progressive idea she started with
- She trotted out establishment Democrats to lecture the electorate instead of inspire them
- Tlaib pulled twice the numbers as Harris as the only anti-genocide Palestinian in Congress
It’s Harris and the Democrats. Should people have voted? Yes. Is it understandable why people didn’t want to vote for the person telling them that she’ll be a good republican and support a genocide? Also yes.
You’re only providing half of the argument. The other half of the argument is the fact that if you didn’t support her, then you supported a fascist dictatorship.
And what happened? We got a fascist dictatorship!
Let’s preface with the fact I voted for Harris, and understand where you’re coming from with lesser evil voting.
But the other half of your argument is that with the way that Harris was tacking to the right to try to gain moderate voters, the choice was between voting between fascism now and fascism later down the line.
But if we vote for fascism later then we have time to distance ourselves from fascism.
By sitting at home happy that you did your job and ‘defeated’ fascism, until the next election where your choice is again fascism now and fascism a little less later down the line?
As the Dems keep drifting further and further right. At what point do you put your foot down and demand actual progressive policies? And how do you get those demands to actually be listened to when the party knows you’ll vote for them because “at least we’re not as bad as the other guys. What choice do you have?” Supporting her is a message to the Democratic party that their strategy of slowly becoming more conservative wins elections. And this is the reason that I was very conflicted about voting for her, but just held my nose and did it for the greater good.
I think you’re wrong about how the party sees non voters. When you don’t vote, the party treats you like a non voter and moves their platform to the right to appeal to the voters. When you sit home in an election the party doesn’t go “how do we get these votes of people that only vote when the stars align perfectly”, they go, “how do we get these votes of people that always vote”. Every far left person mad about the country moving right can blame themselves just as much as the party. People who consistently participate shape the future.
Source: I’ve worked for the Democratic party and have a pretty good idea how they interpret voter turnout data.
Out of curiosity, how do they interpret 3rd party left-leaning votes, particularly in swing states? Obviously those wouldn’t have decided this election, just curious since you seem to be in the know.
If I understand their outlook, first job is getting people who consistently vote for Dems to be reminded and motivated to go to the polls. 2nd is convincing consistent voters to vote for you (that includes Republicans and third party), a distant last is convincing non-voters or occasional voters. I think the problem with trying to get 3rd party voters to vote for Dems is that the type of person that votes 3rd party is very difficult to convince that you’re an ally.
They could completely realign the party platform to fit with 3rd party and non voters biggest issues and most won’t shift their vote for many reasons. Disgust for the 2 party system, distrust that the party will follow a more left wing agenda, conspiracy theories, the needs to be contrarian or protect their sense of moral purity, etc.
While I’m not sure I agree with the parties approach to disaffected voters. I do think the amount of investment needed to get those voters is possibly outweighed by the amount of voters you may lose in the process. And that sense of inherent risk is stopping the party from taking a chance. Maybe we get lucky and they no longer see an alternative, but I doubt it.
That’s because fascism has never and will never be beaten at the ballot box.
I didn’t realize a wealth tax, 25k credit for first time home buyers, support for legalized cannabis, support for trans people, etc were Republican policies.
Are there more things on my progressive checklist? Yes, definitely. Universal healthcare, for one.
Part of being an adult is not being able to get everything you want when you want it.
Part of politics in the US is understanding that some of those things that Harris supported which resulted in a candidate that was not far left enough to get progressives off the couch, are too far left for other voters.
I don’t envy whoever is picking up the pieces at the DNC and trying to determine what the precise amount of leftism is that will get those 10-15 million leftists off the couch without alienating the 60-70 million that did show up.
This is especially true for the Palestine issue. How many of those 10-15 million watching from the sidelines would have shown up for a pro-Palestine candidate? Even if it was 10 million, there would still have been more who would sit this one out or vote Trump, because they’d believe the bullshit that the Palestinians are all terrorists. I truly wish it wasn’t the case, but I fear the post-911 Islamophobia and the imperialist attitudes about support for Israel would have cost a pro-Palestine candidate more votes than they would have gained.
a wealth tax
Did she actually campaign on this, or was it just some white paper she had on her website? There’s a difference between having a policy that you are campaigning on and actually intend to carry out and some vague policy paper a staffer wrote.
25k credit for first time home buyers This was an absolute embarrassment of a policy. Did you see the requirements on it? They presented it as a typical neoliberal bullshit policy. It was filled with so many specific requirements that almost no one would qualify for it. And it was bad economic policy too, as it would simply serve to further inflate the overheated housing bubble.
support for legalized cannabis
You cannot run on something that is one of your severe policy failures. Democrats have been running on the cannabis issue for multiple cycles at this point. They’ve all dragged their feet and slow-walked it for cheap political points.
support for trans people
She’s objectively better on this than Trump, but trying to Third Way it, she screwed herself over. Democrats were vocally supportive of trans rights before any kind of major backlash emerged, but their support was only ever skin-deep. Trans issues were largely absent from the recent DNC.
The Republicans latched onto anti-trans bigotry as one of their major campaign planks, and the Democrats responded by just trying to ignore trans people entirely. They avoided discussing trans people whenever possible, and they never came up with effective responses to Republicans’ main attack points. If you actually believe in trans rights, the correct response to the charge of “you want men in women sports!” is to say, “well trans women aren’t men, and you shouldn’t moronically assume trans women have the same athletic advantages as cis men.” If you actually believe in trans rights and equality, you would say, “the differences between men and women sports performance is almost entirely due to testosterone. Any minor differences that remain are not worth discriminating against people over.” Etc. You know, actually RESPONDING TO and REBUTTING the attacks Republicans make against trans people.
Centrist democrats showed conclusively that their support for trans people was nothing more than shallow political pandering. The Biden administration hasn’t been using all the levers of federal power to protect trans kids from their state governments.
This kind of mealy-mouthed centrism is what cost Kamala the election. She isn’t an enemy of trans people, but she’s also not a real ally. She doesn’t want to actively harm trans people, but she doesn’t have some fundamental belief in the worth of trans rights. It’s just another political football to her. It was beneficial to seem extremely pro-trans in 2020, and now that the conservatives have rallied against trans people, now she’s not so eager to defend trans people. It seems disingenuous and it made her look like someone who would say anything just to win the election.
How many of those 10-15 million watching from the sidelines would have shown up for a pro-Palestine candidate?
No one was expecting her to become a rabidly pro-Palestinian protester. No one expected her to get up at the podium and say, “actually, Hamas did nothing wrong, and the Israelis should be relocated out of Palestine.” People wanted her to make US military aid contingent on Israel meeting human rights guidelines. Israel, despite all the precision weaponry we give them, has a worse civilian:military kill ratio than Hamas. They kill more civilians for every soldier they kill than radical terrorists. Despite all their high-tech weaponry, THAT is how unconcerned Israel has been about civilian casualties. Hamas has done a better job of avoiding civilian casualties than Israel.
Anyway, the polling showed that calling for a cease-fire and other measures would have been immensely popular. This was a completely unforced error on her part. She threw away votes for nothing.
I’m not saying that she didn’t have any liberal centrist ideas like what you listed, but that doesn’t mean she was progressive either. A lot of the policy ideas that were actually good were once on the Republican platform before Reagan.
Don’t forget about how popular Bernie was in 2016 before he was forcibly removed from the democratic nomination by the party establishment or how popular Tlaib, AOC, and Omar have been. Don’t forget about how down-ballot races in this cycle, while brutal to Democrats, didn’t push out many progressives. Progressivism is far more popular than the democratic party is willing to admit or fight on, because the party is owned and controlled by the same class currently oppressing us; the billionaires. If a candidate like Bernie presents a real path, they will force the person out. It’s not strictly an issue with the Overton window.
Here’s the thing about the choice facing people in the election: it doesn’t matter anymore as a matter of the current political reality, because Harris gambled hard on the “good cop, bad cop” aspect of “he’s worse” and lost hard. That statement is 110% true, but it’s horribly ineffective as we saw in 2016 and again in this election. Islamophobia will absolutely increase, and Trump will fund the genocide until all of Palestine is settled by colonists. But once again, don’t forget about how successful Tlaib was in comparison to Harris. We no longer have the opportunity to find out if it would or wouldn’t have affected the campaign, but the indication is there that at least 1 swing state would have gone to Harris with an anti-genocide stance.
There’s a perverse bunch here on lemmy that are blaming the Democrat Party for their failure to vote. They justify it by essentially saying that because they weren’t catered to (being further left than centrist platform Harris ran) that it’s the democrat’s fault we got trump. That’s some republican-level victim shit. “We did the opposite of what we should and things didn’t get better!”
No, motherfucker, you sat this one out in a battleground state so we got a fascist and that’s better than Harris? WTF kind of logic is that?
They get to blame everyone and pretend to be smarter than other people because their third choice candidate can’t be wrong. This way they can blame the DNC for themselves not caring about all the groups trump will adversely effect and they can then also blame republicans when they eventually do it, all from the top of their high horse.
Every. Single. Election. People. Blame. Voters. And. Nothing. Changes. Maybe it’s the lame ass corporate candidates that need to change. I voted Kamala, but it was fucking obvious as shit she didn’t stand a chance.
The vote is the only thing we have control over.
You think allowing a dictator to take the reins is gonna get you what you want? Really? Explain to everyone how sitting this one out, an election that may cement Republican power and place Democrats as a token but useless party fore the remainder of the foreseeable future, will fix what you see as wrong with the Democratic party?
Any other election I might have agreed with you.
But not this one.
Own it.
I didn’t say that, I voted. I’ve just heard this same argument so many times through the years and it’s not working.
Sounds to me like she would of won with a more leftist policy. Sounds to me like the campaign failed to do the thing that would of won them the election.
Like, I voted harris as a harm reduction vote, but I cannot be mad at people for refusing to vote for the party who abandoned them and everything they stand for on the hope that they (the voter) would back them regardless of running on pro Israel, pro border wall, half ass abortion and status quo when status quo is the thing everyone fucking hates right now.
They went in with a bad gameplan and it didn’t pan out. Blame the fucking party for doing nothing.
“I can’t just run on not being the other guy? I actually have to articulate a platform and get people to like me???”
Add the /s
It may cost a lot of lives, but at least you got your moral high ground. Must be nice having the mental age of a 5yo and be content.
It may cost lives, but at least the Dems stood on… Well nothing. They could of catered to the non voters. Given them something when it was clear that this was happening. Instead they did nothing. They attacked college protestors, they muzzled waltz, they adopted Republican immigration policy, became pro wall, tried to say they were even MORE anti immigration than Republicans. They literally just ran as the 2020 trump in 2024.
Like. You saw it coming. I saw it coming. They saw it coming. And you want to blame the voter instead of the party that did NOTHING to get it. They were told as clear as physically possible what to do to get that vote. At some point, which we are past, it’s on the party.
I voted for Harris as a harm reduction vote. And I do wish my fellow leftists could of come out for that. But I can’t blame them at the end of the day. The Dems couldn’t stop being the corporate party for 4 years out of desperation. They thought they could win by becoming the Republican party instead and lost. Bad gameplan. It failed. They lost all 4 seats of government with that plan.
