Missed the point again award. If people want to vote for conservatives, they’re going to vote for conservatives, not conservatives lite. If people want to vote for leftists, they’re going to vote third party, vote for the dipshit threatening to tear it all down, or stay home, not vote for conservatives lite. If you’d take a few seconds to really use your noggin, you’d understand that people are fucking drowning and desperate for a change. Not “lol the guys at the Goldman Sachs fundraiser said we should think about a 1% COLA for social security”, I’m talking burn the house down and start over change. There’s a reason why there’s the phenomenon of the Obama-Bernie-Trump voter or Bernie-Trump voter. It’s not the sexism, it’s the promise of change. Obama failed to deliver, and Bernie didn’t happen, which just leaves us with that fucking guy. The democrats miscalculated twice and thought that voters surely wouldn’t vote for that fucking guy over their promise of change so mild that even fox news would get bored. It’s not the voter’s fault that the democrats failed to put forward a good platform. To the Democratic party and the people towing this line, I say: voters don’t owe you victory. In fact, voters don’t owe you a goddamn thing. Stop blaming them and get your shit together or get out of the way.
When Democrats move to the right in order to capture conservative votes, conservatives don’t believe they’re sincere. But the left does.
Probably still would’ve been less bad if people voted for the lesser of two evils though
Maybe. There’s an argument for accelerationism. I’m not convinced of it yet, but clearly the system has entrenched interests that benefit from things being awful for everyone else, and the majority power in the Democratic party has showed that it’s all too willing to roll up its sleeves and make minor adjustments. Most folks don’t have 3000 years to wait for the democrats to finally adjust things to where they need to be, and in the case of climate change, we certainly don’t have that time. Yes, pushing the system to collapse is going to be fucking awful, but I actually wonder if the net suffering will be less than waiting however long it takes for the lesser evil to turn good.
It sounds like it relies on the hopium that at some point people will wake up. You are certainly more optimistic than I would be.
The argument against is that people like me need healthcare and are about to get fucked.
I guess. I worked in EMS for fifteen years and saw my fair share of the system exploiting, abusing, and killing (yeah, I’ll stand by that one) people for profit. We’ve also had major medical events in the family, and had to deal with the insurance fucking with us to try and get out of paying. It only ever seems to move in one direction, which is towards fucking people harder. A system like that deserves a swift kick in the pants, not a gentle polishing.
Democracies that fall to fascism can take decades to recover and end up weaker even if they win. I have no reason to believe that this will end up positively
Biden did more to battle climate change than any president in living memory. Trump has done the opposite, we don’t have another four years of runway to speed the collapse, the time for revolution was when Bush stole the election.
Dude, we’re just not going to meet the climate goals we need to. Not with Biden, not with Trump. We need someone that’s not afraid of the owner class bitching and moaning and withholding donations, and our system simply isn’t wired that way.
But I’ll bite, what did Biden do to address climate change, and what’s the tangible impact?
The Inflation Reduction Act encouraged $3 trillion of investments in renewable energy, he’s been working to triple nuclear energy production, and he blocked the construction of oil pipelines.
It’s not about picking a candidate to meet the goals, that ship has sailed. We had the choice between Biden/Harris and Trump, the difference in climate policy between them is staggering.
Biden did more to battle climate change than any president in living memory.
You know what causes ungodly amounts of pollution? war. Blowing up and burning whole cities. Biden sent the bombs that blew up all of the west bank and Gaza, and ensured the war would continue. Dont lecture us about how great an environmental president he was. Biden also set up drilling and mineral exploitation everywhere. He was no environmentalist.
As opposed to all the presidents we’ve had who didn’t send bombs to Israel or set up drilling and mineral exploitation?
We need to invest in renewable energy production if we are going to survive the next century, Biden invested more than any president in my lifetime.
Just a different kind of evil. Not lesser.
What sort of evil are you thinking of that Kamala would do that Trump wouldn’t also do, but even worse?
Temporarily yes. Perhaps not in the long run, though. Sometimes you have to go through some pain to cure the disease.
This is more putting through people through certain pain for uncertain, perhaps never coming cure.
Hell of a gamble.
Slow death versus a possible quick death with a chance for a cure.
It’s like facing a canyon and hitting the gas pedal instead of working slowing the car down. But they, who knows, there might be a ramp lol
It’s more like facing a cliff and pulling the handbrake to crash the car in the hopes it rolls to a stop before going over the edge instead of bickering about what speed we want to go over the cliff at.
Handbrake would be a drastic action to slow down. In this case accelerationists want to accelerate towards the cliff, hoping there’s some good outcome from that, instead of trying to slow down.
Though it’s true that that doesn’t capture the fact that it’s outright making things worse for people, especially minority groups, for really uncertain hope that things will drastically improve.
instead of bickering about what speed we want to go over the cliff at
It seems sensible to try and vote to slow down the speed instead of accelerating lol. With slower speed you have more time to actually stop the car.
You could call it temporary if this was part of a clear plan for a better future. But it isn’t.
The Trump victory doesn’t lead to anything good. It isn’t ‘temporary’ pain for a long-term fix. It is simply going in the wrong direction, and it won’t turn around by with magic or wishful thinking.
No one has anything like a plan to fix things. The point is to break everything hard enough that the staunch status quo idiots with their heads in the sand are forced to look up and start doing something. Failing that we’ll have a quick death rather than a long and torturous one.
So your plan is to fuck everything up in order to motivate ‘status quo idiots’ to do something, so that you don’t have to. Is that about right?
It seems to me that instead of trying to make things worse, you could instead try to make things better. But I guess activism is much easier when you don’t actually have to do anything yourself.
To be clear, this isn’t my plan. I’m just relaying the reality of the situation to you. This is what is happening and we have to deal with it.
I don’t even want the democrats to get their shit together. I want them to get the fuck out of the way. That party needs to go the way of the fucking whigs.
Very fucking right. It’s toe the line though if you’re interested in improving things in a very small way.
I’ve heard that before, but tow the line, as in to pull something by a tether, makes contextual sense to me. Folks are doing work trying to carry that argument.
The phrase is authoritarian. As in “you’d better get your toes on the line I just drew in the dirt, or I’m gonna hang ya, boy.”
Didn’t know that, thanks!
I do love it when you can justify using a different homophone than the etymologically correct one.
“eggcorns”. You can really do some fun ones. For all intensive purposes, they’re pretty much equivalent.
The AOC+Trump voters would also fall into that category
Yes to all of this. Neolibs in this thread are really pressed.
I was also on the side of vote for Kamala fix it after because with Trump fixing is impossible with Kamala maybe. But whenever I see stuff like
45 Democrats Vote With GOP to Pass Bill Sanctioning ICC Over Netanyahu Warrant
Senate Overwhelmingly Rejects Sanders Resolutions to Block Arms Sales to Israel
it makes me doubt how feasible this approach would be too. Sure Kamala is factors of magnitude better than Trump for the USA, for Ukraine, for LGBTQ people, for women etc. But I can understand a US citizen with roots in the middle east etc not voting for Democrats after seeing disgusting stuff like this.
“PATRIOT Act” passed Senate 98 to 1. Partisanship is for complete morons.
45 out of 215 Democrats voted for that or around 21% vs 90% of Republicans. This means that the crazy option is wildly unpopular and would never pass under a democrat. I’m not seeing the problem here.
45 out of 215 Democrats voted for that or around 21% vs 90% of Republicans.
21% of Democratic voters voting for Republican candidates would be completely unacceptable. Why is it ok for 21% of our representatives to vote for genocide?
Oh right. It’s ok when it’s the only thing centrists actually want.
And “centrist” in the US really means far right.
45 democrats didn’t vote the way you want? And how many republicans didn’t? Are you really saying both sides are the same?
No they are not but I am convinced that about 2/3 of the democrats don’t give a shit about the party they are a member of nor its voters. If their only opportunity was to be a republican candidate they would jump at that opportunity without any internal moral conflicts. And I understand how frustrating it must be when a majority of a party that you are told to vote for has no moral issues with bombing a country where your relatives live to the ground.
There are 215 Democrats currently serving in the house. The 45 that voted with Republicans don’t even make up a quarter let alone 2/3.
I am talking about the Sanders vote though. I think, there were about 10 that said yes to stop selling weapons.
two different wings of the same shitbird…
Not even different wings. Both are right wing parties. The left wing of this bird was long since broken.
Bruh that’s crazy about that dude’s virginity
I’m so confused, why is that there.
I’m actually less concerned with the OP but more with how George Takei feels the need to double down on it
deleted by creator
I said “I’m actually less concerned with the OP but more with how George Takei feels the need to double down on it”
This elevator is a little crowded, I see why you couldn’t hear me
George Takei and his family were literally in a camp when he was a child, because all Japanese living in America were “a threat” during WWII.
He understandably has no chill when fascism is involved.
Okay but again, I’m not referring to the the white text but the part of his virginity growing back
At least centrists didn’t have to move left.
Yes, they got to maintain their rightwing purity.
If Trump is a conman, rapist, fascist, etc. & Democrats still lost to him, says a lot about how shitty & out of touch Democrats have been, maybe you should focus on that?
Or it shows that when you are truly awful, racist, homophobic, transphobic, idiots, your children move away from you to the cities where they don’t have to talk or interact with you, which concentrates the intelligent and worthwhile portion of the population into blue centers that aren’t evenly distributed across the electoral college?
Which is generally true, but he also won the popular vote. That’s an indication that being awful is less important to most voters than being entertaining. The lesson I see here is Dems need to focus more on engaging rhetoric than silly trivialities like “competence” and “beneficial policy”
Trump’s narrative, despite being just a makeover of the political establishment, is that he’s anti-establishment. Democrats are just nakedly the political establishment with clown makeup pretending to be “progressive”. Trump’s message resonated with his audience, the Democrats’ message didn’t. Both of them are genocidal maniacs that are using nuclear weapons to hold the entire world hostage. Let’s keep our eyes on the target here.
He isn’t anti-establishment though, except that he’s more concerned with self aggrandizement than practical policy. Democrats are establishment that occasionally align with voter needs, Trump is 100% aligned with his own needs, which occasionally defy the establishment when there’s a conflict with his interests.
Again, this comes down to messaging, i.e. rhetoric. Not in content, but in vibes. The Democrats need to pay more attention to vibes, rhetoric, than content. You’re just repeating what I said with different words.
I am not repeating what you said, we have fundamentally different understandings of this system. Trump and Biden are both puppets of an imperial machine. You are trying to play strategist for the Democrats, my interest is in ending the machine. You are under the illusion that Trump emerged out of left field and is operating of his own accord, I am aware that he’s just a slight rebranding of establishment policy made to look like some kind of wildcard.
Your understanding of my point is incorrect. I am under no such illusion. Your interest in “ending the machine” lacks praxis to accomplish that goal. My interest is in Democratic strategy only insofar that it is a stopgap solution to that very same goal. I have no interest in equivocating liberals and fascists. Certainly, the one begets the other, in the same way a tiger cub will become an adult tiger, but I am more confident in our ability to overcome a cub than an adult tiger.
I seek Democratic victory only insofar that I do not see a mature threat to the establishment, and I seek an establishment party which is easier to subvert in the meantime, while meaningful praxis matures. Slow descent into fascism is preferable to accelerated descent into fascism, because I do not believe that accelerationism is in the interest of the people. The risk of enduring fascism is too high.
Now kiss. We’re all on the same side here. Left infighting is what has doomed us all. Yes Trump is a disgusting capitalist bigot piece of shit, but that’s what the American people want. They may be too fucking dumb but they want the system to change and Trump is offering to flip the whole table.
Stop fucking fighting and let’s figure out what to do.
The dems need to give us universal healthcare and education and stop the wars. They won’t do any of the above except admonish and shame voters for voting wrong. Fuck them and fuck their braindead supporters.
The last time Democrats held the House, Senate supermajority, and the Presidency for a total of 73 days in 2009 and we got Obamacare. Then the Republicans spent the next decade doing everything they could to tear it down.
In 2020 Trump won 74.2 million votes compared to 75 million in 2024. Meanwhile Democrats got around 7 million fewer votes. The lost to voter apathy, not to Trump. That apathy was fed by propaganda.
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I am so glad I left this bubble for a spell, because it’s fun to come back and see all the great new propaganda tactics being floated. Blue maga is hilariously internet! Love that for you.
Anywho, blaming the dems for trump winning, and ignoring all the people who voted for him is not coping, but pointing out that cities are liberal havens is?
I guess I’ll get back to focusing on my job instead of lemmy nonsense, because this place has always been completely unreasonably biased nonsense. My job is in a blue state whose taxes pay for the welfare of the rest of this shithole of a country, after all, so if I don’t do it, those trump supporters can’t buy his merch!
Nothing the Democrats did mattered because the truth didn’t matter. Propaganda, lies, and foreign interference lost the election.
I’m pretty sure one major reason Trump won is that he wasn’t in prison. Which is fucking weird since he tried to overthrow the country!
And Democrats lost because no one wanted to vote for them.
I have a big hunch that Trump never went to prison because the Democrats wanted to run against him again. Surely if we fucked around again, we wouldn’t find out twice, right?
And why did no one want to vote for the Democrats? The lies and propaganda.
Also the facts.
Nothing the Democrats did mattered
So what we saw was what Democrats did when nothing mattered? When there were no boundaries? They supported genocide. They adopted Republican border policy. They ran anti-trans hate in their own ads. They cozied up to Dick Cheney. They showed us what they really are.
They showed us who WE really are. They simply played to the middle to try to motivate swing voters and never-Trumpers.
No, they fucked up. Exit polling showed that democrat and left leaning voters stayed home, and less than 1% of registered Republicans went for Kamala. Trying to rely on the moderate Republican vote is almost as insane a strategy as relying on the Sasquatch vote.
They underestimated the degree to which the public had been impacted by propaganda and lies. They thought the public understood the threat Trump poses but they did not.
From a millennial perspective, it honestly reminds me of the terror threat level. After 9/11, the DHS would set a daily terror threat level in one of several threatening colors and the 24/7 news channels always had it just chilling in the bottom of their broadcast for years (of course it was always at nearly maximum leading up to invading Iraq, go figure). After a few years, nobody paid any attention to it anymore.
If the only thing you’ve got to offer is fear, eventually people get numb to that message, even if they should be scared. Imo, it’s hardly surprising that the democrats lost whe coming to the table with conservatism lite, small business tax credits, and “OMG TRUMP IS SCARY WOW” while Merrick Garland slow walked the case against him. I had a feeling we were cooked when Kamala started doing appearances with A-listers; it reminded me a lot of the tone-deaf gilded campaign run by the Hillary team.
What does Trump offer but fear? The illegals are coming to steal your jobs! Muslim terrorists! Dems are DESTROYING the economy!
Joe Biden, is that you? The public didn’t love genocide.
It’s propaganda that Trump is the anti-genocide option. It’s propaganda that not voting for the Democrats will somehow stop the war. It won’t. It will make it worse.
They played to the RIGHT. It’s all they have always been and always will be.
It seems this one did matter:
Asked whether there is anything she would have done differently than Biden over the past four years, Harris demurred.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact,” she said, going on to talk about the administration’s work capping the cost of insulin at $35 for Medicare recipients.
She appeared to backtrack on that answer later in the show.
“You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me — that will be one of the differences. I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet,”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-view-00182883
And they still can’t figure out why they lost its incredible!
Even if she said she was going to have all Republicans in her cabinet, she would still have been a better option than Trump and the lunatics he is hiring. Nothing the Democrats did mattered. They would have lost regardless.
Better option than this mess? Sure.
But beyond that, if you need to wallow in doomerism, suit yourself. But I roundly disagree with this fatalism. The Democrats could have actually campaigned on the left. A few years ago Joe Rogan was hosting and supporting Bernie. This cycle, he was lost to the fascists. It is very clear that the Democratic party tried a strategy based around enticing moderate Republicans. They have been doing this for years. You as a voter, need to face this reality: the Democratic party strategy …failed. They need a different one. But suit yourself with self-defeating fatalism if you want.
It’s easy to say that moving to the left would be more successful, but I doubt it would. 75 million Americans voted for blatant fascism and millions more didn’t care enough to bother voting one way or another. People have lost hope that things will ever get better.
Maybe the wouldn’t or maybe they would. The only think we know for sure is they didn’t vote for the center-right version. That failed. Time to try the other one.
“You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me — that will be one of the differences. I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet,”
JFC That’s a real quote? She really steered full force into the ground on purpose.
The Democrats lost. And deserved to
More so than a convicted felon, rapist, and conman? Bullshit.
Because this election was about the need for change, as every one since 2008 has been. As the need has gone unaddressed, voters have grown increasingly willing to embrace more extreme platforms. That Trump is a huge piece of shit that definitely won’t help anyone is beside the point- he promises dramatic, systems-level changes while Democrats are offering tweaks and adjustments and generally run like it’s 1996. I would say they’re asleep at the wheel, but that would suggest that they’re not being willfully ignorant, which I think they are. That’s why they deserve the L, and why they will continue to deserve the L as long as they think that just being the lesser of two evils is a good enough platform.
I don’t know if there has ever been a US election that wasn’t about change. It’s an easy thing to promise because the voter can self-insert whatever they themselves think needs to be different. The candidate doesn’t actually have to have a plan beyond that.
The problem with systems-level change is that it usually comes with unexpected consequences and that can cost lives. Small changes may be less satisfying but they can gradually get you the same changes in a slower but safer way.
I think maybe a more helpful descriptor than big or little, as it concerns change, would be ‘meaningful’. People have been yearning for meaningful change. Meaningful changes can be big, but they don’t have to be. Obamacare didn’t bring about socialized medicine, but still brought some meaningful change. That said, it was just one step in the right direction, but failed to be followed with more meaningful changes to a system that we’ve been trying to fix since Eisenhower. The more meaningful change is put off, the more desperate people become and the more urgent the problem becomes, the more people are willing to accept dramatic and unconventional changes as meaningful changes. The Democrats, to their credit, are occasionally capable of small, meaningful changes, such as investment in rail infrastructure. There’s also unfortunately a lot of parading of meaningless change as meaningful, or apologetics as to why meaningful change isn’t convenient just now. Repeat that for twenty years and you’ve basically got the post-2000s DNC platform; a few scattered, meaningful steps on disparate items, couched with a whoooooooole lot of high-octane mediocrity.
Look at the Build Back Better act. It was to be the largest investment in infrastructure, social, and environmental programs since the 1930s. It was big and meaningful.
The first part, the American Rescue Plan was enacted putting $1.9 billion in public stimulus. Republicans chiseled down the rest to a fraction of what it was supposed to be. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is $1.2 trillion. The Inflation Reduction Act spent $891 billion on energy, climate change, and a few other things.
The problem isn’t that it wasn’t big or meaningful. It was. It was too big to easily understand and necessarily slow to implement. Real change takes time. More than a 4 year presidency. Real change doesn’t fit in a campaign slogan. Trump lied about making change and that is easy to fit into a slogan.
They all deserved to lose
At least Trump had people wanting to vote for him whereas Biden/Harris was relying on people to vote against Trump instead of for them
A hard truth is always less popular than pleasant lies.
I mean you guys elected that asshole…
Privatized gains, socialized losses except instead of losing money, your daughters die of a miscarriage in the waiting rooms of hospitals
For a second I thought I saw my name and was confused what this had to do with me :-D
*ignores voters*
*loses election*
“heh, stupid voters”
I’m glad we have a sexual assaulter to tell us how it is.
Won’t be 4 years.
bLuEmAGa were the ones who skipped an election
It’s really cute watching all the Neolibs pretend like their conservative policies attract the leftists they need to win elections.
Sucking up to a demographic of old white conservative men was not a winning strategy for the Democratic party.
I have two fists
Tankies and their fucking accelerationism.
Capitalists and their fucking accelerationism.
Why not both?
Name one tankie
Now do capitalists.
Tankies in America are inconsequential and don’t exist in real life in any kind of meaningful number. They’re online edgelords who need to touch grass.
Capitalists have all of the power.
If they’re too insignificant to listen to, they’re too insignificant to blame.
