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The left doesn’t show up to vote
I'm not so sure about that. As an outside observer, it seems pretty obvious to me that the lack of a left vote in the US is because they do not have a notable left wing party. The best way to win someone's vote is to represent them. If nobody represents someone nobody will get that vote.
Obviously to actually fix that you'll need election reform, this is pretty much the expected outcome of a single vote FPTP winner-take-all system.
Look I voted because I'm a big picture guy and I see where you are coming from but the Democrats made it very clear they didn't give a fuck about the left vote this time around.
Maybe this time they will learn that if people want a conservative they will just vote for the psycho-conservative party that actually delivers than the milquetoast-conservative party that crows about "unity" and "woke" shit all the time.
Haha who am I kidding
You sure showed them, didn’t you?
Remains to be seen 4 years from now.
Hopefully we’ll still have elections then.
There aren’t enough leftists in America to win an election without catering to multiple ideologies.
Democrats were catering to leftists and moderates and never-trumpers. Because there is a lot of diversity in our country and it is a politicians job to work for all their constituents not just a certain ideology.
Leftists have a track record of not voting if they have to compromise.
Because moderates will compromise a progressive policy to death. Where is the public option?
Its cool man, im 33 and I've voted democrat in every election. I always push left but I showed up for barack, hilary, biden, and kamala.
This neoliberal shit is not going to fly with leftists, maybe y'all do need to push further right, hell why not just amalgate with republicans? Fuck it, its a a diverse nation afterall.
See ya in 2 years, where I'll tow the party line again and get blamed for its loss again somehow.
What do you mean by “where is the public option?”
The public option in the affordable care act that was killed by Joe Lieberman?
Maybe if they ran a fucking left-wing candidate they might.
There are some left wing candidates in local elections, but they don't get votes either
No offense, but that's so vague it's almost meaningless. What candidates? What elections? When?
I can tell you that progressive legislation had a lot of wins last week, with voters passing minimum wage increases, paid sick leave, abortion protections, and union protections while rejecting school vouchers in 3 states. Progressivism did a lot better than Centrism last week.
Then they would lose votes from moderates and lose again
The sheer number of trump voters I've heard say they were originally gonna vote for Bernie is larger than you would imagine.
People are angry the system is rigged, trump channels that anger and says he will solve it. Granted he won't and they're dipshits for believing him, but that's how it goes.
100% of Trump voters I’ve met call Biden and Kamala radical leftist that are responsible for inflation and many other things.
I’m sure there are some fringe trump voters that would vote for Bernie but not enough.
Trump has foreign bots, the billionaire class and republican propaganda machine all helping him.
Bernie would be depending on donations from lower income workers.
I am talking about the voter swing required for trump and GOP to sweep the whole government. That isn't because of Trump supporters, they would vote trump if he personally knifed their mother in front of them. That is because of disenfranchised fence sitters who put zero effort into educating themselves and then vote for a change of leadership off of a gut instinct that a different person cant do worse. Its ignorant and wrong, but look no farther than worldwide elections this year showing a huge ousting of incumbent officials. Inflation has been unreal, and the uneducated think the president controls literally everything (see the "I did that" stickers on gas stations nationwide) People want change but they don't know how to get it, and here is a man yelling and screaming about how he is going to change shit.
I know its difficult to imagine being this ignorant, but i truly believe this is how a lot of people operate. Its not malice, its ignorance and apathy.
I would vote for Bernie but in my experience many voters are closer to the middle of the ideological spectrum than far left or right.
This is very true, a lot of people get wrapped up in their bubbles, either the internet bubble or their own personal bubbles, so they believe the bubble when it says "everyone is left or right" but there's a ton of people sitting in the middle just apathetic towards being invested politically.
The kicker is that those people in the middle are villanized by both sides as being a part of the other side. Instead of them trying to bring them to their ideology, they push them away. But this was what the constant polarization through wedge issues get you, an easily divided populace that is fighting about things the political figures on either end don't actually care about, so you vote for those issues instead of the ones that prevent the ever increasing cancer that is billionaires.
Its all a distraction.
Agreed. It is also the strategy that Russia openly admits to using to defeat the US from within.
In this case, id have to say they're full of shit. We did this to ourselves when the government chose to chase the needs of the capitalist over the people that make up the country. That's like tossing a match into an active fire and saying you started it.
I think think there are more moderates that far left or far right because the majority of people are exposed to talking points from all ideologies.
I think the internet is causing more people to stay inside their echo chambers and drift further left or right instead of being exposed to nuance.
But I suppose capitalism has played a part in forming those echo chambers. Facebook being one example that comes to mind.
There not getting votes from moderates now! Why is it somehow smart and good to go, "wow, moderates didn't vote for us, I guess we have to get more moderate," but it's somehow dumb to say, "the left didn't vote for us, maybe we should go more left?"
Especially because, according the Pew Research Center, you're, "the left doesn't vote," premise is a lie, and people on the far-left and far-right are more likely to vote, donate, and attend rallies than people in the center?
What makes you think moderates arent voting for democrats?
Because they keep fucking losing when they try to pick up moderates. In 2016, Chuck Schumer makes a grand prediction that Democrats will pick up two moderates for every one working-class voter they lose. Turns out they just lost working class voters. A NY Times study showed that hidden Trump voters were much more likely to be moderates. 2020, Biden went much farther to the left than Hillary, and he did better than her with not only moderates but conservatives. Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney to try and flip moderates, and she wound up doing 11 points worse than Biden with moderates.
The Democrats won big with a moderate message exactly once in 1992 when Bill Clinton beat Bush, and they've been chasing that high ever since, even though they keep losing. Gore? Moderate, loser. Kerry? Moderate, loser. Obama? Progressive (at least in platform, he pivoted hard to the center almost immediately), winner. And we've already been over Hillary, Biden, and Harris.
The data is in. Chasing moderate voters is a much worse strategy than having a robust, progressive platform. But they keep doing this, and they keep losing. It's ridiculous.
Biden catered to moderates in 2020 and wouldn’t have won without them.
So you are wrong. Moderates are voting for democrats.
Yeah, no shit, that's literally in my comment! Maybe try rereading it and getting back to me.
There not getting votes from moderates now!
This was your comment. How bout you proofread it.
Oh my god, you're right! I should have said, "They're not gaining with moderates and, in fact, are losing moderate support in many crucial elections, especially when they weaken their message to try to be more appealing to them!" What an idiot I am for using concise language that anyone with half a brain would understand.
Anyway, since I'm also a pedantic twat, I looked it up, and it turns out a lot of leftists did show up in 2020! Looks like your assertion that, "The left doesn’t show up to vote," is false as well. Looks like you got some proofreading to do! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You Charlie Browns types are just actually incapable of learning, huh?
I learned that “leftists” on lemmy claim they won’t vote unless dems act in a way that would lose votes from other groups. It’s an obvious bad faith argument.
“Leftists” on lemmy aren’t willing to compromise and claim they won’t vote for dems unless dems have the same attitude and also don’t compromise.
America isn’t made up of leftists though so you can’t win in a diverse democracy without compromise.
Lol, okay buddy.
While I agree, it would probably help if the Dems actually tried being left-wing for once, rather than always trying to be Republicans-lite
Why vote for a right-wing campaign?
Have they stopped teaching politics in school or something?
If you sit out enough democratic elections, eventually, it defaults to a socialist party. It's a known exploit, they're just trying their best. /s
Because the center right to right wing Dem leadership simultaneously ignore the wishes of the Left and take them for granted, offering them little to nothing in the way of improvements to the atrocious status quo.
Give people something to vote FOR, instead of only a greater evil to vote AGAINST, and you'll get much higher voter turnout.
For example, another received wisdom is "young people don't vote" and guess what? When they were given the chance to vote for their bodily autonomy in Kansas, young women voted at a higher rate than men of any age combined.
The last time the Dems campaigned on going further left, 2008, was their biggest win in decades. When Obama then governed further to the right and campaigned for reelection accordingly, he won by a MUCH smaller margin.
and you'll get much higher voter suppression.
You mean turnout here?
Yeah, thanks for pointing that out 😄
Fixed
How dare you suggest that the best way to get my voice represented is to use my voice in the first place.
