After not endorsing Harris, Rashida Tlaib secures win in Michigan
After not endorsing Harris, Rashida Tlaib secures win in Michigan
Palestinian-American congresswoman secures fourth term after beating Republican James Hooper
Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib defeated her Republican opponent in Michigan's 12th congressional district election on Tuesday, securing a fourth term as the only Palestinian-American woman in the US Congress.
The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.
Tlaib secured 77 percent of the vote, defeating the Republican Party's James Hooper who received just 19 percent of the vote.
Her victory comes amid the backdrop of Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians so far and has been diplomatically and militarily supported by the Biden-Harris administration for more than a year.
Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the war, calling for the US to withhold weapons from Israel. Her opposition to the war on Gaza and support for pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses have drawn harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Who could've guessed that appealing to far-right republicans — who are going to vote republican anyway — wouldn't be a winning strategy?
Yeah, Democrats are always doing Republican-lite, then they're surprised that doesn't peel off voters on the right that will just always vote for the real thing anyway.
It is actually worse. It confirms the right wing standpoints and thus leads to a general societal swing to a more right-leaning worldview. This is basically what framing is. You can see this very well here in Germany, were basically the whole political spectrum nowadays presents views that would have been considered far right just 10 years ago.
They also make the mistake of thinking that in order to appeal to conservative voters they have to be conservative. I have more often gotten through to conservatives with socialist economics and anarchist political philosophy than I ever could when I was a liberal trying to sway them on cultural issues and basic welfare.
And after getting through to them they started to come around on the cultural issues too.
Fucking learn from this, DNC.
DNC response:
They will not. They will do what they always do:
- rely on people being pissed off enough after four years of Rep rule to vote for the Dems no matter what
- rely on a few select 'free' topics (abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights etc) to show how different they are, when they are mostly exactly the same when it comes to topics that matter to most voters daily (ie topics that affect them personally, like their own economic situation)
I recon the only thing that could actually make them shift to the left is strong opposition from the left, basically a left Ross Perot, if you want. One that collects all the votes of the people who were too disillusioned this time around to actually vote, and then basically says "Shift to the left enough, be a real alternative, and you can have these". Without someone or a party like that, no, they will not change. They will continue to further the interests of billionaires, just like the Reps.
So, I'm just pondering here, but it seems to me that it's a bad Idea to run an unpopular presidential candidate because when voters choose to stay home, they also take their down-ballot votes with them.
Very true. I was wondering why the GOP won the Senate but that makes perfect sense.
Tbh I’m not convinced there’s going to be an election 4 years from now
Dont expect the Democrats to learn anything from this because their Billionaire donors would rather they lose by promoting policies that don't threaten profits than win and cost the donors money.
Their billionaire donors don't lose, that's the point. Reps are following the same main purpose of allowing barely restricted capital accumulation.
To know what happens in US politics when the donors are seeing even the distant possiblity of losing one day, ask Black Panthers for example.
Im very familiar with the BPP and model my contributions to direcr action orgs around their principles as well as the desire to set up parallel power structure. Without the rank and file or our own power structures, there is no foundation or material support for revolution. We're not even in a position where violence could help us yet. In short, unfortunatly, at this point it seems things need to get worse before they can get better, if they can get better.
This means not endorsing Harris was the correct political move for Tlaib.
Tlaib correctly understood that she needed to appeal to her voters to win. Donors have a lot of money but it turns out they do not get you elected. Getting votes does.
Do not support genocide. It is that easy!
It's not that easy. Democrats have to go a lot more left than just "not genocide." They have to actually give a shit about the conditions of the working class if they want the working class to support them.
Democratic party is not a left leaning or even a centrist party. Most of right wing policy of Republican presidency is continued by the Democratic presidency.
We have a conservative party and a very conservative party.
We have two very conservative parties with one trying to shake their branding of being otherwise.
This makes me glad. I obviously wasn't hoping for much from this election to begin with, but I've been finding a lot of silver-linings since the news started coming in. Shout out to Nebraska
and Floridafor their cannabis legalization ballot measures.Florida's cannabis legalization ballot measure failed...
And thanks in part to Michigan voters, we have a president who will fuck over Gaza even more. Great success.
The only hope Gaza ever had was the Axis of Resistance, no matter who won they were facing annihilation and forced displacement. North Gaza is the blueprint for the rest of the Strip. Only if Israel is defeated can Palestine be free.
She knew how to keep her job.
The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.
WTF?
Not unusual, and not a bad thing. They called a number of races with less than that. If you're taking your expected percentages with the voting samples you've got and your statistics and calculations say there's less than a 1% chance the race will flip, you might as well call it. They're pretty much never wrong when they make a call that early.
It also doesn't actually matter because the AP isn't who decides the winner.
What was the breakdown of the district's vote in the presidential election? I'm surprised that wasn't included in the article. It seems extremely pertinent.
Another reason to love her.
Another reason to worry about her being deported
Well done! Elect an official that is likely to be deported because you just elected, "a dictator on day one who wants to deport 20 million people in the first 6 months, with no end in sight."
You're just like Missouri that just ended a statewide abortion ban, only to elect the guy that promised to ban it at the federal level.
Basically your state sold the rest of us out because of your pride, greed, and racism.
I hope she's happy with the outcome.
I don't think she's happy that her own party's presidential candidate failed to capture their own constituents by using trump as a scapegoat
Gaza gets wiped out even faster now on top of all the other bad things the GOP want.
Not that I believe that Gaza dissenters mattered at all in this election. I'd be amazed if even 1% of voters considered it a factor for their vote.
I think what you're supposed to take away from this is actual left wing candidates who are against genocide did well this election. A big part of why Kamala lost is because she did not have high voter turnout from the left. She spent most of her campaign trying to appeal to moderate right-wing voters who did not vote for her. And she also did not get the turn out of the left because of it. She should have been trying to appeal to farther left voters by promoting actual left Wing ideas and not sicking the police on anti genocide protesters.
But hey it don't matter, not like we're ever going to get to vote again anyway
Wiped out faster? Based on the stern red lines that cannot be crossed put down by Biden?
Locked in the basement of your mind palace.
I think it gets wiped out at exactly the same pace
What is trump gonna do that Biden didn't? He was giving the maximum money and weapons allowed every single week.
Let's not pretend it wasn't Biden who vetoed every single ceasefire resolution in the UN
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see American troops helping in the genocide come next year.
Pyrrhic victory. She has her seat, but will likely have no ability to influence any positive change. A unified front was needed, a unified front did not emerge.
There was no "winning" divided. Now we all lose together.
why should the left unify with a canidate who was at every option deciding to run farther to the right, a canidate who dicided a genocide was moraly ok? why is that something we should just accept