The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own "base" than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
Save? No
Stop from making worse? Yes
Plus I think Democrats will cave to protesters faster than the GOP will, Democrats see people mad at them and they panic, GOP sees people made at them and they shout "Open fire!"
A literal monkey elected to office would do less harm than Trump and the modern Republican party. We can keep arguing that the Dems are the lesser of two evils but until they radically change and grow a spine it's only delaying the inevitable descent into chaos.
As for Dems responding to protestors, are you forgetting so soon how the Dems responded to the Palestine protesters over the summer?
Harris Democrats saw their constituents mad at them and they responded by telling them to go fuck themselves, so I find your analysis questionable.
i hate to inform you that most of the people who vote for the democratic party are significantly more centrist than you and me. They really don't care, as long as it isn't the republican voter base, i'm sure they have gripes, we all do, but they probably just don't care as much. That's why they consistently manage such high, but not winning turnout numbers. They mobilize the majority of their base, not the majority of their base, and anybody else that they can.
Even when Democrats are in power, they still don't do anything hardly at all. I have voted Democrat for a long time now, but what we really need to do is get rid of First Past the Post voting in America, as it would really light a fire under them to be effective or be replaced.
If democrats cared about the country, they would back Ranked Choice voting.
Too bad they fucking harpooned it in Colorado. Democrats and Republicans campaigned against it and killed the initiative. Neither party wants it because it pulls power away from both of them.
Exactly. Democrats are better than Republicans by a long shot, but they're paralyzed by rich oligarch capture.
Republicans purged 3.5 million voters likely to vote Democrat from rolls in 2024.
And tens of millions of Democrats didn't vote.
We do, but democrats have not had effective comprehensive power to overcome typical republican bullshittery in decades.
No, they have had power but they have absolutely shitty leaders who defend capital above all else.
Look at Jeffries right now....do you think McConnell ever said "oh well, what can we do?...we have no leverage. We're not gonna bother swinging at every pitch."?
And Schumer...JFC what a milquetoast fucking wimp. Doesn't fight ANYTHING; just wants to hold votes to "get (GOP) on the record" as obstructionists. What a fucking pussy.
Even when Democrats are in power, they still don’t do anything hardly at all.
They get plenty done. They just don't get everything YOU want done.
Do yourself a favor and Google Biden's accomplishments as president. He actually got a lot of good shit done. But Democrats are always held to a higher standard, so people like to pretend they didn't do anything because they expect them to do everything.
Yes, Biden accomplished a lot....that was then subsequently undone by Trump.
Should Biden get credit for it still? Sure. He tried and it was a calm 4 years we had with him, minus inflation.
Did it make a fly's fart worth of difference? No, because much of that action was done through executive actions.
Biden did very little to support actual, systemic change to our voting systems, protections against executive power abuse, etc. He spent 4 years working hard to have his work mostly undone in a month.
We don't need incremental growth anymore. We've ignored systemic problems so long now that drastic change is needed. Systemic problems in education, voter rights protections, LGBTQ+ protections, higher education (he did try to kinda address this), racism, etc. Many of these things Biden didn't do anything to change that were long lasting, legislative changes.
These problems aren't just on Biden, though. They require the whole party to move as one progressive unit and not capitulate to this "both sides" and "moderate" bullshit. The Republican party is regressive and obstructionist and in order to combat it, we must take bold moves to show how green the grass is on the other side. Not "nothing will fundamentally change".
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
I think if you voted for Democrats you get to complain, but if you were eligible to vote and didn't have to jump through a ton of hoops to do so you don't get to complain. This could have been avoided.
edit: to be clear, I don't think Democratic leadership really cares that we've got a dictator. But voting for them was harm reduction and too many people couldn't be bothered, whatever the reason.
Why do people pretend that each election is in isolation? That if somehow we had all just voted for Harris even harder that America wasn't headed down this path anyway. This shit has been a plan of American politics since Ronald Reagan.
I'm not an "accelerationist" by any means. But it's just silly to act like this is a problem with voter turnout and only if we had "voted harder" it would all be fine. No. The entire system is fundamentally broken. That's how we got here.
you are absolutely welcome to complain, however i would advise you to complain about actual real issues, rather than "black hole issues" like "The DNC didn't personally target me and now i feel left out" because let's be honest, nobody fucking cares. We have problems to be solving, not shit to be moping over.
So disingenuous. The DNC targeted voters that don't even exist. Their strategy on the economy was to gaslight voters and tell them that nothing would change from the president who had a 38% approval rating. A president who spent 4 years yelling at then that everything was fine in the middle of a housing crisis with record inflation.
The whining about "unfair" criticism is unbelievable. Give me a break. The Democratic leadership is completely out of touch with voters. Kamala never should've let them run her campaign.
And over one third of voters didn't vote for anyone. This is talking about them:
https://www.environmentalvoter.org/updates/2024-was-landslidefor-did-not-vote
The people complaining hardest are the ones who called democrats genocidal fascists and refused to vote. This site was filled to the brim with anty Democrat posts at election time, now it’s filled with “why aren’t they doing anything??” Posts, it’s the same people
TBF I voted extra hard for Harris and I'm still wondering why Democrats are voting yes on Trumps cabinet picks and why an 83 year old Bernie Sanders is out drumming up the masses while Hakeem Jefferies tells Jon Stewart that we're all too stupid to know how amazing Democrats are.
ALSO, Democrats don't seem to give a shit about the genocide, including you. So IDK what the fuck you expect me to say. I voted for harm reduction because I knew exactly what Trump was going to do, but that doesn't mean I gave up all of my rights to complain about the shit job that Democrats do.
You can't berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
Yeah. Obviously not all of America voted, and many of Biden's voters didn't show up for Harris. But of those who did vote, Trump fucking won. Trump didn't get more votes this time, Democrats got less. Maybe they could learn a lesson about actually caring or even fucking pretending to care about people struggling to get by.
I think it's a little disingenuous to describe the mood as "berating people into voting the way you want".
The US, the leader of the free world, is now a fascist dictatorship.
I'm very frustrated, worried, and angry. When discussing it with people who did not take action to avoid this outcome, it's very difficult for that frustration not to leak out.
As I recall, there were fuck-tons of blowhard tankie trolls berating everyone and accusing anyone voting democrat of being “gEnoCiDe sUpPoRtErS” and that everyone should either vote for dipshit unknown, untested, 3rd party clowns, or not vote at all.
So… I took a look around and yeah… there’s no high road for you here.
I don't know why you went out of your way to use the mocking "gEnoCiDe sUpPoRtErS" while, when, an actual genocide was being committed. You can disagree with the strategy of not voting for genocide supporters in elections, and there may even be compelling reasons when the alternative is trump, but mocking the people who prioritise not supporting genocide isn't a very high moral ground in my opinion.
More than attempting for third parties to win, the whole "conditioning the vote on an end to genocide" was attempted at forcing the democrat administration to end the genocide under threat of losing the elections, not "let's make sure that X third person gets elected". The democratic party was clear: we will not compromise in our support of genocide even if it costs us the elections. So they lost.
This is correct, the right is already blinded by anger; telling them how stupid they are only makes them dig the hole deeper. If people want to change the way those people vote the only solution is redirecting their anger.
The entire dnc seems to be blind or dumb with their approach in the last 3 elections. It's all algorithmic, the Dems appeal to intellectuals but their message is too old school to get those uneducated voters who cling to a single issue to even listen. Get fucking angry, show some humanity, entertain, drive views, algorithm pushes your content, you brainwash the idiots instead of letting your opposition. Sure it's grimy, but it's better than spreading your cheeks and saying "they wouldn't because of decorum!"
Get fucking angry, show some humanity, entertain, drive views, algorithm pushes your content, you brainwash the idiots instead of letting your opposition.
i dont necessarily agree with this, it's going to make things worse, sure abuse the environment while you can, the kamala campaign literally did that, and it worked great. It just didn't provide turnout.
Right right, it's a neat graphic, but it kind of ignores people who remember multiple presidential elections.
If we vote Democrat and then the Democrats don't do jack s*** then what surprise is it that people stay home next time? Obama was weak. Biden was weak. They could have pushed policies that would benefit the average American citizen, and they mostly didn't. The party threw us away, not the other way around.
And I still think people should vote, but you don't get to blame them for the Democrats being s*****.
I don't think the Democratic Party in this country is all that great. However, I've seen this take many times and I don't understand why only the Democrats are blamed for the fact that the Republicans seem to constantly make things difficult for them to achieve anything. What exactly is bipartisanship these days??
The republicans are blamed too, but why would they give a shit? People are upset at democrats because they promise progressive ideals, renig on it, and when it’s them who are supposed to obstruct to save peoples lives, they refuse, buying into republicans talking points of “public mandate”
Obama was weak. Biden was weak.
You're making it pretty obvious that you paid absolutely no attention to either of these president's accomplishments.
One of them gave me affordable healthcare when I was young and broke, for starters.
They had control of the house, senate and presidency and backed away from passing a single payer system. They chose, instead, to simply provide government subsidies to insurance companies.
They had the opportunity, and the power, to provide universal healthcare like ever other Western Democracy and they chose to gift health insurance company billions without any meaningful change to the system.
I'm glad you got healthcare, everyone should have healthcare. Everyone could have had healthcare, but they were weak.
It's like they're trying to force only two options- Either Democrats are beyond reproach and you have to vote for them, or you hate democracy. I'm not allowed to be critical of Dems and have voted for them. I'm not allowed to call them complicit or call out their lack of resistance.
I'm going to be very critical of Dems and I'm going to keep a close eye out for any feasible alternatives. I'm hard out if they put AOC up.
I’m going to be very critical of Dems
That's totally fine, as long as you understand that right now, in America, if you want to protect our democracy, you have to vote Dem, because Republicans do not respect our democracy, at all.
I’m going to keep a close eye out for any feasible alternatives.
That's also fine if you're talking about local elections, but not if you're talking about the Presidency. Because no 3rd party has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the presidency. Why? Because no 3rd party has any presence, at all, in the House or Senate and the 3rd party candidate with the most votes in 2024 only got HALF OF A SINGLE PERCENT of the total votes cast.
How do you vote to get rid of the dumb voting system in USA?
That would be democrats
The Democratic Party actively crushed attempts at ranked choice voting. What planet are you on?
Edit: Its fine to downvote but lets not pretend it didn't happen https://dcist.com/story/23/08/07/dc-democrats-sue-to-stop-ranked-choice-voting-initiative/
Realistically, it's the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of "We offer you nothing!", did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
The democratic message was less "we offer you nothing" than "nothing will change".
Nothing will change has good sides and bad sides. The bad side is that there are no new radical fixes, just small, incremental changes.
The good side of nothing will change is... well look at the absolute chaos of the Trump second presidency. Installing absolutely unqualified candidates everywhere, the military's first DUI hire for secretary of defence. The absolute destruction of USAID. Musk's chaos putting BigBalls in charge of trillions of dollars of government spending.
(And, as an aside, it's not even true that with the democrats nothing was going to change. Just look at the progress they had been making on antitrust. But, it's true that they were shit at messaging and taking credit for their accomplishments.)
Biden was the "Nothing will essentially change" candidate. We finally pushed him out, but Harris only had 2 weeks to come up with "Something". That something? A small tax credit for small businesses that was DOA in the house. It was probably why they didn't promise anything else - if a TAX CUT isn't passing the GOP controlled parts of congress, what the heck could Harris promise that would?
"That something" also included the largest medicare expansion in history and $25k first time homebuyer assistance.
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
But that's the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn't do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.
Also, I don't think the Democrats are suffering. They're all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.
We all voted for Biden even though we KNEW he would be worthless but that's who was forced on us...and then for four years he ABSOLUTELY REFUSED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE to do his Number One Job of defending the US against domestic terrorism and insurrection.
ABSOLUTE REFUSAL.
And then his successor campaigns as a GWB acolyte and gives vague, rambling non-answers to very simple questions while telling the constituency to go fuck themselves.
You figure it out
even though we KNEW he would be worthless
Lol. So many people who paid absolutely no attention to his accomplishments as president crying online about how he did nothing.
So frustrating to people who actually paid attention. Guy was the most progressive president in pretty much all of our lives.
Could he have done more? Sure. And he should have. But for you to come on here and post that he was worthless is a condemnation of you, not Biden.
But yes. Blame the party that always respects the Constitution and has a voting history proving they regularly support the middle/lower classes while ignoring the party that regularly takes a shit on the Constitution, supports literal traitors, and only votes in favor of the wealthy.
His main accomplishment unfortunately was handing the presidency to Trump.
If he had followed through on his promise to be a one term president, and encouraged a primary I think its very likely we'd be in a different place now.
Desperately holding onto power until 3 months before the election doomed us to the reality we're in now.
You can't cling to the current Dem establishment and also expect them to handle Trump and maga. They can't and they won't-- it's been 10 years.
Maga is organized and motivated, we need to organize and motivate the rest of the country, it's very hard to get motivated around neocon candidates.
Every election since Trump 1 has been the same thing: quietly accept the inadequacies of the Democratic party and let maga walk all over the country while you watch half of the country get swept away by misinformation. People are exhausted trying to wait it out. If we are going to fix this country we need to seize control now, not waiting for the next election cycle.
I voted in Taiwan. I had to take a 1 hour train ride to the American embassy to vote.
Well the Google results i saw say about 64% of eligible voters voted, which is apparently high for the US.
Based on 2020 numbers it does look like a lot of 2020 Biden voters stayed home and most 2020 Trump voters came out again. Add in some economy frustration and surprise we get this shit show for 4 years...
average turnout is 50% on a good day. 60%+ is high.
the question is what the breakout between registration and voters who actually voted looks like. I'd be a disproportionate amount of dems simply didn't vote.
The voting system doesn't have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren't the democrats doing anything? Because they don't have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? "Vote for us... or else" is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it's all about preventing republican control, it wouldn't matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don't want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don't support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world's easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that "most important election ever" but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it's a long shot. But it's better then having no shot at all.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Thank you for writing this.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish(c)
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can't get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala... they were voting AGAINST Trump
I'm so tired of this. Obviously more people need to be more politically active, but there's a lot of issues occurring that we just don't talk about enough here.
Being politically active while being a responsible and well-informed voter takes time. The first without the other two is just how you make more Republican voters. When you consider how much a lot of people are working and the other struggles they're facing it really isn't surprising that a lot of people are not that informed or active. Let's also not pretend that one party doesn't go out of its way to make it more difficult for people to vote either.
Other the other side of the issue there's a myriad of issues that have made our current democrats less motivated to be an opposition party. Also, let me just point out that a party should never sit back and watch simply because they are not currently in full control of congress at the given moment. The Republicans have led by example on this repeatedly. Even when they aren't in control they continue to be aggressive, to be disruptive, to keep a media presence. Democrats can do this too. They need to.
This isn't to say that Democrats are completely to blame. There's a lot of shitty people in this country and there are people out there that can do a bit more than what they're doing to support the cause. This is just to say that Democrats share some responsibility and some of the burden here.
Also I just want to put this out there. I know people are scared, people are angry, people are upset, but the blame game isn't doing anyone any good. It is important to understand what went wrong, but spending all our time pointing fingers is simply wasting energy.
True; they should be spending their time arming up and hitting the firing range
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I've been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it's a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They've given unanimous consent to Trump's agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they're actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Why the lies?
Democrats used every second of their allotted talking time to block Gaetz’s confirmation as much as they could while holding a minority. You genuinely need to look up the meaning of the word “unanimous”.
Republicans obstructed democrats for so long by preventing a majority. The American people enabled that by voting them in.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn't even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, "unanimous consent." It's a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It's one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump's agenda if they had the willpower.
Most of the members of Congress are extremely wealthy, Republican and Democrat alike. They're not doing anything about this coup consolidating capitalist class power because they stand to personally gain from it. They don't have to pretend to not have the votes to stop yet another grab at working class wallets because they can point at Elon and say "we have no power here."
There are certain people who never want to hear it, but very few national politicians give a shit about us, certainly not enough to make a difference. They're in it for personal gain, everything else is performative.
Some of them also don't want to risk being violently purged by fascists so are bowing down early.
The handful that are actually speaking out are risking being very dead.
Which is fucking terrifying and why I've (and others) been screaming that nobody is coming to save us, we have to save each other. Put down the identity stuff for now and rekindle the militant labor movements we used to have in this country. Withholding our labor is the only way out of this - they need us a lot more than we need them.
i voted for fetterman and he's more useless at resisting tyranny than a wet blanket
I feel like too many people don't know how passing laws work.
Is it by reaching across the aisle to work with your fellow Americans in the opposition party in a bipartisan spirit of aloha to reach an acceptable compromise and pass legislation to help improve the lives of everyday Americans?
...because GOP says to go fuck yourself with a red hot poker.
This is assuming we didn't vote and things weren't "lost".
We deserved a hand recount at least. The fact that they didn't try is telling.
It's a legitimate question.
My sentiments exactly
Libs still imagining that voting matters. Not where I live. Not where most people live.
It’s absolutely fucking mind blowing that you still don’t seem to understand what voting means or how it works.
Someone hire this guy for the Democratic party, he will fit right in!
As an old leftist i find that the young American left is hyper focused on punishing politicians based on things that should be, not based on how things are.
Yes it would be nice if the world was like you want it, but it isn’t. Voting the lesser of two evils is just how most of us around the world do it.
But an example is the whole car free/anti car thing, Yes that would work if cities had adequate transit and service, but they don’t, and they won’t in my lifetime. It would be nice but it’s not going to happen, ever. So I may as well just vote for the candidates who fund transit instead of trying to find a candidate who is yelling about being anti car
We've been doing it that way for ages and it hasn't worked. It's long past time to try something else.
Oh I’m still doing the whole thing like voting for the right people and even volunteering at election time, doing my part, I just know it’s futile. I would say maybe my kid’s generation, but nah. Every new generation takes way too long to figure out the game and get mad, by that point it’s too late and they have too much to lose.
Kids out there protesting and I just think “good for them, but I have been there and so have my parents and their parents, and it never works” im a pessimist because of what I’ve seen, I’m just voicing it here.
Again i do everything y’all ask of me, I just know it won’t help unless we change gears
Time exists. If you’re not moving forward you’re going backward. Inherently, the status quo is regressive. Btw, I’m old too.
Right? Like
"Well, if you're not doing anything for me I'm withholding my vote!"
It doesn't register to anyone that Democrats can't do anything about Trump if they don't have the offices
Holy shit, one thousand upvotes!
Thanks guys, I’d like to talk for a moment about something that’s important to me and that’s how to check if you’re registered to vote.
so true.
Americans are voting every few seconds, don't you see where they are staring
They are voting up the memes. We have Meme Kings of Trump and Musk to meme about every few seconds on every single media platform. I see people pressing UpVote on Reddit, Bluesky.
People sold out to Apple iPhone, who in February 2025 is promoting products on Elon Musk's X (Apple is paying money to Elon Musk), a long time ago for the ability to mock a 78 year old man on the Toilet tweeting.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
Honestly at this point can't we just call it? The US is done. Let's all go our separate ways and dissolve the union.
Aren't the only ones saying this the Dems?
No, us non Americans watching also noticed this. Americans told democrats to eat shit and now they want them to be the saviours. It’s ridiculous when looking from the outside
This may be news to you, but all of the Democrats in Congress were elected to represent their constituents. That doesn't change whether they are in the majority, minority, or regardless of who is in the White House.
Yes, the amount of power they have is related to those things. But when Democrats talk about working with the current administration, that is an abdication of their duties.
I’ve been voting. Doesn’t seem to work.
It only works in aggregate. Like how a drop of water won't quench anyone's thirst, but a 20 gallon barrel generally will.
It only works in aggregate.
It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you're doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.
Trickle down, but for voting too!
Oh, and I guess that's what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.
Have you tried the second amendment?
I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.
What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.
Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our "way of life"?
making it difficult to vote is a feature not a bug.
The question isn't why are they not doing anything but why didn't they do anything when they had the chance.
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the "shitty health care" you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it's not great healthcare, it's still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra "pro-life", which means abortion rights weren't gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let's not let facts get in the way of our outage or anything.
Political parties are supposed to appeal to voters, not the other way around. Will post this again since people still don’t get it:
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
This is true, but naive. There was a choice to be made, you can argue there should be more or better choices, but there weren't. There were two options or the option not to choose. When there's a fork on the road you pick a way, complaining that neither path looks good doesn't get you anywhere.
If there's the Party For Kicking Puppies and the Kill All Minorities Party, neither are good. But I sure as shit would would vote for the former to prevent the later. I don't want puppies kicked, but I want minorities to live even more. Voting for neither then complaining about minorites being killed because "there was no good option" is just deflecting blame in a situation you could impact. Maybe vote in the puppy kickers and try to better it from there, because the other option doesn't leave a lot of room.
Yes, we should have better options. But people should also vote for the best option, because not voting is condoning the worst outcome because you felt no need to do anything to prevent it.
Thank you for succinctly expressing exactly how I feel about this.
This ignores a very important thing: The Republicans get their votes by lying their asses off to their base. I have no doubt the DNC has the money to pay enough people to figure out the perfect lie to tell every single person here to get their vote, but no one here wants that. Short of lies, they'd have to go with their original strategy: big tent compromise. And that's means hard left compromising with centrists, and we all know that won't happen.
So what's left? Abandon the middle? You'll just shift the non-voting demographic around.
Maybe if the far left could organize its own political movement, but that would require "the left" to operate as a unified group, which just by looking at all the infighting here, is obviously never going to happen.
So we have a left that won't compromise, a middle that isn't big enough to win an election, and a hard right party going full send on misinformation, voter suppression, etc.
And the largest group of eligible voters...doesn't.
Yeah, the answer here isn't "the DNC changing their shit", it's figuring out how to get people to give a shit about voting again.
No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.
The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It's not the left that's refusing to compromise.
And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I'm leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can't say "oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN't 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!" Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
You're 100% right, but just a heads up, you absolutely will hear dems say that. Campaigning for a third party started long ago and you just joined in.
Dems will have no idea how long you've been supporting third-party candidates, and will only recall the discussions they hear while engaged - during election season.
This is a little bit dishonest. It's not about the length of time you support a party but how much general support they have. You absolutely should support third party and grow the voter base on local and state and even push for larger support. But the spoiler effect is very real. In major elections where voting third party will elect the individuals most likely to harm you and your lifestyle in the most severe ways, and it is extremely obvious that third party has no real horse in the game, you hurt more than yourself. I agree Dems either need to figure their shit out and cut out the cancer or they need to get the fuck out of the way, but until third party candidates stand a real chance at national change for good, i will only be voting for them in elections they either stand a chance in or where showing support for them will help grow the voter base while limiting harm. Mid terms, vote 3pt. Primaries, vote 3pt. General election? Vote to minimize harm while maintaining a potential win.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren't a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
Edit: judging from the votes on this comment, we're gonna lose again because half of you refuse to learn anything from history that (metaphorically) happened yesterday.
I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.
However... there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn't win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won't be listing the republicans on my ballot)
So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that's on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.
What's really telling is that Democratic Party supporters seem to think that the Green Party is the only third party to exist, and that splitting the vote only affects them, when the right-wing parties and independent candidates get many, many more votes.
Weird how the Greens who get less votes than the Libertarians in every election somehow throw the vote to Republicans, when the Libertarians:
- Are in all 50 states, the greens often are in just over half
- More voters are registered Libertarian than any other third party since the 1980s
- More people voted for Libertarian than Green in 2000, 2016, and 2024
- Yet somehow Green voters are blamed in all of these despite if every Green voter was given to Democrats they wouldn't have won, but Libertarian votes would have
- And you never see Democrats getting mad at the serious third party that people actually vote for in swing states, but they have taken ideas from the Green party like the Green New Deal
One of those things where both
- Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren't doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
- Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
are true.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you'd think we'd at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn't want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should've had none.
Now is exactly the right time to criticize the dems, make them step up their game. Would be better 4 years ago, but here we are.
Totally agree "but here we are", but a better time would be 1992
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikaanse_presidentsverkiezingen_1992
If you've got a time machine, feel free.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic "leaders" asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn't do.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they're literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn't control every branch of government, but doesn't have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can't stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of "we aren't the Republicans" can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
Second highest voter turn out for a presidential election in US history.
Clearly its the voters fault.....
Also why in the broken nation is the assumption that if more people showed up they would have voted like you? I never got this concept. Please spend more effort being an opposition/resistance and less being poor losers.
It is pathetic that among high voter suppression (due to Republican motions) the Democrats blame the people for not voting, instead of blaming voter suppression, or any of the other decades worth of inaction by Democrats to foresee and prepare for this. They have a two party system, it's not like the Republicans were a complete surprise
Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).
Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
Millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn't show up to vote for Harris in 2024.
Trump's numbers barely changed at all between the two.
Dems will do anything to not accept responsibility for fumbling 12 years in office since 2000.
I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to "pick a side" even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.
America, you did this. Stop trying to make it someone else's fault.
If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!
If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!
If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!
This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don't have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don't care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.
Second highest by sheer number, eighth by percent of voting eligible population.
From your source:
Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column....
it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.
Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:
Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!
Voter turnout being high is great for non-republicans.
Democrats
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
How could non-voters do this.
I'm not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don't really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won't typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don't really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
I'm just gonna leave this here: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
There is evidence to support widespread vote suppression is occurring by "vigilantes" knocking people off the voter registry amongst other tactics
A third of the eligible voters didn't vote. If they had, this tiny marginal bullshit wouldn't matter.
Assuming that the third would be biased toward one candidate rather than being probably just as evenly divided as those that did vote.
We know the restrictive voting laws were biased. We do not know that the "didn't bother to vote" has the same bias.
Separate reply, this isn't tiny marginal bullshit, we're talking millions of votes
I don't disagree, but not like my preferred candidate was on the ballot, I still voted tho...
Welp, that settles it.
Don't stop at suppression when it was full manipulation.
Beyond the statistical realities that Saleh mention, the general point about drop-off is also weird.
It implies that the GOP cheated, but declined to cheat in down ballot. This seems odd, if they had the will and capability to just change the votes, why would they skip the down ballot elections? Further another similar site pointed out the drop-off was uneven, that it was suspiciously higher in Montana than Michigan. To imply the GOP cheated more in Montana? When your theory indicates a bigger effort to cheat in a safe state than a swing state, then there's something going on.
The drop-off effect is easily explained by the reality that people weren't voting for a Republican or a Democrat, they were voting for or against Trump. That mindset is wholly separate from Republican v. Democrat. It's almost an Apples v. Oranges to try to compare a race with Trump to it to any other race (which is why the GOP is desperate to run him again, because even they don't understand how he engages the base and he is a useful idiot).
I'm glad to see it investigated and I wish that the voting populace didn't do what they did (and accept that without the suppression, the results might have gone the other way). However I don't think fraud has been proven in any significant degree.
Perhaps the democrats should emphasize vote in person on election day if at all possible, and mail-in is a last resort, rather than saying "voting is easy, just mail it in". It's obvious that they are having great success in discarding legitimate mail-in ballots the way they see fit.
This is bullshit and this group is likely just out there to cash in on the election. What they claim to be suspicious patterns is just basic statistics.
If machines have a higher number of votes it is just to be expected that the spread of the results get smaller and towards the end result. The larger the sample size, the smaller the spread.
And the early voting machines had up to 250 votes per machine, whereas the election day machines only had around 125. At least in the graphics this group used in their own report. If you scale the graphic of the early machines only until 125 votes per machine they look similar.
Also on election day there were about 3000 machines as opposed to 1000. And here another basic truth comes up. If you repeat a sampling more often, the distribution of results becomes more even.
These guys are just describing basic statistic effects and claiming them to be suspicious, probably to collect donations and run with the money. Also their website is dubious about who they are exactly and what their credentials are.
There is legitimate criticisms and leads to investigate, but these guys are not one of them.
Good potential* evidence to add to the pile, thank you for bringing it up!
Edit: *
The results at my last city vote was depressing. We had 20% turn out. Twenty! And we have mail-in by default here
Thankfully the people who did vote voted for the positive changes we need but it's not hard to imagine how easily 20% of the population can be easily swayed
They should like... Be politicians though. We get they can't pass legislation, but be fucking politicians.
Republicans out of the majority make you sniff their shit daily and are all over the news cycle. Democrats seem to think it's ok to just say they're concerned and send me fundraising emails.
While some people don’t vote out of apathy, others are a target of indirect disenfranchisement that prevents the working poor from voting.
Others still do it because of religious dedication to the accelerationist belief that making the human experience worse will magically cause the working class to gain class consciousness and revolt. You know. Like has never occurred in recorded history...
Democrats do anything but take accountability for their mistakes any% Speedrun challenge (impossible).
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren't owed votes. They have to earn votes.
The Democrats failed to earn enough votes against Trump TWICE.
I don't even wanna hear some shit about it being a rigged election or anything. The right was screaming about 2020 being rigged for 4 years and y'all kept telling them it was ridiculous and they just need to suck it up because they lost.
The Democrats will lose again in 2028 if they do not make serious changes up and down their party.
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up?
Indeed. The democrats should recognise their mistakes, and so should the voters. Either one could have stopped this, but they both chose stubbornness.
As out-of-touch as George H.W. Bush looked marveling at the checkout scanner at a supermarket, that's nothing compared to the people who think American voters by and of large sat down and thoughtfully compared the policy positions of all the candidates, gamed out the implications, and voted accordingly.
How can you say this after the news about the people who didn't know Biden dropped out until election day? That had never heard of Project 2025? That didn't know what tariffs are?
I don't think so. That was our future on the line. Though they may have run a more effective social media campaign spinning their fake, populist bullshit stimulating Trump cultists out in Trump country, none of that should have mattered. Regardless of a weak opposing campaign & inflation, we fucked up by not recognizing an existential threat & voting against it anyway. That's just downright stupid of us.
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren’t owed votes. They have to earn votes.
Thanks, I love hearing that my existence has to be earned.
Your existence? The fuck are you talking about?
I'm talking about the stupid meme and Democrats once again pointing fingers everywhere else instead of looking in a fuckin mirror.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people. They have failed to do so now multiple times.
At some point you can't keep pointing the finger elsewhere and you have to accept that you didn't convince enough people that you were the better option.
They need to take some responsibility instead of playing professional victims all the damn time. I'm sick of it.
I agree with this, but it seems to be more of a far-right nazi issue. In Germany, it was again the young, white men that turned nazi that almost won the nazis the election. Let that sink in. The nazis almost won an election in Germany. Here, we have the same issues, but with gerrymandering, voter suppression and swing state election officials cheating occasionally. It's our young white men that have a ton of energy, want to see change, and have lost their way when looking for someone to help them do that, that are our biggest threat.
Edit: I forgot to add the link to the Germany voters: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186
21% of Young people voted for the AfD. They got 20,8% in total. Thats not a significant increase. The cohort of 35-49 year-olds turned out stronger for the AfD.
The largest voting disparity is in the working class. 37% of workers voted for a party that would crush them.
Angry ML shouting incoming
You would be angry as well if you had no representation in government. It must be nice for you to have two conservative parties to choose from.
Why don’t you vote some representatives in then?
In American politics, it doesn't matter who you vote for, you're still getting fucked! Like choosing a broom and a stick to get fucked with.
what needs to change is the way that voting work. Or at least people to vote for someone less embarassing than Harris and less facist than trump and a lot less in favor of the capitalists in general (Bernie my beloved).
Uncommitted performative boTh sIDEs grandstanding couch sitters who drank a bit too much right-wing wedge-driving vodka:
Make sides irrelevant by passing state level electoral reform and opening our elections to 3rd parties. More democracy is the solution, not forcing people to vote for your preference. Do you people ever take the time to consider you don't want people to vote for who they want to vote for? How can you sleep at night dreaming of taking other's right to vote away? Awful...
I am a huge advocate to changing our election systems. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's done more write-ups and advocacy for campaign finance and election reform.
That said, this is putting the cart before the horse. Such Constitutional reform first requires consensus among the working class. We must first unite the left and right under a common enemy of the rich. Only then can we pressure states to seek a convention for amendments to the constitution.
Is the Democrat master plan to have a one party system? Everyone always and only vote Democrat, because if the other party of a two party system ever gets in to power we are screwed! It doesn't sound like a good plan.
You guys had a good idea with Ross Perot in 1992. Look into that (especially how he got 0 electoral college votes) and maybe you'll have a better idea of what you should be doing, instead of blaming each other.
Better off to die fighting for humanity, not "the other white..." rich politicians. The america before Trump wasn't one I wanted to live for either.
This war was going on before Obama and Bush. It's more fundamental than left and right politics. It's a mass social existential crisis in a nation that was taught to consume as a way to escape the reality of life as a human being. There is no saviour to run to. We've wasted so much time putting blind faith into mainstream pop politicians that live for "the game" and not humanity.
...except maybe Bernie.
The crowd that didn't vote for Kamala have mysteriously disappeared from their soapbox and went into hiding...
I gotta start saving this exact same comment every time I see it. Still pushing for electoral reform and a dissolution of the two party system on a daily basis. This is the right time to do so right? Now you can't cry "Oh it's to close to the election!"
Well, have you pushed to replace First past the post voting in your state so people can be free to vote how they want? Will you be complaining about 3rd party mid term voters after a year and a half of doing nothing to change the mathematically flawed voting system in your state?
I didn't have to roll out the red carpet for Donald "Israel needs to win and win fast" Trump to push for voting reform.
Every terrible thing we told you would happen is currently happening, so I hope you're happy for queer Americans and about the fate of Palestine. You got exactly what we told you we would get. I hope you're comfy on your soapbox, because it's not comfy for trans people right now. Thanks a lot.
I seeing us everywhere. I'm not sure what your talking about
Hi I voted for Stein
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn't even care enough about country to do that.
Da.
Obviously you're transphobic genocide lovers who demand corporate ownership of the meats of production.
(/s obvs)
Good thing you added that /s or else I'd have to get my billionaire sponsors to test out their space lasers on you.
How much are you getting paid by the billionaires in the dnc to simp this hard for them?
Just enough to cover my Lemmy monthly subscription.
