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Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
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.
So disingenuous. The DNC targeted voters that don’t even exist.
and yet people went to the rallies? People were excited about the election, people felt good until it happened. And then everybody flipped like a switch and went edgy teen "i'm going to do something really bad" mode immediately after.
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.
which to be fair, was accurate, and is true, all of their claims are factually correct, the problem is that voters are stupid, and politicians struggle to get this point across to their idiot supporter base appropriately for some reason. The consumers tend to feel the effects of a recession, in a lagged period. Think about covid, not many people struggled through covid, it was easier than most people thought it would be, it's the inflation that happens after that really causes problems. The economy tends to do significantly better through these periods of inflation, which is why the inflation happens. To stem the growth to more reasonable levels. Otherwise you have some really funny shit happen.
that nothing would change from the president who had a 38% approval rating.
find me any evidence of approval rating meaning literally anything. Please.
A president who spent 4 years yelling at then that everything was fine in the middle of a housing crisis with record inflation.
the record inflation happened after covid, at the end of the four year term, nobody should've been surprised by this, it was an established and expected thing that was going to happen, but for some reason everybody now pretends like inflation never should've happened, because covid "wasn't that bad actually" even though it was a literal failure of the global shipping industry. Of course the inflation is going to be pretty bad, that's literally how Keynesian economics work.
The whining about “unfair” criticism is unbelievable. Give me a break. The Democratic leadership is completely out of touch with voters.
there is argument to be made about the DNC being out of touch, and just generally incompetent. However people mostly just like to bitch and yell I.E. your comment, rather than do anything to actually fix the fucking issue, and i guess hoping for a golden goose to show up and suddenly fix everything, even though that's literally not how this works, and we BOTH know this. We ALL know this.
BUT FOR SOME REASON WE CHOOSE TO IGNORE IT WHEN IT'S MOST CONVENIENT.
edit: the housing crisis was in part instated by trump admin era tariffs on canadian lumber? Literally has nothing to do with that admin.
Can I complain about the fact that the Biden/Harris admin prioritized continuing a genocide over beating Trump?
uh, no? These are literally two irrelevant concepts.
If you want to complain about the fact that the biden/harris admin have less than desirable stances on the israel/palestine problem, by all means do that. But i don't see how this is relevant to anything to do with beating trump. Because the statistics literally show that 75 million people voted for kamala harris this election. to the 77 million who voted for trump. Could that specific issue push her over the edge? Maybe, maybe not. It's impossible to know unless you do incredibly in depth study on it.
This is literally the meme of "if only it wasn't slightly too cold for me to comfortably go on a run right now, otherwise i would totally be taking care of my physical fitness, instead i will do nothing."
https://lemmy.ml/post/25756796?scrollToComments=true
Harris purposely ignored and pushed away parts of her base that cared about Palestine. She also refused to let a single Palestinian-American Democrat speak at the DNC.
That is prioritizing the genocide over the campaign
Harris purposely ignored and pushed away parts of her base that cared about Palestine.
because it's primarily people under the age of 25. And a very small voter demographic, maybe arabic people also, but arabic people are decidedly biased against israel for obvious reasons.
She also refused to let a single Palestinian-American Democrat speak at the DNC.
i don't know of any incidents regarding kamala, or her team publicly refusing the ability of a Palestinian to speak, but i could be wrong. If i had to guess, they prioritized big names and celebrities more than random people, which would generally track, following along with the general controversy surrounding the palestine issue, it's probably the safest political bet they could make at the time.
That is prioritizing the genocide over the campaign
i don't think this statement even makes sense in a semantic fashion, wouldn't they stop promoting the campaign, and give like 300 billion dollars to israel instead?
Purposely pushing away any voters (especially parts of your base) during an election is a crazy choice if you want to win
And reminder here, they didn't win, they knew they weren't winning, they knew they needed more voters and they pushed people away anyway
they weren't "pushing them away" the voter base was pulling away from the democratic base, if you aren't aware of this because you don't know any history prior to 2023, than you will be shocked to learn that the US has historically supported israel since it's very creation. It's literally an 80 year long history. The dems were doing nothing other than running on historical popular sentiment, which doesn't seem to have changed significantly judging by the 75 million votes, and the additional polling that shows that support for palestine is mostly among the younger voters. (if they even vote at all) I'm also not convinced that it was a significant portion of the population to the point where you need to worry about explicitly including them. They didn't specifically cosy up the black voter base, or hispanic voter base, they just ran on policy, and they still voted for them.
you can make that argument all you want, but at the end of the something as controversial as the israel palestine issue (which is definitionally controversial otherwise we would all be in agreement, and it wouldn't be controversial at all.) is more than likely going to harm the voter turnout, especially among the older demographics who are more willing to support this kind of rhetoric anyway. They likely believed it was more worthwhile to target the existing, known reliable voter base as much as possible, over people who were between the ages of 20-25 and were in college.
And reminder here, they didn’t win, they knew they weren’t winning, they knew they needed more voters and they pushed people away anyway
by 2 million votes. Electorally is a different story, but that's irrelevant, please show me these concrete figures you must be referencing demonstrating AT LEAST 2 million voters who would've reliably voted for kamala prior to the israel palestine issue (before kamala was even running in the first place) who wouldn't vote for kamala, after the campaign.
I'm aware that there were like, at least 30 people in michigan who cared enough, but im pretty sure michigan went red anyway. I think there were like, 12 people in california that cared? Idk, california is weird. I literally only remember one instance of this being a concern ever, and it was with michigan voters. This really just doesn't seem like a demographic problem to me at all.
Your right, the Democratic strategists knew what they were doing, they shouldn't have tried to attract more voters
you are literally engaging all three of your functionally capable brain cells to make this argument huh.
How do i explain this to you, in a way that you can understand.
So, there are primary effects, secondary effects, tertiary, etc, continues all the way down until you stop caring. An action like, going against 80 years of allyship and historical precedent could net you a 5% larger voter base for example.
Now there's this funny concept where the secondary effect is that 70% of your voter base is less ok with this, so you might lose 7% of your voter base to another party instead, now you've gained a net -2% share of voters!
Oh, but wait. It's more complicated than this, because the two primary candidates in this case were kamala, and trump, trump who is notoriously problematic in regards to this one issue, and kamala who has repeatedly stated that she wants to at least do something about it. Now if you're a pro this issue supporter, if you don't vote for kamala harris, even though her stance is moderate, not terrible, not great, but moderate. You have essentially given a direct boost to the alternate, who in this case is a great negative to the problem at hand.
Congratulations you've once again succeeded in making things worse! But now you get to pretend like it wasn't your fault, wow look at that, isn't that so cool. Crazy how you can just absolve yourself of all your wrongdoings and problems by pretending they weren't because of you!
Oh but wait, maybe you voted third party, who would theoretically actually do something to stop this problem. OH WAIT, they're a russian puppet, and if you voted for them, you've completely nullified your entire point by voting for someone who supports something opposed to what you support!
man i sure do love putting 3 minutes of thought into a problem, but you can continue living in schizo dream land where if only you circlejerked harder about whatever, people would've totally 100% cared, because trust me, i'm not the issue, it's literally everybody else around me that's the issue!
I'll never vote for someone facilitating a genocide. If those are the only options then this is an evil country that cannot be saved
You can, so long as you acknowledge that them taking an anti Israel stance would most likely also lead to Trump due to other democrats feeling alienated, and thus, a Trump administration that will do even more genocide.
The sad truth just seems to be that not even among democrats that position is a majority. No matter what you voted for, it would most likely not have changed that. The US needs like 20-40 years of progressive change before the majority is ready to take on such positions, and the way to ensure that timeline becomes longer and longer, is by making choices that undercut even small steps there.
Don't vote for the lesser evil, vote for the path towards that eventual US where your opinion is held by the majority.
Don’t vote for the lesser evil
unless voting for the lesser evil is that path that leads to that point. Because otherwise you're stuck voting third party, which is a meme. Or not voting at all, and look where that has gotten us thus far lmao.
Voting for the lesser evil has also gotten us here
yeah and driving cars gets people into fatal auto accidents, great statement.
vote for the path towards that eventual US where your opinion is held by the majority.
Been trying that for decades and it hasn't worked.
The only reason I started voting for the Dems in the first place was because they were anti-war, now they are pro-war so things have moved backwards
Been trying that for decades and it hasn’t worked.
ok great news, you can like, do political ground work, today, for free even. Just go outside and talk to people, im sure there are even organizations that will assist you and provide you material to go and do it for them. It's not hard.
The money is on the side of pro-war politics, this isn't about what 1 person is capable of its a systemic problem
man i wonder how you could possibly go about deterring that mechanism, man i sure wonder.
You're right, I'll just become a billionaire, no prob
i mean, that's one option. Too bad you don't like, interact with people regularly or something. There's no data or research that suggests that you can influence the opinion of people by simply talking to them.
It's indeed a shame that the Dems regressed on that issue, and that in the current system you have no alternative choice that can actually win, but sometimes holding a line is all you can do as a single person. The propaganda that the republicans are producing is exactly designed to make sure your position never holds a majority, as with the right stimulation, most people can be made to believe that being pro-war makes you a patriot and a 'true' American. And they've been winning for a long time on that front too.
You can't vote that propaganda away completely with the current democrats, that's true as well. But it's incredibly hard to resist when that propaganda is entangled and mixed in with staying informed about the government and society. Things aren't lost, but if they were hard to impossible before, it didn't make it any easier like this, even progressive minds can be taught to reject progressiveness, so long as you get to them early and overwhelmingly enough.
True, this is an evil country. USA delenda est
You could have if Trump was going to actually end the genocide instead of explicitly saying he was going to make it even worse.
How bout the fact that the Biden/Harris admin absolutely refused under any circumstances whatsoever to do their number one job of defending the country against domestic threats and a criminal regime? ...and even used notorious opposition party members are their mascots?
I didn't say her campaign was good. But the choice was obvious. Either make things at home better while avoiding escalation around the world, or make things at home substantially worse while also escalating conflicts around the world including in Gaza.
Harris could've just stood there and said "I'm not Trump" and I would say the exact same thing about the idiots that couldn't bother to vote for her.
No.
Why not? Shouldn't beating trump have been their top priority?
It was. And it was also everyone else’s top priority that had any common sense. Because most of us with properly functioning brains didn’t hold their vote hostage over things they didn’t give a shit about a year ago. Also- most people saw what was coming from a mile away, and weren’t smug entitled assholes they felt no obligation to participate. They weren’t irresponsible and careless children that would just pretend to be victims alongside everyone else once the smoke clears-
as I predicted they would.
If beating trump was their top priority why didn't they listen to their base who were against the genocide? https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx
News flash genius: EVERYONE is against genocide. You’re not part of some special grassroots movement of people that figured something out.
It’s just that there rest of us aren’t smug entitled children that have no idea how politics work.
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
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.
And the Democratic leadership allowed that to happen. The GOP did all of this in full public view.
The Democrats aligned themselves with Republicans on economic and labor policy under Clinton, they deregulated the media under Clinton, and they did nothing at all to counter the massive GOP controlled media empire. That's on them.
The Democrats are weak. Even now they blame everyone but themselves for their political failures. Mainly trans people and progressives. It's always the voters ' fault when they lose.
They completely ignore the fact that most Trump-voting independents voted for him because of the economy, not because of social issues. They gaslit us about having the "greatest economy in the world" while we're living through a housing crisis, record inflation, and a job market full of shitty work and a completely stagnant white collar sector.
Fuck the Democrats. We need to take them out like MAGA did the GOP.
Unfortunately I don't think that that's possible. MAGA was able to take over the Republican party because they still fundamentally defend the interest of capital. It's why you still have career Republicans that criticized MAGA as a part of MAGA today.
The Democrats refuse to move left because leftist are anti capitalist and pro worker. They will never move that way because it is against their class interest and against the class interest of their donors. The most they will do is "allow" some slightly progressive voices like AOC into the party at "tokens". But they will never platform them or allow them to grow.
The Democrats will gladly lose elections if it prevents anyone left of Reagan from winning.
I don't claim this election was in isolation but I agree with everything else you've said. We need people to vote for the harm reduction, and we need people to organize because our system of government is trash. Biden being in office gave us four years to organize with the usual amount of opposition instead of the federal government being ordered to go after anyone the fascists don't like; his response to the Gaza camps last year was fucked up but if/when something like that happens again, Trump's gonna have the military kill people.
I think this was inevitable too, it would have taken the people at the top choosing to fight fascism like the threat it is and I didn't/don't see that happening. I voted for Harris because it gives us breathing room, and if Trump doesn't survive the next four years it would be harder for the fascist movement to retain its power if they didn't have complete control of the government. At the same time I've been involved in activism for the last few years, because we need people to do both.
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 need to understand that American non-voters are unironically fucking stupid. They heard you complaining about Democrats and that just reinforced their decision to not vote for anyone.
Its simple cause and effect.
Wait, so it's up to me to sweep all of the bullshit under the rug so we can trick people into voting for the lesser evil instead of the Democrats being responsible for giving the people what they want and need?
Wtf
Yes. Unironically yes. Unless you enjoy what we have today.
Na, lying to people is far above my pay grade. Knock yourself out, though.
I'm not saying that. I'm describing cause and effect.
You need to ask yourself what is more important, consequences or virtue? Because sometimes you don't get both.
What's more important to me is that we demand better from our elected officials and stop accepting "at least it's not the very worst" as acceptable.
You can Susan Collins at me all day but you're never going to convince me to go out and cheer on "could be worse, bro". I KNOW it could be worse and that's why I vote against republicans but I'm going to demand the people I vote for DO BETTER.
Our officials mostly lost this election. And might not even have a chance to run again.
Demanding better can be phrased in a way as to not encourage people to abstain form voting them in.
It doesn't really matter anymore.
What has the Democrats offered in the face of growing inequality and increasing power of corporations?
They probably told people, however media and the people where busy watching the Trump freak show, and listening to all the lies about of how bad the Democrats are.
How naive of you.
That is irrelevant. You don't seem to understand the point I'm making. I'm saying the average American hears critiques and only process them at surface level and forms a black and white evaluation on that basis. This is incredibly fucking stupid.
And knowing that there are so many American's like this: it is legitimately going to make fewer Americans vote to prevent the fascist from taking power (and did!) because they'll feel like they're aligning with the "bad guys" if you critique Democrats in public without a load of additional context (that some wont even absorb anyway if you provided it).
Why is your criticism so heavily directed at voters? Voting for who you want is a fundamental part of democracy. You are spending so much energy criticizing voters but I haven't seen an ounce of criticism for the actual party leadership. It is literally the job of the party leaders to create a platform that aligns with its voting base. They literally turned their back on their base in order to try to appeal to Trump voters with anti immigration policies. THEY HAD ADS TALKING ABOUT BUILDING THE WALL. Do you think MAYBE that has something to do with why the Democrats failed to get voters out to the polls?
I hate the democratic leadership as well. I can hate two groups at the same time. But I primarily hate them for losing to fascists and not taking the threat seriously. Much like I hate the non-voters for basically the same fucking reason.
The democrats thought that appealing to moderate republicans and centrists would siphon votes from Trump. This was obviously a stupid idea and I cringed as they did so and hoped that it wouldn't hurt them too bad in the polls. It obviously fucking did.
The thing is, they more or less admitted so at this point that their strategy was dumb as fuck and that Sanders was right all along.
There are still people who did not vote who are accelerationists, "apolitical", or think "democrats and republicans are identical" and my spite and hatred of those people is so incredibly intense. I hope they get exactly what they did not vote against. I resent that I've put effort where they choose not to and now expect me to continue fucking fighting after they let the difficulty level explode and likely doom the planet to a scorching hellscape.
Why should people vote for a party that do not even want to resolve the most pressing issues that affect their daily lives?
To prevent fascists from taking power.
To prevent fascists from taking over, we should elect corpos who will constantly push us on a rightward trajectory towards fascism.
Instead, we should sprint full speed into fascism. That'll show the fascists!
And what are the Democrats doing to prevent that? Offer Medicare for all? Increase federal wage? Increase taxes on the rich? Offer free college? Build social housing?
"People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."- Franklin Roosevelt
"The masses" do not think like this. They don't even know what that word means except in a passing negative emotional reaction.
I feel like your missing that many people do see the Democrats as the bad guys, and I can't say that I blame them. We recently asked them to say "Genocide is bad, and we won't support it" and they wouldn't. They are the baddies
I feel like your missing that many people do see the Democrats as the bad guys
No I'm not. I literally said that they would. And I hold that such a black and white surface level evaluation of the situation and to then choose not to vote is aggressively fucking stupid.
And TBH, I don't want to help stupid people if they're going to keep dragging me into the mud. I've worried about politics for most of my life and worked to make things better for other people but this election has freed me to focus on helping mostly just myself and a few close people that align with me. Most other people are hopeless. I'm done swimming up a waterfall.
Maybe the Democrats should prove the complainers wrong. The Democratic leadership has had plenty of opportunity to build trust amongst the voters, and decided to ignore them instead. They've spent years letting their voters down, which is why they aren't trusted.
"Why should we prove the complainers and voters wrong? We should stick to the guns that made people sick of us in 2016, 2020, and 2024! Nothing will fundamentally change, and that's final!"
And they wonder why people are sick of neoliberalism and willing to listen to a lying fascist saying he'd change something, just not for the better of anyone but the 1%.
I agree.
We still should have prevented Trump from winning by more people voting Democrat.
And then what? Get 4 more years of a genocidal Cop in the white house further normalizing "tough on the border" policies and genocidal foreign policy. And then follow it up with another Republican with even more of a "mandate" to murder immigrants and bomb brown kids? America has been a dictatorship of the capitalist class since it's founding. Voting for president is like voting for a temporary court jester. It doesn't change who runs this country. It only changes which interest of the ruling class are served.