“Oh damn I lost the race I thought was easy again. Could I be a shit party with shit messaging and wet farts for fans? Nah its everyone else whos wrong”
I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
You voted for her while explaining how awful you thought she was, which put other voters off voting for her. The election was won for Donald “ethnic cleansing” Trump by people staying home because Harris was so flawed, a point made by republicans and useful left wing idiots alike.
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.” Do you fucking hear yourself yet? Do you still not understand why people call you Blue MAGA?
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.”
Do you not think campaigning has an effect?
If all it took was people on social grumbling about their terrible policy plank to sink the campaign, maybe, just maybe, they ran a shit campaign and there’s lessons to be learned.
You’re right, Pug, a billion dollars in direct spending was derailed by people pointing out the bad things they were seeing. It definitely wasn’t the bad things that cost her the election, just the people acknowledging that the bad things existed and suggesting she do something different. I forgot, if you’re in a car with someone who is about to drive or a cliff, the best thing you can do is remain quiet; you wouldn’t want to distract the driver with your negativity. Once again, Pug, your brilliant insights have saved the day.
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
Well, they were correct that right-wing rhetoric was popular. Diet Republican will just never beat the real thing.
I’m sure if they just go little further right they’ll get 'em next time.
Not only that, but many (but not all) of the implementations of those policies were either middling or incomplete, and there was still so much further to go on progressive economic policies, that it was truly baffling to me that they basically rolled out the “mission accomplished” banner on the economy when the 2024 campaigns were asked about it. Democrats seem terminally terrified of casting stones within the party, to the point of refusing to acknowledge the reality that voters are experiencing because it might make the guys not seeking election look bad. It was frustrating to see that while I was financially worse off then when Biden took office, as was almost everyone else I knew, the democrats were crowing about how great the economy was and essentially declaring economic victory for Biden. I remember getting banned by more than one Mastodon account and labelled a Trump supporter when I raised concerns that this messaging was going to fail to resonate.
It’s similarly frustrating now to see the Democratic party leadership and presidential campaign staff saying “well, yes, that makes twice we’ve lost what should have been the easiest election ever, but we made no mistakes and have nothing to learn here except that we need to be more like Republicans.” Likewise, it’s concerning to see Democrats legitimizing this administration and already announcing that they’re eager to work with them where their priorities align. It makes me think a lot about how back in the 30s, the capitalists were all too ready to align with the Nazis, and a big chunk of the democrats are occupied by the crony capitalist block. I really hope the democrats as a party can get their shit together on a national level, but I’m not counting on it. I’m expecting a lot of lip service about resistance as 96% of them fall in line.
100% spot on, although I will say this; it’s not that Democrats are too scared of casting stones within their party. It’s that they’re too terrified of displaying behavior that would displease donors. They’re happy to throw Jamaal Bowman or Rashida Tlaib under the bus if AIPAC is displeased. They’ll sideline AOC if her rhetoric makes one of their, “good,” billionaires nervous. They’ve been trying to find a balance between making their wealthy benefactors and their working class base happy for years now, and they still haven’t figured out that those goals are antithetical.
Biden ran a much different campaign.
Harris ran a much more progressive yet inclusive campaign then Biden but I don’t think people were ready to vote for a Black Indian woman.
You can’t be serious with this more progressive than Biden bullshit?
Harris had Cheney and corporations cozying up to her. She acted like she was going to be progressive at first and then she decided to go after those moderate voters. If she was a little bit progressive then she would have allowed the Palestinian to speak at the DNC. Instead she let some right wingers and a billionaire.
People who called themselves progressives had more and more strict purity tests on what actually makes someone progressive until they decided to support the Republicans.
Progressive for who? Not the workers. Not for unions . Not for regulation. Who was it Progressive for? There’s this myth that she was super Progressive but I didn’t see any evidence of it anywhere. The few Progressive movements of the Biden White House we’re on the chopping block for Harris. She nominated a great vice president choice and then she put them in the closet so no he couldn’t spread the message. Her intentions were very clear she was running well to the right of Joe Biden’s campaign.
She was very clearly for big business and for this mythical middle class that doesn’t even exist anymore. She could give a shit about the working class. A sentiment that was being shared by the way in interviews of potential voters which is how you knew she was about to lose.
The few progressive movements of the Biden White House were on the chopping block for Harris.
Which ones?
So Harris was so far right you all flocked to Trump or didn’t vote to send a message that you’d go further right?
And there it is. The old Hillary Clinton that’s all I fucking have campaign in a nutshell. Immediately accuse them of liking Donald Trump. Because the only thing they are is not Trump. Lost them two elections. It’s going to lose them every other election ever to come if we even get any. Cuz these fucking neoliberals have nothing for us. They can’t run on their Promises to the voters because they don’t have any. Every freaking time.
…and they won’t court the leftist because they don’t/won’t vote so it’s just going to go further right.
A “state patrol” would be nice about now. Know where to find one?
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.
Ahhh, okay! Got it. Well, in this case, we might not be able to go to the authorities, given that the authorities are kinda the problem. There’s really only two things you can do when that’s the case: give up, or organize within your community to build resilience. I mean, for all the jokes about violence, Trump and Elon are symptoms as well as causes. If someone redacted them, we’d still be stuck in the same causes and conditions that led us here, so it’s not a fix. The best cure for what we have is building resilience as much as we can where we can.
Great analogy.
Not really.
If you wanna compare, the Trump version would be the alcoholic father purposely running into people on the way to the liquor store. While blaming it on somebody else.
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They still put forth the mutually exclusive arguments, simultaneously. “Our protest couldn’t have had an effect, so we totally didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folk for a chance at saving Gaza” + “If the Dems had just given in to our protest, we would’ve voted for them and they would have won”
Both arguments are stupid on their own merits, but together, they paint a picture of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
I mean, they didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folks for a chance to save Gaza. They sacrificed us for absolutely nothing.
Actually, they sacrificed us for an even faster genocide of Gaza. So now everyone loses!
But it’s not their fault, and even if it was, America deserves genocide. /s
Yes. The naraccism prayer is on clear display with them:
That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
They’ve cleared stage four and I await to see how they spin the last two.
Based on news of Elon setting up fake pro-Trump liberal advocacy groups before the election do we know how much of these arguments are coming from legit leftists IRL vs manufactured consent? Just curious, when you say ‘they’ are these people you’ve talked to IRL or online?
There are a good number right here on Lemmy.
Others who scrubbed months of their comments immediately after the election.
Lemmy users is really not a group that represents voters in any category other than lemmy users.
I don’t believe I claimed anything otherwise - just pointing out they exist, and you can find examples here on Lemmy.
How prevalent outside of online spaces… I don’t know, not something I’d be tracking personally.
If protest voters had voted for Harris, she still would have lost, because twenty million democrats stayed home. She didn’t lose because of protest votes, she lost because white middle class voters decided they didn’t want to bother, because the election won’t affect them anyway.
If 77 million people vote for Trump, and 75 million vote for Harris, that any single voter’s vote is only one vote does not mean that if they vote for Trump, it’s a morally neutral act. Not being the tipping point is not absolution for one’s actions or inaction. And doing mental backflips to justify a vote for Trump because they were ‘just one vote’ instead of taking some time to fucking reflect if Trump winning was the outcome they wanted to support would make them an utter cretin.
The core issue is that many Americans don’t seem to care if fascism comes to America. This includes protest voters, but yes, protest voters are only a small percentage of that much-larger category.
Fascism came a long time ago, now they are just ripping off the politically correct mask.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re not that stupid so why pretend?
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one” are the same statement: both point out that not enough people did the thing you’re so pissed about
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one”
“Had more people agreed with us, we would have had more people who agreed with us” is not anything but a statement of obvious, if wishful, fact, and is not what is being said; not in my summary nor in the arguments of the people I’m referring to. Nor does it make any sense as an argument, explanation, or point of any kind. Utterly vacuous.
The argument being put forth, and I suspect you’re well-aware of this, is that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
And your claim is that they were actually saying “If more people agreed with us, we would have more people who agreed with us.”
Would you like to explain how that is, in context, anything resembling a salient point? Or is your argument that they were spewing empty phrases, and I was wrong to apply meaning to their words?
We’re probably making the classic mistake of homogenizing a heterogeneous group.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
They put forth both arguments simultaneously, regardless of whether they believe one or both. Or neither.
Okay, who? Which person specifically is doing that?
Next time I run into one, I’ll send it to you.
Your supposed to vote for the candidate that represents your views. Doing so should never be considered sacrificing anyone unless you candidate is the bad guy.
Decades of blaming third party voters is why we have two parties that don’t represent the people today. There will be pain breaking that trend, but eventually it will pay off.
Why are y’all so obsessed with third party voters lmao
It lets them ignore the responsibility of running a bad campaign with a failed strategy.
If they can blame the voters then the DNC doesn’t need to change.
Sounds true… but if you remove one excuse, they will find another. They would rather go down with the ship than change.
After all, changing means losing thier cash flow and influence. Letting the reps win means they can probably keep those things for the rest of their personal lives. They’ll be dead before we become a true one party system.
Because it would be the solution to a better voting system
More parties are better, because there is never just black or wait (or better said just blue and red)
The world is more nuanced than that, but sadly this is already too complex for too many people.
OP has lost their shit over third party voters every day since the election.
I voted 3rd party in the last UK election, it probably helps that our system is 650 elections at once across the country. You are only voting for your local representative. But it is still FPTP which is pretty bad as a system, it’s still less shit than the US system though.
My thinking is that sure they won’t win this time but if support for them starts to increase (it is doing so) then the party may at some point put more focus on this area for a future election and win. This is how they have now got some influence and also if you look at the local level it takes even less. Most local council elections where I live are won with less than 1000 total votes because they cover pretty small areas. There are of course also cases where a party loses narrowly because of a 3rd party, a local one here had the minor parties fighting between each other and the incumbent national party came dead last with 5%.
Still thinking the people to blame are the DNC elites that went on to run on a right platform, even inviting fucking war criminal mass murderer Dick Cheney to advocate for them.
Also Trump is not something that just happened. The US is an empire in decline and Trump is a symptom of that. The conditions of decline are maintained by the Republicans and Democrats and voting either won’t be enough to turn things around.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Yea, it was happening, not very fast but RCV or other FPTP alternatives were spreading. Now it’s probably going to take a back seat now that Trump and Co has returned to power. Yet another consequence of the short sighted bLuEmAGa folk
This comment section gave me acute radiation syndrome.
Yeah man
The best part ? They really think that, like 3 people on Lemmy swayed the election towards Trump lmao
Next thing they’ll say, Trump actually lost and Kamala is the actual president of the United States of America.
They will just keep on blaming the voters.
I’m sure it will work wonders
Then they will keep asking themselves why they lost the election LMAO 🤣
I am so tired of strategic voting
Just one more time bro! Just vote for the Dems one more time bro, and they’ll definitely stop being a lesser evil. I know they’ve never done anything to actually obstruct America’s slide to fascism, but just vote blue no matter who one more time bro I’m sure this is the time!
Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of voting there is, so long as there are factions and negotiations (ie always, realistically speaking).
People think of voting at the polls like an opinion poll, but it’s not, or shouldn’t be treated as such. We are the equivalent of electors in a college or legislators in a parliament. What we wield is not our opinion, it is our political power, what little sliver of it we have in the great mass of the electorate. If Senator John Q. RealtivelyLeft abstained on a bill for universal healthcare tomorrow because the wording displeased him, we wouldn’t say “Well, that’s just his opinion”, we’d lambast him for forsaking a chance to make this fucking country a little less miserable for his own petty partiality. Same with voting.
Look to your left and to your right. Your fellow voters are there, and it’s only by majority vote that anything gets passed.
Be strategic. And also, be loud and unafraid of your own position; it’s the only way the calculus on strategies changes.
And vote for ranked voting when it comes up in local elections.
Or approval voting
Yes, and that is why you have to have a mechanism to trigger a national vote to cancel any new written law before it takes effect
It is called a referendum
As well as a way that anyone can issue a change of the constitution by triggering a so called initiative which than has to win vote to get through
And of course, make sure nothing disturbs separation of powers like a pardon law or president setting judges without a vote.
First pass the post suuuuucks. Literally anything else is at least slightly better.
Alaska actually had ranked choice this last election. No green candidate in a state they could have done the most good in though
Well apart from outright vanguard single party rule or dictatorship. Absolutely.
aren’t you enjoying your pseudo-democracy?
Have a look at the swiss voting system 😇 hope you see the way for improvement 😁
But first kill this stupid pardon right of president making all courts a fucking joke and waste of money
and this is just week 1 of episode 2. it’s gonna get a lot worse and they won’t waste any time. they have to shovel all the shit they have planned before midterms while they still have congress.
if congress doesn’t flip and flip hard–like impeachment-ready and veto-proof hard, it’s ‘game over’. instead of a few decades to fix episode 1, it will take generations, if it is even possible to recover completely at all.
It’s cute you think there will be a real midterm election
I would say, prepare yourself to free your country from Nazis…
There is nearly 0 chance of flipping to veto proof. But flip it probably will.
I see democrats are already doing their best to blame everyone but themselves. Can’t wait to see who you run against him for his third term. I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama, like the last three elections you ran against Trump.
You guys just really fucking love losing.
I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama…
You think Clinton, Biden and Harris are carbon copies of Obama?
You’re right, Obama could articulate a sentence.
Based
Translation: “I did everything I could to usher the fat orange fascist into power, but the DEMOCRATS are the ones to blame!!!”
THIRD-PARTY CAN WINNN!!
Show me the comments that said a third party could win the 2024 presidential election. Literally no one was saying that.
If I show you comments that say exactly that, will you eat your words, or deny it like you deny the Tiananmen Square massacre?
They might be wrong that no one was saying that, but there definitely wasn’t a significant voting block who thought a third party candidate had a shot at winning.
Blaming third party voters is a loser mentality. 77 million voted trump, 75 million Harris, and 101 million didn’t vote at all. How about blaming those people? Or blaming the party and candidate? If someone didn’t win the majority of the blame lies with the person running.
They might be wrong that no one was saying that, but there definitely wasn’t a significant voting block who thought a third party candidate had a shot at winning.
Blaming third party voters is a loser mentality. 77 million voted trump, 75 million Harris, and 101 million didn’t vote at all. How about blaming those people?
Yeah, I mean, I agree. I don’t think third-party voters made the difference. I don’t even think protest voters and protest nonvoters made the difference. I think the civic education of the US electorate is worse than previously thought, and it was previously thought to be pretty damn bad.
Or blaming the party and candidate? If someone didn’t win the majority of the blame lies with the person running.
This is an election. The people - the electorate - make the choice. If faced with the most incompetent democratic candidate imaginable, and a literal Nazi, the electorate - the voters - should still be held responsible if they chose the literal Nazi, or decided it wasn’t worth bothering with which one won. Or, conversely, if the democratic candidate is the best damn campaigner anyone has ever seen, but loses to the literal Nazi, that does not mean that the blame lies with the democratic candidate.
Elections are not a race between two aristocrats trying to prove they’re better than the other - or at least, they should not be. Elections are a decision about what direction the country should take going forward, and the campaigning of candidates only important insofar they emphasize one aspect or another. And the country decided that it liked, or didn’t care about, the fascist platform put forward by Trump.
That’s on us. That’s on the country. No matter what incompetence, vanity, or venality Harris or the Dems have shown, no matter what condemnation they rightly deserve, the final choice, the ultimate sin, is on the nation’s soul. We were given the choice between fascism and avoiding fascism, and we chose fascism.
Elections are a decision about what direction the country should take going forward
That is your personal belief, not an objective truth. There is no manual for voting. YOU view voting one way, and others are perfectly free to vote on whatever principles or with whatever method they choose.
When people call liberals arrogant, this is the type of thing they’re referring to. I’m sure you would call yourself open-minded, but you are completely incapable of seeing the world through another person’s eyes.
Not everyone votes like you. YOU see voting as a way of picking the ideal candidate for the next few years. YOU see voting as a kind of job interview. But your way is not the only way.
Others see voting as more of a performance review, a way of holding people accountable. They see judging past actions as more important than considering future actions. In many ways, this is a much better way of judging elected leaders. After all, politicians lie all the time. It’s often better to judge them by past actions than by whatever lies they happen to be telling today.
People saw that Biden enabled a genocide. That’s something he did. Full stop. There are tens of thousands of innocent dead civilians that he enabled. For millions of voters, holding Biden accountable for this was more important that what hypothetical future crimes Trump might commit.
You can disagree. And I don’t think you’re entirely wrong. You’re applying your cultural beliefs about voting perfectly fine. In fact, I did the same thing and voted for Kamala. But I have enough humility to not simply dismiss the reasons for those who didn’t. It’s simply a matter of how you interpret voting. And unless you want to fulfill every arrogant liberal stereotype, you should have enough humility to accept that your way is not the only way.
That is your personal belief, not an objective truth. There is no manual for voting. YOU view voting one way, and others are perfectly free to vote on whatever principles or with whatever method they choose.
Yeah, people are free to be fascists or believe that an aristocracy must rule over us peasants, that doesn’t mean they aren’t fucking wrong. Jesus H. Christ. This is “Genocide is okay if they really believe in it” level apologetics.
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I don’t think it was said unironcly and i am willing to be proven wrong.
I see the people who insisted that they had to keep doing the genocide for the election are still trying to blame everyone else
And allowing Trump to return to power is stopping the genocide how exactly?
Because at this point it’s getting worse and there’s soon to be a second genocide going on here in the US.
Soo much better!/s
Yea, maybe you should have pressured Kamala to flip on this like I was posting about for a fucking year before the election. Instead centrists told Arabs, Latinos, the poor, and other minorities to fuck off and this is the result. Now you’re here pathetically posting stuff like this almost daily to make yourself feel better, but its really transparent and gross.
Instead centrists told Arabs, Latinos, the poor, and other minorities to fuck off and this is the result.
Remember when you lot said “Fuck off, I don’t WANT the non-fascist candidate, let the fascist candidate who despises minorities and openly yearns for their death, win”?
Good times.
I’ll be sure to show up at your door vomiting blood when they strip Medicaid from the ‘unworthy’. Assuming that comes before the camps for those on psychiatric medication for ‘healing through labor’. And probably both of those will come before the Racial Hygiene laws, so I can’t do it after that.
Remember how I said I voted for her and have said I would be voting dem the whole time and you still insist I didn’t. I also said that Gaza would look really bad for them and would lose them michigan but you insisted that changing their mind was political suicide. So glad they listened to people like you.
Remember how I said I voted for her and have said I would be voting dem the whole time and you still insist I didn’t.
I don’t remember this, though it’s certainly possible, considering how many people playing stupid games I argued with during the lead-up to the election.
I also said that Gaza would look really bad for them and would lose them michigan but you insisted that changing their mind was political suicide.
My opinion on the public opinion on Gaza changed all the way back in March with the emergence of new polling numbers on US Dem and independent opinion on the genocide. Before March I said that it was impractical for the Dems to change their platform when the majority of Dems still supported Israel (or did not support the removal of aid, which amounts to the same thing). Having lived through the US electorate sleeping through Israeli genocide several times in my short life, I don’t think it’s ridiculous that I thought they’d sleep through it again, while us few who cared about foreign policy looked on in horror, as we had the last three times.
I did opine at several points after March that I understood why a change may not be a net gain since opinions were deeply divided, but that they should commit to an anti-genocide anyway, since either position had become a losing position with regards to large portions of the electorate.
So glad they listened to people like you.
Did Gaza protest votes lose the Dems the election or not? I wish you lot would make up your mind.
I think they contributed significantly, but I put the blame on the people who decided Genocide at all costs, aka the candidates.
I don’t think the genocide was the deciding factor. I don’t think winning over swing voters on both sides of the genocide would’ve saved us, unfortunately. The numbers which came in after election day were… not close enough, and the issue not rated highly enough by voters to make up the difference.
I put significant blame on Biden for ignorantly trundling forward for months despite internal polling telling him that he was cooked, some blame on Harris and her allies for running a shite campaign, and the overwhelming amount of blame on the ~90 million voters who said “I don’t care if fascism wins” and the ~77 million who said “I want fascism to win”.
In a just world, Biden would be reviled as the man who lost the republic, and I intend to put that forward regularly for as long as I can. In a just world, Harris’s political career would be dead. I’m less dedicated to that. But neither of their flaws or positions justifies letting fascism win. If Biden and Harris deserve a noose, even, that would still not mean that the electorate was not at fault. The final choice between fascism and a non-fascist regime was ultimately decided by the electorate, not the candidates. You can place blame on the chef who makes a burnt stir-fry and loses the contest for incompetence or malice, but in the end, it’s the judges who decided that they preferred the “Glass, arsenic, and dogshit sandwich” - or didn’t care enough to make a decision either way - who made the ultimate decision.
For those who sat by and let fascism win despite being nominally left-wing, this is essentially an expression of frustration.
This wasn’t even “Trump supports my one issue”. That would be ridiculous, but there’s a logic to it, if one legitimately values a single issue above all others. But it wasn’t. For all of them who stood by and let Trump win, they did so with the knowledge that Trump was worse on the issue they were supposedly protesting against.
It’s exhausting. To see people complain about support for genocide and then decide that if they can’t stop it, they’re okay with INCREASING support for genocide, and starting a few new ones for good measure.
And honestly, I’m only a little pissed that I’m in the sights of the regime, if not the first target (that, unfortunately, will be our trans countrymen and women). Mostly I’m pissed at the idea that ‘left’ people embraced injustice entirely without gain out of either spite or sheer empty-headed thoughtlessness. Are they the lynchpin? Would they have saved us? Probably not. Maybe if they put 100% in campaigning, but I can hardly blame them for not doing that. But they should have known better than to stand by and let fascism in. By the values they preach, they should have known better. And by the fact that most of them still prefer puffing up their inaction as some form of heroic resistance instead of a contribution to a literal fascist victory?
Well, forgive me for not wanting that narrative of ‘Inaction against fascism is heroic’ to take root, in case we still have elections in four years. God only knows what kind of margin of victory or defeat we’ll be dealing with.
You entirely dodged the question.
How was allowing Trump to return to power stopping the genocide? How is it not worse?
And allowing Trump to return to power is stopping the genocide how exactly? Because at this point it’s getting worse
Uh… Big news, fella, there was a ceasefire. Kamala openly said during campaigning that under her rule America would always have “the most lethal armed forces in the world”.
I see the people who obnoxiously shouted at everyone that bOtH SiDeS aRe tHe sAmE for months before the election are beginning to see that they’re not.
It’s too bad they have that commonality with MAGA in their shared lack of shame to admit it.
Now it’s OUR turn to tell you we told you so, only we’re far less smug about it.
Seeing how Democrats keep gnawing on this bone really lets me know the Democrats are never going to ever win another election. Anything in the world to avoid having to change their failed strategy. They ran the Hillary Clinton campaign and lost again, but God forbid they changed that no it’s the voters who are wrong. Should we appeal to voters who care more about the working class than the business class? Nah fuck that. Should we appeal to people who don’t like people like Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney? Nah fuck that. Keep fucking that chicken.
I hope they at least got paid. Doing that level of BS for free would just be sad
I don’t think its even paid shills. We have generative AI now, and can VPN with fake accounts pretty easily as regular consumers. If we can do it, they can do it on a larger scale and professionally, and not just ‘their side’, but global rivals.
If another country wants your country to do something stupid, all they have to do is get a bot army to upvote bad ideas and pump out memes and comments supporting whatever policy you think will negatively impact your rival.
If they’re NOT doing this already, then they’re terrible at their jobs, and I don’t think they’re honestly that incompetent.
That said, don’t assume they’re only trying to influence everyone other than you. All that social media data created a system to predict who you are and what buttons to push to get you to act.
That would also be nicer than an army of people sincerely believing they’re doing the right thing by not voting
As I said in another thread elsewhere on the same subject:
The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Whether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone: “We told you all what would happen!”
• Onnoxiously claim there is: “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
- Protest voters fell for a propaganda campaign (maybe by the republicans, maybe by Russia or China trying to destabilise the USA).
Occam’s razor that versus the campaign was SO POORLY RAN that it didn’t inspire people to vote against a literal dictator.
all of the above, plus perhaps iran, dprk…
As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true
They absolutely can. Protest voters not voting don’t encompass every democrat vote lost, there are simply many unconvinced people who became apathetic and didn’t vote despite having nothing to do with protest voters, with the latter being a minority. Stop your logical fallacies based on false premises.
So, you’re claiming that the protest both worked to help elect trump, and simultaneously didn’t work to help elect trump……
Gotcha.
I’m claiming that protest voting wasn’t a significant factor in trump being elected, unlike democrats running on having the, I quote, “most lethal army in the world” during an ongoing genocide, bringing the Cheney, and a myriad of other problems. The dems only have themselves to blame for being incapable of offering a better, more desirable option than Donald J fucking Trump
Sooooooo…. All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Because a LOT of you seem to think that your little protest was a clear message sent and received.
All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Not liars, just unaware that, outwards (i.e. internationally), there is no difference in policy between democrats and republicans. Now, what are you gonna do, bash to the left of you (the ones who actually organise to fight against fascism), or join us?
Okay, so-
It DID work and you all successfully got trump elected?
You’re kind of making my point for me here. Pick a lane and stick with it. Either your protest was effective and you take credit for where we are now, or it was a waste of time and effort.
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