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- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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I just wanted to put a quote from Blackshirts and Reds here. Chapter 9 as a whole has some very prescient parts:
To the extent that class is accorded any attention in academic social science, pop sociology, and media commentary, it is as a kind of demographic trait or occupational status. So sociologists refer to “upper-middle,” “lower-middle,” and the like. Reduced to a demographic trait, one’s class affiliation certainly can seem to have relatively low political salience. Society itself becomes little more than a pluralistic configuration of status groups. Class is not a taboo subject if divorced from capitalism’s exploitative accumulation process.
Both mainstream social scientists and “left” ABC [Anything-But-Class] theorists fail to consider the dynamic interrelationship that gives classes their significance. In contrast, Marxists treat class as the key concept in an entire social order known as capitalism (or feudalism or slavery), centering around the ownership of the means of production (factories, mines, oil wells, agribusinesses, media conglomerates, and the like) and the need—if one lacks ownership—to sell one’s labor on terms that are highly favorable to the employer.
…
To support their view that class (in the Marxist sense) is passé, the ABC theorists repeatedly assert that there is not going to be a workers’ revolution in the United States in the foreseeable future. (I heard this sentiment expressed at three different panels during a “Gramsci conference” at Amherst, Massachusetts, in April 1987.) Even if we agree with this prophecy, we might still wonder how it becomes grounds for rejecting class analysis and for concluding that there is no such thing as exploitation of labor by capital and no opposition from people who work for a living.
Class has a dynamic that goes beyond its immediate visibility. Whether we are aware of it or not, class realities permeate our society, determining much about our capacity to pursue our own interests. Class power is a factor in setting the political agenda,
selecting leaders,
reporting the news, funding science and education, distributing health care, mistreating the environment, depressing wages, resisting racial and gender equality, marketing entertainment and the arts, propagating religious messages, suppressing dissidence, and defining social reality itself.
ABC theorists see the working class as not only incapable of revolution but as on the way out, declining in significance as a social formation. Anyone who still thinks that class is of primary importance is labeled a diehard Marxist, guilty of “economism” and “reductionism” and unable to keep up with the “post-Marxist,” “post-structuralist,” “post-industrialist,” “post-capitalist,” “post-modernist,” and “post-deconstructionist” times.
It is ironic that some left intellectuals should deem class struggle to be largely irrelevant at the very time class power is becoming increasingly transparent, at the very time corporate concentration and profit accumulation is more rapacious than ever, and the tax system has become more regressive and oppressive, the upward transfer of income and wealth has accelerated, public sector assets are being privatized, corporate money exercises an increasing control over the political process, people at home and abroad are working harder for less, and throughout the world poverty is growing at a faster rate than overall population.
This, I think, has a lot to do with Dems today, esp. with Chuck Schumer appealing to “moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia”, which blatantly shows how little they understand class, even in an election–and as we’ve seen, even when a fascist could win instead. The dismantling of class conscious has been a disaster for the world. This is especially the case as people conflate hardworking intellectuals with the bourgeoise, and misconstrue legitimate protests against state greviances as a “color revolution”.
There is no single group of people on the planet Earth as adept at shitting and falling back in it as the Democrats.
They turned “Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory” into an artform.
This why people think they are a psyop.
I don’t need convincing. They showed me in 2016 that they’re controlled opposition. Admitted it in court.
Wilding v. DNC Services Corp.
Google it for yourself.
I don’t think there has ever, in history, been a group capable of doing that at this scale other than the Democratic Party. They are the greatest to ever do it.
“So what you’re saying is we need to move further to the right.”
- Democrats and pundits
Our constituents’ rent went up 15% and their wages stayed the same, so everything is basically ok.
Exactly the message I expect them to take away from this, if 2016 and 2020 are any indication. Zero introspection.
I would not be surprised if the new iteration of the DNC is the 90s, early 2000s GOP. Look how they are spamming McCain on reddit.
Such a sick cruel joke to make it so the choices in our false election be GOP or Orange Putin.
Remember Tucker Carlson fucking a loaf of bread in a Russian grocery store? Well I hope you all like bread!
The only thing that makes all of this interesting is trumps inevitable death. I know his mental decline is in there too but they’ll just weekend at bernies him for the final years.
I don’t know why everyone keeps insisting that courting the right was a stupid move. I personally know a lot of life long Republicans that got real tired of the MAGA stuff. In this matchup specifically, trying to scoop the conservative-but-not-MAGA vote makes sense by the numbers. Obviously it didn’t pan out, but at least in theory, there should be a sizeable bloc of voters there.
Less people voted Trump in 2024 than in 2020. It is not that Trump won, it is that Biden/Harris lost hard.
Trump: 74 Mio. in 2020, 73 Mio. in 2024
Biden/Harris: 81 Mio. in 2020, 69 Mio. in 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
Seems like people on the less right side of politics also got tired after the whole “we need to stop Trump or democracy ends” messaging led to an underwhelming / genocidal and dementia struck president
It’s easy to look back. I sincerely think that, based on research and subsequent speculation, appealing to non-MAGA conservatives was a rational play. It explains Liz Cheney and the whole nothing-will-fundamentally-change angle.
Again, didn’t pay off, but I’m sure research showed greater expected returns from conservatives than leftists.
Polling research has shown that many progressive policies are popular with not only republican voters but all Americans. Trying to appeal to republican voters by taking on right-wing framing on issues like Immigration, will just reinforce the lies that rhetoric is built on and push those voters further right.
Polls on campaign messaging
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
Polls on policy
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
People don’t want ‘nothing will fundamentally change’ they want real change to improve their livelyhood
I think it was obviously insane from the start. It was clear long before 2024, before 2020 even. Offering a racist a ham sandwich isn’t going to get him to vote for you when the alternative is offering him the whole pig. Campaigning that way and losing once looks like an accident. Doing it… however the fuck many times we’ve seen this play out now looks like it’s on purpose.
Not every conservative is a racist and it isn’t helpful to frame things that way. It’s not unreasonable to prefer a ham sandwich to a diseased pig, and it’s not unreasonable to think that’s a compelling offer.
They’re either racists or willing to support and vote for racists. Not sure where you think that line of reasoning is gonna go.
The gamble was that enough of them wouldn’t support racists if given a moderate alternative. Just because it didn’t work didn’t mean it wasn’t a reasonable strategy.
But these “lets poll and analyse who to peddle to” strategy has been a failure for two of the past three elections. People are tired of getting managed messages instead of a coherent platform.
I’m not saying you’re incorrect, I’m just saying that, considering the circumstances, it wasn’t an unreasonable gamble. Leftists are notoriously stingy with their vote. As long as progressives are unreliable on election day, appealing to proven voters on well-vocalized issues is a safer strategy. It being an unsuccessful strategy doesn’t mean it’s not the most successful strategy.
To be fair, the Republicans did all these same things and won all three branches, so…
Turns out people who want those things can vote for Republicans. Who offer more of those things!
And the people who did not want those things stayed home.
It shouldn’t have to be repeated so often that maybe Republican voters aren’t who the Democratic party needs to be gearing itself to attract.
Because right wingers want that and left wingers don’t, that’s some surprising maths.
Republicans had a primary.
This point needs to be driven home over and over and over again. The democrats haven’t held a real primary where the DNC operatives weren’t interfering since 2008! which coincided with the election in a landslide of Obama after he won an extremely competitive primary.
Democrats learned the wrong lesson from that election, they thought it was identity politics that won the landslide. No idiots, it was democracy itself. Of course being the first black man to be president helped him but having an appealing platform that outcompeted everyone else’s (and a better record re Iraq war, he voted against it as senator unlike Clinton) won him the popular mandate that led to the landslide in the general. Against a formidable candidate! John McCain was no joke and I think todays democrats and even progressives would be thrilled to have him as president if he were still alive compared to our current options.
They’ve disenfranchised so many voters with their shenanigans, that it has cost them 2 out of the last 3 elections, and the person they had to beat should have been the most easily defeated candidate in the history of the United States. I would have voted for a literal dog over trump. At least a dog wouldn’t intentionally burn the country to the ground so he could rule over the ashes.
I would vote for a dog over any human let’s be real. Wouldn’t you?!
They would of lost three elections if covid never happened. Biden got in by the skin of his teeth on that one when it shouldn’t of even been close. The fact that this election is a Republican landslide is just fucking embarrassing.
most easily defeated candidate
He got 70 million votes, that’s not “easily defeated”.
idk if anyone will be as easily defeated as mondale. even his home state BARELY had majority and that was the only state he won
Actually true. The Republican politicians at the time hated Trump in 2015
I don’t get it. Yeah all of these things are horrible but the other choice is literally Hitler. We could say the same thing about them but we didn’t win
The term “literally Hitler” is a lot less impactful when democrats have been complicit in genocide for an entire year.
If Trump did what Biden did, I have no doubt you would have called him literally Hitler for it.
Oh I have no doubt since his plan os giving Israel everything they need to massacre every and each Palestinian. At least the Biden administration pretended to care
Dems just straight up fantasising and wishing for genocide openly wasnt what i expected. Fk americans. Also don’t quote trump, atleast be a normal human and try to act like you atleast care. Lost an election and now projecting anger on Palestinians.
I know a lot of Lemmy users have an unbearable stench and a holier than thou attitude but I never expected this much spite.
So did Hillary right before she went on every media talk show to talk about illegitimate elections, stolen elections, investigations, et cetera. Blue Maga, is losing their shit right now.
The other choice may have been literal Hitler, but the choice the Democrats put up was Goebbels
Either you are able to vote on harm reduction alone, knowing that your pick isn’t ideal…
Or you are so ideologically locked in that nothing but “your brand” is enough.
Harris sucks but the vote was to keep MORE, NEW people from being at risk.
Trump won both times because he departed from GOP ideology, not his voters. Harm reduction doesn’t get voters to the polls.
This isn’t about you and me. A campaign centered around “stop this person” is just less effective than one centered around “let’s start doing this”.
Just saying this is a hypothetical reality. As you say, it doesn’t get people to the polls.
What it means is folks have to live with a FURTHER candidate because they aren’t smart enough to serve their own interests and take the NEARER candidate.
The difference is that expecting the candidate to change was a realistic expectation, while expecting the voters to change was not.
I disagree, especially on Israel. Change would mean deviation from the official position. Imo it is a weakness with running a candidate who is already in the Whitehouse. They can’t just say things, weather or not they want to, if that will have strategic/military implications. An outside candidate is free to say whatever. (To be clear, I don’t believe Harris wanted to deviate much)
Lastly, I think my whole point is I’m not expecting anything from anyone, I’m observing how voter’s inability to accept a good not great candidate results in a much worse candidate, so inaction results in a even less satisfying outcome.
Republicans always seem to win with shitty candidates because they understand this intrinsically. They do not care that DJT is an utter buffoon, they care that he will enact the shit they want, and now they’re getting it because they refused to stay home. As the saying goes: Democrats want to fall in love, Republicans want to fall in line.
So Republicans backed their guy, just like they did the last two elections, and there was no line that could not be crossed that would convince even a fraction of Republicans to not vote. Meanwhile, virtue signaling lefties desperately tried to convince me for months that I shouldn’t vote for Biden OR Harris because they were both equally culpable for a genocide that is happening halfway across the world, as if Trump would have been any better.
Yeah, we absolutely deserve to be punished for this. We let this happen. If Dems could actually get a solid trifecta in the government, we might have a shot at actually reversing some of the damage that has been accumulating since Reagan, but that requires people to set aside their purity tests and hold their noses at the ballot box. The real elitists are the Democratic base who feel personally slighted at the idea of compromise or harm reduction.
California has a bulletproof Democrat supermajority, They don’t have any of the things that the DNC campaigned on. Why would I believe the DNC could get anything accomplished with a trifecta if a bulletproof Democrat super majority in California can’t. Democrats are indebted to the same donor class, CEOs and bankers that Republicans are. They are merely controlled opposition to Republicans.
There were 14 Presidents since FDR. And many of the Democratic ones had ample possibility to enact progressive laws and chose not to.
You keep claiming that people like Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden or Harris are “left”, but they are center-right, in many aspects far right by European standards.
People don’t vote “perfect” also not on the left. They vote “this is current issues, who addresses these issues?” Trump pretending to care about working class people helped him. Biden/Harris made a point of alienating everyone that is against genocide, which should be a nobrainer for progressive politics, and also peddling racist messages with bragging about their deportation numbers.
The idea that the center to far right Democrats would actually bring any leftist solution is laughable. They haven proven time and time again, that they are the party of maintaining the neoliberal and imperial status quo.
The solution is to offer a progressive solution against the reactionary solution, so people can rally around your progressive solution. Providing no solution and denying the problems is a surefire way to demotivate and disengage people. Someone who wants genocide, deportations and neoliberal economics can always vote the Republicans. And the Republicans can succesfully further the image of the Democrats being the billionaire cultural elite party, while the Reps are the billionaire “hard working” party, peddling the lie of the American dream. But it can be peddled to Joe and Jose in the milling plant.
And all of the policies that FDR was credited for were actually drafted by Francis Perkins, his Secretary of Labor and Socialist.
Respectfully, I have to disagree.
How many democratic presidents have had control of all three branches of government? It’s easy for Republicans to get shit done because they have the courts essentially in their pocket. If the Dems win the house, senate and presidency, they still have to contend with the openly partisan SCOTUS attempting to obstruct them from passing sweeping reforms that would actually fix things. We’re fucked for another generation in that regard.
Also, immigration was the #1 issue at the polls this year, even ahead of economy. There’s no way in hell it’s a bad strategy to campaign on how good Dems actually are with immigration and border security. If anything, we should have been screaming from every mountaintop about how Trump killed the most comprehensive border security package ever penned by convincing Republican congressmen to oppose it strictly so he could run on the issue. That means the issue is not actually something that Republicans care to solve, despite what they’ve convinced the American people of.
People who were not motivated or engaged to fight against what could very well be the end of democracy itself certainly won’t be motivated by progressive promises, especially knowing that they are very unlikely to be implemented. The people who stayed home this year are the ones to blame for everything that happens next, full stop. We can’t even point to the EC as a factor this time. A majority of Americans have bought into fascism.
How many democratic presidents have had control of all three branches of government?
Just pointing out: this is an insane take.
For example, Obama had control of the House, Senate, and Presidency. He spent that whole time trying to get Republicans to vote for Obamacare and at the end of all that, none of them did. He watered everything down and they refused to vote for it anyway and then Obamacare passed without them. Who would vote for that? Only people who for whom the alternative is an actual catastrophe.
This is the second time in a decade that the liberal establishment expected the US voting public to actually do something about all the fascism they themselves don’t seem to actually want or can do anything about.
The “Vote Harder!” brigade was warned about this - at one point or the other, “lesser evilism” is going to hit rock-bottom.
That’s fine, my point stands.
If more people need “their brand” then they’ll also in the bed they made: the further possible candidate from their brand
Harm reduction does not exist, that’s shit that liberals tell themselves because they know that what they are voting for is evil.
Naw dawg you bought a trump by sitting on a pedestal.
It’s all fun and games to build the perfect candidate, but it wasn’t on the ballot.
Ignoring “harm reduction” just put thousands of trans and millions of immigrants right in front of the bulldozer. Own it from your ivory perch.
I guess you didn’t hear anything about Harris throwing trans under the bus last week, did you? I guess you didn’t hear anything about Harris having draconian immigration bills as harsh as what came from Republicans. Did you? I suppose you forgot it was Bidens ICE that was chasing down Haitians on horseback.
No matter what you can say about Harris, I don’t support any of it. None of it was “as harsh” as trump. Get ready for Muslim ban 2.0, etc.etc.
What I can say is trump, and project 2025 have a whole lot more in store.
So Harris, while distasteful, was harm reduction by comparison
Project 2025 has been around for 40 years, going by various different names. It started out with contract with America and it’s been expanding since. much of the legislation that has come out of all variations of project 2025 has been 100% bipartisan. Bipartisan politicians that are voting along with legislation written by the Heritage Foundation is not harm reduction. Somehow liberals seem to have this weird idea that it ban is so much worse than genocide and burning people alive.
Yappin
Truth does that when folks plug their ears and make noise about it.
The answer isn’t them. It’s us. You. Me. Now. But go rant. That solves everything.
Stop it Patrick, you’re scaring the liberals. Imagine how shocking it must be for reality to prove that the leftists were correct about everything this entire time. Again.
Really weird how leftists have a 100% accuracy rate about all of history going back 150 years, but I’m sure the liberals will take some Ws eventually.
Just keep barreling towards fascism, libs! I believe in you!
“Voters voted for the choice furthest to the right because they wanted the choice on the left to be more left”
People didn’t vote. Significantly less turnout this year than 2020. Further left is more exciting than an idiot chasing endorsement from Republicans.
It’s stupid, but if people weren’t stupid Trump wouldn’t have been a candidate.
2020 had the highest voter turnout in the history of our country because of the pandemic. Without a major motivator like the pandemic, we are not going to hit those numbers again.
So naturally there will be less voter turnout this year.
Then compare it to 2016 - it was practically the same campaign strategy, only this time it lost the popular vote on top of the electoral collage.
Trying to flip people at the margin is not a winning strategy. Obama won in '08 by campaigning to the left and promising meaningful change – it got people who normally don’t vote to engage. Why is that strategy so anathema now?
Trump won in 2016 because of Russian bot farms. That has long been common knowledge. The only part that hasn’t yet been verified is whether Trump was in on it.
Obama wasn’t any further left than Harris. To get anything done after election there needs to be compromise. You can’t get that without moderates.
It’s public knowledge that Russias strategy is to push the democrats further left and republicans further right so there is no middle ground or compromise and nothing gets done.
Oh, Obama governed as a Regan-era republican. The Affordable Healthcare Act was based on a Heratige Foundation proposal, and given the blessing of health insurance companies. But he campaigned on the left, that line of broken promises got him into office.
As for the rest… pay no attention to the declining lifespan, the increasing precarity, the rising cost of just scraping by. People aren’t voting because of real grievances, it’s all Russian Bots don’cha know?
Like, jeeze, you’d rather have a Sinister Villain to peg this on than actually examine the conditions in this country. That’s some saturday morning cartoon nonsense you’ve spun.
Oh, Obama governed as a Regan-era republican. The Affordable Healthcare Act was based on a Heratige Foundation proposal, and given the blessing of health insurance companies. But he campaigned on the left, that line of broken promises got him into office.
Obama won office for two terms and republicans won this election. If what you’re saying is true then it disproves the claim that democrats didn’t go far enough left according to voters.
As for the rest… pay no attention to the declining lifespan, the increasing precarity, the rising cost of just scraping by. People aren’t voting because of real grievances, it’s all Russian Bots don’cha know?
So you’re pretending that foreign nations don’t try to influence the elections while adding in new topics to create a straw man argument. The polls show that voters were most motivated by inflation and immigration and that is what resulted in republicans winning.
Like, jeeze, you’d rather have a Sinister Villain to peg this on than actually examine the conditions in this country. That’s some saturday morning cartoon nonsense you’ve spun.
I’m just stating the facts. I’m sorry if they don’t align with your feelings.
The polls show that voters were most motivated by inflation and immigration and that is what resulted in republicans winning
Just one comment ago, you claimed it was Russian bots. Now you’re agreeing that it’s people feeling economic pressure.
If what you’re saying is true then it disproves the claim that democrats didn’t go far enough left according to voters.
If you give people a choice between Republicans and diet-Republicans, they pick the real one. Would you have them try to outflank republicans more next election?
Democrats and liberals will use any excuse not to consider progress
Less people voted Trump in 2024 than in 2020. It is not that Trump won, it is that Biden/Harris lost hard.
Trump: 74 Mio. in 2020, 73 Mio. in 2024
Biden/Harris: 81 Mio. in 2020, 69 Mio. in 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
Less people voted overall in 2024. That’s less for Trump and Harris. Because 2020 was the highest voter turnout ever. It was record breaking because of the pandemic. Without another motivator as big as the pandemic you’re going to see less voters for both Trump and Harris. You’re also going to see many different reasons claiming why. But it’s a fact that if you don’t have record breaking overall voter turnout in 2024 also, both sides will lose voters.
Yes. People want a populous movement. In the absence of left-wing populism (like socialist reforms), they will take right win populism (fascism).
Democrats campaigned on making billionaires pay their fair share and addressing health care and student loans etc so socialist reforms. But the majority of voters were still convinced that that would make them worse off unfortunately.
And all of that populist talk came to a grinding halt once companies like Black Rock started drafting economic policy.
That might have been in the footnotes of the DNC platform, but Kamala said none of that.
Here’s a quote from Stephen Semler’s newsletter:
For example, in this video clip, Stephen Colbert asks Harris, “Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be and what would stay the same?” Harris replies: “Sure. Well, I mean, I’m obviously not Joe Biden. So that would be one change. But also I think it’s important to say with 28 days to go, I’m not Donald Trump.”
First, that doesn’t answer the question. Second, that description applies to literally everyone except for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This is the quality of candidate you get when the Democratic Party chooses one for you.
When it was being discussed who would replace Biden before he dropped out, many black abd female voters were pissed it was even up for discussion considering Kamala was the vice president. They saw it as her job to be next in line after Biden.
If someone else was chosen all those votes would’ve been lost and we would still have lost.
Since we lost anyways, I would have preferred to have an actual primary process, even if it was a very abbreviated one at the convention. Destroying democracy to save democracy never made sense to me.
It’s easy to say that in hindsight.
Many many many people were saying that the entire time. It has been clear to anyone not drinking the Biden kool aid that he hasn’t been as lucid as he used to be, and many people said that if we had debates and Joe Biden won, at least we would have given others a voice. Anyone who supported Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, etc. especially was infuriated there were no debates, just a coronation. Many people were mad that certain states even canceled the democratic primaries. When Biden dropped out, it would have not been that strange for several prominent democrats to throw their hats in the ring - Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, etc. and at least have some sort of debate at the convention.
Did they? If they did, then they did a terrible job of it, since many people didn’t hear that message. The message that everyone heard over and over again is “I’m not trump”. Besides, promising to get rid of student loans as a campaign promise when you just spent 4 years proving that you can’t really deliver on that promise seems unwise.
They did and it was loud and clear and everyone I know that voted republican did so because they thought democrats were bad for the economy and polls showed that.
You’re scapegoating democrats for not doing enough when really there just wasn’t enough voters that supported them because of right wing propaganda.
Key word being, “addressing.” Medicare for All? Nope. They’re going to address healthcare costs. Student loans insanely expensive for the majority of Americans? They already tried addressing it. What are they going to do? Eliminate the filibuster to pass legislation? Stack the Supreme Court?
They’ve been a little better on taxing the wealthy, but raising taxes doesn’t mean much if you believe the revenue is going towards the military industrial complex or, “woke,” agenda, based on your political leanings.
Liberal half measures aren’t going to work anymore. They need a full-blown progressive agenda and the balls to ram it through whatever institution is in their way.
If democrats try to move left and they lose because of it and then people like yourself scapegoat them for not doing enough then they will move further right next time because that’s what the voters vote for.
Your response is an example of letting perfection become the enemy of progress.
WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? We’re two days out from a centrist campaign leading to the largest fucking bloodbath in recent memory, and you’re already trying to find excuses to not try appealing to the left? Rejoin reality, dude.
Their cognitive dissonance in these threads is just astounding
Astounding but not unexpected.
If we don’t move further right now and instead move left then we might move further right later???
Democrats moved left and there was a “blood bath”. And your take is that we should ignore the polls saying it was because of inflation and move further left. You’re the one that needs to log off lemmy for a while and rejoin reality.
What part of it embracing war criminals like Dick Cheney, ignoring the needs of the working class, and mirroring much of Trump’s policies is moving left?
The Democrats moved left? Fucking when? They’ve been moving to the right my entire life, and I’m not young. This election they campaigned with Liz Cheney on arming Isreal, a harsh border policy, and adding Republicans to their cabinet.
And yeah, it was the economy and the inflation; it’s killing the working class. So why did she tailor her message entirely to the middle class? Their economic message was, “inflation is better, the status quo is good, your wrong if you think the economy needs to change.” Then they lost, and your takeaway is, “well, changing to a left-wing economic message would obviously be bad.” Get a grip, dude.
Biden campaigned on similar promises and ideals like resolving student debt and improving the economy. Even personally relevant promises like creating a public health jobs corps (relevant to my degree and field of study). The only thing he sufficiently accomplished were the initial vaccination efforts, but it’s as if we stopped having an actual president into and after 2022: The filthy rich managed to get exponentially richer with this war-supply economy and stock market presidency. My student debt is still a burden in the back of my mind and all of my available graduate-entry jobs are either severely underpaid or shilled out to robots that also vet my applications. Until the war profiteer and stock market billionaires actually pay their fair share (which they should have been a few years ago) or provide citizens with jobs that can sustain a healthy living, any good socialist promises that are made are flat-out lies because senility and flacid mental acuity won’t even be a valid excuse anymore.
Biden tried to do things like forgive student debt and was blocked by republicans and you scapegoat him for it? That’s a good way to make sure no one tries again. But maybe that’s your true intentions.
It was blocked by the courts because Biden was trying to use measures that were not within his authority. He was advised multiple times on the proper way to go about canceling student debt. And he never did. Pelosi instructed him that he does not have the authority to use the measures that he tried to do. He talked about student debt as a pr headline.
Biden was actually fairly committed to the student debt forgiveness, but his blind institutionalism meant he couldn’t actually achieve much. He wouldn’t push to remove the filibuster until late into his presidency and refused to discuss stacking the court. He was the wrong man to meet this moment in history, and we’ll be living with his failures for decades.
Democrats never had near enough seats in Congress to actually expand the Supreme Court or remove the filibuster. He said he would support it but if he would’ve said more than that you would be blaming him for not accomplishing that also, even though it was never possible.
All it takes to eliminate the filibuster is 51 votes. They won’t remove the filibuster because that’s one of the rotating villains they love to utilized whenever they don’t want to do something.
There were procedural methods they could have used to eliminate the filibuster, which he refused to even consider for half his term. They would have needed the House to expand the court, but if they had the balls to do it, then they could have run on it. Instead, they tried nothing and got nothing.
I know someone who didn’t vote and gave this exact logic.
What logic specifically?
He wanted an actual progressive and refused to vote for a Democrat since the Democrats aren’t embracing progressivism, despite the fact that not voting for a Democrat means there’s a greater likelihood that we end up even further from progressivism.
In short: the exact logic in your comment.
I know many people that voted democrat in 2020 and switched republican this year because they thought inflation was caused by Bidens progressive policies. The polls support my experience:
More like out of 2 right wing options people went for the more right wing option.
Democrats have been moving further left ever since progressives joined them. This “democrats aren’t left enough” talking point is in line with the Russian strategy to polarize American politics more so that we dont get anything done.
Til their platform, messaging and strategy is just Russian
You’re not making any sense
Democrats have been moving further left ever since progressives joined them. This “democrats aren’t left enough” talking point is in line with the Russian strategy to polarize American politics more so that we dont get anything done.
Please tell me how I want republican immigration policy and to build the wall at the Mexican border are left-wing.
Again you’re not making sense. Why would I tell you that you want that?
What I can tell you is that you want the non facsist political party to win and then you want your government officials to get along long enough to actually accomplish something.
This requires voters, which requires compromise. According to the polls:
Wait I thought that disappointment was just Russian disinformation? /s
So they looked at what’s unpopular and stayed with it. What an amazing strategy the dnc did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Primaries happened. Biden won it, Harris likely wouldn’t have, but by the time Joe dipped it was too late to do the process again.
Oh, you mean the primary where no one else had universal ballot access? Where there was only one actually viable challenger, Dean Phillips, who the Democrats drove out of politics afterwards? That primary?
Like, FFS, even the pundit class doesn’t pretend that was a serious primary. Stop pretending a ceremonial vote means something.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field? He was the incumbent. It’s practically a given they’ll get the nod with token effort. The last time the incumbent actually almost kinda sorta had a challenge was 1992, it was Bush Sr., and he still shat all over them like 75%/25%. Even Carter in 1980 got the nod and he was polling at like a 28% approval rating at times. Stop pretending that a full primary wouldn’t have just been throwing money into a dumpster.
Now if you want to say Joe should have held to what he was considering in 2019 and not running a second term then we’d be in absolute agreement. His hubris fucked all of us.
You really think Joe wouldn’t have won in a more crowded field?
In a real primary? Fucking yes, are you fucking kidding me? The man couldn’t get through a single debate against Trump without looking like a dementia patient. You think he was going to make it through the same process that got him elected in 2020? A process he only got through because the party coordinated around him to block Sanders? You’re out of your fucking mind if you think he be the nominee if he had to get on stage with a single primary opponent.
These people are fucking delusional and the gaslighting is out of control. A real primary would of produced a democrat winner in the general.
In a real primary? Fucking yes, are you fucking kidding me?
If Carter got the nod, then Biden 100% would have. Shit, Trump got the nod too in 2020 and his approval rating never broke 50% his entire disasterpiece of a presidency. The only time a elected incumbent didn’t get the nod was Franklin Pierce, in 1852.
A process he only got through because the party coordinated around him to block Sanders?
And that is exactly why he would get the nod. The big money Dem donors have made it abundantly clear that even milquetoast progressive policies simply are not in the cards. They’d do everything possibly including hired gunmen to ensure Bernie didn’t get the nomination.
OK, so, first of all, you gotta stop with the historical parallels, man. There just aren’t any. No one this old ever ran before. Carter wasn’t sundowning during Kennedy’s challenge. If there had been a real primary, then everything that happened during the Trump debate happens a little earlier; Biden shows a severe level of cognitive decline, the entire country goes, “Holy shit, this guy’s trying to sign up for another 4 years?” and we get a new candidate. We know it’s what would have happened in the primary because it’s what did happen in the general.
Second, you’re right, they never would have let Bernie win. My point wasn’t that Bernie would win, but that Biden only won his first primary because they coordinated around him to beat Bernie. They might have been able to win the general if there had been a primary challenger that could at least fake a progressive agenda like Obama did, but we’ll never know.
OK, so, first of all, you gotta stop with the historical parallels, man.
Hence why I also pointed out approval rating, and how Carter had a lower one then Biden and they still let him go again, and how Trump’s was dogshit and he still got the nod too. Unless you’re going to also say candidate approval rating somehow also “doesn’t count”, in which case we may as well stop wasting each others time because we’re clearly never going to see eye to eye on this.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what point you’re even trying to make anymore. Your original point seemed to be, “Yes, we did have a real primary,” and when I pointed out that no one considers what happened in 2024 a legitimate primary your point became, “Well, they would have given it to him anyway, like they did for Carter.” That would seem to invalidate your original point, but it doesn’t really matter, because as I said twice, Carter wasn’t hiding severe cognitive decline from his primary opponent. Now you want to talk about approval ratings while again hiding from that fact.
So, one more time; explain to me how Biden gets through the scrutiny of a primary campaign, with real challengers, without everyone seeing his cognitive decline? Why wouldn’t the thing that forced him off the ticket at the 11th hour force him off the ticket during a primary? Explain it to me or don’t reply.
Liberals hubris has always fucked us.
“Primaries” where they strongly discouraged anyone from running if they wanted a future in the democrat party. A primary against someone with brain worms who’s not so secretly a trumper is not a real primary.
Snap elections get held in every civilized country
They could have called one right there
Universal healthcare exists in every civilized country too. America is special… and I don’t mean that in a good way.
And that was likely by design, or at least people think it was. Kamala wouldn’t have won the primaries, so the DNC rat fucked another primary to put their chosen candidate on the ballot.
Not our problem, Democrats decided to run a person no one trusted or liked and instead of listening to voters they kept him in until the donor class spoke up and said no. A real indicator of runs the country.
And it’s not like Biden could have been forced out of the race any earlier.
Those are facts. Do not use them. It makes you look like a decent person and nobody likes that.
What are the odds Dems win the House?
It’s highly unlikely.
It has always been that we could go left or we go right when things got tough for the masses. It was unlikely that USA was gonna go left, so we had to go right. Either way, capitalism wins.
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Abandon the working class?
unions declining to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate.
Unpopular candidate?
15m less Democrats voted.
Eh I don’t think those 15 mil were dems anyway. Maybe ultra progressive with higher standards than what the dems have to offer.
Historical speaking Harris got standard dem numbers. No one ever got numbers like Biden.
Doesn’t matter how you label them. 15m people who voted dem last time didn’t this time (broadly speaking). That is Unpopular.
Which was purely political nonsense from the unions. And now a guy who held oligarchic union busting up as a good thing is in power.
It not purely political nonsense. It reflects the voter base.
The real problem is that people (like you) dismiss the workers opinion’s as “political nonsense” and subsequently lose elections.
I’m dismissing union leadership decisions as nonsense, not the workers’ issues. We actually had something similar happen in my city with this election. City needed a debt override to be popularly voted in to finance construction of a much needed new fire department HQ, but the firefighter union (and really all unions) have a terrible relationship with the mayor so they campaigned AGAINST it. It failed. Now they won’t get the new HQ unless they fire a bunch of firefighters or, i dunno, have a wicked successful bake sale or some shit. It was literally in no one’s best interest for the ballot question to fail but pure political shitassery made them campaign against their own and everyone’s interests even when significant time and even money was spent explaining in excruciating detail why there was no other choice than the debt override for it to happen.
You can only do so much to explain things to people before the burden falls on them to (a) listen in good faith, and (b) try to not be dumbshits.
Oh, look. A liberal whose liberal holy cows has predictably failed to prevent (or even slightly resist) the rise of fascism is trying to blame leftists for their holy cow’s failure.
Yawn.
Unpopular candidate? Yeah, her rallies were ghost towns.
On Tuesday there was a spike in google searches asking why Biden wasn’t on the ballot and at least 15 million fewer people voted than the last presidential. You consider that popular?
Sounds like it doesn’t matter what she did at all. If that many people weren’t aware that Biden dropped out, she could have the perfect platform and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Oh, Harris was actually popular? That’s good! When’s the inauguration?
She’s so popular she lost an amount of voters almost equivalent to the population of Pennsylvania when compared to Biden.
Unpopular candidate? Yeah, her rallies were ghost towns.
Lmao
Crawl under the covers and scream into your pillow about Palestine or whatever unforgivable issue made you let the country down by not supporting Harris
Lmaoo
IT. WAS. YOU. Fuck y’all.
Lmaooo
The Trump campaign should pay you for all the covert advertising you do for them.
How did dems abandon the working class?
Biden has been the most pro working class president since FDR.
I’d say most working-class since Reagan. The Dems were obviously scared of Suburban Republicans, and obviously trying to court their vote, for some reason. They were probably convinced that the United States was a “post-industrial” society, so as the logic goes, cultural issues would take precedence over class ones, and 24/7 social media users would be more valuable than blue-collar workers. There was also the idea that China is the world’s manufacturing base, most metals are mined in African countries (like how cobalt comes from the Congo), and most fruits come from Latin American countries (like bananas from Guatemala). Class, nevertheless, remains a concern, and the proletariat in the United States is not a fiction.
Tell that to the rail workers
US rail companies grant paid sick days after public pressure in win for unions https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave?CMP=share_btn_url
When Joe Biden and Congress enacted legislation in December that blocked a threatened freight rail strike, many workers angrily faulted Biden for not ensuring that the legislation also guaranteed paid sick days. But since then, union officials says, members of the Biden administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who stepped down on 11 March, lobbied the railroads, telling them it was wrong not to grant paid sick days.
“We’ve made a lot of progress,” said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation. “This is being done the right way. Each railroad is negotiating with each of its individual unions on this.”
So let’s take a step back and take in what your argument is here.
You’re implying that you can be pro worker by stripping them of their autonomy and power… then arranging for them to get whatever tiny scraps the owners decide is worth the PR
You must be some kind of black belt master in black and white thinking 🤡. Biden literally got workers their first ever paid sick days after decades of not being able to even call in sick, pressured companies to drop their draconian attendance policies, and you’re here crying about him ‘abandoning the working class’? Lmao get real
I’m pro slave. I savagely put down any attempt for them to speak for themselves but then once their movement is destroyed I give them tiny concessions to mute the agitation that led to their uprising.
black and white thinking
Thought terminating cliche for infantile minds
And it was because the public demanded the rail workers should get paid sick days after the administration shut down the strike. Showing that the Biden Administration had to walk back unpopular anti-union activities because of public outcry as evidence of Biden’s pro-union behavior is not a very strong argument.
Biden has been the most pro working class president since FDR.
That Biden is the high water mark was an alarm bell. Just ask the rail workers.
There is no such thing as a “pro-working class” president.
Can’t serve capital and labor.
It happened because fascist enablers didnt vote
If only the DNC had given them something to vote for, instead of appealing to fear and guilt
Fear was all that was needed this cycle. Just wait, we will see soon.
To be clear: Harris sucks. Trump is a monster. Avoiding trump was all we needed to care about.
Fear was all that was needed this cycle.
If that was true it would have worked. It didn’t.
Well yeah cause a bunch of silly gooses couldn’t hold their nose to keep an open fascist rapist out. Harris didn’t pass the purity test and now we all live in maralago USA
No. Its the peoples fault for not voting. When the option is fascism or not they shouldnt need anything else. Aside from that Harris had policies which were known and easy to find. There is 0 excuse not to vote when democracy is on the line. Now you never have the chance to vote in a free election again
Threatening and guilting people didn’t work, in fact it failed miserably, and your answer is to double down on it? Congratulations, you’re now the DNC chair.
But they aren’t wrong.
Maybe people should vote every single time then things would improve. But theyre not so they won’t. Congrats on the own goal.
It’s the candidates job to give people a reason to vote. Harris clearly didn’t do a good enough job of that.
The fuck it is.
Someone on reddit (yes I know) put it well so I’ll just copy pasta-
If you pay attention to any of the teaching subreddits you’ll see a common refrain. When students aren’t paying attention it is deemed the teacher’s fault by administration and parents because the teacher should be able to make the class fun or interesting. Those in power don’t hold the students responsible for learning - it is the teacher’s job not only to teach but to make the students want to learn.
It is strikingly similar to the way many people talk about civics. It is the Democrats’ job not only to govern, but to make voters want to vote. But, that is not how it is supposed to work. Everyone has the responsibility to vote. It is only the candidate’s job to convince you to vote for them while you are at the polls.
The idea that a candidate has to make you want to vote in the first place is absolute nonsense. It’s a civic responsibility. People are just too lazy. A student who doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to get an education is shooting themself in the foot. A citizen who doesn’t take the opportunity to participate in an election is shooting themself in the foot.
People shouldn’t wait to be inspired to go vote. They should do it as a matter of course.
Funny that the Republicans don’t seem to have this problem
Okay, but please explain to me how you intend for students to magically become more willing to learn, or citizens more willing to vote. You fight the battles you can, you don’t just blame the world or people for being the way that they are. Sure, as an individual, you can do better. Maybe eben influence those around you. Now what about the millions of others who have to change their behavior in order to enact change on the country-wide scale? To fight at that scale you have to be in a position of power, and the only people who are in those positions of power in the US who aren’t republicans are democrats. The responsibility lies with the democrats to do whatever it takes to improve voter turnout or fix problems because nobody else has the means and isn’t a republican (and good luck trying to convince them to be less shit). Blaming the people just makes them pissed at you and gets you nowhere.
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That’s what they told me in 2008 too. Then Obama won, and spent 8 years acting exactly like Bush. If the Democrats want their credibility back they need to give us more than just fear of the alternative. They failed and we’re all paying the price.
They’ve learned literally nothing since 2016, same tired Playbook over and over, kill progressive campaigns, neuter those that win regardless, blame progressives when nothing materially changes for the populace and they don’t vote for the DNCs annoited candidate. Rinse and repeat
It’s a shame too, Harris would have been ok for a lukewarm neo liberal.
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I did vote, and it didn’t do shit. Turns out lots of people want a platform more robust than “vote for me or die”
The people screaming about protecting democracy accepted a candidate no one voted for and was installed. Installing her was the only way to get her on the ballot.
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In the eyes of many leftists and left leaning liberals the DNC shifted too far to the right. They openly welcomed right wing support and right wing policy. They deserved to lose.
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We are not Democrat, why would we vote for democrats? I can’t speak for everyone else here but I’m a communist, I would never vote for either right wing capitalist owned politician
You are a fascist enabler. You had the choice between fascism and no fascism and chose not to vote. Therefore you picked fascism. Call yourself what you want. You showed that when given the choice you choose to support a fascist.
The only no fascist candidates were green or socialist
Harm reduction. Given 2 choices you pick the one that doesn’t put a target on someone’s back that doesn’t already exist. Then you advocate to remove targets. LGBTQ and immigrants have a fresh target they didn’t last week, due to trump winning.
Total at-risk people is up with trump, and a communist candidate was never an option.
110% this. And they still don’t get it.
The fascists in this equation are the DNC and RNC. The enablers of fascism would be the DNC and by proxy anyone that voted for them.
The DNC were the party that was against fascism this election. The fascists were Trumpists. The enablers the non voters. They picked fascism over democracy
They’re ratchet effect enables fascism, by proxy they are fascist.
