Are you fucking kidding? Because Biden 2020 was a progressive platform and Harris 2024 was a centrist one. They weren’t even remotely similar. Biden may be a centrist, but he’s very pro-labor, and he could see how important the progressive base was that election, so he literally sat down with Sanders and hammered out a platform that they could get behind. And while I’ve got a lot of problems with Joe Biden, he actually was very committed to that platform. He really wanted BBB to get through and he kept trying to find ways to abolish student debt.
Harris, on the other hand, had a handful of disparate, vaguely left policy positions, like the first-time homebuyer’s credit and legalizing pot, but her campaign was mainly centered on economic opportunity for the middle class. She also committed wholeheartedly to the most right-wing polices of the Biden administration, like arming Israel and cracking down on the border. But worst of all, she made bipartisanship and Republican consensus a huge part of her campaign, promising to add Republicans to her cabinet , campaigning with Liz Cheney, and even praising Dick Fucking Cheney.
TL;DR, Biden campaigned like Obama in 2008, Harris Campaigned like Hillary in 2016. And the results were the same.
Do you even remember 2020? Nobody fucking wanted Biden. He was never progressive. He was literally mocked for telling donors “Nothing will fundamentally change.” People turned out because of how much they hated Trump.
That actually occurred in 2019, not 2020. After Bernie nearly stomped him in the primary, he made a hard pivot to the left in 2020. As I said, he’s a centrist, but he actually does have a strong history of pro-union activism, which made him a fairly credible (though imperfect) messenger for a populous platform.
It’s almost unfathomable how many people failed to show up to vote, if they disliked Trump that much in 2020. What has Trump done to gather support or apathy about this in so many people?
It was more that Kamala did nothing to get them off the couch.
Biden at least promised student loan forgiveness and did try. It was a shit attempt but credit where it’s due he tried and ended up being able to at least forgive a bunch of public service loans. Kamala promised, what? Help to buy a house? Ok sure. Because we can totally afford that with the cost of groceries today.
Maybe we underestimated how much Covid forced/gave everyone time to pay attention to politics. Or perhaps people saw Trump dodge accountability at every turn and disillusionment in the system bred apathy. It could also be online manipulation pushing Gaza as making Harris/Biden just as bad as Trump. Probably all of the above.
I get that but 15 mil people is a lot. Needs looking into imho.
Agreed. There’s a tiny paranoid voice in the back of my head saying that with Trump every accusation is a confession and he made a lot of election fraud accusations.
Trump didn’t do that, Putin did.
So why didn’t he in 2020?
Don’t forget that Biden was the first president to walk a picket line. No other president had ever done that in America’s history. That single action won over the UAW.
Then, Biden fought back against the railroad corporations and won a contract for workers that includes PTO and other basic labor necessities.
Then, Biden reduced fentanyl overdoses, something that no president has done in like 30-40 years.
Couple this with BBB and IRA, you have a much more progressive president than what people give water to it.
Well, I don’t want to give him too much credit. Biden is and always has been a centrist. He has a mixed history on Civil Rights (cause he’s 120 years old), he has a pretty pro-bank history, he’s supported some anti-consumer stuff (like the anti-bankruptcy laws), and he even helped put Clarence Thomas on the bench. And that’s not even touching on his administration, where Gaza and the border will probably be his lasting legacy. But, two things that he’s always been pretty consistent on were unions and infrastructure, and he read the room in 2020 and leaned heavily into those things.
Oh I agree. He likely made all of those concessions because 1) he wanted to rally the base following the 2020 primaries, and 2) to stick it to the establishment Dems. Seems like Biden has grown to be quite the grumpy old man to those in the party.
I agree with you in Gaza and the border. Biden has shown no backbone to Netanyahu, and his administration introduced a border bill that echoed a lot of Trump’s sentiments.
On the whole, it’s hard to make the call on whether Biden or Harris would have been better to run against Trump, but all that matters now is that we continue the message that establishment Democrats got us here by chasing centrism instead of progress. We need to root out a lot of people who actually do the politicking in the party because if those people aren’t out, we’re doomed to make the same mistakes.
Hasan Piker put it well the other day. If this were a game of sports, underperformers would be benched pretty aggressively. If this were a job, underperformers would be put on a performance plan (hopefully) or fired straight up.
There are people consulting Democrats that have failed time and again since 2016, hell even 2008. They need OUT.
all that matters now is that we continue the message that establishment Democrats got us here by chasing centrism instead of progress. We need to root out a lot of people who actually do the politicking in the party because if those people aren’t out, we’re doomed to make the same mistakes.
100% this. On Monday, I’m calling my state and federal representatives and telling them DNC chair Jamie Harrison needs to go. Then I’m gonna start looking for movements that will primary anyone who still thinks incrementalism and centrism are a path forward. From now on, Medicare for All and UBI need to be the bare minimum standard for anyone that wants a D in front of their name.
remember earlier this year when leftists were saying biden never did anything and that he was too old, and started refusing to vote for him and calling for him to drop out, and he did?
remember the six months following that when leftists were complaining that the person they got biden to drop out for wasn’t good enough and how they weren’t going to vote for her?
and now that trump won suddenly leftists are singing biden’s praises and blaming trump’s win on the DNC picking a shit candidate?
I honestly have no clue how you constructed your conception of “leftists”.
Leftists != Tankies != Blue MAGA/Anon != Progressives
Biden did great things while in office. However, the Left has the liberty to continue pushing the current administration to go farther and implement more policies in line with their ideals. This is a force that counters the Right.
Biden did not go far enough on Gaza, and neither did Kamala. The same goes for corporations like those in the Oil & Gas sector that raised their prices following oil demobilization during COVID, as well as those that kept their prices high even years after like those producing consumer goods. Could have gone farther.
When the existing administration makes no concessions to those in the base that voted for that administration but not as their first choice, they have the right to criticize and call out the administration’s failure to represent them.
All of this would be fixed, or at least alleviated if we abandoned our political duopoly in favor of an electoral and congressional system that allowed for more diversity in government. Ranked choice seems to be taking off in many states.
Oh, and Kamala was great at the beginning. She took over for Biden, then chose Tim Walz. But then her administration attached itself to Biden, the person that spawned her campaign since the Democratic base utterly rejected him following the debate, and then went after the Right in hope of gaining more votes, taking their own base for granted.
Now that we have the full scope of Kamala’s campaign, she ran on much more conservative values than Biden did in his campaign leading up to the 2020 election.
This nuance is not something you’ll see in the mainstream media, perhaps not even on Lemmy. But this is the realm that hopefully progressives like me and some Leftists operate in.
Your mindset is honestly the same that many ignorant people share regarding science and the scientific method. Things can be true for different reasons and at different times.
i’m not debating any of that. i’m just kind of mad at leftists for being mad at the DNC for doing exactly what they told them to do.
The meme demanded, pjwestin delivered.
I do what I can. If the question had been asked in good faith, I might have even been nice about it.
Everyone is still pissed about inflation, and her answer to what she would do better was ‘nothing’.
Everything else is just noise around the edges.
Because people pissed at inflation are fucking stupid. Inflation is down. They aren’t pissed at greedy corporations, which have been the problem the entire fucking time.
You know you’ve heard people say inflation hasn’t stopped because prices are still high. Like they’re going to magically get better prices when inflation stops.
Yeah it’s stupid, welcome to America.
Actually they’re not wrong, wages were not increased to keep up with inflation so stopping it alone wasn’t enough.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q#0 Real wages are up since Covid was dealt with. That’s simple factual reality.
The perception of course, is that everything is worse. Because prices did go up, and they’re staying there. Which just means the economy didn’t collapse and cause mass unemployment.
I think the problem is that inflation does not impact the poorest population the same:
The CPI weighting is based on an average consumer, the poorest people will have more sensibility to price change for things like food or rent.
Rent and food prices increase in total by 20-25% in 4 years. If you were already tight at the beginning of the Biden presidency, you’re now have a high chance of being homeless.
Seen hundreds of lemmy comments arguing exactly that.
The sad thing is that there are a thousand ways to attack prices, or even just give sound bites that the public can run with. But almost all of them would upset neoliberal billionaires, so they can never be spoken.
They think it’ll be like gas prices. They go up, but the “right guy” will make them come back down, ignoring the fact that that only happens with commodities like oil. Once a company raises prices, they rarely bring them back down. Tha6s called deflation, and it’s not good.
Well, we kind of need deflation to happen because the alternative is rising wages and that’s not fucking happening.
We need to do what Harris had stated, and go after all these companies price gouging like we are still in the middle of the COVID pandemic. And that is now only going to get worse with a con man in office set on making himself, his companies, and his friends (which is anyone that says nice things to him) as rich as possible by extracting what remains of the working class. They are going to weaken/dismantle unions, and likely start mass death/slave labor camps for the poor.
He is also going to use his new position of power to pass laws to shield crypto scammers, and use his new crypto platform to undermine the US dollar and try and force more people to his crypto grift run by some of the worse humans around. And use his NFT/crypto stuff to openly except bribes to sell off the US to the highest bidder so when his dementia gets bad enough they put JD in charge he can live out the rest of his days being fed liquid cheese burgers on a golden spoon.
I imagine Vance goes in around the two year mark so he can have three terms.
Not sure JD would get any additional terms, the cult might want to install either Jr. or Eric and start a “royalty” line of succession. And hope that Ivanka enjoys the hellscape she helped usher in for her daughter, and women everywhere.
Deflation just means everyone is already starving. Deflation isn’t the start of a process, it’s the result of massive failure. Just like inflation doesn’t happen the second money is printed, it has to circulate before price inflation is a thing.
What we need are labor groups, and taxes on companies who use government benefits as part of their wage calculation.
In short, never try to make prices go down, instead make wages go up, and make competition control prices.
Deflation isn’t the start of a process, it’s the result of massive failure
We’ve already had a massive failure. The economy doing great and yet everyone’s broke? Such a blatant lie! Time to acknowledge and lower prices to end food waste.
Everyone is broke, but still buying everything in the economy? Sorry, time to acknowledge the reality that life is just hard. Deflation happens after it gets really bad.
We live in a nation of people that are a mix of uneducated and propagandized. If the party messaging doesn’t take that into account, that fault lies with them in addition to the voters.
It’s not enough that the rate of inflation is slowing. The problem is that wages aren’t going up to match inflation. When people are working two jobs and still living paycheck to paycheck, do you think it means anything to them to tell them that “um ackshually, inflation is down 0.4% from last year!”?
This kind of disconnect is exactly why we aren’t reaching voters.
California voted to not raise minimum wage, too.
Also they kept prison slave labor.
Come on now don’t bring up that in one of the “left most” and most populous state in the union that people are actually pretty non leftist, it might contradict some of their feel based arguments.
America is not full of progressives. I don’t know why people here can never be convinced otherwise.
America is not full of progressives.
No it is not and I’ll toss another example on there -
Gay marriage was only legalized nation wide by a bunch of unelected judges, and the second most-recent Democratic president “evolved” on the issue less than a decade ago.
US postures as the world’s defender of LGBT rights when it’s “bringing democracy” places, but it’s not great at doing that internally.
America is a country that lies to itself. It claims we need to make female super heroes flat chested to combat sexism, but then turn around and laugh at the idea of a female president so hard they’re willing to give Hitler a second chance.
Wages have outpaced inflation recently. Things have generally been heading in the right direction since the pandemic but it came too late and the masses are mostly ignorant or misinformed so the data is irrelevant to them. Its about how people feel as you point out, there’s not a rational argument against feelings, people feel how they feel. One side has become very good at taping into those feelings, the other side is talking about data and no one gives a shit unless the data validates what they feel.
Don’t lie to me.
People who rent got hit twice as hard by inflation, I know I’m paying a significantly higher portion of my paycheck in rent vs 4 years ago.
The raw material cost increases which provide the cover/excuse for price gouging are the result of two different things the Harris/Biden admin participated in and had no real path towards solving.
One is the fact that the vast majority of ocean shipping is going around Africa rather than the red sea, due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza that the Biden admin has been bypassing Congress to continue arming.
Two is the cutting off of Russian oil, which resulted in ballooning costs in Europe.
Like it or not, Harris did not provide any answers on these two fronts that looked anything like a change in policy.
Because fixing inflation means jacking up interest rates and cutting government spending. And no-one wants that.
People are too stupid to understand inflation and too stupid to understand how it’s combated.
Literally Covid. People thoght they were going to die.
I actually don’t think so. Like I speak with Republicans that are very dismissive of covid still, despite having family members die to it. If people were bothered by his covid response, they would continue to be bothered by the fact Trump shit the covid response. Instead it seems voters think everything was fine during his term (completely uninformed or unaware of the fact that he was impeached twice, raped women, a good friend and neighbor of Epstein, and tried to overthrow the government)
The apathy maybe comes from how Harris was hand picked (because it was so last minute that Biden dropped off) vs us having an actual primary with several democrats.
Republicans aren’t the ones who didn’t turn out, idk what this has to do with what they think about Trumps covid response. If you want to know why 10 million more democratic voters turned out last time covids gonna play a large factor.
So covid but not fascist plundering and terrorism. Huh.
Stupid fuckers.
And BLM was already out on the streets.
Bernie.
Bernie was what got us to vote for Biden. Biden formed a comittee with Bernie and actually adopted a bunch of his ideas. That’s what got the left to vote for Biden.
That and all of us were reeling from the economy after coronavirus.
Meanwhile Harris told the left to fuck off with your Palestinians are human nonsense and tried to get the Liz Cheney constituency (that doesn’t exist).
Because we did vote for Biden and he was useless at preventing the spread of fascism in states, and then Harris’s responses to how she would handle any of it, which was effectively “I will do nothing.” The Democrats made the left apathetic to the electoral system by refusing to appeal to them and instead the democrats focused on trying to sway republicans and moved further right. The Democrats did the worst thing they could have done and made people apathetic and hopeless.
Da, comrade
The elections over dipshit, and putins dog won. Why would they still pay their troll farms when the deal has been sealed?
Ever think people looked online and saw behavior such as yours and felt they didn’t want to be involved with people like you?
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Obviously, the main reason for record turnout in 2020 was COVID.
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Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn’t even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was “untested” to put it mildly.
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The economic situation was different.
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Regardless of to what degree he was responsible, under Biden the US got entangled in foreign conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine.
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It’s not that there are 10 million commies that liked Biden but not Harris, it’s that us commies believe that you can win over the working class by appealing to material interests.
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Biden didn’t campaign with fucking Dick Cheney
Relevant user name
Biden actually has decent political instincts and has actually won elections before. Kamala didn’t even have to pass a primary and bombed out of the one she did participate in in 2020. She was “untested” to put it mildly
I believe democrats called bernie Sanders “unelectable” so I feel it’s fair to use that term in this circumstance.
- Trump was a bigot, which is what a majority of Americans wanted.
Weird how so many of you demonize the largest most powerful organization of antifascists in America instead of those who voted to give Trump power. It’s almost like you are trying to sow division in the anti-trump electorate 🤔
This sort of thinking is why Democrats keep repeating the same mistakes. Any sort of criticism, even if it’s constructive, is treasonous. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Organizations either adapt or die. Rejection of criticism is a suicidal, accelerationist position. When people are so concerned with deflecting blame that they’re incapable of performing an honest, frank assessment of which strategies work and which don’t, then you are destined to fail no matter whether its a political party or anything else. If you’d prefer the Democrats keep doing things that don’t work because you’re afraid of them losing face, then your perspective is worthless.
Twisting of words and arguing against a point someone didn’t make is a common alt-right “debate” strategy. Readers please note that I did not say that members of the Democratic party are above criticism. The person I am replying to continues to blame antifascists for the rise of fascism.
The car just slammed into a wall and it’s backing up and preparing to slam in into the same wall for the third time, and I’m yelling at the driver to turn left so it doesn’t hit the wall again, and your response is like, “Why are you criticizing the driver? You must be trying to distract them so the car crashes!”
Since you’re totally not saying that the democrats are above criticism, since that’s only me “twisting your words,” why don’t you tell me what the democrats did wrong that they could’ve done differently or could do differently in the future to avoid an outcome like this?
largest most powerful organization of antifascists in America
Please do not insinuate that the Democratic Party is Anti-Fascist. They have have adopted Trump’s 2016 border policy, are unconditionally funding a genocide, and will peacefully transfer power to those they acknowledge are fascists. They are not antifascists, they are merely the lesser fascists.
“The Democrats are fascists” is exactly the narrative MAGA espouses. When someone ostensibly anti-MAGA attacks the largest coalition of anti-MAGA forces, that person is pro-MAGA.
So in your mind no one can criticize the DNC’s failure to stop fascism or its concessions to said fascist movemet? Our glorious leadership must be blindly followed no matter how many times they fail or give ground to fascists?
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Biden was running on massive infrastructure investment, student loan forgiveness, ending the war in Afghanistan, child tax credit and a $2000 cheque in the mail . Harris may have had those in her platform as well but she wasn’t mentioning it or Bidens wins on these at all, her campaign was “I’m not trump” and we learned from Hillary that’s not enough.
Biden campaign was “build back better” a motto for change much like another democrat who actually won. Harris’ campaign was “were not going back” which implies no change and relies on you thinking the trump years were horrible enough to justify the current status quo, and apparently the only thing Americans remember about the trump years was the economy was “better” and wanted to go back.
Covid and Trumps handling of it.
But energy was high in the anti Trump camp anyway with BLM protests.So saying the Dems need to move more right is the opposite of the right lesson. Just look at political donations to Bernie… from across the US. There are no moderate republicans, they all stayed with trump, there is a huge untapped electorate in the US that wants something else, and I’d argue it is more left social democrats and what they bring… But the capital class will never allow it in the US. The moment you talk wealth distribution, even MSNBC and such call you communist.
Edit: oh and Biden should have taken action on Trumps fascism on day 1. Chuck him in jail pending trial and get it over with. Everyone except a small part of his base distanced themselves from him, the time was in the first 100 days of taking office, but they did NOTHING… they might as well have stormed the capitol themselves by now.
I honestly expected him to just pardon Trump to “Let the nation heal”
And if it had been a magical third Obama term, I’m sure that’s exactly what would have happened.
I honestly expected him to just pardon Trump to “Let the nation heal”
Sure as shit would have happened if trump ever sat down and shut the fuck up. That’s why the ball started rolling so late. They wanted trump to go away on his own so they didn’t have to do their jobs.
Why can I too easily imagine an alternate universe where Trump stays quiet, gets pardoned by Biden, a Trump-Wannabe shows up on the 2024 ticket, and Harris campaigns with Trump the same way Hillary rehabilitated Bush?
That would have been the wrong lesson from Watergate.
They learn every wrong lesson from history. Republicans see history and go “Let’s do it again, but even worse for the average person!” and Democrats see history and go “Let’s try it again, it didn’t work last time, but surely 3rd time is the charm.”
Have you seen the numbers of people who think they were better off 4 years ago?
People think they were better off during the height of COVID deaths. Our attention span is 27 seconds. We’re idiots
Also, Harris doesn’t have a penis and somehow that’s supposed to matter
A lot of folks actually were better off back then due to the stimulus checks…
Yeah, getting less than one month’s living expenses over a period of 18 months of un or underemployment really had me living large!
I’m not discounting that, but if you were disabled or on a fixed income then that one month’s living expenses might be the biggest windfall you’ve had in decades.
Biden’s years were the best of my life, I had stability for once…
That was nice, can’t wait to fucking get laid off.
A California lawyer trying to win a centrist campaign is like Tiger Woods trying to win a World Series ring. Harris wasn’t the right person to run a centrist campaign. But, if she had run a progressive campaign from July, she would have won the popular vote and still lost the election. She wouldn’t have gotten past a primary.
Elizabeth Warren would have been a better progressive choice. Mark Kelly could have run a progressive or a centrist campaign.
Gods, I’d have loved seeing an astronaut in the big chair.
You cannot put a woman or a minority on the ticket and expect Right Wingers to care.
Back in 2015 when it was either Trump or Ben Carson for nomination, I knew it would be Trump. Simply because I knew once the debates started and Boomers were actually looking at Ben Carson instead of just reading newspaper articles about him, they’d abandon him for being the wrong color…
And I was right
Too many people will simply never submit to Female Rule.
It’s why I knew Nikki Hailey wasn’t going to get the 2024 nomination despite Trump being the most idiotic and easily beatable choice (and if Kamela ran a progressive campaign and actually had time to make her campaign)
American Men simply do not respect women.
Old white man, old white man, if he can’t do it, no one can!
Yeah I wouldn’t discount sexism, or racism - I do think it’s hard for Democrats to win elections here unless people are in the middle of a conservative administration, they just don’t remember how bad it is, it’s like people who remember their time in school fondly once it’s over.
But in general, it’s also true that women have to be near perfect, to be promoted over a man. And same thing with race. Like they can’t just be the better choice it has to be a blowout. Now to a sensible person, she met that bar and flew past it, but we aren’t all sensible and people are stupidly nostalgic for times that were objectively worse.
You’d love for it to be about sex or race. Then the voters have.to change, not the democrats.
Sorry buddy… the democrats have to change. Alot. And they have to do away with First-past-the-post voting in the blue states they control. Get more people represented, more political parties on solving this problem. The democrats have demonstrated multiple times they are incapable of doing this by themselves.
I’m not a Democrat. Yes I’d like them to be progressive instead of drifting ever rightward. It sucks to have two totalitarian parties here. But if you think racism and sexism is dead in America you are blind.
The government isn’t a machine, it’s us. People.
A lot of people probably were better off. Not working or working remotely. Possibly getting 600/week in unemployment, it may even have been an effective raise. We now know the panic around covid was largely just that.
No. No we don’t.
Ten Million commies in the US - lol - if only.
Flaunting your Dick Cheney endorsement isn’t being insufficiently left. Its political suicide.The lesson for Democrats is surely that after years and years of telling anyone they could find that had concerns about society “oh you must be a literal Nazi, cope harder la la la la whoop whoop air high fives and fist bumps that’s roiiight ma BOI!” at some point these people are going to turn around and say “well ok then, I just won’t vote for you because you have nothing to offer me”.
I’m not saying the Republican party has done this any better, but surely insulting potential voters en masse and refusing to understand their concerns isn’t a sensible way to win elections. I didn’t work for Hilary either, and it hasn’t worked for Harris.
Yeah, the disconnect you also felt here when you said that Biden is clearly suffering dementia was crazy. People just deluded themselves and gaslit like crazy instead of acknowledging that Bidens mental health was not up for another 4 years of presidency. And this topic alone dragged on for months, until Biden failed the candidate debate so badly, even the billionaire donors got cold feet. But again it was the billionaire donors who pushed for Biden to drop out, not the concerns of the normal people. The DNC has effectively immunized against the voices of the people. And with all the talk about Trump bringing the end to Democracy, the Reps held proper primaries every cycle.
Look, the Democrats have to own this loss, for once, like they should have last time. It is clearly insufficient to try and frighten democratic supporters with a probability of fascism which we’ve never experienced before. It is clearly insufficient to abandon the working class as they have for so long. We should never fund or promote far right candidates in primaries. The media should not provide free coverage for outrage candidates to drive viewershop. It is clearly a mistake to try and court conservative voters, because hardly any have ever crossed over. It was certainly a mistake for Biden to run again, and then to drop out so late, far too late to have a primary.
Maybe the fact she is a minority woman turned people off. I don’t know. It’s a stupid reason not to run women, but that possibility exists.
But it damn sure isn’t the only reason we lost.
Ok. First. Those votes were not, like, commies or something. Communists broadly (but not universally ) have no faith in electoral politics beyond the ability to demonstrate how useless electoral politics are for the kinds of change they see as required. The missing votes are likely non-explicitly-ideological Americans, and the disenfranchised left wing of the Democrat coalition, who are not revolutionary socialists - they are better described as social democrats. And why so many of them voted for Biden was, at least in significant part three things that you’re pretending don’t exist with this meme.
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Tremendous dislike of Trump… which is actually still true, but he was not currently the president during this election. Trump had just spent the last few months massively fucking up the pandemic response very publicly and got covid immediately prior to the election, which made him look stupid and incompetent.
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Because of COVID policies, voting had literally never been easier. Shit loads of people voted early because it was universally available. Led to highest turnout ever.
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A competitive democratic primary process meant that we had a candidate selection process people could believe in to some degree. Brenie and Biden ran, and Biden won. Bernie voters saw that, looked at the situation and said “This is tolerable because we had a real process, and we can accept Biden as a stop gap under the conditions of Trump needing to be removed, and Biden being a 1 term President”. It wasn’t 2016, where a significant portion of potential Democrat voters saw the DNC’s treatment of Bernie as unfair, and it wasn’t 2024 where Biden decided to run with no true Primary after the deal was “single term president”, then abruptly dropped out (good idea, shoulda done it 2 years earlier) and effectively appointed his successor by decree.
2020 was an anomaly, and as is true of 2020 in most data sets, using it as a comparison point requires many many qualifications, but Trump gained 40000 votes, Harris lost 10 million. Trump did not perform better, Harris lost voter enthusiasm, which hasn’t actually been on the Democrat’s side in presidential elections (which have more non-explicitly-ideological voters) since, like, Obama. It’s not even necessarily that she needed to be “more left”. It’s that she needed to reflect the public’s distrust of the political status quo and promise material gain for working people explicitly at the expense of someone else (Trump chose , for instance, immigrants and the democrats as the bad guys, but Harris could have chosen, say, rich fuckers like Musk) . She needed to be ready to rip up the floor boards, and she wasn’t even ready to say she’d break from fucking Biden (who is broadly unpopular) on policy.
I really, really wish y’all democrats would stop trying to purge your own party of any dissent, because y’all coming out of this with the right lesson will be the difference between a brief period of Republican control, or several elections cycles of Democrats being unviable as a party.
True. Thank you. It’s frustrating seeing the DNC shoot itself in the fucking foot to watch people on Lemmy start swinging on anyone but the people who made and executed the failure of a campaign strategy.
Hey everyone, when you see comments like this from a ““Leftist”” who only ever criticizes “The Dems” for right-wing victories, and never puts the responsibility on the actual, y’know, Trump supporters, that user is a MAGA supporter trying to divide the left and prevent the formulation of a broad antifascist coalition capable of changing the course the GOP has set.
These “non voters” did not actually sit out the election, they are trying to convince you to sit out the next one (or vote third party etc etc). Don’t fall for it! We are in this together.
Ugh. This is such a toxic attitude.
Dissent is a good thing. Criticizing yourself is necessary to prevent rot.
Claiming that anyone that disagrees with the party lines is a Russian or a Trump supporter is insane and smacks of McCarthyism.
But blaming the party and sitting out, or voting 3rd party, everyone knew would lead to Trump winning, just like it did. Not voting for Harris was a vote for Trump, and makes those people just as complicity in his being elected as the people that voted for him. Trying to rationalize it as “Dems need to run a better candidate/campaign/etc” is just cover for not wanting to take responsibility for allowing the man everyone left of the GOP knew was a bad idea, back into power (and with numbers that are going to feed his ego into fascist wet dreams).
Moral of my rant is this - criticism of the party is fine and should be allowed/encouraged, but trying to blame the party for millions of people handing Trump the presidency is a bad faith argument and should be called out as such each and every time. We are all adults, everyone knew the consequences, and we all made a choice. And people need to start owning that instead of blaming the DNC for not being their unicorn party able to 100% represent a **WAY ** more diverse set of ideals than Trumps singular ideology of hate/fear.
/rant
I’m very sick and tired of being punished by the DNC for not falling in line.
Like why did they not make Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire before Trump got into office? How could they have not seen that one coming? Everyone saw that happening apparently except for the DNC.
Same with codifying Roe v Wade. They had many opportunities to codify it and then they supply did not. Now it’s gone.
Same thing with running the oldest presidential candidate of all time. When people started calling for him to step down, the DNC acted like there was so contingency plan for an 80 candidate.
And then it was the same shit when they ran Harris. She was so unpopular in the last primary that she had to drop out before any votes were cast. Then they just skipped the primary and ran her as the candidate anyways. Then she lost.
The DNC acts absolutely hapless.
I think a great deal of the issue on the “left” is that being such a large coalition, with takes all over the place on many topics, is that we have a very hard time getting everyone to fall lockstep behind many things.
The right has no real platform, and thus can just use their wide propaganda network to just spread their new deflection of the day 24/7, and everyone in that network of lies does their part without question.
I watched a good video last night talking about how we need to build a network like the right has to spread the lefts talking points, our victories, and our goals. Because the current media landscape constantly bends themselves in knots to not offend the right instead of calling out their lies and bullshit for what it is. We need to stop giving the disinformation a platform outside of the Rights network.
This comment is arguing against points I did not make, and continuing to blame the antifascist coalition for the rise of fascism.
I wonder, what was the Democratic party wearing when they lost the election?
You could, possibly, potentially, consider that criticism is coming from a direction that outflanks you on leftism? And that it’s frustrated at the constant party/DC Beltway elitism clutching to neoliberalism during democratic apathy and distrust, and not you?
That’s the narrative they espouse, but if you think about it for more than a second, no rational antifascist would attack another antifascist when there are fascists around. It’s all about trying to divide a meaningful antifascist coalition.
Either you are with us, or you are against us
Where have I heard that before? 🤔
Division only occurs as people follow their rational self interest - enforcing orthodoxy and silencing dissent to protect the party that failed us all, will only perpetuate their poor performance electorally. People who cannot afford the luxury of blind fealty will go somewhere else - even if that person is a charlatan grifter who never delivers. You cannot defeat populism with more elitism.
If you interpret an ally trying to help as an attack? Clearly I can’t help you brother
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y’all don’t get it do you. It hasn’t sunk in yet.
Don’t worry, you’ll get there. Probably in about six months
Blue conservatives jerking themselves off over what trump will do to the people they dislike is so fucking god damn cringe.
Fuck First-past-the-post voting for making me have to be “allies” with you.
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I voted for Harris but if “you guys” were really responsible for loosing then we should have given “them” more representation. But hey, at least this way we don’t have to blame Zionists, transphobies, xenophobes, or misogynists. Right?
Say it then. We’re in the period of time where we must critically evaluate the failures of the political machine that delivered this. I’m trying my level best to provide detailed, informative assessment of what I’m seeing without resorting to vitriol or anger, both online and in real life. If you have additional details, provide them. This is the time for vigorous debate, and reassessment, and I see the Democrats as much more of allies than the Republicans, so if you, or any other liberal can get past the phase where you’re upset with the leftists who have broadly provided critical support for the Democratic coalliton, I welcome your input.
the leftists who have broadly provided critical support for the Democratic coalliton
have you not been on lemmy the last six months or are you just blind?
Oh I get it now. You’re saying that “there won’t be a next election”. Careful with the self fufulling prophecies. If you don’t want to succumb to that, I recommend getting involved locally. Whoever you trust electorally will need your help now to build a bulwark for 2026, and getting your hands dirty will help you get over the pessimism.
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The turnout was really high, the democrats main plan for this election was catering to the “moderate republicans” which backfired spectacularly (a smaller % of registered republicans voted for democrats than in 2020), left-wing was pretty much abandoned in the campaign… It’s a horror all around, and the democratic party only have themselves to blame for this blunder instead of trying to point fingers at literally everything (so far I’ve seen blame thrown on LGBTQ+, Biden, Kamala’s aides, left wing voters, etc).
Liberals are the best at pretending that nothing is their fault, ever. It’s always the fault of the leftists, a coincidence, or bad luck. Being liberal is like the art of being the most irresponsible you can be.
Alternative major candidate not left enough? I’ma let the extreme right win in that case, it is for everyone’s benefit!
It’s interesting that you think “Leftists” comprise tens of millions of votes. I’m flattered, but I don’t think enough people came to the last DSA meeting to make that the most likely possibility.
Most all of the terminally online voted. Nonvoters aren’t here arguing about politics on Lemmy. Leftists have been screaming for months that if the Dems don’t make improving the lives of the working class their main focus, people aren’t going to come out. I wish we had more political engagement too, but sarcastic comments about how people should be more strategic doesn’t seem to be a viable get out the vote strategy. Maybe we should try making people’s lives materially better.
I don’t understand the “we were to small to matter” argument I’ve been seeing. If that’s true, why on Earth would you expect to matter enough to move the Democratic platform, or to shape society after leftists “burn it all down” (whatever that means)?
You’re talking about two different numbers.
I’m not sure I said “we’re too small to matter”. But exit polls said that 10% of the electorate cared about Gaza. If everyone who abstained from voting due to Gaza had voted for Harris, she still would have lost.
But what I’m trying to tell you is that the issue is not communists, socialist, and anarchists. Agree with us or not but we are deeply involved in politics and extremely tuned in. (Compared to the average American. I think everyone on a political memes channel on Lemmy is at least paying attention. Everyone reading this is an outlier.)
Leftists tend to conflate leftist policies with “policies that help the working class”. I tend to think the latter is a subset of the former. Democrats need to get out and fight for the working class enough to excite people to come to the polls. It’s not leftists that you need to convince to vote, but the people working three jobs and still having trouble with rent who think that politics doesn’t really affect them. By the time you get that person out, Leftists will be over the moon for you.
I did not say anything about burning anything.
I don’t believe I am talking about two different numbers when I’m talking about the same voting bloc for both.
The “we” I used was probably misplaced, since I think you are making a distinction between your position and “leftists”, who are the people I’ve seen on Lemmy advocating for destroying the system.
I’m not sure I follow your point about political engagement, I don’t think I mentioned anything about that. I was commenting on the size of the group of third-party and non- voters. If that group wasn’t big enough to change the outcome, I just don’t see how they could be relevant at all.
I think we must be in agreement, though, since you suggest that Democrats need to better engage with the working class. Maybe we need a dedicated labor party, though without a more parliamentary system, the parties can’t really be single-issue in the US.
Sorry if I was unclear. I am a leftist. I care about Gaza. I understand that Gaza was not a winning issue.
I am making a distinction between people who vote third party or don’t vote to send a message and people who don’t vote out of apathy. The former group is small. I don’t think a foreign policy issue will usually swing an election.
I, for one, don’t believe that electoralism will solve our problems. I vote for harm reduction and on the off chance I’m wrong, and because our voices matter a bit more in down ballot races. I’d guess this is the most common position amongst people left of the Dems.
And Americans don’t get it. As a Canadian it’s insane watching these people who helped Trump by not voting, jump through hoops to try and justify and blame others for their lack of sense and duty
The vast majority of internet ““leftists”” are MAGA trolls trying to divide.
A McCarthyist says what?
