Political Discussion and Commentary

Democratic strategist James Carville heavily criticized Kamala Harris' 2024 campaign, focusing on its extraordinary spending and potential financial mismanagement.

Key points include:

1. Campaign Spending: Harris' campaign reportedly spent $1.5 billion during its brief 15-week run, which Carville described as causing "almost unfathomable" damage to the Democratic brand.

2. Financial Controversies:

• The campaign spent $900,000 advertising on the Las Vegas Sphere
• Sources claim the campaign was $20 million in debt after the election (though the campaign denies this)
• A related super PAC, Future Forward, reportedly raised over $900 million

3. Carville's Recommendations:

• Called for a comprehensive audit of the campaign
• Wants to audit the campaign, Future Forward, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
• Expressed frustration about the lack of transparency regarding where the money was spent

4. Broader Impact: Carville suggested the campaign's financial practices have disillusioned Democratic fundraisers, who are now "burnt" and "really pissed."

The strategist is known for his work on Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

“That’s two and a half frickin’ billion dollars. Do you have any idea where this money went? Does anybody have any idea where that money went?” said Carville, while looping in his $1 billion figure to the reported $1.5 billion in spending.

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For years, Hezbollah told the Lebanese that it alone could defend them from Israel. It boasted of powerful weapons and hardened commandos who would unleash deadly “surprises” if war broke out. And it assured its followers that a regional alliance of militias supported by Iran would jump in to support it in battle.

Those myths have now been shattered.

Need a few additional mods to aid in occasionally removing posts or comments that violate the rules in the sidebar, mostly incivility.

As things are more likely to fall back to the states and local government, make sure yours is willing to fight for their rights. Don’t give in to despair. Grieving is natural, but don’t let it consume you completely. When you build back up that energy, put your fury into change

Power tends to flow upwards in the party over time. The local leaders tend to be flow into higher and higher office, so lets make the party's pool of people as progressive as we can

Some helpful links:

Run for Something, a group that supports progressives running for any downballot positions. They've helped elect around a thousand progressive into office

Where Can I Run?

No concern whatsoever for qualifications, only loyalty. The Empire is rising.

Who decides what policies the DNC chooses for their national platform? Obviously corporate donors effect the bottom line of the organization, but who are the power brokers internally at the DNC that make the decisions to create those policies that favor corporations over people?

This is their leadership team, but something tells me they're not the ones making the decisions to not advocate for Medicare for all, or other widely popular left wing policies.

I'm a bit confused why capitalists support Trump when he plans on doing stuff that I think would destroy the economy. Thinking of mass deportations and high, broad tarrifs.

I'm not sure if:

1. They just don't care because they have enough wealth to weather anything.
2. They don't think Trump will actually do these things.
3. They're dumb and think it won't hurt the economy.
4. They plan on trading wealth for more direct power. I.e. becoming oligarchs.
5. They have other ideologies (racism, Ayn Rand-ism, accelerationism, Dark Enlightenment, etc) that they prioritize higher than obtaining as much wealth as possible.

Or maybe some combination of the above, or something else entirely.

Edit: by "capitalists," I mean the "elite" like Musk and his other billionaire donors. But I guess it's a good question for smaller donors as well.

If you’re concerned about Trump’s nominations, the most impactful thing you can do is to reach out to your US Senators and voice your opposition. A large volume of brief phone calls do make a difference at strategic times. Immediately after a nomination announcement is one of those strategic times, because they are figuring out how/whether to respond publicly. Democracy must be fought for even after elections have ended.

Contacting Senators from both parties also matters right now. The prevailing message in the media is that Dems need to cater even more to Republicans to win the next election, they need to hear your voice if you disagree with that.

The most effective phone calls take less than a minute: say your name, your city or ZIP code, and what you support/oppose, maybe a sentence on why. You’ll be marked down on a spread sheet that is discussed at the daily office strategy meeting.

Other actions like brief emails, meeting in-person at the district office, meeting in-person at the DC office, can also be effective, but take more time and energy. Emails aren’t always read right away like a phone call must be answered for example. And you generally need to make an appointment for an in-person meeting.

Mass phone calls are a tactic used by the NRA and other powerful lobby groups. Getting a lot of their group’s members to voice their opinion is the key to their success…perhaps to the point of making an office fearful of the backlash via phone calls for going against them.

Relevant John Oliver segment

Find your Senators' contact info

"Secret" is tongue in cheek.

We know people flash the white power hand sign when having their picture taken, as if it isn't a racist dog whistle.

The Bloods have a hand sign. I'm impressed that one can spell the entire word with one's hands.

Jeep drivers have a cutesy hand wave that signals a common identity with other Jeep drivers.

AFAIK there's no hand sign that espouses the Eat The Rich sentiment. There's an opportunity to create something new where one doesn't yet exist.

If "Eat the Rich" produced a secret hand gesture, what would/should it look like?

I understand the argument of "This doesn't help; instead write to your congressman or volunteer to burp newborns." I get that, but this is independent of that.

This truly belongs in AskLemmy but their (justified) temporary ban on US politics seems to discourage this question.

1. I am not saying you shouldn't shame people for their voting choice as a demonstration of lack of critical thought or moral compass. You should.
2. I am not saying that all the political parties are equally guilty. I am obviously talking about Trump as the much greater evil of the available evils.
3. I am not saying that votes never count or have impact. They sometimes do.

All I really want to say is that blaming your friends and family for the election outcome is misguided and probably serves to benefit the political machine in its current form more than it serves to affect voter choice.

Am I the only one who thinks if the Democratic party couldn't win this election it's time for them to go the way of the Whigs? It seems obvious to me that this party has become a liability to this country and if they cared about it they would get out of the way and let a new party step up.

More of a recommendation, I suppose, but curious if anyone else has read & has thoughts on it.

I just sent this to Biden & Harris via the White House contact page https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/. I share in case you would like to add your voice and may find it helpful to have a pre-existing template to use or edit. Please feel free to share with others as you see fit.

Best, Atelopus-zeteki

I would like to add my voice in the call for a recount of the 2024 presidential election. I would also like to ask that you conduct a full investigation into tampering, interference, and fraud for this election.

· 32 bomb threats were called into democratic leaning polling places in swing states, causing them to be closed for extended periods of time on Election Day.

· At least one bomb threat was called into a vote counting center.

· Polling locations were closed while voters were still in line to vote.

· Multiple Ballot drop boxes were set on fire, in democratic leaning areas, losing thousands of ballots.

· Many voters reported not receiving mail in ballots, while districts apparently had not sent thousands of them.

· Hundreds of people in swing states are reporting that their votes have not been counted or even have never been received, though they were dropped off/mailed on time

· Some voters also reported instances of their outgoing mail not being picked up after placing their ballot in their mailbox.

· Voters also reported having their ballots invalidated for reasons such as invalid signatures, and given no chance to fix it.

We cannot allow election interference. Please order a recount as soon as possible.

The American people do not trust the results of this election. The people are concerned that there is outside interference – from foreign governments and from private corporations at least – in our election. We are concerned that this was not a free and fair election. We are concerned that we are being lied to and a dictator is trying to take over our government. I am begging you to do everything in your power to stop this from taking place. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

The ignorance displayed in their experiment at the end of this video is amazing. Just shows that everybody lies about everything.

Joe Rogan says that Elon Musk created an app that allowed him to know the election results hours before the results were announced.

Now is a great time for if I were there hypotheticals, so here's mine.

Once it was decided to run Harris and push Biden out, they should have gone all the way and used the 25th amendment to let Harris become president. This would have effectively separated her from Biden while still allowing her to take credit for the good stuff. She could have instructed the DOJ to start investigating price gouging now, and campaigned on needing to win to keep it up.

The 100ish days wouldn't have been enough for wholesale replacement, but it could have created a concrete message of this is where I want to go. A campaign focused on already delivering is a positive message people could get behind as well.

I sincerely don't know to what degree Trump and his crew may change the US, and by the looks of other countries, it could be as extreme as silencing the opposition by force. Are there any efforts to protect dissent? Can this be planned for and successfully fought back before it becomes a problem? Do you have a different view entirely?