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Democrats in denial over Trump defeat, voters say: ‘Haven’t learned the lessons’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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While that's true, choosing to vote for Trump, a third-party, or not at all is like saying, "I don't like this ham sandwich and I don't like my sandwich choices... so I'm going to eat this dog-turds-and-radioactive-glass-shards sandwich instead!"
This country is fucked.
Edit: Rather than respond below to every comment, thought I'd clarify a few things here.
Democrats have moved to the right, and hurt themselves doing so. That is true. But they are still objectively superior to Republicans in every conceivable way. People who voted Republican voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces party because they were angry about Democrats being imperfect, and their faces will be eaten.
You're missing the lesson too, ironically.
The voters didn't like what the Democrats were offering them, they wanted change, and they wanted it badly enough that they went ahead and ate that dog-turd-and-glass-sandwich.
You're saying "they shouldn't have eaten that, the sandwich the Democrats were offering was better." Okay, well, they did it anyway. So you're wrong. The Democrats were wrong. They've been wrong multiple times now. They're doing the "Am I so out of touch? No. It's the voters who are wrong." Meme.
America's a democracy. The voters aren't wrong, as much as you might personally disagree with their choice. If you want a different government you have to offer them one that they'll vote for. That may require some compromises, but that's part of democracy.
I hope that they get it this time. This is the second time in recent memory that they've made this mistake. Even Biden's election was closer than it should have been. I really hope that the DNC gets its head out of its ass and cleans house, but articles like this are disheartening.
I live in a deep blue state. Family is all very blue. They have learned absolutely nothing. They all think what the Democrats did was perfect. Kamala was flawless. She didn't get elected because America is racist AND sexist.
They genuinely believe that there was nothing they could have done to improve.
I think they are gonna have to learn this lesson a few more times before they pull their heads outta their ass finally. I hope.
And thinking like this is why the democrats are going to continue to lose, and minorities and women will continue to get fucked for it.
Democrats, it’s the economy, stupid.
It won't happen. Every election in the last 25 years, including midterms, where the democrats tried to play to "moderate republicans", they got wiped out.
and they keep trying to dislodge "sane" republicans because they'd rather maintain centralized power than risk a grass roots movement distributing power to the masses. dyed in the wool democrats prefer fascism to meaningful reform
Obama was amazingly effective at the ballot box, but to the established Democratic power structure he was dangerous. Luckily for them he merged himself into their structure rather than maintaining his separate power base and taking on individual in-party resistors like Trump has, but it was a warning about what could happen and they took that lesson to heart. They do not want anything resembling another Obama.
Yep, that's why Hillary was basically in control of the party via Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and how much the DNC effectively owed Clinton at that point.
People want to memory hole that aspect of it but it was 100% a response to the Obama presidency an attempt to grab a stranglehold on the party which she used to shut down Sanders and force her nomination. People often forget this is the same year the Republicans rejected Jeb Bush. America didn't want Bush v. Clinton again, and Trump and Sanders were the only voices offering anything different. Democrats shut down their nascent progressive wing, and Trump just steamrolled the Republicans because he's a fucking bully and those guys bend over and take it for bullies.
You have to conclude that they'd rather chase after "moderate Republicans" and lose than chase after the left and win.
This talking point is just so Democrats have an excuse to keep AOC out of the 2028 race in favor of some centrist turd barge.
The problem you (people blaming voters) don't seem to understand is, the Democrats moving right DIRECTLY demotivated voters and they stayed home because they were going to get right wing policy either way. They literally had no choice in multiple different avenues of how the country would be run so they said "fuck it if I got no choice for x y AND z, why vote?" maybe they still had a choice for a-w but maybe those specific policies didn't matter to them personally and wouldn't have affected their life.
This is A) the problem with having a shitty party platform and B) the problem with hyper-individualism that our country loves.
If only someone, or a group of like minded thinkers, had predicted this exact social course and offered another course that actually has ideological solutions for capital interests fucking over everything in their quest for more money and power!
I think a lot of the core of the Kamala base is just as out of touch as the Democratic establishment. The fact that the establishment can't understand this outcome just demonstrates their ineptitude.
People are hurting, a lot. Real wage growth has been stagnant, people are having trouble making ends meet, the wealthy are richer than ever leaving the working class with less and less.
What do the Democrats do to actually improve peoples material conditions? Absolutely nothing. The CHIPS act and IRA are great for longer term problems, but does nothing to put more food on people table. Kamala had the gall to ignore the problem all together. The economy is great, look at the stock market! And her big economic plan? Tax breaks for small businesses and your first home purchase. That's it. That's their fucking cornerstone economic policy. That's not gonna help the vast majority of people.
Then on the other hand you have trump. He tells everyone it's the brown peoples fault everything sucks, so we will get rid of them (and, by implication, your problems). It's their fault egg prices are high, just get rid of them and things will go back to the way things were. Of course the rich are the real problem, not immigrants or trans people or any other conservative boogie man, but Trump acknowledged the pain many working class Americans are under.
Now you can think to yourself, how would anyone believe that? Think about someone who's working two jobs to make ends meet, they're surrounded by Fox news, all their family is Republican. They were raised in the public education system (half the country can't read at a 6th grade level) and can't parse the details of domestic economic policy, but Trump says it's the brown peoples fault. Finally they felt seen and acknowledged. They remember the Trump stimulus checks. They remember the tax break (even if it's temporary, they won't look too closely and notice it's permeant for the rich).
You know how Democrats win? By bringing back the party of FDR and really championing the working class. Thanks to citizens united we will never see that again, but it's quite easy to understand their loss against trump. There's only one issue, and thats class conflict. Until the Democrats stop serving their corporate donors they will never win again as it's too easy for Republicans to acknowledge working class pain and scapegoat marginalized people.