I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don't, you weren't paying attention.
Plenty of us were critiquing Clinton's campaign on those merits and were consistently talked down to in shocker the same way we're being talked down to now. Shocker, she lost. I remember saying a few weeks before the election "We're about to get Brexited." I put my vote down for Clinton, because Trump is fucking insane, and that was clear before he was President. It was clear in the fucking 1980's.
Being able to critique our leaders is supposed to be what is the difference between us and conservative voters. They're the cult who unquestioningly believes all the bullshit that comes out of Trump's mouth and diapers. I find it weird that people think we should be more like them in regards to our leaders like that would be a good thing.
Ah, yes, the fallacy where the Republicans are the de facto winners and the election is only up to what the Democrats do.
I mean, yeah, they ran a mediocre campaign, but there is a difference between "critiquing our leaders" and literally campaigning against them, and leftist in general have a hard, hard, HARD time with that one. Critique is for when you're in power. You analize, you apply your newfound political power to create pressure, you postmortem what went wrong. Campaigns are for winning.
And every year we're told it's "not the time to critique the Democrats" because its "too close to an election."
Dude, I'm pushing fucking fifty and this has been every year of my fucking life with this "this is not the time for critique" shit. When is gonna be a good time to critique them? Because it sure fucking feels like the argument is never or this wouldn't have been going on since fucking Bill Clinton left the Presidency.
Okay, let's break it down.
How about first half of the Trump presidency, when the Democrats needed to regroup, take stock of just how badly they screwed up and plan how to never do that again? I'd say that was a good time.
How about the first half of the Biden presidency, when the Democrats could actually pass legislation and position themselves to brand the nature of their term? That was a good time. Happy to engage then.
I know it sucks to not have an alternative. I get it. But going after the only side that is even vaguely functional because you think you're holding "your guys" to account is not one of the set of options you have at the moment. Spend those good times to debate lobbying for deep, profound reform that unlocks the political system for more varied options, as opposed to making every election an existential choice between actual, explicit fascism and literally anything else.
Until you do that, these are your choices. Not liking the choices doesn't change that fact.
That's funny, because I was berated by people online for critiquing them at the time, too. Especially critiquing Clinton, how badly she ran her campaign, and how they had destroyed goodwill of progressives by putting their finger on the scale for Clinton. Sanders is a class act, and that's why he stood behind Clinton.
Sorry, but I was still being assaulted with "BERNIE BRO!!!" during this time period, so you can take this perspective and shove it.
It really would have been a great time for the party to consider what happened, but they were busy doubling down on it being the voters fault and doing anything they could to shift blame away from their own mistakes. They were literally arguing in court it was their right to go in back rooms to smoke cigars to choose the candidate... come on...
Literally I have been talked down to every year of my adult life about this, because every year its too close to a mid-term election or a Presidential election.
So you still didn't really address the elephant in the room which is progressives are never actually allowed to critique the party.
Your claims aren't believable
Man youre fucking triggered, huh?
??
This wasn't even the political climate during the 2016 election. It wasn't the political climate immediately after clinton
In fact I remember people being VERY harsh on democrats during the 2016 election.
And I remember being shat on for having those opinions? Sorry?
Again, by whom? I could say the same thing in different communities and some people would love it and others be enraged. I mean, criticize Trump in a conservative reddit sub in 2016 and you’d get instantly banned with a vulgar message from the mod.
MetaFilter is actually where a lot of DC DNC members have accounts and have for a long time. It's one of the places where you can get a good eye on actual professionals and what they're thinking.
This has been a problem on MeFi forever and continues to be, just check out thread on Jeff Sharlet's book The Undertow. Half of it is about how Chris Hedges must be a Russian shill, despite the same people loving Hedges during the Bush administration.
https://www.metafilter.com/202246/A-slow-civil-war
So yeah, people who actually work for the DNC at the national level, that's who. Along with every shitty redditor in every halfway political sub. And just peruse this thread (gestures wildly) for current examples, thanks.
...If they're a DNC heavy site, then go to a normal site. Even reddit is going to be more normal. It'd be like going to truth.social and trying to argue anything about Trump.
I've never heard of metafilter in all my life.
But I still checked the articles in 2016 (it has an archive) and it was definitely not the discussions we're having now.
edit: I don't see anything like that in the 2000 elections for bush either.
Knowing how MeFi works, I have a hard time believing you read all the political threads post-2000, post-2008 and post-2016 already. They're not neatly threaded like here, and many of them are hundreds of comments long, but sure, you "don't see any."
What you're more likely to see is a message from a MeFi admin "a couple comments removed" while usually leaving the stuff that impugns progressives in the thread, removing any pushback or discussion of pushback.
I'm literally on Lemmy right now, one of the most leftist sites on the internet, and I'm still dealing with this bullshit right now.
So I don't know where else you want me to go where I'm not overrun with it?
I'm starting to think the problem may just be you.
People are always heated for political discussions, but that was not the discussion back then.
It was literally the first election I voted in. It was mostly people making fun of trump/hillary. It was definitely not a "not the time" kindof discussion. The bleak discussion currently going on is semi-recent.
THIS. I feel this. If I could super-upvote, I would. The same argument is deployed towards anyone voting 3rd party. The argument that ranked choice voting is the solution to a lot of problems, is valid. But we are never going to get that either so long as we keep diligently voting for the less evil between two parties. Seems like "never" is the answer to the question of when a lot of imperative, necessary, vital change is going to happen.
Given this dynamic, I can understand how anyone who has been paying attention, becomes disillusioned with our system and votes immorally just to encourage some change, even if it's making things worse. I don't condone it, but I see it happening and I can understand why
After an election seems like a good time to discuss what to do differently next time.
Post 2016 I was absolutely berated for thinking to critique what went wrong but sure I don't remember what happened what is this gaslighting shit.
On reddit or something? I remember a fair bit of political reporting and opinion articles discussing how badly the Clinton campaign fucked up. You have a fair point that someone could have said this before she didn’t bother to go to Michigan and so on. Talking campaign strategy before it’s too late makes sense.
Sounds false