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I'm just gonna be blunt and accept the downvotes here:
All this "the Democrats failed because [blank]" arguments are just blame shifting. We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time. We all know what kind of threat Trump represents to the future of this country.
The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to take that threat seriously.
We all know what kind of threat Trump represents.
No we all most certainly don't. I can't tell you the number of conversations I have had with people on both sides of the political spectrum haven't heard of project 2025 or many of his policy proposals. The ones who have heard about them mostly don't seem to believe then.
The most common response to "watch out we're marching towards fascism" is always some variant of "This is America. It can't happen here"
Not really sure what more could be done to inform people of the dangers of Project 2025. Maybe repeating it ad nauseam caused people to tune it out or something?
There's always going to be a large majority of the population who is not informed about anything and just vote on vibes. Biden & Harris took a lot of the post-Covid economic heat that many countries are dealing with now, and isn't unique to the US or specific policies. That's causing bad vibes and rejection of incumbent leadership everywhere.
Yep.
The average person can't be bothered to do their civic duty and look up stats/facts in order to make educated decisions.. It's all about emotion. And we all know how people make good choices when emotional.
We're good and fucked. Hope everyone's ready.
Repeated ad nauseum? Only in the furthest left areas of the Internet did I hear it mentioned more than in passing. It was a very brief series of news posts. It came up in the debate, and he managed to brush it off as not being his. And everyone just let him get away with that answer.
Do you have any idea how many mailers I got about "stopping the liberal agenda"? If there had been as many, or any at all about P25, maybe people would've been appropriately concerned
Perhaps I'm just in an echo chamber? John Oliver spent a full half hour of his show outlining it all and that has 10M views on YT and an estimated half a million who watched it live. ^1^
And everyone just let him get away with that answer.
This is the most baffling thing, he can do every career suicide move and get away with it.
1 - https://ustvdb.com/networks/hbo/shows/last-week-tonight/
The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to not take that threat seriously.
But WHY?? This is the one thing I just can't wrap my head around. How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough?? Understand that I am trying to make sense of this election from an outsiders perspective. But it feels like I'm trying to uncover a magic trick.
How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough??
In a nutshell:
Bullshit.
I voted for Harris, but I understand why people gave up.
I have cancer, under Harris, I would have still had a struggle to afford my medications AND work at the same time. As it was, I was condemned to a life of poverty to afford my medications, choosing to not have a job so I could get the ACA to cover my $18k a month medications. Debating on whether I should be condemned to the poverty of disability or continue trying to find a way to work.
I will die under Trump, but for a lot of people, the prospect of just waiting and waiting for help that will never come? They got tired and were willing to watch it all burn because what's the fucking point if no one is coming to save you either way?
In a way, at least my death here will be swift instead of stressful-to-the-end-of-my-life-in-poverty. I can see why some people chose that. I'm 43 and I'm exhausted, I'm sure there's more who are even more exhausted than me, because cancer didn't hit me until I was 42 (I guess cancer is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything), and many many many people were suffering under similar issues far younger. So they just chose to abandon the Dems because the Dems abandoned them.
The Dems were busy trying to get WAR CRIMINAL Dick Cheney on their side like that matters to people who are struggling. They spent the election crowing about how good the economy was when it was realistically only good for the already obscenely wealthy. They told railroad unions to go fuck themselves, they don't get to strike (and then followed up with trains chemical bombing whole cities in derailments). They were willing to hand the Republicans literally everything they wanted in a border bill because FUCK them DREAMers, I guess.
They abandoned us and continue to abandon us, and I understand why people who have been abandoned don't show up to vote.
Honestly so few people actually gave a fuck about Palestine its a joke to bring up. It's not like anyone even knows who the fuck Rachel Corrie is, and if they cared about Palestine, they would be chanting her fucking name to this god damned day. American citizen murdered with a bulldozer so Israel could steal Palestinian land, over 20 years later and still no one gives a shit. Americans were never going to give a fuck about Gaza, they're all too god damned selfish.
I was excited when Harris first announced and started calling out Trump on his bullshit. Then she was non-committal in actually withholding arms from Israel due to their constantly violating the conditions of being sent those weapons. Then she said that burning a flag was unAmerican or something close enough. Then it went to the step of trying to appeal to Republican voters instead of trying to motivate undecided and apathetic voters, who are the people that helped Obama win with his campaign of hope and change.
I can completely understand someone who has given up because the Dems are just slow walking the decline, not actually improving anything. It is so fucking demoralizing that the Dems can't learn anything.
who are the people that helped Obama win with his campaign of hope and change.
They became the establishment that helped Hillary lose to Trump.
Obama had a winning message and he failed to follow through on a lot of it. It was about hope and more importantly CHANGE.
The change never came, and the candidates that came after never promised hope OR change. People stopped believing Democrats were offering either hope or change. Because they weren't, they were offering "don't rock the boat, it might upset the rich."
I mean, even Obama offered up RomneyCare instead of something more progressive. People got wise to that over time. It made them feel defeated.
Trump offered change, it's that simple. Most in this country are sadly too uneducated to really realize what his type of change means.
Democrats were too busy worrying about whether they could actually implement policy, so they tried to only make promises they could keep, and with Republicans obstructing everything they did, they stopped making real, useful promises to the electorate.
People loved Sanders whether he could make his agenda happen or not, case in point. Nobody likes a policy wonk telling them "no, wait longer."
Obama had a winning message and he failed to follow through on a lot of it. It was about hope and more importantly CHANGE.
Dems failed spectacularly by not getting rid of the filibuster when their supermajority had a couple dissenters. If they had actually followed through instead of letting Republicans obstruct when they had two houses and the oval office they could have shown that change and kept the momentum going. Well, if they actually sold their success, which they are also terrible at.
Instead they held onto their safety blanket that the Republicans neutered to stack the courts, and will absolutely throw out if they get the House too so they can pass all the terrible laws they want.
Dems screwed themselves.
Obama in his book says similar things about the filibuster. It's his major regret, not ending it when he had the chance so that he could've done more.
By that same logic...
People could ask why Kamala insisted on doubling down on support of a genocide knowing it was seriously hurting her chances to stop trump.
If voters always have to compromise and politicians can do what they want with no consequences...
That's how Republicans got stuck with trump.
Not having standards is not an effective way to fight fascism, especially when the alternative you're holding your nose for won't actually try to get rid of fascists because the only other option being fascist is the only reason they can win (sometimes).
Because as much as Palestine is supported on lemmy there's a lot of support for Israel within the party as well.
Part of what the Trump campaign did successfully was make both of those caucuses believe that Democrats can offer them nothing while Trump might offer them a solution.
In practice, I would be surprised if Palestine isn't leveled under the Trump administration with prejudice. Trump hasn't been particularly kind to Muslims from what I've seen.
How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough??
Because a bunch of whiny little bitches decided to become single issue voters.
"WAAAAAH, PALESTINE!!!"
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the guy that will allow Palestine to turn to dust becomes president.
"WAAAAAH, STOP GIVING MONEY TO UKRAINE!!!"
Fails to understand that we're doing that to keep our adversary from expanding their borders and threatening Europe/NATO.
"WAAAAAH, DEMOCRATS DIDN'T ENSHRINE ROE INTO LAW!!!"
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the party that literally repealed Roe controls all aspects of our government.
The real answer to your question is that Americans are STUUUUUUUUPID. Clinically stupid. Uneducated. Uninstersted in informing themselves responsibly. STUUUUUUUUUPID.
Which is why we'll suffer and are likely to be locked in to a long period of serious decline. Sucks to be us.
I think all three of those groups are in for a pretty bad wake up call regarding what their protest vote bought them...
Yes, thank you. Every generation "discovers" the Palestinian issue and then some act like its a new problem. And then some dumb-asses in America choose that as their hill to die on. To the point where they helped Trump get elected this time.
The Palestinians have been locked in a death embrace with Israel for 80 years and no amount of whining by privileged American protesters is going to change that. Do they really think that more river-to-the-sea terrorism is going to make the Israelis just give up and die? No, a two-state solution where all the Palestinians move to the West Bank and all the Israeli settlers move back to Israel is the only viable solution. Every generation eventually figures that out, too. Also, Gaza is finished this time. It was always a dumb idea to have two separate Palestinian enclaves.
It is down to the practical matter of separating the two sides and imposing a peace since apparently they can't do it for themselves. If that sounds harsh, it is almost certainly better for the Palestinians than letting the Israelis settle it the Roman way. And that is on the table now, since I'm sure we can all agree that Trump doesn't give a single shit on his golden toilet about the Palestinians.
Yup.
I don't want bad things to happen anywhere in the world, but the bottom line is we have our own shit to deal with and jeopardizing our own country by becoming a single issue voter over two countries in a neverending religious conflict on the other side of the planet is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
We're literally going to be in a state of decline for an unknown period of years now partially because we chose to place another country over our own by voting for the guy that made it clear he would allow that country to turn to dust.
It sounds stupid because it is, in fact, unbelievably stupid.
But WHY??
Because Dem voters have always needed something to vote for, voting against works for Republicans.
But there's significant brain differences between the two groups, what's effective for one isn't for the other
The problem is the "moderates" running the DNC think like Republicans, and part of that is a reduction in empathy that prevents them from understanding others think differently. They legitimately have no idea what went wrong right now, their brains can't comprehend another person's point of view.
So we've got two political parties ran by conservatives, it's just only one actually understands how their voters think. So they keep winning even with trump.
This is a very popular thought in the "leftist" and/or "progressive" space. However, what's your explanation for West Virginia?
I can't tell you how many people I've argued with that said "get rid of Manchin, run a real progressive."
https://web.archive.org/web/20240930203241/https://www.elliottforwv.com/issues/
Democrats are going to lose their Senate majority in no part because people decided it was better to harass Manchin into not running. Elliott is definitely much more progressive than Manchin ever was.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/west-virginia-senate-results
Elliott lost by a LANDSLIDE. How do you rationalize that? Shouldn't it have at least been close? Was he just not "progressive enough"?
Because Dem voters have always needed something to vote for, voting against works for Republicans.
Technically Republicans are voting for something when when they are voting to destroy the government. Their goal just happens to be destructive.
I kinda thought they would learn from Obama's success in promoting hope and change, but no, they are right back to trying to peel off Republican voters instead of motivating the unengaged voters like he did.
We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time
It's worse than that though. He and those around him literally told everyone for years what they were going to do to subvert the process. At the start of the election he said he already has all the votes he needs, before voting even ended anywhere he said this. He outright announced he'd already subverted it and nobody who can called it out.
This isn't blame shifting, it's pure gaslighting.
Yup.
You can blame the Democrat party all you want. Wasn't their fault. It was American voter's fault.
We are an unbelievably stupid electorate. And the suffering we're about to experience is no one's fault but our own. I'd like to say we'll learn from it. But we won't. Buckle up. We're about to embark on a long decline.
The entire point of a political campaign is to motivate voters to vote for the candidate...
If not enough people voted, then it's the fault of the campaign/candidate.
Like imagine if you sold cars, you could blame not selling on potential customers not wanting to buy a car, but your manager isn't going to listen when the other guy can still sell cars despite being a giant piece of shit.
You'll be called a bad salesperson.
And if you don't improve in almost a decade, it would be crazy to keep paying you to not sell cars.
The problem is we had a car salesperson selling us a genuinely nice comfortable, reliable, family car vs a car salesperson selling us a "sports car" from some unknown decade with a number of questionable but loudly expressed selling points we don't understand "IT'S GOT A TURBO BOOSTMAX 9000! THAT OTHER CAR DOESN'T HAVE THAT! IT MIGHT EVEN INTENTIONALLY KILL YOU WITH ITS SO CALLED SAFETY FEATURES" belittling us for even considering taking the family car.
... we bought the "sports car."
There is a point where the salesperson is not the one responsible and the buyer is just genuinely stupid.
Americans are dumb.
Democrats could have done a better job, no doubt about that. But it isn't their fault Americans are dumb and too lazy to inform themselves responsibly. The data is all there. It's freely available. Americans chose to vote based on feelings and allow themselves to be captured by propaganda instead of looking at the facts and they made a horribly uninformed decision.
No change in the Democrat's strategy changes that Americans are just plain dumb.
"All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" both advocated against new police accountability practices.
This is why I think Black Lives Matter should have just called itself the Police Accountability Movement, take the wind out of the racist sails, but everybody kept downvoting that suggestion.
Economically, Democratic policies favor poor and middle class people, which statistically makes up the majority of all white men. And there aren’t any policies that oppress white people or men the way that Republican policies oppress women or reduce support for all of the groups that Democratic policies help support.
In other words, unless you get off on the oppression of those groups, almost all white men are served by the Democratic party, even if they can’t find themselves on the list you shared.
“Black Lives Matter” was a response to black men and women being murdered by police at higher rates, of the news stories of those deaths being under-reported by comparison, and of the victims being blamed more than people of other races, particularly white people.
“All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” missed the point. It’s “Black Lives Matter, too.” If all lives mattered, people wouldn’t have needed to protest the killings of black people in the first place.
Imagine if you were at a restaurant and everyone around you got their order but you, so you said “Hey, I need my order.” If the server responded with “Yes, everyone needs their order” and walked off, that would be about the equivalent to saying “All Lives Matter.”
So, is there a parallel between thinking that white men should be pandered to and saying “White Lives Matter?” Absolutely.
Young white men are included under “Young People and Students.”
Old white men are included under “Seniors and Retirees
White straight able bodied men age 25-64 who are no longer students but have yet to retire, and a union doesn't exist in their industry (as far as they know)? Fuck 'em lol. Wait are they religious, rural, a business owner, or a veteran? No? Ok yeah fuck 'em!
White straight able bodied men age 25-64
25-36 is still “young” by their definition.
and a union doesn't exist in their industry (as far as they know)
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re working in if you’re interested in that industry having a union. Making unions more commonplace was part of the point. The second sentence in the Union Members and Families section reads “Democrats will make it easier for workers, public and private, to exercise their right to organize and join unions.”
But sure, if you don’t believe unions have value, this wouldn’t include you.
Fuck 'em lol. Wait are they religious, rural, a business owner, or a veteran? No? Ok yeah fuck 'em!
You and I must have different definitions of “fuck ‘em,” because I clearly said:
Economically, Democratic policies favor poor and middle class people, which statistically makes up the majority of all white men. And there aren’t any policies that oppress white people or men the way that Republican policies oppress women or reduce support for all of the groups that Democratic policies help support.
So sure, if you’re a white man with wealth that puts you in the top 1%, the Republican’s economic policies will be better for you. For the other 99% of white men - no. And for the specific issues called out in the original post linked (on Reddit):
Democrats need to work on their messaging, obviously (and the comments on the Reddit post touch on that), but the problem isn’t that their policies don’t help white men, because they obviously do.
Anti-incumbent voting is way up across the globe. People are pissed off about inflation (corporate greed) and they just knee-jerk "vote them out".
Please remember that most people don't pay attention to the details of economic policies or politics very much. They only get a general "vibe" from whatever bubbled media and bot content they consume. People have voted against their own interests for generations because of this phenomenon.
I'll never forget years ago when my father was listening to Rush Limbaugh and that asshole Rush said, "I understand my listeners are hard working people who are very busy and simply don't have the time to pay attention to these political things so that's why you can just get your information here, I will tell you what to think." Not an exact quote, but close enough. That type of thing has been going on for generations.
I think it’s less that young white men actively supported Trump because the Dems didn’t pander to them, and more that young, upper-middle class, suburban white men were altogether uninspired to vote because in either scenario, they wagered they’d be okay.
The lesson seems to be a very clear and unfortunate rebuke of women as presidential candidates, but very specifically black women, as Harris seems to have gotten even less support in this demographic than Clinton did. It’s shameful, but I believe that if Newsom had been the nominee and ran a near identical campaign, Israel and all, that he’d likely be president elect today.
The "All Lives Matter" retort wad nothing more than an attempt to dilute the issue of police brutality and wrongful killing of black people. That was it, nothing more.
Right wingers invent retorts to everything, even if it goes into extremism and silliness. Eating horse paste instead of getting a vaccine, drinking their own urine instead of getting medical care, destroying their own personal property as a protest against numerous companies for imaginary slights, nonsensical boycotts, and on and on.
The founder of the Proud Boys terrorist organization once shoved a butt plug up his own ass on video just to "own the libs."
I understand not being from here you aren't as familiar with these slogans and their context. Black Lives Matter as a movement is a movement against police violence that disproportionately impacts young men who are African Americans. Hispanic men and other minorities are also targeted by police, but to a lesser extent.
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-the-data-shows-about-police-use-of-force-by-race/
So the slogan Black Lives Matter is a specific condemnation of this situation. Black lives are disproportionately fucked up by police violence, they matter, ergo we need to do something about police violence.
All lives matter as a phrase, wasn't used as a slogan or anything until after Black Lives Matter. It exists almost entirely in the context of Black Lives Matter, and is used almost exclusively to advocate against reforming the police and lowering the use of force against Black Americans. Its sole purpose is to try and discredit the motives of people advocating for less police violence in Black communities, by implying that by singling out Black lives is not ethically correct. The police act as though Black lives don't matter, so by responding to that by saying All Lives Matter, all you are doing is trying to paper over the problem.
With those explanations out of the way, I think that Dems should not be saying All Lives Matter. It may work better among young white men, but you do so by ignoring a very real and dangerous aspect of the problem. If the Dems want to reach those young white men, I think the answer isn't to water down the existing slogans, but to add legs of the platform to address separate issues.
Show young men how police corruption fucks their lives too. I remember growing up hearing how much worse ticketing and traffic stops are for young men, so that could be a way to push back. Police will do violence to your black friends, and on top of that they issue tickets to men at almost twice the rate they do to women. If that isn't an in to get young men on board with police reform I don't know what could be.
Please don't take that as me saying women have it easier in traffic stops. Cops are horrible, and when cops are sexual predators they are just as dangerous as other predators but alsoalso have state authority to abuse. There have been stories of cops using police databases to stalk women and more, but that doesn't mean you can't bring up men's issues here too. Black lives matter, women need to be protected from cops abusing authority, and men shouldn't be unfairly burdened by traffic tickets. Dems need to learn to find those parts of the problems and speak to them because all three problems can be tackled together.
Yes. It's a very wrong perspective.
So let me break it down, and I'm not trying to be alienating or picking a side in the arguments of sex, gender, or color.
In the US, at least, it's very close enough to say that it's a half split on biologically born male and female.
Around 25% of those people identify to associate with the LGBTQIA+ group.
Around 32% of Americans are black
19% are Hispanic
7% are asian
And I'm adding this for effect: 58% are european
Now! If we look at the multiple demographic and ethnic ideas and peoples, then we see a different perspective, idea, and solutions.
I didn't even mention religious or political ideologies, which would make the breakdown even deeper.
My point is that "who we fight for" is not a thing that we can identify with our eyes anymore. We should fight for affection and life. The hardest part is seeing people oppose what looks like who we/what concern ourselves with. That should tell you that not everyone who looks like the person who opposes you might not be your enemy. We have seen what happens when fear and hate control our emotions. Yet very few people want to do anything about it
Well.......yes and no.
Yes there was a point, but that wasn't the correct time to complain about that problem. It's silly to me to try to compare police violence against white lives vs black lives. There is a biased based on facts. Black Lives Matter highlighted this difference, but people argued 'against' the message with a bad faith argument of 'All Lives Matter'. The whole point was black lives are being killed more often than they should be, so black lives matter, also. Not that the are the only lives that matter. To paraphrase Michael Che, if you see someone with a 9/11 never forget shirt just say "excuse me, but all buildings matter."
Dem outreach to whites or white youth is a different topic from police reform. It should be anyway.
You might be on to something in the sense that coming back with a more inclusive response is a better approach. I don't think that makes them "right" though.
Anyone concerned with whether the democrats "who we serve" page mentioned men specifically was unlikely to vote for a woman of color anyway.
No, it means that people really want there to have been a point to the All Lives Matter movement
I think that there's not just one reason we can list as why she lost. It's complicated. The young white male demographic specifically, voted primarily Republican - which makes sense given that they're being marketed to by republicans (think people like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, people like that). I almost didn't vote for her over Gaza - and I'm sure a lot of people didn't vote over Gaza. In regards to "All Lives Matter", I don't think so. I never got the impression that that "movement" was really about saying "Not just black people matter!", it was about being an opposing statement to the BLM movement. The words "Black Lives Matter" do not say that other people don't matter - and the movement is about police violence against black people. "All Lives Matter" was made to deny the recognition that this racial violence happens. I've seen it used a lot to defend police (and let's be honest it has ties to the whole "Blue Lives Matter" thing).