politics

Unfortunately where I'm from (the self centered shithead part of NY) moving to the right is EXACTLY what they want... I've had no shortage of people tell me they only voted for Kamala because she dropped the progressive stuff and was taking on Republicans in her cabinet. Of course the propagandists have done a wonderful job this cycle associating progressives with antisemitism so that did wonders for us too....

I think we just need to accept that America is a far right country and we're the miniscule minority that wants change... I was already depressed about the result but then hearing just how many selfish bootlickers are out there made it even worse.

abandon the Dem voter base.

I'm Ok with that at this point. The Dem voting base is just liberal Republicans at this point. It's time for something else.

Martin Luther King Jr identified this roadblock some 60 years ago: The White Moderate.

Particularly salient point, 53% of white women just voted for Trump.

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

[ I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. ]

American political lexicon is stunted (probably deliberately). I volunteered my time and donated my money for Bernie’s campaign, and prefer to go by “progressive” since it hits the main points and has an actual caucus in Congress.

The conservatives I know call me a liberal (if they’re feeling nice), but they also know it’s not accurate, they’re just trying to sow chaos on the left.

Next cycle

Bless your heart.

While I do think she has gone against the grain of the broken system and would be a great choice, thinking another woman and especially a woman is color will win over the racist misogynistic US populace, I think you'll be disappointed.

But who knows what will come of an actual fair primary if we even have elections in the future.

Let's keep it friendly and civil while the MAGA police is dragging you out of your apartment because you made fun of the orange emperor

We don't need a new party to begin with. Just start by going independent.

It's the same thing that we needed to be employed this election cycle, but at a larger scale. The Blue MAGA/ Any blue will do/ "Trump bad, you have to vote Blue" is the precise reason we lost this election, because the gave the did not ask anything of the candidate, which gave the candidate cover to not have to shift to more generally popular positions that would get them elected. Blue MAGA threw the opportunity, when Kamala was on a trajectory to be in the mid to high 50's in October, by effectively making the argument that we can't demand anything if this candidate because Trump is too great a threat. But the reality of that is that the demands laid down on a candidate serve the important function that they drag a candidate into more generally popular positions.

Kamala had no real economic plan, and when she said "I would do nothing differently", she's telling Americans, 60% of whom are living paycheck to paycheck, that this is what her policy is going to be.

So if we're going to blame voters for a failure this election cycle, we need to be clear that the voters to blame are the ones who accepted less and little, and who abused and defeated those who wanted the candidate to move on specific policy positions. It was rampant and structural on Lemmy, and I've heard that it was similarly bad on Reddit. Extremely biased moderation here turned communities like c/News, c/Political_Memes, and c/politics into echo chambers where any pushback against an obviously failing and now obviously failed political rhetoric was basically site sponsored. And that needs to be called out and addressed. It literally cost the Democrats this election, and some of the most prominent names in Lemmy were responsible for it. Now obviously Lemmy is tiny and the impact was microscopic, but the same pattern was repeated for much larger platforms like reddit.

It started a couple months before with a tiktok video that got basically repeated regarding "strategic voting". The problem, however, is that the strategy outlined is completely half baked. It doesn't actually work because it keeps candidates unaccountable for having to "go to where their voters are" and get their votes. The result is that the candidate is afforded the opportunity to maintain policy positions that are broadly unpopular because they don't think they need to move to get voters. It's not good strategy, and both 2016, and 2024 offer direct evidence for this, while 2020 offers the counterfactual (Biden did shift in policy, effectively handing over the platform to Bernie, and he gathered the necessary coalition of voters to win as a result).

Going independent is what Democratic voters needed to do in this election to force Kamala into more popular positions. She didn't feel the pressure to do so and lost in a frankly, almost unmitigated disaster of a campaign. And she was afforded the opportunity to do so by voters who demanded nothing for their votes. Going independent takes those votes of the table and makes it beyond clear that they are simply not yours to begin with.

Most people I know either obsessively filter and delete junk like this so their inbox is always empty, or they have 30k emails, all unread, and this'll just go in the pile.