Heaven forbid we try running charismatic candidates like Obama and Bill...
Like, it's insane to me that everyone seems to be aware of what wins elections, but the people running the Dem party just keep insisting we need to shut up and vote for someone very few people actually want.
Like, we can't do this without the voters, they're the irreplaceable part.
We can get different people to run the party, or just coalesce around another.
Democrats need to fall in love. Republicans just need to fall in line.
It's like you read the meme and went yep, totally their fault. I'm ok with my life gets shittier until I fall in love with a politician. It's not my fault. I am owed this.
Is there a term for the political version of an incel?
Yes. It's called a political agitator.
This user canvases lemmy threads with anti Biden and anti Dem strawman arguments completely out of context of the thread. Every thread calling out Republicans for bullshit, this user is there never acknowledging how terrible the GOP is, and going straight into anti dem whataboutism.
Just look at the sheer number of comments this user posts daily. And search the mod logs for deleted comments on this user.
If they're not being paid to disenfranchise progressive voters into abstaining from this election, they should look for a sponsor because they're working for free.
Like. lets talk about what happened.
it's reasonable to claim that Gore actually won in 2000. There were sixty one thousand votes that had not been machine-counted because of rampant, clearly partisan, bullshit reasons (among them "hanging chad",). the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual count of those ballots with SCOTUS, lead by Scalia, decided to stay because the recount would give Bush a veneer of "illegitimacy". (gee. wonder why, ya fucking partisan hack.) To be perfectly clear, Gore lost Florida (and the electoral college) by 570 votes. The decision in Bush V. Gore to stay the manual recount basically handed Bush the win. (and, I might add, cast doubt on the legitimacy of bush's win. it was handed by a court that had no business ordering that stay. But did anyway, because they're partisan hacks. I'm not angry, honest.)
Kerry flip-flopped more than a fish out of water, making it hard for independents and centrists to know what his positions actually were. 2 years prior to the election he was, for example, staunchly against gay marriage (and lets be honest, the US was very hostile to gay marriage then. There's been a massive sea change in that, but it hadn't happened yet.), but in 2004 signed a letter urging Massachusetts to not outlaw gay marriage. Further, he had the personality of a cold fish. and his running mate was an empty suit with nothing to back it up- who couldn't even deliver his home State of North Carolina.... In short, you had a couple warm bodies running. At the time, Bush was still riding high off 9/11 and the Iraq war and americans were still angry at that; the war wasn't unpopular yet. Katrina hadn't happened yet, and Bush was still reasonably popular. So, of fucking course Kerry lost.
Hillary. Where do we begin? her emails? lets start there.
Sure, "HeR EmAiLs" and "LoCk HeR uP" is an idiotic rallying cry of MAGA morons everywhere. But, even so, she conducted official Sec of State business on a personal email routinely. It's such a great rallying cry because it actually has some teeth. it should be scandalous. Even if she was perfectly not-at-all-corrupt, it looks that way. I- and most everyone else- would be legitimately fired for conducting that level of business off a personal email. it should be 100% unacceptable. Not saying she should have been locked up or grilled the way she was. But seriously. It looked bad. and it played in the news.
Then we got Benghazi. an American ambassador died in a terrorist attack. There's some things that hindsight says they could have done differently. Republicans latched onto it for political theater, with 10 different investigations and multiple sessions of grilling Clinton, who even then was the presumptive nominee to replace Obama. there was some funding that her office denied, she might not even have been aware that "she" denied it. Hindsight's a bitch. Anyhow... the republican shenanigans played well in the media.
Oh. "Super Criminals". Hillary was very unpopular with minority voters- particularly Black and Latinos. sound clips calling for law-and-order tough-on-crime calling black people "super criminals" didn't help. there was a lot there, especially with her attitude, but in the end they simply didn't show up for her. Even if you look at women voters, she under-performed compared to Obamma. (i mean, he looks mighty fine in a tan suit... sorry, sorry. couldn't resist.) Like, how unpopular do you have to be as a woman, to lose women voters from Obama's election, when you're running against Donald- "grab them by the pussy", "When you're that rich they let you do it", "Octopus-Arms" -Trump.
Lets also talk about how she boosted trump specifically because he was "a clown" or whatever. She gave us trump and then proceededly arrogantly not campaign in key states.
oh, and there's more that I just don't have time to get into... but we got Whitewater, Travelgate, filegate; and shit rolls down hill so lets toss in Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky scandals. Like there's a lot of smoke there, and there might be a couple fires, or maybe they're just really not that corrupt as people and it's all a big missunderstanding. but again, that plays in the media, and it looks bad. Hilary was the definition of The Establishment™️ running against an anti-establismhent candidate. Of fucking course she's gonna lose, and she really didn't help matters by fucking around with not campaigning in key swing states because, "naw, it's fucking trump".
Yup. so aside from Gore, there's really rather good reasons to have not liked them, and the DNC idiots thought they new better and ran them anyhow... and we got fucked because of it. blaming voters for your own stupid blunders seems to be a DNC favorite. And they're doing it again.
Right!?
Young and charismatic. That's all that is necessary for Dems to sweep elections. Proven time and time again. With a hearty message of progress and love.
It's that fucking simple.
(signed someone who ultimately voted for Hillary and Biden but they were far from my 1st preference in the primaries).
Edit: Typo.
Young and charismatic might mean higher taxes for the rich and more progressive policies.
The Democratic leadership doesn’t want that. They really like the neoliberal consensus, they like having funding parity with the Republicans. They like being seen as “very serious people “ and they’re deathly afraid of being called socialists.
The problem is that their apparatchiks all came of age, politically, in the 1990s under that same neoliberal golden age. That’s not the world they’re in anymore. They aren’t running against Bush the Elder, and cutting taxes while playing jazz isn’t going to cut it when they’re losing working class votes to fascists.
We saw this play out horribly in the UK: where Labour’s party leaders would rather sabotage their own leader because he was too progressive then risk him winning and give socialism credibility.
The political left really liked the 1990s, but it’s a bygo era and it isn’t coming back.
The last time the Democrats ran a progressive candidate allowed Nixon to sweep every state except a few in that election. I mean, just look at this shit!
So yeah, if anyone is wondering why the Democrats don't run progressive candidates, this is why! They've only moved further to the right since then. Expecting Democrats to run a progressive would likely sweep the whole nation blue, but if you thought tRump was bad, a progressive would be just as bad for monied interests, which have only grown more emboldened and enriched the last 40-45 years.
It will take a lot of time, I'm afraid, to undo the damage Republicans have have done with their shitty ideals and politics, starting largely with Reagan's racist, homophobic, anti-union, and regulation gutting bullshit!
It's not just the president, you need to vote for house of reps and Senate. Obama only had control for 2/8 years. In that time he got the ACA. The remaining 6 years of Obama the GOP were more than happy to block everything. They even shut down the government. If you need charisma to feed your emotions every 4 years, yeesh.
*Oh I caught on, it's the thiny veiled Biden bad, hinting he has no charisma and nobody wants to vote for him. "They just have to run someone else nudge nudge. Someone else to run the party wink wink." Nuts to that, Biden is doing great.
I get people want to fall in line at this point and I have and will vote for Biden, but your head is deep in the sand if you believe Biden's senility and lack of charisma isn't hurting him here. The only thing we're lucky on is that Donald is running again who is for all intents just as senile and far more deranged and far less compassionate.
But Biden doesn't hold a candle to Obama.
No!…it’s the voters who are wrong. Better blame theme some more, as that will surely boost our historically abysmal national voter turnout come November.
/s
You're totally right they should just put their hand inside the magical candidate bag where all the charismatic candidates are stored, say the magic formula, and pull one out. How stupid can they be!
We could try running a fair and open primary...
If we really want to focus on getting the most popular candidate with voters rather than the corporate favorite moderate...
Dems have complete control of their primary, they can get corporate money out of it at literally any second.
But they dont.
Because the people running the party don't want the candidate that voters are most likely to vote for. They want the candidate that will get the most donations from corporations and billionaires.
Lots of people keep trying to explain why if beating Republicans is the only thing that matters, everyone involved in the process should make choices that maximize the amount of votes that the Dem candidate gets.
However "moderates" keep insisting the wealthy and corporations gets what they want and everyone else need to support them unquestionably....
Which is already what the Republicans do.
So if both parties are catering to the rich and powerful...
Why not try giving the millions and millions of voters what they want and making the rich and powerful compromise?
Why do they always win no matter what?
Historically giving Dem voters a candidate they want translates to a Dem president.
Biden won by less than 100k.votes spread out between 3-5 battleground states. And has nowhere near his 2020 support. Probably because in 2020 he was pretending to be more left leaning.
And 2024 he's just ignoring anyone that's saying anything besides unadulterated praise.
I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary. And now we have an absolute joke of a Supreme Court that will suck every single nanoliter of jizz from the corporate dick any time day or night.
Blackstone wants democrats to win while Blackrock wants republicans to win. To corporations, the choice between biden and trump is like Coke vs Pepsi because they largely win either way even if they’re a bit disappointed they have to drink Pepsi when they wanted Coke.
I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary.
Oh my god you're so frustratingly close to realizing the truth that we've been telling you all along.
The corporations (and Putin) did sabotage the Democrats. But not by some bizarre overcomplicated plan of infiltrating of the DNC to send up moderate candidates who consistently win the popular vote yet are just unlikeable enough to not win swing states. They just used propaganda to get people like you to hate perfectly good candidates.
You can see controlled opposition in the Green party and RFK Jr. They put up shit candidates and then try to pull some people away from Democrats. If the corporations and Putin could infiltrate the Democratic party, they would just have the DNC close up shop and we would have Republicans forever. Why the fuck would corporations try to put up a candidate who wants to raise their taxes?
You're coming up with these insane scenarios because it's embarrassing to admit that you are one of the ones who fell for the propaganda, but think about it. Occams Razor. That's the simplest explanation.
When the other side are fascists openly running on a platform of doing fascists, needing to feel excited to fall in line and vote against them just makes you a fascist who thinks they can get bribes out of it.
No, DNC, you're not out of touch. It's the voters who are wrong.
That is really the best way to put my frustrations. IT IS NOT MY FAULT YOU DON'T LIKE ME, ITS YOURS. It is literally a popularity contest and you are worried about losing to a criminal. But sure, we are the crazies, not you. This country has never needed another party so bad.
Who’s the DNC? We need names. Also the voters, i guess?
Key people: Jaime Harrison (Chair) Chris Korge (Finance chair) Jason Rae (Secretary)
Taken from Wikipedia because who actually knows that shit
Not saying you shouldn't do the right thing when the choice is limited, but how about the DNC stops putting its finger on the scale for unpopular establishment candidates?
It's clear that the 'safe' choice can still lose, so why not go for the person the base actually likes instead of another centrist wet napkin who appeals to no one?
Because the DNC is conservative. They don't want a left leaning candidate. That's not who they intend to represent. They represent money. That is all. They will let the Republicans pull things to the extreme right and then they can hang out right of center and now there is no other choice.
Because the base likes centrist wet napkins. I'm not sure who you're picturing as the base democratic voter block but they're not exactly a bunch of radicals.
The DNC is bought by big money donors just like the RNC is. Those big money donors would rather see a fascist in charge than a socialist.
History repeats itself once again.
Reminds me of when the army tried to simplify uniforms by measuring a bunch of soldiers for data and making an average size medium, large, and small that ended up not fitting anyone well at at all.
People always trying to push Biden bad. This is the candidate that won. He is popular. This is what the base likes.
Everytime the Dems move left they lose. Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton. Bam lost the election. Thanks 3rd party voters. Hillary tried just a tiny little bit with the map room to fight climate change, after hopefully the population warmed up with Obama. Bam lost the election. Thanks protest no-voters!
Imagine what the landscape would be if they won. If you want the Dems to move left, you have to give them victories. Because when they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton.
Gore didn't lose. had a proper recount been done (including the overvotes,) Gore probably would have won. SCOTUS intervened and stopped recount of the undervotes and Gore never pushed for recounts of the overvotes (which should have been recounted anyhow by florida state law.)
They need the conservative voters in swing states. Do the Dems in swing states get excited about leftists or progressives? Like in 2016 Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. I wish Bernie had gotten to the general and I think the EC is a cancer. But I don't think going by popular vote is a viable strategy given that we have to deal with that reality.
That’s a great conversation to have the next time its relevant.
When will that be?
We couldn't primary Biden in 2024 if we wanted to. Even the unaligned votes that should be a symbol of "hey, you're not pleasing your base" were ignored. In 2028, they'll surely push K-hole as the safe choice because even if Trump dies, you know they'll put his head in a jar to run him again and clearly his only natural enemy is bland centre-right politics.
Biden's appeal wasn't that he was charismatic or brilliant or super-competent.. it was that he was a reasonably sincere, respectable human, and he's proceeded to squander that by failing to handle Gaza gracefully.
Don't tell me he can't do anything. Just run the same playbook we subjected Venezuela or Cuba to, and that would get Bibi's attention.
You mean now? The convention hasn't happened yet.
al gore won that election.
But it was stolen due to 5 hard right justices
Mmmm. Yeah.
Quit putting up shit candidates assholes!
Yeah seriously; this post sucks.
AOC for President with Biden as VP. It would destroy the Republicans... they'd have strokes within a few days. With Biden as VP all the boomers that actually like Biden will be onboard.
Yeah!
I just want to join in to remind everyone that multiple things can be true at the same time.
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The DNC/Biden can and should be doing better.
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We only have 2 options for president. It will be one of the two main candidates because that is how the system works. Don't pretend it doesn't. You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
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We should be pressuring Biden to do more about both Ukraine and Gaza. Ending both conflicts and getting aid to people.
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Choosing to vote for a 3rd party to protest Biden's response to Gaza/Israel is only going to help Trump in the short term. Yes, long term Biden and DNC may notice their total votes going down, but in the short term it will put Trump in the Whitehouse and now what? What did you accomplish if the DNC realizes they fucked up, but can't do anything about it because Trump is now a dictator?
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Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won't compromise on anything. That isn't how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn't happen in one election cycle.
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We should have been and should be campaigning and pushing for changes to our system so that we can have better options in the future. We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP). And voting in local level elections to make small changes across the country. Term limits. Campaign finance reforms. Etc etc. because until we get a new system we effectively can't just vote for who we want or it doesn't do anything more than a fart in a hurricane.
I see a lot of people who are saying they will not vote for Biden because the Gaza/Israel issue. Which I completely understand. But the two truths you have to accept in doing so is that you will not be complicit in the genocide. But you will be complicit if Trump wins. Both can be true. You decide which one you would rather see. If you don't want Trump then the only option is a vote for Biden. And until we reform our voting system we don't have viable 3rd parties and pretending we do is just delusional. Look at every election for the last hundred years and you will see enough proof. It's not ideal, but it is reality. **Accept it **so we can change it together.
I would add that there ARE things you can do to help stop the genocide, that are not refusing to vote. I absolutely believe that the demonstrations, protest votes, calls to congresspeople, and so on, are part of what’s behind the changes to the US’s Israel policy recently (sanctions on settlers, pause in the weapons shipments, stuff like that - that’s nowhere near enough and no excuse for Biden’s support for Israel during the “war” and before it, but also, nothing ANYWHERE near that has happened in 75 years of consistently war-criminal support by the US for Israel).
All that stuff makes a difference and can help stop the genocide. Refusing to vote does nothing to stop the genocide and risks putting someone in office who is much much worse (actively wants to kill more Palestinians.)
Oh Trump would accelerate the genocide.
He has already said that they're taking too long and the Gaza strip makes for great beachfront property.
With Biden, at least the Palestinians might get a country of their own.
With Trump? They'll be buried under the condos overlooked by the Trump Tower.
Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won’t compromise on anything. That isn’t how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn’t happen in one election cycle.
It took fifty years of consistent Evangelical support, along with their advantage of low population density, to get to a point where Roe was overturned.
Politics isn't slow: It's glacial.
Very well said!
We only have 2 options for president.
This kind of thinking is how you end up with only two options.
A third option emerges when enough people say "I am not voting for either of those two".
You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
Or, it means you're not okay with either.
We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP).
Canada has FPTP voting and still manages to have four federal political parties.
Australia has ranked ballots and effectively has a two-party system that hasn't changed in 80 years (though they do sometimes manage to get some independents elected to parliament)*.
I'm not saying the voting system is irrelevant. But the true obstacle to multi-party democracy is the fact that voters think in a polarized two-party way (that you are currently reinforcing).
* This is a description of Australia's House of Representives. Their Senate uses proportional representation, and does have more than two parties. And technically Australia has three political parties in the House of Representives, but two of them have been in a permanent coalition since 1946 and are often treated as a single entity, with the result that Australians consider themselves to have a two-party system.
You will be ok voting for genocide. Gotcha
I mean this in the kindest way possible:
Do you want to feel good about your choice or do you want your choice to make a small difference?
I want wars and genocides and murders and suffering and death and sickness to be minimal or zero. I want my fellow humans to be happy and healthy and thrive. I want my labor and work to be a positive thing for society and also benefit me fairly. I want to be a part of ensuring the ecosystem doesn't collapse. I want to learn from others and I want to be able to teach others. And I have a feeling you agree with me on those things.
But I also am approaching this from reality. And I am acknowledging that with our voting system as it is today, you can either vote for 1 of 2 candidates or you don't care who wins and are complicit with their choices the next 4 years. That is simply reality.
But I also agree with you that ideally we could vote for not-genocide. I want that so badly. But we have to have a viable means to do that first. So let's work together and push for a system where our voices can be heard and can make a difference. In the meantime I'd rather see Biden in office which gives us a chance for those things vs Trump which has said and demonstrated he will try to end it.
I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm trying to make the point of reality vs ideal. And we aren't at ideal yet, so we need to work toward it.
Not voting lets Trump do the genocide instead.
Voting is literally the least effective form of civil engagement.
But at least voting for Biden you're maybe not going to see project 2025 come to pass.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=op0yk50uMlQ
This is their plan if they win, it's in the open, and it's the end of Democracy in the United States.
Do you want to not vote? If you don't vote you might not ever vote again.
Even if you aren't lgbtq it's highly unlikely that you don't know someone who isn't. They will suffer first.
Know any women? They'll lose control over their bodies, thier periods monitored by the state
You like having sex? Don't like getter her pregnant though? Hope that you like pilling out because say goodbye to condoms. Actually that's a sin to spill your seed so you're going to jail for that too.
Say that you actually want to have a baby? Maybe you waited to do it, but now you're having trouble? Say goodbye to invitro fertilization. That's not God's way. If he wanted you to have a baby he would have made it happen. Clearly something is wrong with you. You're defective and must be bad.
Oh, you call God by a different name or don't believe? Sucks, you're going to need some corrective education. You Heathen!
It's literally good to be A Handmaid's Tale.
But stand by your principles. Maybe it won't happen here.
But what if it does?
When God Emperor Trump jails his enemies. Suspends the constitution. "Leader for life, I like the sound of that."
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Yeah, it's totally our fault the Dems have to see how far right they can possibly get away with. And they just "aren't for us" completely diminishes our issues. This is a problem created by the DNC, it is not created by the voters.
Donald Trump was the DNCs fault for running a centrist, dirty candidate. Not ours for not falling in love with her. Your fucking guilting us into voting for a turd sandwitch is bullshit. Stop sucking.
I have and will vote against Donald Trump, but I am not donating and making calls like I did for Bernie. Biden is a big pile of literally not Donald Trump, that's all he is.
The fact that you need grassroots help to win an election when you can easily represent a large majority of the voters by just representing the voters is your fault.
I preferred Bernie and was excited for that. But Hillary was winning primaries in swing states that actually matter, like AZ, NV, FL, OH. Are you certain blaming the DNC on that one isn't to some extent right-wing propaganda? Repubs know how to drive a wedge if they see a popular runner-up.
You may have been taught in school that democracy is an ideal system. But when you become an adult you learn the truth about it. It's not actually about getting the perfect person that everyone agrees with in power. Because that's impossible, people don't agree on anything.
Democracy is really about preventing the worst people from having power. You will never be voting for someone that you 100% agree with because that's impossible, no one agrees on everything. But it's your duty as a citizen to determine who is are the worst people on the ballot and determine which way to vote to either remove those people from power or prevent them from getting it. That's what democracy really is. Welcome to adulthood.
I am very likely older than you. And I don't "not 100%" agree with, It's more like Trump I agree with 0%, and Biden is like 0.2%. I refuse to believe that the founding fathers wanted two senile men that can't hold their shit babbling aimlessly on TV with an army of think tanks and billionaires behind them telling them what to say to manipulate the masses with the two party system. "Preventing the worst people"... they are both some of the worst people in American politics right now. One is actively a shitbag and the other is propped up by shitbags.
Maybe I should just accept the shitbags and be thankful I guess. Fall in line. I will fight the bullshit until someone does better or I die, whichevercomes first. I'm sure it will be the latter.
Democracy isn't about filtering candidates through one of only two viable parties that are both completely controlled by rich donors.
The Democrats could stop dropping out of primaries to back conservative cardboard cut outs.
But no, it's the voters who are wrong!
Cross reference the states the conservative cutouts are winning in the primaries with whether or not they are swing states and number of EC votes, then get back to us. In 2016, Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. What do you want to happen for that shit, bank it on states like WV (+42 R) suddenly flipping blue?
Because there isn't an overwhelming swarm of people voting for anyone who isn't Repub, the Dems have to chase the reliable voters, who are more conservative.
It is the voters who are wrong, by staying home election after election or throwing their votes in the trash instead of pushing against the sliding window.
I don't like the Dem choices but IDK what the fuck else they are supposed to do once the primaries start. Running the candidate who wins with Dem voters in swing states makes sense as a strategy.
Arizona is not a blue dog state. There is a large gap between a mostly progressive democrat party and a batshit insane republican party.
And it might also have to do with Idaho and South Carolina going first, with everyone else dropping out before super tuesday even happens. Most of the states don't even get a real choice.
Aren't you saying that voters are wrong voting for candidates you don't like?
More the Democrats that make-up the DNC who control the voting menu.
Take the case of Howard Dean. Destroyed electorally by the media in 2004, managed to become chair of the DNC, implements the 50 state strategy and Obama wins big.
Dean was the last Democrat marginally willing to adopt a winning strategy and he was destroyed for it. Democratic Speakers of the House, Party Majority Leader, Whips, Chiefs of Staff all vocally and vociferously against him.
He only won them Virginia which has been Blue(ish) since. He had the party do outreach in North Carolina and flipped it for Obama. His strategy even won INDIANA.
He is replaced with Tim Kaine.
No. I'm saying they don't even run the full primary. They drop out and back the party's favored candidate. It happened with Clinton and Biden. Voters aren't being given an actual choice unless you live in one of two states.
Yeah I never understood wanting to vote for the "guy I want to have a beer with" thing.
The guys I have beers with are nice enough and funny at times, but I sure as hell wouldn't want them running the country.
I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country. Someone I wouldn't want to have a beer with because all they ever talk about is their job.
Bernie Sanders over here, consistently battling for the working man, despite both parties doing everything in their power to ignore him.
ignore him
Not true, they shifted focus to him for a while so they could do everything in their power to kneecap and malign him when he had a plausible shot at giving them the presidency in 2016, and grabbing them support from a generation of young voters who were for the only time in their lives actually wholly excited to vote for somebody, anybody, who seemed like he might care about them and want to do great things with the awesome power of the American presidency.
He was the most popular politician in America for YEARS after they decided he wasn’t their guy, and is still more popular today than either Biden or Trump.
I want to put a sad emoji here, but I can’t actually find one that is sufficient to convey what I want to express about it
I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country
Me too. When will we nominate one of those?
I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country.
I actually think they do run most countries. Unfortunately they are scheming cowardly types without morals in addition to that.
Hillary lost cause Democrats sabotaged Bernie Sanders. Cry me a river liberals.
She did a pretty good job sabotaging herself by cleaving the party in two and then expecting everypne to just forget about the viturol thrown at the left the entire time
And thinking it was a good idea to have trump get air time
The entitlement of "it's her turn" after everything she has done just gave it all a stink. Honestly her campaign did more damage than the Republican one (MUH EMAILS)
Were they perfectly fair to him? No, they said mean things about him and gave Clinton some debate questions.
Did they sabotage him? Absolutely not. This narrative is pretty equivalent to the stupid baseless "they stole the election from trump!"
Did they sabotage him?
I don't know, mate. You can say that all the rules and such were followed, but just like any rigged system, playing by the rules doesn't mean that things are appropriate. The idea of superdelegates is fucked up. The way we let certain states 'spoil' the results and create inertia by voting at different times is fucked up. First past the post voting is fucked up.
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. You got the conservative justices because of the electoral college. And because Obama let Mitch McConnell steamroll him into “it’s too close to an election”.
Obama also backtracked from Freedom of Choice Act immediately after entering office, which was a significant blow to the effort of protecting abortion rights.
That's the Democrat's only gambit. Never make any progress and keep as much rights as possible contingent on the next election to try to force people into accepting lesser evils.
God Obama didn't "let" him. It was in the hands of the Senate and there was nothing Obama could do. Stuff like you posted is revisionist history, and for what purpose?
So if non-voters in ohio, wisconsin, utah, et. al. would have voted. Right?
What the fuck is this shit? Motherfucker, I lived through these elections, and this is some boomer revisionist bull shit.
Al Gore lost because he couldn't differentiate himself from god-damned George W Bush. He was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Kerry lost because he couldn't articulate his better vision for America, and was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Hillary lost because she didn't even try to reach out to the left base. She was too centrist to beat Donald Fucking Trump.
Three ostensibly intelligent leaders who lost their elections to fucking morons because they thought that they didn't need to try very hard to reach out to progressive voters.
Any one of them would have been a better President than what we got, but the fact that they all lost means they did something wrong. It isn't the fault of the voters demanding better, it's the fault of the party failing to meet the demand.
Al Gore
too centrist
I am fascinated to wonder who is upvoting this.
I mean, it’s true that the left base didn’t completely show up for him. Enough of them showed up that he won the popular vote and the electoral college, but if the vigorous activist left that was focused on WTO and GATT and other non electoral issues had been on the ground in the same way that Roger Stone’s machine was, they might have been able to stop Bush from stealing the election, and we might have had action on climate change back before it was too late, no global war on terror affecting hundreds of thousands of lives, no ISIS, no 2008 financial crash, and we might not have had all the failures to take US intelligence’s warnings seriously, that led to 9/11. Plus God knows what else actual forward progress.
Reframing “the US news media is so corrupted by propaganda that the average viewer can’t determine who is better between Gore and Bush, by a large enough margin to overcome a pretty blatant coup” as being all Gore’s fault somehow, is the most Lemmy-fake-leftist thing I’ve seen today, and I’ve seen someone praise the USSR’s justice system and someone else say that Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap.
“Too centrist”
Get the fuck out of here
You’re right about Hillary though, that part is true
“Too centrist”
You young ones won't know this, but Gore had a very different persona as Congressman and VP. Note that the only reason Clinton, a notorious draft-dodger, picked Gore as his running-mate was because of Gore's reputation as the top Pentagon-hawk. As well, Gore led centrist wing of the party that wanted to eliminate welfare and implement austerity measures.
People who say Gore would have kept us out of Iraq, or not done all the other dumb shit Bush did, don't seem to recall that politician Gore was complete polar opposite of post-political Gore we know today.
Man, I lived through it. Don't piss on my leg and call it rain. I followed Gore's campaign. I watched his debates. The man had splinters in his ass from riding fences. He picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate to prove how centrist he was.
Compared to modern Democrats, he's basically a communist, but 2000 was a heady time for progressives. We thought Bill Clinton was just the beginning, a transitional precursor to a new era of balanced budgets and human rights for all. But it was not to be.
Schrödinger's Left
Simultaneously stupid babies on the fringe who don't even warrant acknowledgement, AND the singular cause of every Democratic loss of the past 30 years - no adjustments to make, no lessons to learn, just blame the left and take 5 more steps right.
I mean... It's always Schrödinger's left. When we talk about "the left" it's always a constructed public. Whatever the speaker wants "the left" to encompass is in there. Like you talk to a conservative and "the left" encompasses a party like the Democrats, you talk to a democrat and Depending on the person they might consider themselves leftists or not depending. You talk to a Socialist and "the left" excludes the Democrats. The concept serves a purpose in each case. To create a body of condemnation, to create a nebulous scapegoat, to attempt to build (sometimes false) solidarity out of an incredibly fractured group, to establish an aspirational ingroup or out group... Or to self soothe that one's highly individualized take on politics is not alone.
It's a weakness in the flanks of the way we discuss these things. There's a holier than thou approach to claiming where on the political compass one sits and what is worthy of scorn. The Republican base doesn't seem to have that in the same measure which makes it more dangerous.
I don't think it's resolvable personally. Ditching the concept of claiming "the left" may be key to changing engagement styles to become less armchair criticism of a nebulous ill defined group... And more focused on actually tackling and pushing specific issues with more progressive non-partisan ship.
It's not that revisionist. I definitely remember "have a beer with him" being said.
In retrospect it was probably a phrase coined by the media to lure the lowest common denominator to GW. But it worked and it stuck.
Lin Manuel made a reference to this in "The election of 1800" in Hamilton:
Talk less! (Burr!)
Smile more! (Burr!)
Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for! (Burr!)
Shake hands with him! (Burr!)
Charm her! (Burr!)
It's 1800; ladies, tell your husbands, vote for Burr! (Burr!)I don't like Adams!
Well, he's gonna lose, that's just defeatist
And Jefferson?
In love with France!
Yeah, he's so elitist!
I like that Aaron Burr!
I can't believe we're here with him!
He seems approachable?
Like you could grab a beer with himI remember the "have a beer with him," too. But that wasn't why people voted for Bush instead of Gore. Conservatices voted for the conaervative candidate. Moderates split their vote because both sides the same. Progressives didn't vote, or voted for Nader, because they didn't have a candidate.
Surely some moderates voted for the guy they wanted to hang out, but that's not why Gore lost.
I think this election is a little different in that we have a known threat that is significantly worse than the alternative. It's not an exaggeration to say that Trump is a threat to democracy and to anyone that doesn't want to live under religious law as interpreted by the Republicans.
The other candidate is harm reduction presidentially personified. That is the best choice we actually have, and the consequences for disincentivizing left leaning or undecided voters is much worse than Bush, and that's saying something.
Vote against Christ flavored dictatorship, and encourage others to do the same. And not some impossible 3rd party bullshit.
There's been a flood of these type of memes lately trying to voter shame.
trying to voter shame.
Lol holy projection
flood of these type of memes
Well ranted, and I don’t disagree but it’s simply the case that voters not showing up gave us the shitshow we now have. It would have been very different, and you can blame the candidates but the fact is none of them are Jesus or Batman or whothefuckever is going to be all things to everyone.
And, at this point, after 2016, i do not give a single fuck about it. Get to the polls vote Biden and bitch after we’ve saved this country. Everyone gets a full three-and-a-half years to promote whatever their answer is, and if they don’t get it done by then, or have any other useful purpose, time to shut up and get to saving us from Idiot Handmaid’s Dream Reich.
This tweet or whatever - It’s not an academic treatise. It’s making the point that we can’t sit back again and let cheating fascist billionaire sycophants run away with it again. LIKE WE DID. Didn’t like Al Gore? Don’t care. Kerry too “stiff” for you? Shut the fuck up, we’re fighting goddamned war criminals. Hilary too - whatever - for you? Well no shit, me too but i’m voting for her anyway.
Be precious later. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW.
Right, and you and I are in complete agreement. I agree with the urgency and the overall goal. The only thing I don't like about this tweet is that it blames the voters. It's like the people who blame consumers for shopping at Walmart, driving small local businesses into bankruptcy. Or, you could go back to the classic fable of the scorpion and the frog.
People need to be motivated to vote. For me, voting against Trump is reason enough to show up. For other people, that isn't enough. And if you lived through Trump's presidency, and that wasn't enough to motivate you to show up to vote, this tweet isn't going to be any more persuasive.
The problem is not that the voters suck. The problem is that most people cannot see the world through the eyes of another person. Most people, the vast majority, are not dialed into politics. Most people are annoyed at politics. They don't see a correlation between the people in charge and their personal quality of life.
Are they wrong? Ignorant? Out of touch? Apathetic? Maybe all of the above. But that's who they are. You have to meet voters where they are. And if the voters aren't showing up for you, then that isn't their fault, it's yours. The leaders must lead, or they aren't worth voting for.
I desperately want Biden to win. I do not want to live in Trump's America again. But if we have another 4 years of Trump, it's because Biden and the Democrats are bad at their jobs. If you blame the voters, you may as well blame the tides for rising or the wind for blowing.
I voted for Nader, but only because Gore won my home state and I was still naive enough to think the DNC would get the message. I voted for Kerry and Hillary, but I didn't expect either of them to win.
Those one-liners don't come close to describing the reason voters rejected those candidates.
Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz backstabbing Bernie Sanders had to be a huge part of why people hated her.
Accuracy is not the goal, smug indignation is. You never have to examine your beliefs if you just blame someone else for the loss.
She won the most votes so not sure how much of a difference that actually made. The problem is our dog shit electoral system.
I'm not so sure the knee-jerk "most-votes" vs. "electoral system" is the problem.
One reason we produce so much food in The USA is that system, that gives heightened weight to agrarian areas that would be underrepresented in a straight democracy. We've seen many countries experience shortages because they've not properly understood the needs of the farmer, but not America.
Personally, I'd say the bigger problem is two PRIVATE ENTITIES (the Democrat and Republican parties) OWN all the political positions in our nation. That institutional bribery is legal (lobbying). That there is no incentive (other than goodwill) for those in power to change anything.
But you go ahead and believe a popular vote would fix things.
Well “those voters” made the country and the world much, much worse than it could have been. So fuck them. Thanks a lot “those voters”. Shitheads.
While you should vote for the best possible option, I feel like these kinds of posts are constantly shifting responsibility away from Democrats for their own short-comings.
A couple of weeks ago I voted in the European Parliament elections for the option that had, in my view, the best possible agenda: socially progressive, ecologist, economically left-leaning, decent foreign policy and coherent voting records. But the campaign they ran was absolutely terrible, starting by the candidate. Even though she is admittedly an accomplished woman who has had a very solid career, she doesn't know about the concept of charisma. She wasn't selected because she was the person who would perform the best in debates or in speeches (and she definitely wasn't), but rather, because she was an option that would provoke little conflict among the different factions of the coalition. That was the sign that the internal dynamics of the coalition had degenerated and were acting out of their own inertia, rather than seeking the best possible outcome.
Expectedly, we got about half the seats we were aiming for.
The very next day, the leader of the coalition resigned from that position. Even though she's a great minister (making policy), she's proven she isn't good at keeping the aparatus under control in order to achieve good results (doing politics). It's a painful process, but a necessary one where mistakes and short-comings must be admitted in order to grow into something more virtuous.
Having read US liberals for years, I grow more and more convinced that they're instinctively hostile to constructive criticism of their party's aparatus. And, when your country's voters declare themselves to agree far more with your party's policies than those of their direct opponent, and yet they can't bury their opponent into irrelevance, you have to admit that your party is doing electoralism wrong, and must question why.
It's Gerrymandering. That's the answer to the question: why?
TIL Dems are responsible for the EC, FPTP instead of proportional representation for Congress, the cap on number of representatives, gerrymandering, the decades of propaganda, Southern Strategy and so on. Thank you for informing me.
Yeah I ultimately do not like their choices. They have to run candidates who will win the swing states because a cult of rabid idiots who have more voting power per person than the rest of us consistently and reliably show up and vote entirely Repub from top to bottom of the ballot.
I mean, sure, fire the heads of the party and put new people in. Fuck 'em. But they aren't going to be able to win just by running candidates who appeal to the majority of the country, because the majority of the country's votes are diluted since they reside in densely populated cities. That's a sickening reality we all have to deal with.
Al gore got fucked and he should have been president
The same way Bernie got fucked by the DNC and would have won against trump if he had been the nominee
Hillary Clinton is at best centre right and was an absolutely horseshit choice, her only redeeming feature was she wasnt trump
Maybe democrats should actually be progressive and not all be owned by corporations and then people would go for them
A fucken men
Democrats should try changing their strategy since it's obviously not working.
Bernie would still win easily, but the Democrats would litterally watch the word burn before nominating a progressive.
At least gore had a chance until he got rat fucked by the Supreme Court and his opponents brothers state
They kind of did. Biden did a good job of shutting trump down instead of trying to have a normal debate like Hilary
I think it is working. I think the Democratic National Committee is happy with what they've accomplished. We can see their values from how their candidates have voted on major issues. Probably you and many of us think that their values suck, but that's a different issue.
It's "working" in that they are keeping the status quo going to the delight of their rich donors. Democrats would rather lose to fascists than give in to progressive policies.
The future is either Idiocracy or A Handmaid's Tale.
I was hedging my bets for Star Trek but I would settle for Firefly.
Rather Star Wars 20 to 0 BBY.
Which is quite similar to Firefly.
Idiocracy would be an optimistic variant, lots of positive idiots, killing each other mostly by incompetence, occasionally a plane falls from the sky.
IRL evil is not idiotic.
🍃
How do reivers clean their harpoons? They run them through the Wash.
I remember history different. I remember Gore losing the debates because he listened to his advisors. That was cringey.
But you think it's the voters who blew it every time. You even think minority voters in hardcore Red states blew it, which is quite absurd.
Maybe the candidates were shit? Maybe their policy positions sucked? Hmm. That might be relevant too.
Democrats always try to straddle the fence of keeping the status qou and slowly advancing civil rights and worker protection, all the while always protecting corporate interest.
Republicans give ZERO shits about civil rights or worker rights and are balls deep in corporate money, but they keep selling themselves by pushing culture wars and pretending to be "for the people" because "tax cuts"
The average voter is dumb as shit and swallows the Republican bullshit readily because it absolves them of any blame. It's always someone else's fault, the gays, the blacks the immigrants... There is always someone to blame.
So yea... We have two parties, one center right and one batshit crazy right.
Idiots seem to not understand that if you want politics to move more left you have to defeat the far right nut jobs, you aren't going to go left by refusing to vote democrat because they are not left enough for you. You need to put pressure on the Republicans so they have to move back towards the center, then Democrats will be forced to move more left.
But this is already too much text and nuance for the average voter so they'll keep screaming about both sides and "I'd like to have a beer with x..."
Literally more people voted for Gore than Bush. Not sure what you expect the voters to do when they vote and the court just chooses the other guy
Maybe their positions were ok and the massive proven amounts of dark money had an effect? Maybe the obvious and admitted attempt at interference was successful, as they’ve been crowing for years? Nah…must be bad messaging from the dems
An attack on the capitol in 2000 would have been legitimate and justified defense of the nation after watching a Repub SCOTUS decide an election for the Repubs.
Somehow, despite having a majority for only several months out of the last several decades, that is all the Dems' fault for not trying hard enough or whatever.
Therefore I (definitely not an accelerationist cosplaying as caring about leftism) could not possibly support anyone other than candidates certain to lose the election.
Change the Senate to population proportional seats and eliminate the electrical college. This country would change in a big way in a few years or less. Easier said than done though.
People still underestimate the damage the GWB presidency has done to the US' international standing and the living conditions of the average citizen. But sure, Gore was a huge bore with a giant stick up his arse.
I've never understood how so many voters could earnestly think that increasing the overall amount of condescension would ever actually net them more allies & supporters.
Al Gore would have stopped 9/11, preventing two massive land wars in the middle-east, and the subsequent hollowing out of the US middle class.
We would probably also not have a climate apocalypse to look forward to that will kill millions and displace billions.
Al Gore would have stopped 9/11
Kind of like how Clinton stopped the bombing in '93?
Gore’s presidency would have been a continuation of Clinton’s, who were aware of the threat potential posed by al-Qaeda. So if/when the now infamous Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US memo landed on his desk on August 6th, 2001 - or the even earlier “UBL [Usama Bin Laden] Threats Are Real" memos from months earlier; they would have been taken seriously and acted upon.
Instead Bush's response was to fob it off disinterestedly, saying: "All right. You've covered your ass"
So yes, learning from earlier failings - a theoretical Gore presidency would have taken these threats much more seriously, and could have prevented the thousands of deaths of 9/11, and tens of thousands of deaths in the subsequent wars.
Think how boring the world could be with Al Gore. US taking proper actions against climate change two decades ago.
You can't claim world wide pandemic followed by the world war three is boring.
I think the Great Recession was bound to happen regardless of who was in office, but everything else is correct.
Wasnt uh.. Werent' the rules rolled back under Clinton? Glass–Steagall . Yeah that was it. Glass–Steagall, which basically separated commercial and investment banking.
Depends. Someone could have seen the writing on the wall and said hey we gotta do something before this goes nuts. Gore strikes me that he would have listened.
Also Gore wouldn't have been so focused on Iraq and WMD and the chaos after.
How about the democrats actually run a candidate with just a modicum of character and integrity rather than threatening people into voting for them. It should be easy to win against someone like bush or trump and yet they are consistently close races. Thats on you democrats.
Democrats aren't threatening anyone. Explaining the reality of electoral politics is not a threat.
Recasting “you are in danger if you don’t do X” as someone threatening / coercing you into doing X, is one of those little skillful emotional reframings that I was talking about in my other comment. If you watch closely on Lemmy there are like 8-10 of them (all pointing in the direction of “don’t vote for Joe Biden”) that come up again and again.
This is a truly terrible take. If I run a restaurant, and it goes out of business, I don't get to blame my customers. If I ever want to run a successful restaurant, I have to look at my product, marketing, and service and figure out where I failed. If Biden loses, then the Dems need to look at where they failed; I'd start with the fact that they chose not to hold a primary when the majority of their own party didn't want Biden to be the candidate.
This is a bad analogy. This isn't like running a business. Voters don't have a lot of choice over the product, they just have their vote. We have two choices (effectively) and some will reject a candidate over a single issue when the consequences are much broader.
You're right, it's not a good analogy. In this country, voting is not mandatory, election day isn't a holiday, and in many states, mail-in voting is not available and polling locations are sparse. Voting is a hardship for many Americans, especially lower income Americans. This isn't like asking someone to go to a restaurant; going to a restaurant is easier and has more tangible benefits.
However, my core point is the same. The most basic function of a political party is to get votes and win elections. If the party can't do that, the failure lies with the party, not the voters.
Let's fix this analogy.
It's as if a town has the choice of having one restaurant and only one restaurant. We have one that meekly attempted to do right by their customers and fell short, or the other that actively tries to harm some of its customers (often your family and friends).
You only have those 2 choices. You can't get a different restaurant. You're forced to eat at the restaurant that is chosen, whether you helped choose it or not. And yes, you can blame the customers because they have literally only this option, and there is no better choice this time.
Let's fix your fixing of my analogy. Imagine the two restaurants you mentioned exist. Now imagine thinking the people who don't go out to eat are entitled.
And yeah, I know you're going to tell me that elections have consequences for everyone, whether they vote or not, but most people who don't vote don't see it that way. Sure, a small percentage of them are withholding their vote as a protest, but most of them are working class people that are barely getting by. They're not going waste what little free time they have voting for a candidate if they don't think it will help them. So stop trying to shame them into voting and give them something to vote for.
Politics isn't show biz.
...OK? Neither are restaurants.
But don't worry. We the people don't actually get to vote the new fucker in chief into office. We're too dumb. The electoral college composed of some random people who we don't know is the small group that actually gets to vote for the president. Our ballots are just suggestions.
ITT: “Yeah but it’s their job to ‘appeal’ to me; it’s not my job to vote for them, and I gotta say ‘not the end of democracy’ isn’t a big selling point for me tbh. Dance for me, candidate! Dance!”
Imagine politicians actually trying to get elected. How absurd would that be?
OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country
Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates
Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.
This is like saying that if you go to a restaurant, and the food tastes like shit, it's the customers' fault.
Holy Jesus is this a flawed analogy. I'll try to fix it for you:
If you go to a restaurant where for some reason every present customer votes for a cook out of a lineup of cooks who each only prepare certain dishes, and out of which only two are consistently popular enough to get the majority of customers to vote for them.
Out of these two, both let the manager pick the dishes. But one only makes meals out of tofu, which isn't terrible but not worth going out for, and the customers only vote for him because they're afraid it's the only choice that will beat the other guy. The other cook just scrapes and serves the sludge off the bottom of the stove but has run a successful decades-long campaign to convince their customers that sludge tastes better than tofu. None of those customers have ever tried tofu so they don't know better.
Despite the fact that it's obvious that the issue with this system is overwhelmingly the manager running a shitty restaurant and the cooks pitting the customers against each other, the small but vocal subset of customers who just want a steak are blaming the other customers like it's their fault.
"The candidate has done nothing to earn my vote, so I'm not voting for them."
"wtf why aren't people voting for the candidate I support?! They must just hate everyone and be a fascist since they can't see the obvious righteousness of my candidate"
These people never realize that this is a two way street. If candidates are going to earn votes, that means their candidate has to earn votes too and not just accept them for granted. They have to build bridges to achieve their goals. You can tell that those burning bridges don't actually care about their espoused virtues -- they just want to be right and stick it to their enemies.
Yeah. Plus the continuation of that conversation tends to go:
"Okay. He raised literally about a trillion dollars via corporate tax increases, which he then spent on climate change and working people, achieving incremental but quite significant results."
"Yeah but did he OVERTURN CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM? Because if not PROJECT 2025 BECOMES ALL THE DEMOCRATS FAULT"
Democracy is when your government holds your (and many others around the world) life, health, and welfare hostage.
Unpopular opinion: These smarmy hot takes do more harm than good.
Definitely, the more I see this shit the more I want to stay home and let them get what they deserve. But alas, I will be the one suffering, not them.
Hot take paradox alert
So the key to getting a better government is to lower our expectations.
Nope, something that terrifies many lefties far more. Forming coalitions and showing solidarity to actually win victories and a chance to govern. We can even call it the Sanders method.
Al Gote not only could not differentiate himself from GWB, he also had a wife who led a censorship campaign against artists.
slow clap
Where is the lie?
And btw, Obama gave his pick away. He thought he was gonna win.
Bush Vs. Gore was a supreme court decision. I get the point here but at some point if we don't get a better voting system we're playing with fire. The longer it takes democrats to realize we need ranked choice and proportional voting, the more they risk fascism running rampant.
I mean, we’re there already.
You got your GQP fascists on the right, and the so-helpful tankie/socialist newly-graduated on the left. If we can get rid of the EC lone it’d be a major miracle.
“Boring” “Unlikeable” “Stiff”
“Can sit down and have a beer with him” “Tells it like it is” “I like him ‘cause he’s not a politician”
I wouldn’t be too hard on the electorate, although I 100% agree with the problem description and that counter-educating them out of being duped by these framings is important. But they didn’t come up with the framings. There’s a whole ass science of how to resonate with people emotionally and produce behaviors you want, and professionals have been studying it for over a century now to sell toothpaste and beer and deodorant, and it works. It’s actually one of the primary focuses of hard scientific study in our society, much much more so than addressing climate change. And so, when they turned that whole machine in favor of particular candidates and against other candidates, it’s not surprising that it worked on a whole fuck of a lot of people.
Now let’s start to talk about how “I could NEVER vote for a genocide” and “Here comes the biggest election of our lifetime, just like every other one before that 🙄” fits into that framework…
I mean, idk if it’s really necessary to educate the voters out of being able to recognize demons wearing human skin.
Why not just run good candidates?
Tell me you've never had a lengthy conversation with someone who gets all their political news from Tiktok without telling me etc
You could literally nominate a chocolate milkshake or a dead squirrel and they wouldn't know the difference if they saw some meme videos that said chocolate milkshake is gonna lower gas prices
What a stupid fucking post. Like yeah, I'm voting for Biden. But the rest of that is bullshit. Remeber when we used to have primaries and people decided who would run? Yeah me neither, I guess that was before I was born.
Well thanks for crapping in it, i guess. We had primaries in 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2016 (which, I’ll give you, was indeed bullshit), and 2020. Are you three years old? You’ve got a masterful command of bitchful snark for someone so young.
https://www.thoughtco.com/political-party-definition-4285031
They rarely primary an incumbent, they usually win and all it does is damage the candidate for the general. However, the primaries are bs anyways, the DNC puts their hand on the scale
I am pretty sure it the GOP congress is how we wound up with those hard right judges.
Specifically a GOP Senate.
They have to get nominated first. Then, yes.
Love how it is always the voter's fault, it's not candidates or parties job to appeal to voters.
Preach. The DNC deserve their share of the blame, and berating voters for not wanting to vote for shit candidates (especially how the DNC sabotaged the likes of Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders).
Dubya was the result of GOP fuckery, but Trump was a self-inflicted wound.
I blame Dubya for a lot, but the Great Recession was caused by the housing bubble which was based on laws and practices that predated his presidency (partly Clinton's fault for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act). He did a shit job of handling it and leading recovery from it, but the event itself wasn't his fault.
I just keep reading ai gore...
Most democrats supported the Iraq war
Still voting Joe tho (who voted for the Iraq war btw)
In the senate, but not in the house.
Also, we can agree the DNC of yesteryear is (hopefully) gone. I haven’t seen a bunch of bloodless garbage about “better jobs” or what the fuck ever in awhile. Of course that’s in part because the “republiQan lite” approach was a goddamned disaster.
The Democrats will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Up against Trump the loser, they're pitting... a once-great retirement home escapee. Come on guys in a country of several hundred million people, surely you can do better than this.
Do you work in politics in any capacity? Pollworker? Volunteer? Donate to the party of your choice? Attended a meeting in the last five years?
No? Ah. Well. Yes. Ohhhhh - oh you’re not American. Right, right, well thanks for the insight, okay. Bye.
The USA is going to shit FAST bro
Don’t forget Reagan. Jimmy Carter, one of our best presidents and true nice guy, the only nuclear scientist, someone who truly wanted life to be better for all Americans, spent the rest of his life helping people ……. Wasn’t “likable”, but Reagan was. Maybe y’all better think about that when you want your candidate to be likable, to schmooze, to tell you what you want to hear, or to be a “Great Communicator”
Paying the Iranians to keep the hostages until the election really should have been the tip-off that these were bad people. Instead, the Dems spent forty years trying to copy them. DNC consultants are garbage.
Carter was a poor president, he may be a nice guy though.
Carter was more than a good guy, he tried to do good things, for good motivations, he tried to conscientiously fulfill his role for his constituents. We would all be much better off if we had followed President Carter four more years. But he wasn’t photogenic, wasn’t a great talker
Reagan was nicknamed “the Great Communicator” because he was photogenic and great at talking, influencing, redirecting. He made us want to follow him. We all know how that turned out.
It’s a mismatch of expectations: why do elect based on ability to talk, but then complain about the initiatives and actions? Are we getting stuck with exactly what we deserve? We’re doing it again: Trump is a talker who riles people up, gets them agitated to follow him regardless of the disaster they’re following him into. In 2016, the biggest complaint of Clinton was she was boring. I didn’t like her either but she would have been effective, she would have started initiatives all us Lemmings would whole-heartedly agree with. She would have made the country, even the world, a better place. So why do we vote on personality and talk if we want specific action and direction
I miss when Lemmy was a socialist platform. It's full of "vote blue no matter who" people now
I mean, voting blue no matter who is still in my best interest.
I hate it and it sucks, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
There's no contradiction there. Being socialist doesn't make you stupid
Unless
Hilary and Gore won the popular vote. Why don't Democrats ever do something about the blatant theft of votes from minorities instead or blaming their own base for getting their votes stolen.
Who do you think is doing anything about disenfranchised voters? Want to know?
Perfect people expect a perfect politician. Lots of perfect people out there. /s
Hey you stupid shit the radical right has FULL CONTROL OF ALL MAINSTREAM MEDIA. That:s because liberals gave it to them. How bout blame them for creating a nation of Nazis?
The fuck
Telecommunications Act, 1996
IDC about American politics,I just want to see AI gore in my feed
Uh . . .fair enough, then.
That's an i isn't it... not an L.
If by “rigged” you mean part of the constitution added to appease slaveholders, then, yes.
I dont see this changing anytime soon. 2024, trumps looking likely, US continues getting shittier. Maybe Biden wins, US continues getting shittier but slower. 2028, either trump running again, or trump jr, or desantis, another big threat of far right fascism leaving progressive voters feeling pressured once again to put pushing for reform on hold and holding their nose for a well connected "safe" centrist candidate.
Three steps right or 6 steps right, we're still moving right - and democrats have already made sure to close off all roads to applying any leftward force. Either we reward them for moving further right or we vote for someone who doesn't suck and they say "see we have to move further right."
TLDR we have a singular party and corpos gonna corpo
You do reform in between elections and during the primaries. Not during general election.
Yeah reforms not gonna happen inside a democrat primary.
Stop running shit candidates?
Every time Democratic candidates fail to appease progressives and every time they blame the voters. Sorry for having standards but I can not in good conscience vote for someone funding a genocide.
Bit you are helping the other genociders but not voting
Ok, well, put out more likable candidates that get votes then. Stop expecting people to vote for a candidate just because they "aren't the other guy." You want people to vote for your candidate? Stop cherry-picking the next anointed one and saying "here they are, vote for them!"
Goddamn. And Democrats wonder why people think they (we, since I'm registered as one) are so out-of-touch and condescending.
Do people in the US actually refrain from voting because their candidate is "boring"?
Yes. Elections in the US aren't really about convincing people to vote for you, it's about convincing the people that already like you to actually vote.
The number of undecided voters or those that actually vote both parties is basically irrelevant. It's all about getting as many people that support you to actually vote.
Ha! Yes. The usual voter participation in a given election is typically 40% or less.
What about TRON PAUL
Username . . checks out?
What's certain is that the children will be silent tonight
What an astute and hopefully eye-opening perspective.
More brain rot Liberal crap. DNC should run better candidate instead of blaming the people.
#Jill2024
Hey, want to restart this conversation? I’m interested to hear more about the nature of the justice system in the USSR, and now I’m pretty curious what is your assessment of the Ukraine war.
Yawn
If Jill makes you yawn, vote for Cornel West.
And that's why you're the problem. Just a vote blue even though they disappoint every year.
The moment Clinton announced Al Gore as his running mate he lost my vote. I was very familiar with Tipper Gore and the PMRC and had even read her book "Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society"*
There was no way I was going to vote for anyone remotely related to her to be in the White House. It was the first election I had participated in. I do not regret this vote because Clinton still became president and things didn't work out for various reasons.
- These days that book couldn't even get published. The page count was too small. You can't get a book that is less than 300 pages published anymore as a standalone thing through major publisher. This should make you question how much filler there is in current nonfiction books.
They can get excited for a candidate who's literally the living antithesis of their supposed values and yet Democrats not only have to be more popular but wildly so for electoral results that let them go anywhere meaningful.
Not even nominal trifecta control is evidently enough if even one dem thinks a procedural glitch caused by only repealing half a rule by accident, because somehow the cornfields get to hold everything hostage by just declaring "nah we're not done debating yet" and then just never letting it be discussed again.
It's frustrating beyond imagination and even worse it is all entirely by design with the intention of continuous disenfranchisement, against the young, against women, against people of color, and even past all them, against people who don't own their own land.
The establishment types and chrisnats drone on and on about how America is a shining city upon a hill, and in doing so have completely lost the plot. America should never accept that it is the city on the hill, it should forever be striving to be the city on the hill. We need to find a way together to break the walls down and rebuild the structure of this country to be one that is well and good capable enough of getting out of its own way to be able to seek constant and pro-active improvement to the model.
Living antithesis of Democratic values?
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy, leveraged the NLRB for an FTC ruling that eliminated non-compete agreements, forgave billions in student debt from predatory loans, created the CHIPS Act to improve reliance on domestic technology, reenacted Net Neutrality, repealed Title 42, ended the Muslim Ban, reinstated the law prohibiting Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory, signed the Equality Act for LGBTQ+ rights, restored gay rights to beneficiaries, reenacted trans care anti-discrimination law, signed the Respect for Marriage Act, enabled unspecified gender on US Passports, rejoined WHO, rescheduled marijuana, actively reducing drug costs with the American Rescue Plan Act…
I was referring to Trump.
He's literally a big city elite with multiple children by multiple women who openly flaunts his disregard for the institution of his own marriage, but the redcaps don't even blink at the thought of casting the ballot for him, because he's the candidate, and him losing means the other guy wins, and unlike Dems, they are actually able to care about "if our guy doesn't win the other guy will" by itself.
