This is a weird meme. The Democrats actively tried to court suburban white voters and other traditionally right-Leaning demographics. They tried to peel Republicans off. The democrats never offered socialists a cup labeled "liberalism", they offered "moderate republicans" a cup labeled "Border Control and Bush era political icons" and they said "Bro. I already told you I will only ever vote for Republicans".
need this comment pinned to the top of .world for the next months
> Democrats: Run most leftist administration in the history of the country
> Democrats: Pass law after law and EO after EO that are a wishlist of progressive and leftist policies
> Democrats: Put officers from the most famous leftist movement in a century in high and visible positions of power in the government
> Leftists online: We never get anything by voting for Democrats they have betrayed us and move to the right constantly
TBH, it's long past time for the Democratic Party to actually start ignoring the fringe left and work for the American people.
Despite all the Biden administrations achievements, they still haven't addressed what the left has been asking for over the last decade.
Stop supporting the war in Gaza? Nah.
Single-payer healthcare system? Nuh uh.
Housing crisis relief? If you're good... maybe.
Courts and criminal justice reform? Lol.
Billionaire tax? Nope.
Livable minimum wage? Psh.
Legalize marijuana? Hah! No.
most leftist administration in the history of the country
That's hilarious
Lay of the mushrooms dude. Those are some serious hallucinations.
I want to live in your reality.
Hey why don't you explain to me how any of that benefits the American people and specifically how it would benefit one of these voters?
Because materially it doesn't.
Lmao. Yep. We're boned. lol.
If after doing fuckall about real shit like grocery prices and rent you clowns lost so bad that no republican has had such a mandate since Reagan in 1980 this is your response?
Yeah, we're cooked chat. Buy guns and dried beans. You're gonna need em.
You honestly think the US Democratic Party has any "fringe left" policy? ROFLMAO
I'd bet everything I own on your being from the United States. No other citizens are consistently this ignorant of political theory.
If that is really the path forward the y'all need to peel off
almost a sixthabout a tenth (Math is hard) of the Republican's Presidential election year voting base while simultaneously not losing any additional support on the social democratic left wing of their own party. I'm not sure that's realistic.
WHeRe iS tHe leFt uNiTy
Buried with all of the socialists and unions liberals have betrayed.
If you go further Left
Marxist-Leninists: “WhERe iS tHe leFt uNiTy?”
Buried with all the Anarchists and Trotskyists cold bloodedly murdered by Lenin and Stalin.
"Further" left is demonstrably incorrect on account of all the genocide, union busting, and heirarchy enforcement they did, but otherwise yes, also true.
Is that why you helped the fascist win? Cause that's a better option?
You Americans refuse to take personal responsibility for your lack of duty and apathy. And you really don't get it
My only hope is you morons stay where you are and reap what you sow, instead of coming to my country and infecting us with your toxicity
Who are you saying helped the fascists win? The democratic party courted war criminals like dick cheney, claimed that genocide must be carried out, and immediately insisted we run even further to the right after losing the election. Are these the ones you think are defending us from fascism? I suppose it's the leftists' fault for wanting to promote popular progressive policies instead of pretending everything is fine?
I would be interested in knowing which country you're from since the neoliberal-fascism tag team seems to be running globally and I would be interested in knowing where this isn't happening.
Yeah seriously, if there's a single thing we've learned from this whole election, is that the best thing for the left is to enforce absolute ideological purity!
We must not tolerate any unorthodoxy! Better to abstain than anything!
It's like you want to take this loss and make the lessons permanent...
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
- Emo Philips
You say that as if the DNCs campaign strategy wasn't to absolutely abandon the left and try to court "moderate republicans", which we very obviously just learned don't actually exist.
Apparently it wasn't so much that they don't exist, but that people are generally stupid and if inflation spikes during your term you're going to get the blame for it - even if your actions significantly limit inflation compared to the rest of the world.
Every government that was in power during the inflation rise and had an election this year lost voter share.
try to court "moderate republicans", which we very obviously just learned don't actually exist.
Exactly. For all their effort, all the campaigning with Liz Cheney, all the promises of Republicans in the cabinet, and all the war hawk endorsements, Harris lost votes with Republicans compared to Biden.
Republicans don't vote Democrat, stop running to the right to appease them. Democrats don't want to hear that shit either and you need them to show up to win, so how about courting their vote instead.
Enough. America is full of idiocy. Everywhere. This isn't a campaign issue it's an ignorance and bigotry issue.
...because taxing the rich, adding affordable daycare/child tax credits, a propose ban on price gouging, and other middle class incentives were abandoning the left...totes. The narrative that's being pushed here is pretty bullshit. Her platform was on point for the middle class and below.
Sure. She campaigned in battleground states, more than any where else....but that was strategic. And it makes sense at the time.
Everyone just keeps saying "she abandoned the left" without adding literally any examples of it.
The DNC fucked up by not holding primaries, but Harris ran a pretty damn good game.
I mean, the lessons are likely to be permanent, regardless. This might be the last few months of peace before the US turns into an authoritarian terror wasteland via project 2025. Hopefully it won’t, but all three branches of government have been compromised, which leaves little hope.
I love how anything outside of what the democratic party wants to do is labelled "ideological purity" even though democrats endlessly shriek at anyone who does not toe the democratic party line. Democrats had their way, again, and lost, again. How about we try something new instead of democrats constantly trying to appeal to fascists while pretending to be the only thing to stand against fascism?
It’s like you want to take this loss and make the lessons permanent…
Yep. They don't care what happens to workers or minorities. They just want to have someone to point their fingers at to blame for the world's problems - and what better way to get that than handing over all power to literal fascists?
It's like you want to take this loss and make the lessons permanent...
Yes. That’s the point. If they can’t have exactly what they want, then acceleration towards collapse is more desirable than comprise.
"I'm going to hurt you because they hurt me"
Fixed that second panel because there isn't even a pretense of respect
It's good to see the old socialism vs liberalism appear again after the US-election. Cycles are a bit out of order lately.
Genuinely clueless and wanting to understand here
What's the difference between liberalism and leftism? My understanding of them is very nebulous and there's a lot of overlap
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
In the US, socialism has historically been shunned and not represented in the political sphere, to the point that the right started using "liberal" derisively and associated the term with socialism. Internationally, the term retains more of its original meaning, for example, in the UK the "Liberal Democrats," are more like libertarians.
Liberals are generally conservative, meaning they support the status quo or gradual change. US "conservatives" are sometimes more accurately called reactionaries or regressives, because they don't just want to preserve the status quo but to actively roll back progress that has already been made.
Because leftism is a very broad term, it's difficult to define exactly what leftists believe in an uncontroversial way, but generally speaking leftists support radical change away from capitalism.
Liberalism is also quite a broad term, which on its own can only really be said to constitute a belief in "equal rights for everyone including the right to private property". The Liberal Democrats, for example, are so-called because they were formed from the merger of the (classically liberal) Liberal Party, and the Social Democratic Party. They are more like libertarians in the sense that they were broadly pro-market but less authoritarian than the tories, but their policy platform has always been more like something that would be described as social liberalism.
In my experience, the word liberal is generally not used so much in UK politics (outside of the name of the Lib Dems), but if someone self-described themselves as a liberal, I think it would be generally understood as socially liberal rather than libertarian.
The cause of the confusion:
Liberalism is the political project which gave us the 18th century liberal revolutions of for instance, the US and France. It centers invidivual freedoms like free speech, association, and the right to own and use private property without interference from the government. It can be seen as a reaction by the land owning middle classes of the 17th and 18th centuries to the power of divine right monarchs, and is the founding principal of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It centralizes human rationality and debate of ideas as means of finding true paths to the future.
Leftism is an umbrella term which holds a few groups in it (Most notably Social democrats, Communist Socialist, and Communist Anarchist ideologies). It can be traced back through history to many times and places, but modern forms of it originate in the utopian socialism of post-revolution France. Leftism promotes the primacy of human well being and equality (or at least more equally distributed material wealth) over property rights. Generally this takes the form of support for the abolition of class society (owner class vs worker class), belief in worker-centered policy, trade unionism, worker cooperativity, and internationalism... but again, it is a big umbrella, and there is a lot of deviation from this formula. In place of rationalism and debate of ideas, Leftism generally centers material conditions and material outcomes of policy.
Liberalism is a moral philosophy based on individual rights, liberty and equality - this is universally agreed apon terminology almost everywhere apart from here on Lemmy. Here for some reason people keep referring to classical capitalism as liberals like it's a historical discussion about the economic system of the 16th-18th centuries. We should really be using neoliberalism or libertarianism instead now days, because those are new words that evolved specifically to reduce confusion and refer to similar economic ideas but in modern context.
liberals tend to be democrats and support democrat views. leftists want something better and tend to vote democratic as there's not really a better option. liberals tend to be center, even center right, while leftists are actually on the left
Here you go: https://youtu.be/33p-8QHZpzY
It depends on the person. For some liberalism is capitalism and leftism is socialism. The real cut is for some any capitalism is liberalism and any socialism is communist. So folks who want managed capitalism (regulations) for like selling crap but want social safety nets (government run programs) for necessary things like education and healthcare. Whelp one side says they are way right liberalists (classical) capitalist facists and the other says they are way left radical communist facists. Those who embrace the centerism (not very central now due to the overton window) disagree but are usually willing to give one way or another to get close to what they want. In the us they are called democrats (sorta, again, overton window).
I don't understand the difference. What is this meme talking about?
Democrats and moderates are blaming leftists because they believe that because of their stances on Gaza and other issues that leftists didn't vote for them. They are unable to reflect on why they actually lost and don't realize the thousand plus issues with their own party so they are working overtime to try and shift the blame. They ran the most unappealing campaign since Clinton and independents didn't show up or actively voted against her.
"I like center-left policies"
"I like my policies further to the left"
"Aight let's fight and make sure as few people as possible vote"
Meanwhile, the conservatives are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yeah, the Bush/Gore race ended so poorly we never got a Democratic candidate that was left of center again.
That started with Bill Clinton who intentionally and very openly ran towards the right. Al Gore was more of the same.
This is why you idiots lost. Nobody was leftists enough for anyone and everyone was the enemy. Allies on the same side, instead of standing against fascism started calling each other Nazis. I've never seen so much bigotry, intolerance and even racism out of the left like I saw this election. And against each other! All cause we don't fully agree with each other.
Meanwhile the right was unified and laughing at you. Congrats, the American left proves to be stupider than Maga. The right will continue to be unified as the left splinters into micro groups who hate each other.
"Worker solidarity as long as the worker in question agrees with me about pretty much everything"
I don’t even think you can call them leftists at this point. Being a leftist is fundamentally about worker solidarity. This is something else entirely. It’s a purity spiral death cult!
The third panel should say "I prefer Trump to Harris"
Fucking too true.
Argued till I was blue in the face right here on Lemmy about sitting out and voting third party. The entire time I was thinking those who are fine with Trump must either be stupid or privileged so as not to be as affected by his bullshit.
You'll be blue in the face 'til the end of time, 'cuz you're still trying to blame the electorate for the failures of the party. Your conception of how voting works is so backwards you think that the party is owed the allegiance of the people rather than the people being owed the faithful representation of their interests regardless of who is in power.
"The Democrats can't fail, they can only be failed!" That's you. That's what you sound like.
