The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own "base" than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
I think if you voted for Democrats you get to complain, but if you were eligible to vote and didn't have to jump through a ton of hoops to do so you don't get to complain. This could have been avoided.
edit: to be clear, I don't think Democratic leadership really cares that we've got a dictator. But voting for them was harm reduction and too many people couldn't be bothered, whatever the reason.
The people complaining hardest are the ones who called democrats genocidal fascists and refused to vote. This site was filled to the brim with anty Democrat posts at election time, now it’s filled with “why aren’t they doing anything??” Posts, it’s the same people
TBF I voted extra hard for Harris and I'm still wondering why Democrats are voting yes on Trumps cabinet picks and why an 83 year old Bernie Sanders is out drumming up the masses while Hakeem Jefferies tells Jon Stewart that we're all too stupid to know how amazing Democrats are.
ALSO, Democrats don't seem to give a shit about the genocide, including you. So IDK what the fuck you expect me to say. I voted for harm reduction because I knew exactly what Trump was going to do, but that doesn't mean I gave up all of my rights to complain about the shit job that Democrats do.
The voting system doesn't have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren't the democrats doing anything? Because they don't have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? "Vote for us... or else" is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it's all about preventing republican control, it wouldn't matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don't want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don't support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world's easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that "most important election ever" but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it's a long shot. But it's better then having no shot at all.
No, us non Americans watching also noticed this. Americans told democrats to eat shit and now they want them to be the saviours. It’s ridiculous when looking from the outside
This may be news to you, but all of the Democrats in Congress were elected to represent their constituents. That doesn't change whether they are in the majority, minority, or regardless of who is in the White House.
Yes, the amount of power they have is related to those things. But when Democrats talk about working with the current administration, that is an abdication of their duties.
Most of the members of Congress are extremely wealthy, Republican and Democrat alike. They're not doing anything about this coup consolidating capitalist class power because they stand to personally gain from it. They don't have to pretend to not have the votes to stop yet another grab at working class wallets because they can point at Elon and say "we have no power here."
There are certain people who never want to hear it, but very few national politicians give a shit about us, certainly not enough to make a difference. They're in it for personal gain, everything else is performative.
Realistically, it's the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of "We offer you nothing!", did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
Keep telling yourself the voters are morons until we lose in 2026 and 2028. If Democratic candidates don't convince people to come out and vote we are lost.
But that's the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn't do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.
Also, I don't think the Democrats are suffering. They're all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I've been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it's a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They've given unanimous consent to Trump's agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they're actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Democrats used every second of their allotted talking time to block Gaetz’s confirmation as much as they could while holding a minority. You genuinely need to look up the meaning of the word “unanimous”.
Republicans obstructed democrats for so long by preventing a majority. The American people enabled that by voting them in.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn't even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, "unanimous consent." It's a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It's one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump's agenda if they had the willpower.
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can't get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala... they were voting AGAINST Trump
As an old leftist i find that the young American left is hyper focused on punishing politicians based on things that should be, not based on how things are.
Yes it would be nice if the world was like you want it, but it isn’t. Voting the lesser of two evils is just how most of us around the world do it.
But an example is the whole car free/anti car thing,
Yes that would work if cities had adequate transit and service, but they don’t, and they won’t in my lifetime. It would be nice but it’s not going to happen, ever. So I may as well just vote for the candidates who fund transit instead of trying to find a candidate who is yelling about being anti car
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I'm leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can't say "oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN't 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!" Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
You're 100% right, but just a heads up, you absolutely will hear dems say that. Campaigning for a third party started long ago and you just joined in.
Dems will have no idea how long you've been supporting third-party candidates, and will only recall the discussions they hear while engaged - during election season.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren't a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.
However... there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn't win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won't be listing the republicans on my ballot)
So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that's on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
I'm not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don't really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won't typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don't really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic "leaders" asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn't do.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they're literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn't control every branch of government, but doesn't have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can't stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of "we aren't the Republicans" can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
They should like... Be politicians though. We get they can't pass legislation, but be fucking politicians.
Republicans out of the majority make you sniff their shit daily and are all over the news cycle. Democrats seem to think it's ok to just say they're concerned and send me fundraising emails.
Is the Democrat master plan to have a one party system? Everyone always and only vote Democrat, because if the other party of a two party system ever gets in to power we are screwed! It doesn't sound like a good plan.
You guys had a good idea with Ross Perot in 1992. Look into that (especially how he got 0 electoral college votes) and maybe you'll have a better idea of what you should be doing, instead of blaming each other.
Second highest turnout in history, but yeah, the non voters are the real issue here. Libs are so privileged they can't even imagine people living from paycheck to paycheck. "Just vote, you losing your job and becoming homeless is worth it for democracy".
Second highest voter turn out for a presidential election in US history.
Clearly its the voters fault.....
Also why in the broken nation is the assumption that if more people showed up they would have voted like you? I never got this concept. Please spend more effort being an opposition/resistance and less being poor losers.
It is pathetic that among high voter suppression (due to Republican motions) the Democrats blame the people for not voting, instead of blaming voter suppression, or any of the other decades worth of inaction by Democrats to foresee and prepare for this. They have a two party system, it's not like the Republicans were a complete surprise
Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).
Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to "pick a side" even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.
If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!
If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!
If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!
This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don't have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don't care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.
Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column....
it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.
Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:
Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!
In American politics, it doesn't matter who you vote for, you're still getting fucked! Like choosing a broom and a stick to get fucked with.
what needs to change is the way that voting work. Or at least people to vote for someone less embarassing than Harris and less facist than trump and a lot less in favor of the capitalists in general (Bernie my beloved).
Political parties are supposed to appeal to voters, not the other way around.
Will post this again since people still don’t get it:
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
This ignores a very important thing: The Republicans get their votes by lying their asses off to their base. I have no doubt the DNC has the money to pay enough people to figure out the perfect lie to tell every single person here to get their vote, but no one here wants that. Short of lies, they'd have to go with their original strategy: big tent compromise. And that's means hard left compromising with centrists, and we all know that won't happen.
So what's left? Abandon the middle? You'll just shift the non-voting demographic around.
Maybe if the far left could organize its own political movement, but that would require "the left" to operate as a unified group, which just by looking at all the infighting here, is obviously never going to happen.
So we have a left that won't compromise, a middle that isn't big enough to win an election, and a hard right party going full send on misinformation, voter suppression, etc.
And the largest group of eligible voters...doesn't.
Yeah, the answer here isn't "the DNC changing their shit", it's figuring out how to get people to give a shit about voting again.
The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It's not the left that's refusing to compromise.
And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party
No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.
There's no room for our system to allow a third party in. They'll just be crushed by the two other parties. It's a rigged system. Money wins. No other party will have the money to win state votes and keep them.
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the "shitty health care" you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it's not great healthcare, it's still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra "pro-life", which means abortion rights weren't gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let's not let facts get in the way of our outage or anything.
Beyond the statistical realities that Saleh mention, the general point about drop-off is also weird.
It implies that the GOP cheated, but declined to cheat in down ballot. This seems odd, if they had the will and capability to just change the votes, why would they skip the down ballot elections? Further another similar site pointed out the drop-off was uneven, that it was suspiciously higher in Montana than Michigan. To imply the GOP cheated more in Montana? When your theory indicates a bigger effort to cheat in a safe state than a swing state, then there's something going on.
The drop-off effect is easily explained by the reality that people weren't voting for a Republican or a Democrat, they were voting for or against Trump. That mindset is wholly separate from Republican v. Democrat. It's almost an Apples v. Oranges to try to compare a race with Trump to it to any other race (which is why the GOP is desperate to run him again, because even they don't understand how he engages the base and he is a useful idiot).
I'm glad to see it investigated and I wish that the voting populace didn't do what they did (and accept that without the suppression, the results might have gone the other way). However I don't think fraud has been proven in any significant degree.
Perhaps the democrats should emphasize vote in person on election day if at all possible, and mail-in is a last resort, rather than saying "voting is easy, just mail it in". It's obvious that they are having great success in discarding legitimate mail-in ballots the way they see fit.
This is bullshit and this group is likely just out there to cash in on the election. What they claim to be suspicious patterns is just basic statistics.
If machines have a higher number of votes it is just to be expected that the spread of the results get smaller and towards the end result. The larger the sample size, the smaller the spread.
And the early voting machines had up to 250 votes per machine, whereas the election day machines only had around 125. At least in the graphics this group used in their own report. If you scale the graphic of the early machines only until 125 votes per machine they look similar.
Also on election day there were about 3000 machines as opposed to 1000. And here another basic truth comes up. If you repeat a sampling more often, the distribution of results becomes more even.
These guys are just describing basic statistic effects and claiming them to be suspicious, probably to collect donations and run with the money. Also their website is dubious about who they are exactly and what their credentials are.
There is legitimate criticisms and leads to investigate, but these guys are not one of them.
Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren't doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you'd think we'd at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn't want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should've had none.
Others still do it because of religious dedication to the accelerationist belief that making the human experience worse will magically cause the working class to gain class consciousness and revolt. You know. Like has never occurred in recorded history...
Democrats do anything but take accountability for their mistakes any% Speedrun challenge (impossible).
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren't owed votes. They have to earn votes.
The Democrats failed to earn enough votes against Trump TWICE.
I don't even wanna hear some shit about it being a rigged election or anything. The right was screaming about 2020 being rigged for 4 years and y'all kept telling them it was ridiculous and they just need to suck it up because they lost.
The Democrats will lose again in 2028 if they do not make serious changes up and down their party.
I don't think so.
That was our future on the line.
Though they may have run a more effective social media campaign spinning their fake, populist bullshit stimulating Trump cultists out in Trump country, none of that should have mattered.
Regardless of a weak opposing campaign & inflation, we fucked up by not recognizing an existential threat & voting against it anyway.
That's just downright stupid of us.
As out-of-touch as George H.W. Bush looked marveling at the checkout scanner at a supermarket, that's nothing compared to the people who think American voters by and of large sat down and thoughtfully compared the policy positions of all the candidates, gamed out the implications, and voted accordingly.
How can you say this after the news about the people who didn't know Biden dropped out until election day? That had never heard of Project 2025? That didn't know what tariffs are?
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren’t owed votes. They have to earn votes.
Thanks, I love hearing that my existence has to be earned.
I'm talking about the stupid meme and Democrats once again pointing fingers everywhere else instead of looking in a fuckin mirror.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people. They have failed to do so now multiple times.
At some point you can't keep pointing the finger elsewhere and you have to accept that you didn't convince enough people that you were the better option.
They need to take some responsibility instead of playing professional victims all the damn time. I'm sick of it.
The results at my last city vote was depressing. We had 20% turn out. Twenty! And we have mail-in by default here
Thankfully the people who did vote voted for the positive changes we need but it's not hard to imagine how easily 20% of the population can be easily swayed
I agree with this, but it seems to be more of a far-right nazi issue. In Germany, it was again the young, white men that turned nazi that almost won the nazis the election. Let that sink in. The nazis almost won an election in Germany. Here, we have the same issues, but with gerrymandering, voter suppression and swing state election officials cheating occasionally. It's our young white men that have a ton of energy, want to see change, and have lost their way when looking for someone to help them do that, that are our biggest threat.
21% of Young people voted for the AfD. They got 20,8% in total. Thats not a significant increase. The cohort of 35-49 year-olds turned out stronger for the AfD.
The largest voting disparity is in the working class. 37% of workers voted for a party that would crush them.
Better off to die fighting for humanity, not "the other white..." rich politicians. The america before Trump wasn't one I wanted to live for either.
This war was going on before Obama and Bush. It's more fundamental than left and right politics. It's a mass social existential crisis in a nation that was taught to consume as a way to escape the reality of life as a human being. There is no saviour to run to. We've wasted so much time putting blind faith into mainstream pop politicians that live for "the game" and not humanity.
Bernie endorsed Kamala because he's an adult that understands accelerationism is something only idiots that have never read a history book think will bring progress.
Make sides irrelevant by passing state level electoral reform and opening our elections to 3rd parties. More democracy is the solution, not forcing people to vote for your preference. Do you people ever take the time to consider you don't want people to vote for who they want to vote for? How can you sleep at night dreaming of taking other's right to vote away? Awful...
I am a huge advocate to changing our election systems. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's done more write-ups and advocacy for campaign finance and election reform.
That said, this is putting the cart before the horse. Such Constitutional reform first requires consensus among the working class. We must first unite the left and right under a common enemy of the rich. Only then can we pressure states to seek a convention for amendments to the constitution.
I gotta start saving this exact same comment every time I see it. Still pushing for electoral reform and a dissolution of the two party system on a daily basis. This is the right time to do so right? Now you can't cry "Oh it's to close to the election!"
Well, have you pushed to replace First past the post voting in your state so people can be free to vote how they want? Will you be complaining about 3rd party mid term voters after a year and a half of doing nothing to change the mathematically flawed voting system in your state?
I didn't have to roll out the red carpet for Donald "Israel needs to win and win fast" Trump to push for voting reform.
Every terrible thing we told you would happen is currently happening, so I hope you're happy for queer Americans and about the fate of Palestine. You got exactly what we told you we would get. I hope you're comfy on your soapbox, because it's not comfy for trans people right now. Thanks a lot.
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn't even care enough about country to do that.