And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?
Russian bots mostly, but also privileged people who think that a Trump presidency won’t affect them
Sure, Russian bots. But Hasbara likely played a significant role too.
also privileged people who think that a Trump presidency won’t affect them
I’m a privileged person who probably won’t be directly affected by another Trump presidency. Probably. Hopefully.
But anybody who genuinely holds that opinion, and doesn’t care what happens to everybody else, may as well just be a full-on trumper.
Don’t underestimate the pissed off poor. The Dems kept telling them that things weren’t so bad while the Reps said they’d change things.
The changes will of course be worse, but if things are clearly shit, and someone keeps telling you that it’s not that bad, you start to despise those people even if they’re the better choice.
Do you have any examples of Dems telling people things werent bad? The closest things I can think of is dems saying we know things are bad but we are working on them and they are getting better. It feels like a republican talking point that dems think things are good.
“Bidenomics” and “Economy is doing great” and anything and everything involving the word “GDP”
Bidenomics is a right wing attack phrase and I’ve never heard Biden say the economy is doing great. So not sure what your point here was.
You’re right. I guess there’s the problem. I don’t doubt that if I also checked some other memories of Biden’s mistakes I’d find that I remember them how the right wants me to remember them.
Don’t underestimate the pissed off poor. The Dems kept telling them that things weren’t so bad while the Reps said they’d change things.
Okay, but those aren’t the single-issue Gaza voters OP was asking about.
Frankly, they should’ve been what OP was asking about though, because they were a way bigger factor (and always are, in every election, despite the Democrats abject refusal to acknowledge it).
The big group of voters that the Democrats didn’t see coming were the ton of racists and misogynistic assholes (mostly white but latino men also)
Those are people who are unable or unwilling to see the forest for the trees.
Like you. :-)
If Democrats knew they’d lose for supporting genocide,.they wouldn’t have done it. It’s precisely because blue-no-matter-who voters convinced them that they were invincible that they ended up losing. They thought they could bully the base into voting for them because enough of the base was willing to be bullied and proud of it.
On the other side, Trump is more likely to lose the war on Palestine.
They did know it had a serious impact on likely Dem voters, and likely Independent voters, in swing states, and they did it anyway.
… Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-israel
From July 25 through August 9, pollsters asked voters if and how the Democratic nominee pledging “to withhold more weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians” would impact their vote. In Arizona, 35% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 5% who said they would be less likely. The figures were similar in Georgia (39% versus 5%) and Pennsylvania (34% versus 7%).
Even bigger shares of voters said they would be more likely to support her in November if President Joe Biden—who dropped out of the race and passed the torch to Harris last month—secured a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In Arizona, 41% said they would be more likely to vote for her, versus 2% who said they would be less likely. In both Georgia and Pennsylvania, it was 44% versus 2%.
…
Biden dropping out and being replaced with Kamala was an opportunity for Kamala to change the Dem stance on this.
Kamala would have stood a much better chance at winning if she massively broke with Biden and did an about face on Gaza, and there is basically no way her campaign did not know this.
… Unless you’re going to tell me her campaign was somehow unaware of this fairly widely published IMEU poll.
They were in a bubble of other blue-no-matter-who media and were assured by the consultants from Clinton’s campaign and the Labour Party that they could ignore those polls.
So really, it would have taken a big enough push from the public that MSNBC became anti-genocide. Hypothetically it could have happened, but the Democratic base is too disorganized to pull that kind of bottom-up messaging coup off.
Nurse bursts in to OR
Doctor!
This new study show that there is a 30% chance the patient will die if you ignore this allergic reaction they may have if you keep pursuing your current treatment plan!
Doctor scoffs
It can’t be that big a deal, if this was serious, the patient’s family would have let me know by mailing me that study with appended handwritten notes from my favorite peer reviewers from JAMA, and a gold star sticker!
But Doctor! It’s not the job of the family to know how to practice medicine, that’s your job! And anyway, I have a copy of the study right here!
Pff, no appended notes, no gold star, ignored.
Patient dies.
Huh, damn, things might have been different if the family had told me how to do my job in the exact, precise manner in which I accept advice. Oh well! Maybe the next patient’s family will figure out the correct way to tell me how to do my job next time. After all, I can’t be held responsible for not accepting information readily available to me… without a gold star sticker!
So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?
She sides with Palestine, so she supports Hamas? She doesn’t support Israel? She supports Iran too!?
That’s just the tip of the media iceberg that would have been thrown at her.
Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?
Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.
How does she politically recover from that? ALL of that?
And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.
Can you (or anyone) provide a politically viable path through the above ‘top level’ landmines which would have gotten her into the White House and into a position where she could take direct action to stop the genocide?
So how could she have broken with Biden as the current VP?
If elected, I vow to cease all offensive arms and munitions shipments and funding for such to the State of Israel on day one.
What Hamas did on Oct 7th was an outrageous act of terrorism committed against a civilian population, but the response from the Netanyahu administration has caused orders of magnitude more death and destruction against innocent residents of Gaza, and this over zealous military response has enflamed tensions in the region and risks escalation into a much broader conflict.
I will still supply the Israelis with defensive funds for their Iron Dome, we will send them Patriot missile intercept systems, but we will no longer send artillery shells, bombs, ammunition, anything that can be used to further their wildly mismanaged offensive operations.
Further, I will actually commit to setting up and operating a temporary harbor for food and medical supplies to enter Gaza.
… Something like that, blah blah blah, make it clear that all sides in this have some level of culpability for wrong actions and that she will do what she can to minimize the harm the US is culpable for.
Let’s say she does that. Do you think with the numbers that DJT turned out that she’d have gained so much more than she would have lost that it would have made a difference?
IMEU polls in July and August showed roughly that 30% to 40% of likely Dem and Indp voters in multiple swing states would be more likely to vote for a Dem candidate if they did what they could to halt the Gaza genocide.
Would this turn off likely Republicans voters from her? Basically no more than they already were turned off from her. But she would have gained a whole bunch of Dem voters who specifically could not bring themselves to vote for a candidate complicit with genocide.
Let’s further say that she did, and it was, and she won the election. She’s now thrown a long-term, strategic ally under the bus on the world stage. Not only that, she’ll have to forcibly disarm them, potentially feeding them to the wolves in the Middle East.
Nope. You can stop enabling offensive action by ceasing to supply offensive systems and munitions, and still maintain your commitment to Israel’s defense by giving them defensive supplies.
You don’t need to totally disarm the IDF. That would involve going into a ground invasion war against our ally which is obviously insane.
This would not be throwing an ally under the bus. It would be stomping your foot down and reigning in an ally that’s gone on a mad rampage with bombs you have given them.
And please don’t mention “genocide” in your reply. That’s already a know variable in play.
Nah, I’ll use that word, because it is an accurate descriptor. I am not sorry at all if this somehow offends your sensibilities.
That’s a very workable plan. Thank you.
I mean we literally just saw the same kind of thing play out with Ukraine.
The West spent a long time giving them weaponry that could either only or mainly be used defensively, and then slowly over time gave them more and more potent weapons.
Its not like this is some revolutionary new idea.
The US could have started doing this after like month two or three of Israel carpet bombing Gaza, shooting up UN food/aid convoys…
But nope.
Not voting for someone who is aiding and abetting genocide is morally correct, it’s not complicated.
If genocide isn’t a red line for you, what is?
So you didn’t vote for anyone for president?
Stein and Kennedy were only on ballots to help Trump win, and he is even worse on Palestine than Harris.
So you didn’t vote for anyone for president?
I’m not American, if I was I would have voted for Stein though.
So in the US “democracy”, if you vote for any party other than the Democrats, you are voting for the Republicans ?
Since voting for both the Democrats and the Republicans is the same as supporting fascism ( unless you want to make me believe that supporting Genocide is not fascist ), I guess it is easy to understand why many people chose not to vote.
But I guess a fascism that pretends to be democratic is better in your eyes than one that is explicit. In my opinion none of the two deserve any support.
Also imagine how full of themselves the Democratic party elite must be to run the VP of a president that people see negatively on both foreign policy (Gaza) and the economy ( a lot of people see their financial situation as worse off after Biden’s 4 years). And Kamala H. literally aligned herself with Biden on everything !
There was no reason to vote for her other than “she is not Trump”. She gave no hope to the electorate for a better future, and for this reason people didn’t show up and vote for her.
A vote for Stein or Kennedy instead of Harris is like voting Republican since they are spoilers that have said they want Trump to win and only criticize Dems for genocide, which makes their purpose clear because Trump has said he wants more genocide.
Voting 3rd party for president is like not voting at all. It doesn’t send any signals to the main parties like it would in a system with more than two parties. Well, in some cases it would send a signal that their spoiler candidates worked out.
And yes, she failed to get an increase in turnout because she ended up just being more ofnthe same by cozying up with Cheney and not focusing on progressive policies.
If you want to read an interesting comment written by another user that answers some of your positions, I’ll copy-paste it here:
-
The DNC learned nothing from 2016. It is the definition of irrationality to do the same thing twice and expect different outcomes.
-
Bernie could garner huge crowds and massive support by campaigning on the basis of policy that has mass appeal, such as universal healthcare. Kamala chose not to do this because she prioritised business as usual over stopping Trump.
-
You say “things will get worse under Trump”. That’s true. But things got worse under Biden/Harris after Trump’s first term as president - environmental policy, the border camps, reproductive rights, trans rights, cop city, the genocide of Palestinians etc. So when you say “we must vote for Kamala or things will get worse” that line of reasoning is at best unconvincing and at worst it betrays the 4-year state of amnesia you have lived in because you are so politically detached from the consequences of your voting.
-
Telling people to protect democracy—the system where you vote for the candidate who best represents your political values—by voting for a person who in no way represents your political values in order to save democracy is tortured logic.
-
No, I’m not an accelerationist. Me advocating for people not to vote for Kamala Harris is not an accelerationist position because we should not be giving a mandate for a genocide, climate change, and civil rights-eroding accelerationist by voting for them.
-
How many delegates did Harris win in the last primaries? How many did she win in the primaries to get her to run for president this time? Is this what you claim as your democracy?
-
When I list a number of legitimate grievances with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s regime and issues with Kamala’s election platform, none of which have a single thing to do with her race or gender, and you respond by calling me racist or misogynistic it drives home how little you are willing to listen to my political concerns and how intransigent your favoured party is. When you act this way and then tell me that people have to vote for Kamala in order to push her left while you yourself are unwilling to even acknowledge the fact that Kamala’s platform has serious issues, it signals to me that there will be no shifting left on anything. I already knew this fact but you have done an exceptional job of inadvertently teaching other people this lesson.
-
When entering into negotiations with someone, it’s a uniquely terrible tactic to hand over your one state-sanctioned bargaining chip before making even one single demand.
-
You are chasing the DNC to the right and one day you will wake up and wonder to yourself “How did I end up all the way over here?” I’m not following you into that marsh but you’re welcome to go into it yourself, just don’t get upset at me when I point out what you’re heading into and don’t get angry when I refuse to blindly follow you.
-
Kamala Harris is the only thing that can stop fascism. Kamala Harris cannot do anything to protect reproductive rights, trans rights, Palestinian lives, the lives of Marcellus Williams and Robert Robertson etc. because she is powerless to do anything about it 🫠
-
Kamala Harris said she would “follow the law” regarding trans people. She was angling to become the primary lawmaker in the US. Not only does this show a lack of whatever libs care about like “leadership” but it shows how cowardly and detestable she is because she understands the law and she is willing to follow it but not when it comes to things like international law, only when it’s laws that she can use to hide behind while trans people are subjected to further oppression through legislation that strips them of rights.
-
Historically, fascism has never been stopped at the ballot box. You being convinced that this is possible does not sway my opinion on any matter aside from my estimation of your political awareness and your ability to achieve change.
-
You had four years (eight+ if you count Trump’s regime and the lead-up to it in this calculation) to “stop fascism”. What did you do in this period of time? Did you push Biden and Kamala to adopt policies which have mass support? Did you do anything except go to back to brunch?
-
When you accuse me of not organising irl, when you say that I’m not doing anything:
-
I’m not about to dox myself
-
I’m not going to make a laundry list of the things that I have done w/organising and activism just to impress (?) you, especially not when you’ve already told me that I haven’t done anything
-
It’s a huge self-report and it’s obvious that you’re projecting
-
You alienate others by telling them “I do not recognise your efforts and everything that you have done is unimportant in my estimation”
-
You aren’t entitled to others’ votes. Stop pretending that you are.
-
We aren’t splitting the so-called left, Kamala Harris did that all by herself.
-
You have no red lines. There is nothing that could make you not support Kamala Harris and we know it. Telling people to drop their standards and ignore their conscience to vote for Kamala is a fatal strategy and you killed her campaign by deploying it.
-
Selective invoking of people of colour to advocate for Kamala was ridiculous and disgustingly tokenistic. Yes, Angela Davis is smarter than I am. Telling me that I’m stupider than her and so I should take my political cues from her with regards to electoralism is a losing argument and it’s low-key ableist became you’re arguing that the person who lacks intelligence also has a commensurate lack of political virtue. Historically speaking, very intelligent people have had absolutely atrocious politics. Also people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are almost certainly a lot smarter than I am. It would be wrong of me not to defer to their superior intellect and their politics, isn’t that right?
-
You say that democracy is going to be strangled in its crib and that fascism has come to town. You are maybe posting about this online in your echo chamber and that’s it. You do not take politics seriously, not even your own, yet you demand that I take your politics more seriously than you yourself do. There are things that I am doing right now to avert this trend in politics. There are things that I would do if fascism proper had seized power, none of which I would post about online. We are not the same. Enjoy your brunch though.
-
Almost all of your arguments for voting for Kamala Harris (aside from the “it will stop Trump” argument which, in retrospect, appears to be a dismal failure) also apply to reasons for voting for Trump. “You can push them left”, “By voting we will get a seat at the table”, “Voting third party or not voting at all is a wasted vote”, “We have to vote this way to protect the country”, “Politics is about comprise - you cannot expect them to be your perfect political candidate”, and whatever hold-your-nose-and-vote arguments you trot out. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why it is that you do not find these arguments for voting Trump to be convincing?
-
Last time Trump got elected you were brutally vindictive. You took glee in the thought of people in red states and marginalised groups suffering due to policy and things like natural disasters, regardless of their politics or how they chose to vote. You were excited to tell these people that they were going to get deported and put into concentration camps. You will do it again this time too because you have learned nothing. November came and these people you targeted with your vicious schadenfreude remembered. They aren’t going to forget how effortlessly you abandoned them and how you wished the worst suffering and ill-fate upon them.
-
You said that a non-vote or a 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. We have been shouting from the rooftops that Kamala Harris is fundamentally unwilling and incapable of stopping Trump. History vindicates this position; Trump managed to win the popular vote while Harris underperformed by millions of votes, even compared to Joe Biden. Thus your support for Kamala Harris was therefore support for Donald Trump’s presidency. Congratulations on getting the candidate which you campaigned so hard to get elected.
-
I don’t care about the US. America must die and if Trump is to be its undertaker then I am relieved to hear it. What you have done is to accelerate the destruction of the US. If I were cynical about achieving my political objectives, wouldn’t have said any of the above. If I was an accelerationist I would have been pushing for all of the things that you’ve been pushing for instead of pushing back against them. I would have even gone so far as to furnish your side with more poisoned chalice arguments (I do this with the far right, I exactly know how to do it). Instead I’ve been defending your political project against your own excesses and self-defeating narrow mindedness. You are right in the fact that I am your enemy but you are wrong to oppose me because you are a far greater enemy to yourself than I could ever have the stomach to be. You won’t listen to a word of what I’ve said because you refuse to learn and to reflect.
-
A cynical person might argue that my strategy is to oppose you in the knowledge that this will make you react by becoming more deeply entrenched in your position, encouraging a sort of siege mentality in you, so that you see any criticism or difference of opinion as being an existential political threat that must be eradicated as a means to create more disaffected people to radicalise out of bourgeois democracy. This is not my intent. If things improve for the proles and the marginalised because of what I argue for then that’s a win for my political objectives. However I can’t control your actions and if you choose to respond by taking a hatchet to your precious liberal democracy then, likewise, that’s a win for my political objectives. Which way, western man?
-
-
In other countries fascist get elected as well, it is not just a problem of the system itself ( don’t get me wrong, it is also a bad system, but it is not the only problem ), the big problem is that the Democratic party ( and a lot centrist parties in Europe as well ) are not electable.
People don’t want them, the Democrats don’t represent the average working person. It is not the fault of the people for not voting for them, the Democratic Party is not their party.
And since this centrist parties invest billions in every campaign to make every leftist party look unelectable ( and this happen with every voting system ), there is no big leftist opposition.
Obviously other countries with better electoral systems have it better than the US, but that is not where the problem starts and ends, it is just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. After all everyone here knows what happened with Bernie, he was never going to be allowed to actually run.
The centrist parties fear the leftist ones much more than a right wing one, because they represent the same interest, the same people. That’s way they allied with old Republicans, that’s who they are the party of.
It is only the fault of the Democratic Party for loosing this election. They actually showed the people that they didn’t care about them. And probably a lot of US citizens already felt that they didn’t, so this just confirmed it for them.
Also not that many people gated for Stein or any other 3rd party candidate. They just didn’t vote, because the still believe what the Democrats told them about voting for 3rd parties never working, so they were left with nothing and just did nothing.
And you should hold Harris much more accountable for doing the genocide right now, rather than keep telling me about Trump. I know Trump wants the Genocide as well, but Kamala is already doing it, so to me that is not an alternative.
And if the Democrats don’t learn from this election, I don’t think they will win that many elections in the future. And honestly, they don’t deserve them, this is just a 100% Hitler (D) against 101% Hitler ® sort of situation.
After all, if they aim at right wing voters, why should right wing voters vote for them rather the the traditionally right wing party of the Republicans. People should really stop alienating non-voters / 3rd party voters when they are the only one that dont want to support Genocide. Really says a lot about the US.
But now I just started to rumble so I’ll end the comment here.
People don’t want them, the Democrats don’t represent the average working person. It is not the fault of the people for not voting for them, the Democratic Party is not their party.
This is fucking hilarious.
Dems do represent the working class. They are the ones who promote and occasionally pass minimum wage increases, worker safety laws, the ACA, funding for FEMA, social supports, and a ton of other things that positively impact the working class and 98% of the population.
The Republican party actively works to destroy all of those things so they can guve the wealthy tax breaks while lying about whether the working class will benefit.
The problem is messaging. Republicans are great at lying and riling people up, the Dems suck at propoting the positive things they attempt and occasionally succeed at.
And you should hold Harris much more accountable for doing the genocide right now, rather than keep telling me about Trump. I know Trump wants the Genocide as well, but Kamala is already doing it, so to me that is not an alternative.
You know Trump wants more and you are blaming Harris for what Biden is currently doing because she didn’t explicitly state she wouldn’t do a complete 180 and stop support entirely.
That is like saying pooring gasoline on a fire is an alternative to not putting it out. I guess that is an alternative…
You are deeply unserious.
You defense of Harris for not being like Biden, when she explicitly said she supports Biden policies, must be a bad joke, because it is not funny.
Also saying that the Democratic party supports the working class, while they are refusing to update the minimum wage, helped break some strikes and keep financing the military, like never before in history, instead of doing any sort of welfare, must be a belief born out of pure fantasy.
Since I’m tired of responding to comments, I found a great video published today on why Kamala lost, it focuses a lot on the economics and the messaging of the Democratic Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBi0m5xCJs
He shows a lot of main stream sources in the video so that shouldn’t be an issue for you.
But, given that Trump will very likely be as bad or worse, why give him the chance? Just to be able to make the statement?
Since no one seems to be taking OP’s question seriously, I’ll take a stab at this. There are a variety of reasons.
Some people feel that voting is offering material support to a specific candidate or system, and they simply cannot bring themselves to do so given the horrors that that person or system is either supporting or failing to condemn.
Others may feel that strategically withholding their vote as a punishment may motivate democrats to take these types of issues more seriously in the future.
Or they may feel that their vote is more impactful in magnifying the voice and power of third parties who offer more meaningful solutions to end the killing, even if they won’t win.
Others still may believe that Trump’s incompetence will accelerate the end of America imperialism and lead to a better global political situation sometime in the future.
Finally, some people feel that voting won’t matter at all and is a distraction from efforts to directly slow or stop the war machine.
I don’t personally endorse any of these viewpoints, but some are relatively serious positions and others are not, in my opinion.
Others may feel that strategically withholding their vote as a punishment may motivate democrats to take these types of issues more seriously in the future.
They never learn though.
They never learn though.
And we’re out of chances for them to do so.
Honestly for a portion of the ones here online, I don’t think they actually care that much about Gaza except as a convenient tool to attack Americans. It’s academic to them. I don’t expect it’ll stop once Trump is in, they’ll just switch to criticizing Americans overall. They’re mostly leftist agitators, and I honestly think they hate moderate progressives the most, since we’re trying to improve capitalism which makes it harder to undermine and destroy.
For people that actually do care, it’s a personal, emotional argument about not being able to feel good about it, which I understand. It’s a sort of trolley problem. If they don’t vote, they kinda just walk away and the trolley runs over a bunch of people, but they don’t have to watch and bear a sense of personal responsibility at that emotional level for being a part of it. It doesn’t actually benefit Gaza, but there’s only so much they could really do anyway.
- An overly simplistic/naive view of the world. (Not sure what they expect here? Stopping weapons and technology transfer? Maybe the US going to war with Israel to stop the Gaza atrocities? Or are they just expecting something symbolic? If Harris publicly denounced Israel’s actions, would that be enough?)
- Thinking that the US President has more power than they do in reality (Congress and the Courts, checks and balances)
- Some logical fallacies they’ve convinced themselves into believing. False Dilemma Fallacy maybe? https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/common-logical-fallacies
Only a Sith deals in absolutes
What Harris could have done is besides the point. What she did and didn’t do is a matter of record.
But look, focus on what I wrote. If it’s your friend or family member then of course you are going to have a simple and strong reaction. It’s fine to try to explain away the badness, and there is some truth to what you wrote, but if someone just lost their cousin, or their daughter’s house was just bombed, they aren’t going to listen to you. That’s natural; that’s reality.
🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺
I believe that Harris had indicated her policy on Biden would’ve been different but I wasn’t entirely sure how.
She could’ve probably said something like “October 7th WAS a terrorist attack and Israel has a right to defend itself. However, there is a difference between defense and suppression” and likely not pissed any sensible people on any side off too much.
That said; My opinion matters very little as I do t have a meaningful connection to the conflict other than hating to see un necessary suffering.
You see, IQ is on a bell curve and 100 is the median. That means half of people must have an IQ below 100. At some number, the exact number is debatable, higher reasoning ability diminishes.
The second factor is education/knowledge. Having none, partial, or incorrect information can lead even rational people down the wrong path.
If you combine these, you get what you are observing.
I’ll leave you a quote from Deming… “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it does.” I say this because we need to change something if we want a different result.
“Remember, I’m pullin for ya. We’re all in this together.”
Red GreenActually several percent of people have 100, so higher and lower are each less than 50%. Not to mention there isn’t a huge difference from 90-110 and that range covers a huge chunk of the population.
Carlin was exaggerating for comedic effect.
I know people who voted neither candidate because Trump was horrible and Harris was pro-choice. Single-issue voters are the death of democracy. Full stop.
Only in a two-party system. Locked in a two party system is the death of it. At least introduce multiple rounds, to democratically elect the 2 contestants for the final round…
Only in a two-party system.
So you mean - like the system this election took place within?
Radicals ruin everything.
Only a radical speaks in absolutes
…is an absolute statement in itself.
Thing is you can actually be radical. In a healthy democracy you need some small fringes to exert pressure, e.g. civil right activist groups and so on so that the government isn’t able to just completely ignore portions of the population.
But to be effective as an activist you have to know when to put on pressure and when to unite. Malcolm X or Fred Hampton didn’t go vote for David Duke just because MLK was a pacifist.
This was the wrong time to pressure because as always activists dramatically misread the levels of actual support for their cause and dramatically underestimate how much support the general populace gives the opposition.
Most people don’t even agree on the very basic facts of reality or that such a thing can even exist, how tf are you gonna expect to convince them of anything? What you gonna write some long post on it? Good luck - they cannot read.
Humanity is just a dogshit species. To even agree that we shouldn’t stab ourselves in our proverbial balls with a proverbial milwaukee power drill - it takes like generations and most people are always for the status quo and the worst possible version of everything is the default we have to work from and with, it’s just a cruel joke and it would be more existentially comforting if progress was outright impossible.
It was absolutely the correct time to pressure. Harris/dnc/biden miscalculated.
Huh? You really think that if they caved on Palestine they would’ve won? Most Americans support the guy who wants to impose Muslim travel bans
Imagine thinking someone needs to cave on not being genocidal. Jesus fucking christ.
- students were arrested under their watch, a key demographic for them in a tight race. Students are often motivated canvassers. Their response to the outcry? There must be order. Get bent biden/harris.
- they lost 25 electoral points in two fucking swing states directly related to this. In literal numbers codified in the outcome.
- they completely fucking ignored the economic issues caused by corporate greed. Fun fact kellogs is charging over 100% more for fucking corn flakes than the store brand. CORN FLAKES.
Most Americans support the guy who wants to impose Muslim travel bans.
Sigh. You didnt do well in math did you? Tell me where did the 20 million votes for biden last time go? Trumps numbers are unchanged. Oh right, they didnt show up. 🤔
Never mind the fucking fact most adults dont vote. So no most Americans dont support trump. They just dont think either party is worth their emotional energy. Good job democrats! 🤔
And token handle the rest of your nonsense with the polling numbers.
students were arrested under their watch, a key demographic for them in a tight race. Students are often motivated canvassers. Their response to the outcry? There must be order. Get bent biden/harris.
Yes and most people support that. They see you as more unhinged than the anti-police protestors and think Trump must be onto something with demolishing the DoE if the nation students are protesting for who they see as Islamist terrorists.
they lost 25 electoral points in two fucking swing states directly related to this. In literal numbers codified in the outcome.
Source?
they completely fucking ignored the economic issues caused by corporate greed
Yeah that’s socialism. They already lost the Latino vote by being too socialist. The electorate wants tax breaks for Kelogg’s CEO.
Sigh. You didnt do well in math did you? Tell me where did the 20 million votes for biden last time go?
Some of them probably to Trump.
Trumps numbers are unchanged.
Are you an idiot? You’re implying that these are the exact same people just because the numbers are roughly the same?
Biden convinced a lot of swing voters due to COVID.
Never mind the fucking fact most adults dont vote.
Source?
And token handle the rest of your nonsense with the polling numbers.
Token handle? Like JRR Tolkien? Did you have a stroke?
source
Please see yourself to any election results site for Wisconsin and Michigan, look at the results differential, look at the 3rd party votes, then go back the the primaries and look at the uncommited numbers from the primary.
Source? (Most dont vote)
See yourself to any american census page, find the adult population numbers, then look at the gross voters for this election. Do some basic math and you’ll end up with 25-30% of the voting population voted.
Are you an idiot?
Possibly but you most definitely are. You dont know basic well known facts about demographics of Michigan and Wisconsin, you ask for sources for literally common knowledge facts that are both widely reported and easily confirmed.
And no i didnt claim they were the exact same people you twit. I was pointing out he had relatively similar levels of total support in fucking aggregate. ~72mill.
Biden convinced a lot of swing voters due to COVID.
No, 20 million voters didnt show up this cycle because harris brought nothing to the tablento motivate them. In fact she mainly brought dismotivation via a genocide and lack of economic policies.
Token handle? Like JRR Tolkien? Did you have a stroke?
No, its the other person who responded to your absolutely trash of a post with a link to some polls.
Okay we’re done here. Nothing productive will be had with furthering a conversation with someone as uninformed, and in lacking basic reasoning skills as yourself.
The numbers don’t lie.
The Muslim vote in the end stayed literally the same, so did the Jewish vote. Most Americans prolly haven’t even heard of all this shit lol
I said months ago that we were going to “single issue” our way to Trump 2.0, and I’ve never ever wanted to be wrong more than when I said that.
nearly all the single-issue voters on the right vote in lock-step unison, and have for decades.
democrats and progressives seem to just toss in the towel if they aren’t getting everything they want, right now.
it takes time to build something great, it takes but a moment to destroy it all. welcome to total destruction.
Single-issue voters on the right, single-issue nonvoters on the left.
Yep, to all that, and I’ve often grumbled the same things.
“Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.”
Everything being ‘dont genocide’ just so we’re clear here. I dont particularly think that was a huge ask. Nor do i think effective economic policies changes for the working class.
And we’ll get to see what the alternative provides. Yay, you won.
No I didnt we lost. We lost our humanity, we’ve lost our shared communities. The fact i had to spend the last year arguing with people that genocide is not fucking okay is evidence of that.
In no fucking way do I consider this outcome a win. There was no winning this election unfortunately and thats precisely the fucking problem. But alas democrats decided committing genocide, arresting their enthusiastic base for protesting, fucking over the working class, and shitting on the people warning them about these issues come voting are winning strategies.
😮💨🤷
And you decided lesser evil wasn’t lesser enough? Now we get greater evil.
Your words not mine. You failed to convince 20 million people with that argument, harris failed to convince 20 million people to show up using it after blowing a billion dollars.
Harris lost 25 electoral points in two states out of the fucking gate using it.
Harris lost more for completely fucking ignoring the problems working Americans are feeling at home. A minor tax break after food has shot up 20-30% in four years? Fuck off.
She fucking managed to lose every swing state using it.
At what point do you fucking realize how absolutely fucking stupid of a play that reasoning is?
I dont need to argue this point anymore. You want answers look internally. Not to me, Ive spent the last year trying to get you deeebs to course correct. You failed to do so and as result you’ve earned trump.
Insanity:
- you
- Harris
- biden
- dnc
- doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
My punk rock lifetime bay area liberal 45 yr old friend voted Trump bc Israel.
I could say something witty or sarcastic, but you’ve probably already thought something along the same lines. I’ll just leave a facepalm emoji instead.
🤦🏻♂️
Sometimes being a single issue voter happens because people just care that much about that one issue. But there’s a natural tendency for anyone’s decision to come down to one thing. Complex issues are complex, most people don’t know what’s right. But then they do have ONE thing that they consider black-and-white, so that influences their choice. It gives them something they feel they can say to others “I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone who XYZ…”
Because let’s face it: no one wants to hear your entire list of political calculations. People’s choices are absolutely influenced by thoughts of how they’ll justify themselves to the people they know. And having one big pithy thing to say is more convenient than a subtle position based on a score of factors.
Humans are social, emotional, idiosyncratic shortcut machines, not logic engines.
For me: Voting represents support for both the process and the government that results from that process. By voting you are essentially expressing that you submit to the electoral process as the sole means for the exercise of political power. Even if you don’t like the results, you’ve agreed to accept it because the rules are more important than the results.
Some obvious problems with that: What if the process itself isn’t fair in the first place? We don’t really get to choose our leaders. We get presented with a set of options which are acceptable to capitalists and are asked our opinion on which we like more. You could write multiple books on the ways the US electoral process has been structured to disenfranchise people and reduce the impact they can have on their government, but fundamentally it comes down to the fact that the government doesn’t represent people and that’s a feature, not a bug.
So we end up with a pair of awful candidates who both have done and will do more awful shit. If the election randomly fell out of the sky without context, sure, you could argue about one being technically better than the other. But it didn’t. It’s this way for a reason. It’s this way because people are willing to cede their expression of political power to it despite the fact that it’s clearly unaccountable to them.
Voting is just supporting the system that’s deprived us of any real democracy while normalizing fascism to protect itself. Voting is a fairly low information form of political expression. You don’t get the choice to be like “Oh I’ll begrudgingly support this candidate, but this this and that are things I don’t like and want them to change.” You get two boxes. Each one represents EVERYTHING the candidate stands for plus the implicit choice of accepting the process in the first place.
If people want things to get better, they have to organize and take real, tangible actions rather than just begging capitalist politicians to do stuff for us every 2-4 years. People should be doing this regardless of who’s in office, but let’s put a fine point on it: People are worried that Trump is gonna be fascist, take away people’s rights, and end democracy. Are you just going to accept that because he won the election? Are the rules that bind the process more important to you than the results? If not, you should be willing to do what it takes to stop him instead of chastising that people didn’t show up to participate in a sham of an electoral system.
For what it’s worth, I actually did go to the polls to vote specifically on an equal rights ballot measure in NY. At least that has a semblance of direct democracy. There I’m explicitly saying “I support this policy specifically” instead of supporting a candidate who just says they support those things while also doing awful shit. It passed, so that’s nice. If anything I’m more pissed at Californians for voting against a measure to END SLAVERY than I am with people who didn’t want to vote for a person currently engaged in supporting a genocide.
I’m curious where this notion comes from:
By voting you are essentially expressing that you submit to the electoral process as the sole means for the exercise of political power.
Do you? Does voting necessarily mean that you can’t also express political power in other ways? Sure, it’s true that most voters don’t really engage with politics outside of the major elections, but that’s got nothing to do with them being voters, many Americans don’t even engage with the elections at all. Why would it be the case that participating in voting means you submit to the electoral process as the sole means of exercising political power? In fact this seems easily disproven by the fact that most political power in this country is exercised by the capital class, but those people still vote.
Even if you don’t like the results, you’ve agreed to accept it because the rules are more important than the results.
Is this actually a condition of voting? What sets these conditions? Are you talking about the social notions of ‘civility politics’ or ‘decorum’ that liberals are so fond of? They’ll try to hold you to those standards regardless of whether or not you vote.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you broadly that there are serious problems with the electoral system, capitalism, the United States, whatever. I also agree that chastising nonvoters is also counter productive. I also agree that voting is probably not going to get us the broad systemic changes that we need. I just don’t really understand the argument that voting somehow precludes one from also doing the actual organizing and activism work we need.
There’s a philosophical and a practical side to this:
Philosophically, the core of a democratic system is the peaceful transition of power. The idea that you won’t just try to force your will over people with violence and will respect the will of the populace. This is a fine principle in a proper democracy with a fair process and political outcomes that fall within acceptable ranges. If you wanted more money for the trains and someone else wanted more money for the busses, that’s a disagreement you can live with. And if the voting system is set up so you had equal chances both to introduce topics/candidates and vote on them, then great. By accepting the election and not trying to go outside the system to get your way, you keep the peace and allow for that process to be a viable vehicle for change.
If this is a requirement for democracy, then the converse is that if a system isn’t fair and produces unacceptable results (eg, Nazis and genocide), participating in it merely legitimizes it. Obviously nothing physically stops you from organizing, but symbolically you’ve shown that you view the system as the sole legitimate way to exert political power and garner authority. And people will then turn around and say you should vote instead of doing xyz actions. “I don’t agree with your methods.”
On the practical side of this: people put a lot of time, energy, and political capital into supporting candidates in these elections. It eats up the public bandwidth, crowding out other forms of political participation. In addition, once someone works hard to get their candidate elected, there is an impulse, an incentive, to defend them. The people who said to suck it up, vote for Biden, then push him to the left turned around and chastised leftists for protesting over things like the continued anti-immigration policies or the support for Israel’s genocide. US electoral politics is a team sport. People get psychologically invested in their team. They don’t like it when you criticize their team. This makes them resistant to change even on policies they nominally support. I think encouraging people to maintain that emotional investment in elections is harmful. It hinders organizing efforts. It hurts attempts to build class consciousness because it gets people to think about their fellow workers as the enemy and capitalists as potential allies. And the corresponding obsession with 24 hour news cycles turns politics into a TV show. Trying to talk to libs about any history older than like a week ago or maybe at most a presidential term is impossible. If it wasn’t on their favorite TV show it doesn’t exist.
We need to be drawing people’s attention to actual types of political participation. Elections don’t just distract from that, they make people think they’re doing the right thing. It’s a release.
All that said, that’s not to say there’s never value in any part of the electoral system, it’s just very limited. Bernie’s attempts at running were part of what got me more engaged in politics and shifted me from being a progressive-ish lib to being more of a socialist. Important to that though was not just the policy platform, but the structure and messaging of the campaign promoted the importance of mass political participation. I ended up meeting some local socialist groups in the process of going to campaign volunteering. However, most of the time and energy still went into the election only for the system to block us at the end and Bernie to give in. Tons of hours of volunteer time went into doing little more than getting people to sign ballot petitions. We weren’t getting those people into a union or a mutual aid group or anything. We basically just tossed our energy into the void.
Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?
But why?
You say you make a statement. A statement is not a question. So nobody needs to answer it.
Now Gaza burns faster. Congrats 3rd party fuckers.
Literally all of the third party voters could have voted a straight Democrat ticket and it wouldn’t have affected a single swing state. Third-party voting was down by about 60% versus 2020.
Maybe not for the popular vote, but in individual districts that were close, it could have. Also, the constant talk for sure influenced some to not bother voting at all due to not having a perfect candidate choice.
60% less than the last presidential election. The one Biden won.
Stop blaming third parties for the Democrats’ failure to build a coalition within its own party.
Only if you don’t recognize that Trump would be much, much, much worse. And what we see from the election, many can’t seem to see that (in any way).
A lot of people did in fact set aside Gaza until Trump was stopped. As for those that didn’t, they should have listened to Bernie Sanders. I did months ago and went all-in on Dem support. There were multiple times when I wrote up a post about US support of Gaza and then didn’t post it because I didn’t want to turn a voter into a non-voter or worse a Trump supporter.
I understand their position of never rewarding ethnic cleansing and war crimes though. They chose to make sure the Dems know they would never “settle”. The support for Israel made it especially hard for Arab Americans to vote Dem. It’s difficult to support a party that has been in power during the whole conflict yet gives unconditional support for the illegal murder of Arabs.
I’m sure a lot also felt disenfranchised by the bipartisan protest suppression and condemnation. Even in Dem states peaceful protesters were punished, and sometimes pro-Israeli protesters who attacked got away with it. Then there was the whole “vote with us or else” pressure that went on for months. Dissenters like the “uncommitted” voters were insulted by the party that wanted their unconditional support.
So it’s not like it’s completely insane. But as Sanders points out that position only makes things worse and has done so.
