I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.
Democrats then: “We’ll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they’re forming PACs like ‘Arabs for Trump.’ We don’t need their votes.”
Democrats now: “We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn’t vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It’s actually your fault that we didn’t bother appealing to you.”
i hate the big d Democratic party. i dont like their platform, i don’t like their candidates. i voted for harris in2024. the time to make political statements and form a movement is now. do you know what you are supposed to do during election season? VOTE!
Yeah, ive said exactly that countless times right before the election, criticize her all you want after the election but ffs, elect her and the average response was something along the lines of “but genocide Joe!” or just nothing .
Also, all those fuckers are gone now, you’re not hearing anything about it anymore so I’m guessing that a lot of them could also have been right wing trolls just pushing people to ensure trump would be voted in
I want to believe that was a large scale, coordinated influence operation, but the truth is probably a bunch of scattered, uncoordinated young folks tring to make a statement
The democrats tried everything except for actually grappling with the subject. Now blaming the voters completely misses the point … that the dems where supporting Israel and clearly stated they would continue the current path. Trump had the decency to lie to the constituents. And now they cope by convincing themselves it’s part of his plan. The voters where duped… but the Dems did this… not the voters.
Well here’s one Arab American for Trump views.
I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.
Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s
Look, I’ve spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane “lesser evil” slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.
Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn’t guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin’ Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?
Y’all couldn’t vote for Nader in 1996, because “he can’t win.” Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we’d get… well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.
As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn’t change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren’t going away. The wealth inequality wasn’t shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn’t on track to make the serfs’ lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.
Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential… Y’know, denial, that power that we’ve all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO2 in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?
Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.
The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.
Truth
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
It isn’t a straw man, it is observation .
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That’s not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Let’s say you’re completely right. How does insulting people’s poor choices 4 months ago help us in the present? We can’t create resistance and solidarity if we hold grievances from the past.
Because some people, mostly just tankies and anarchists pretending to be moral abstainers, are unapologetic about helping elect fascism. By exposing and shaming them, onlookers will reconsider their own stance.
There are actual Nazis in this administration, and you’re worried about “tankies?” Get it together man.
One’s enemies can exist on two fronts. It’s happened before.
“We are fighting the wrong enemy.” Allen Dulles expressed this sentiment in 1942, while serving as the Swiss director of the OSS. He had reevaluated the ongoing war with Nazi Germany and decided that the Communist threat was far graver than the National Socialist one.
You’re in good company
The Tankies are promoting abstaining to help elect the actual Nazis and it fucking worked, so yes I’m worried about the fucking Tankies.
Tankies want 1 thing: “the end of US Imperialism” which is to say for us to all off ourselves so that NATO stops getting in China’s way.
Are the tankies in the room with us now?
Are the Tankies in office? Prioritize and Organize.
Well…
2018
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
2020
Our relationship with China has now probably never, ever been better," Trump said, adding that he gets on well with President Xi Jinping. “He’s for China, I’m for the U.S., but other than that, we love each other.”
2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has “always had a great relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that he looks forward to “getting along with China.”
Yeah, fucking looks like it.
Maybe if some of them would accept responsibility, it would go a long way towards creating that resistance.
I’d actually have a lot of respect for someone someone that could admit they made a huge mistake, because it means they are self aware enough to know that their own behavior has consequences also.
And I can get behind people humble enough to own their mistakes.
But most of these people have the fail to blame people who voted for Harris, or blame Harris herself for not being perfect in every way.
So unless they find some humility, there won’t be any solidarity and I would even go so far as to urge others to refuse to find solidarity with anyone that does not have enough strength of character to own their mistakes.
Guess we should give up then, since things didn’t go our way. Right?
If that’s what you’re taking from what I said, then maybe your should read it again a few times.
Unless you mean to say that they’d rather suffer divided than own their part in the reason for it.
Or worse, to exacerbate racial tensions, is one possibility I fear.
If you agree with them, then why did you post this?
it’s generating productive discussion
also there’s nothing really to “agree” with or not; it’s a question only and I have been doing my best not to come down with immediate judgement toward those answering the question
Well, no, because I’ve been asking myself the same question for a while now. And I don’t have that agenda. Lol
Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side
This is beyond voter shaming, though. This is asking what the fuck were they thinking.
Emphatically correct based on everything I learn. I could never imagine changing my vote based on shaming and I don’t know why so many choose that tactic anyway, even after the thing is over.
This is why the aftermath of the election has been particularly frustrating to me - a LOT of comments are just shitting on Muslim voters and kind of acting happy that trump is so terrible - often ‘liberal’ voters.
What the heck? We have to keep the doors open and politicians have to get them through the doors
It’s also frustrating to spread the word and make sure everyone knows the consequences. And then with everyone 100% knowing the outcome, decided a fascist was the best choice. The guy who had a playbook out months in advance detailing his plans of terror and destruction. The guy that every time he opened his mouth spewed racism, Hitler praising, promises of being a dictator, conspiracy theories, and on and on. And people heard/saw that and were like, YEP!
The idea still blows my mind. And I’m not sure I’ll get to a point where I can understand why someone would sell us all out like that, and then still consider us on the same side.
in this case, i urge you to consider that it was Kamala and Biden who ‘sold us all out’, and not the voters.
it’s not easy, because people are really frustrating. but at the end of the day, if you put the blame on the people running vs the people voting - you’ll get 100% more traction with the people in the world.
i live in fucking MIssouri - it’s HARD to practice what i preach, so trust me on how difficult it is.
this is with much love to you friend, because i want us to be in a better world.
Get out of here with that both sides bullshit. If you voted for a Nazi you wanted a Nazi more than a working country, full stop. And those that did and are now somehow surprised he is doing exactly what he said he would are getting no sympathy from me, and they should be taking responsibility for the pain being waged against marginalized groups.
Removed by mod
Same experience here. It’s deeply unsettling.
Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.
Haha no hate I just think it’s funny you arrive at the same “Russian troll” conclusion as the people trying to relitigate the Gaza voters :Pe: i think i misunderstood your comment, retracted
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
This is a real propaganda campaign
Only speculation, but I believe you are right. This only started 2 days ago after Trump’s Gaza comments. It’s disheartening how easily it is to sway online discourse. Jokes on them, this only motivates me.
It’s also possible to run thousands of parallel chatbots to atroturf sentiment these days.
They will even scour the internet automatically to insert themselves into any slightly relevant conversation
you replied to me twice. i absolutely agree with your first sentence and i believe that the second sentence is applicable to other people—it’s possible you here just misunderstood my position due to my own inclarity
Like anything, it’s probably a mix. There were plenty of actual Americans on the pro-Gaza side, and there were probably some Russian trolls as well. Now, there are some actual Americans trying to vent about the election. But it would also be naive to think a fair number of them aren’t Russian trolls. It’s not like the utility of manipulating an adversary nation’s political discourse ends after an election.
Since there’s no practical benefit to relitigating this old fight, however, it makes sense to just dismiss anyone bringing it up as a Russian bot. There’s nothing to be gained by reopening this old wound among the left, but there is plenty to lose.
Genuine question… see my third to most recent post. It’s rhetorically identical to content I posted before, during and after the election. Based on what you see there, do you think I am a paid or otherwise illegitimate troll?
I mean, people say the same thing about pro-Palestine posters. Logically, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
i don’t know what that means but thanks everyone for the downvotes i guess
I’m stayin’ in the race!
How do you change voter behavior?
You don’t. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it’s to change the rules to what the people want. If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.
It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza
Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted
so why arent we pointing the finger at them?
I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.
On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.
On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.
Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: You don’t run for office with the electorate you want, you run for office with the electorate you have.
Well that’s a lie, with voter suppression and gerrymandering you can have your dream electorate!
Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.
On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.
On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.
Most Americans align closer with progressives than any other group when it comes to policy. But messaging has been coopted by the Republicans to make people instinctively hate “socialism” because of the Red Scare Propaganda.
But Democrats block progressive policy because it makes their donors angry.
So really there’s nobody willing to represent the majority
I’ve become pretty skeptical we know where the majority is. The question determines the outcome of the survey. The measuring stick is flawed and error bars are many times larger than the difference being measured. Frankly, the thing being measured has more dimensions than are being measured.
And it’s worth remembering how the party got here. The left and labor coalition failed to beat Nixon twice, Ford’s losing had little to do with the left, and it utterly fell apart against Reagan. The Democrats only started to get traction at the national level by going to the center, using the DLC playbook. I’m as angry about the abandonment of labor by the Democratic party as anyone, but the reason for it is not a mystery. By the same token if the left doesn’t build the structure for a more left leaning Democratic party to operate no one should expect the party to move.
The hard thing is, I don’t know what that structure looks like, but it’s not enough to be “correct”.
YOU’RE skeptical.
Stop projecting because you are too lazy to go learn about the world around you.
Saving. That survey is hard to find if you don’t search the right terms.
I’ve read it. Many times from many outlets reporting on more than one survey. The first time I found it comforting.
However it’s not hard to find conflicting data. Methodology determines outcomes of these surveys, every time.
Today I’m less comforted. But ultimately, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re that far apart.
And yet they would not turn out to nominate Bernie… Talk about lazy.
Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can’t use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.
You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.
The Republicans understand this.
This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education
Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.
I yelled, but voted Kamala, and encouraged others to do the same. I always wanted to try and push the democrats to not be Republican lite and actually taking a meaningful, impactful stand on fucking anything besides being very passionate about not inhabiting Trump’s body. I wanted to see the democrats say “you know what? Genocide is wrong, whether it’s our allies doing it or not, and this is genocide” instead of “well, we’re going to keep handing them bombs, but we promise to wag our fingers at them while we do it”. I don’t want to hear your goddamn excuses, there’s always some fucking excuse why the democrats just had to spill all their spaghetti. I just wanted to do what I could to push them to show some intestinal fortitude and do the right thing, and I honestly believed (and still do believe) that that would have motivated more voters to turn out than purely relying on “less bad than him”.
No, I don’t regret trying to make the world I want to see; one without genocide. I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
I wish OP would add this to their post. EVERY IRL leftist I know voted Kamala even though they absolutely did not want to. My comment history is littered with we saying exactly this. I truly can’t imagine the kind of person posting/saying the OP quote. Like, she lost. That’s the way it’s phrased for a reason. It was her and the people making decisions for her that are responsible. SHE lost. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all obviously worse off, but why aren’t they upset at the dem establishment?! If the protest voters were “so important” (they mathematically were not) then don’t you think the dems are morally responsible not just for the genocide, but then for losing just to perpetuate it? They’re all like “where are the complaints now?!” Like they are too stupid to understand how pressure works on public officials and that resistance is a limited resource that needs to be rationed. Unfortunately, most actual leftist are organizing resistance efforts and don’t have time to complain about dems any more because that time has passed. I’m very wary of people saying things like OP because it’s such a clinically bad take it feels like trolling/propaganda. Good luck with everything.
I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
Fucking.
A.
Thank you for sharing, genuinely. The way other conversations here have gone, many probably thought you were a Russian bot or something for yelling that you cared about human rights atrocities funded by your taxes. :(
They were on the correct side of the value system, but could not bring themselves to agree to the tactical compromise.
Genuine question, why should I keep agreeing to a compromise that every time I look back has run farther and farther to the right and away from what my values are. You can say protest and advocate for change but when that happened they where shamed arrested and expelled. The railway union was forced into an unfavorable contract by the democrats. At what point is it that this compromise is less a compromise and more a pacification, and me lending my support to another right wing extention? Where is the red line? are individuals not allowed to have positions where if you support them they will not suport you? or even if you get enough of them?
Now go actually look at the outcome of the railway union thing.
why should I keep agreeing to a compromise
*Motions broadly at everything* Is this not enough to look past your ideals in a rigged system?
Look, I get it and I share your values. But come the fuck on. You guys got had by the One Issue being pushed around while everyone else told you not to and now the US lost everything and there’s lasting damage and many more people will end up suffering and dying for many other reasons. 20/20 vision now says Harris was the right choice all along. It’s frustrating.
I mean it is not one issue, I have multiple issues, I had one issue that was the straw that broke the cammels back. I needed enough cleared up, or my none starter cleared up first.
Second if we have the same values, why did you compromise on them, and how are you able to sleep with them so compromised.
Third we had more than 2 choices, I would not say of the multiple people running Harris was the best, HECK Harris was not the best potential Dem nominee, she flat out ended her be neighborly and the GOP is wierd because her C-Suite brother in law asked her to stop. She had a good start, and she chose the right VP but threw it away to appease the rich.
The ratchet effect is real and people should abandon both parties.
That being said there was 0% chance someone besides a D or R would win the 2024 election, so D was the objectively correct choice for anyone who isn’t rich.
That being said the protest voters didn’t actually impact the election in a meaningful way, and the insane pushback against them now is part of a propaganda campaign to keep the poors fighting.
I like you. Welcome to Lemmy.
Thanks fam :3
I hear this stupid take a lot. Some typical “but we didn’t have any effect so we are innocent” BS. You have no idea how many common people “protest voters” misinformation campaign cause to throw their arms up and not vote. If that same group spent their efforts stirring up a drive to get out and vote for the only vote that could stop trump and his puppet masters from gaining devastating power in a critical election that would have toppled both maga and Elon, the sway would have been enormous. Instead they are all trump enablers and get the blame they deserve. (Also the “but the Democrats…blah blah” is a stupid argument, they ALSO get blame that doesn’t absolve the “protest vote” clowns of anything at all)
I only care and am arguing because it seems like it is the harshest button issue, and while I agree its meaningless and they likely did not swey the election too much, I want, in the cathartic emotional way for someone to either admit that, or admit that harris did a bad stratagy because she abandoned the people to the left of her to get people to the right, because it cannot be nither.
The economy has and always will be the number 1 issue.
Also for regular Americans “the economy” means their own financial situation.
I mean I know for none voters this cited Gaza but I think as always Economy was over all number one. I also think it is worth pointing out that we where not doing great over bidens term, so lots of people would vote for anyone who just said it would be better even if it was not fleshed out because it was not good.
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
If they could have resurrected a Unicorn live on stage and it could have magically cured cancer in the radius as thanks: people would still be shitting on them all over the internet.
Exactly this! You can’t just “lesser of two evils” your way through life as you slide towards hell. “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a choice, it’s a hostage situation.
Choosing the bigger evil ain’t the way out of it though. Unless you are an accelerationist that believes things have to get worse before it can get better.
You can’t get out of a hostage situation by making out with either of the two bank robbers.
Yeah. No matter how I look at it, this seems to be the only real solution that would have helped.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media. Their messaging isn’t great and I’ve seen a lot more left-leaning youtube channels talk about them but not outside of that.
Then again, I’m also not American so I don’t know.
Lastly, the non-voters are as much to blame in my opinion. If you didn’t know you should have voted, that’s on you.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media.
The problem is that they made big promises in the early Harris campaign, then continuously abandoned them and watered them down until the campaign became a shadow of its former self. Equally problematic is that they continued to shift to the right and adopt policies that are unpopular with their base. I mean remember the border wall? And of course let’s not ignore the elephant in the room that was Gaza.
Giving subisidies to green energy companies and improving the GDP doesn’t tangibly improve people’s lives in 4 years and that’s what people wanted.
It also takes longer than 4 years to rebound everyone out of the spiral Trump left the nation in. I think messaging around realistic goals and checkpoints could go a very long way to allowing people to understand no President is going to save everyone in a single term, or probably in 2 terms, especially if they have a crater to climb out of just to start at zero. Real change is a long term goal, it would take multiple administrations working towards a goal.
Americans are not educated enough to understand any of that.
They’re hurting finantially, so they get mad and vote out the incumbent.
Democrats push policy like the avg american went to their ivy league schools.
The time for voting is over. It’s time for fighting now, and I don’t think “I told you so”s are helping us unite and work together right now.
Both can happen at the same time. We don’t need to love our ally to fight against a shared enemy. Especially when you feel your ally helped empower them.
Can they though? I mean to some extent maybe but I think it needs to be carefully articulated and respectful. The typical one line takedowns are just signals of tribal affiliation, they don’t persuade anyone and just increase animosity between us.
I agree.
