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Local opinion piece:
https://www.startribune.com/brehm-democrats-have-themselves-to-blame-for-trumps-election/601176736
I read it because of the title, but it’s just some shithead that wants them to move further right:
This red wave wasn’t as much about embracing Donald Trump as it was repudiating far-left progressivism.
[…], and then foisted upon us an equally unqualified and unpalatable hard left alternative.
They are already creating the groundwork for sucking more corporate dick.
Reminds me of that joke about how there are only two races: White, and political. It’s disheartening to see folks (some here on Lemmy) confusing listening to the concerns of brown-skinned people with leftism. The Arab-Americans in Michigan, for a relevant example, are just people with a range of political opinions like the rest of us.
Oh they learned their lessons:
- blame minorities
- shift further right
Oh they know how to win. They just don’t want to. The policy decisions that would lock in Dem control for generations to come run counter to the goals of DNC Services Corp. Because they’re a corp.
This is unironically true, unfortunately.
The funniest part of this is the idea that there will be an opposition party in anything but a token way after this.
…was there one before?..
Was there a party that did not install SCOTUS justices that were so ideologically conservative that they did things like end national legal abortion and gut the ability of government regulation agencies to regulate?
Yes there was. But that party is not coming back except as a token now because people just didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to vote.
But that party is not coming back except as a token now because people just didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to vote
“The party didn’t think stopping the rapist fascist dictator was a good enough reason to listen to their voters”
FTFY
Nope. They can’t force anyone to vote for them. People thought not voting was a better plan than stopping the rapist fascist dictator when they only had two possible choices.
There was an absolute mountain of evidence that Trump would be a disaster. They didn’t vote anyway because they knew they weren’t going to get a pony.
Voting for people in a two-party system is the stupidest thing you can do because you will never get your way with any one politician. So you vote against and keep voting against until you get closer and closer to what you want.
Just not voting or voting for third party candidates that will clearly lose against someone who has an automatic 30% of the vote doesn’t stop the worst possible thing from happening and it never will.
If you didn’t vote to stop Trump from getting into office, I blame you. You had warning after warning and your idealism was more important to you.
They can’t force anyone to vote for them.
Yup, which is why you need to give them reason to vote.
Democrats have been parading around “most important election of our lifetime” for fucking years - don’t be surprised that it didn’t work yet again.
The reason why Trump is popular is because there is legitimate pain and struggle in the working class, and he affirmed that pain and struggle (even if he was misidentifying the source of that pain). Telling voters “things are good, actually, and the other guy is gonna ruin it” is just dumb.
Democrats didn’t run on popular policy and they got destroyed because of it.
They had a reason to vote.
Their reason was that a rapist fascist who quoted Hitler and clearly has dementia that promised to deport millions of people and be a dictator on day one only had a 50/50 chance of being president.
And they didn’t care because they didn’t like Kamala Harris much. Was she any of those things? No. But her boss is funding the same genocide in Israel that Trump said to Netanyahu “finish the job” about on national television, so no one better vote for her either!
Sorry, not a good enough reason to not stop Trump. Not a good enough reason to refuse to vote. Not a good enough reason to vote third party.
For fuck’s sake, do you think people voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they thought he would be a terrific president?
They ran Harris thinking she would win based on her demographics. The DNC needs to learn that not everyone wants a black/LGBTQ/woman/etc candidate that just runs on their race/gender/sexuality.
They want someone that’s competent that will campaign on policies that will make their lives better. The DNC has moved so far away from the working class that the RNC, the party of wealthy creeps, has them.
They ran Harris because she was the only candidate they could justify shoehorning in without a primary, since she’s VP.
Why they didn’t want to run a primary is a great question. Probably cost and time, and name recognition. Studies show that often the candidate with the most name recognition wins. There’s wasn’t enough time to tell every person in America a brand new person’s name.
But usually VPs don’t do well when they run as president. Imo Dems are just trying to avoid another Bernie Sanders situation - a leftist with an authentic campaign and people who genuinely like them. More than anything, they gotta stop real progress in this country.
Imo Dems are just trying to avoid another Bernie Sanders situation - a leftist with an authentic campaign and people who genuinely like them
100% this is why. They didn’t want any internal pressure for progressive policies or a public platform to voice them.
They lost the general because they refused to hold a legitimate primary. This wouldn’t of happened. They haven’t run a real primary since 2008 and look at how hard Obama won in a landslide after competing in a deep field of qualified and competent candidates.
They ran Harris because she was the only viable option when it was clear that Biden was not. They did not run Harris thinking she would win at all, they ran her out of desperation because the incumbent was flatlining. It was not a choice, and it certainly was not one based on demographics. It was a “Hail Mary” and it failed as it was likely to do from the outset, and everyone who was paying attention knew that, yet had no choice but to hope for the best.
They had no platform other than fear mongering about Trump.
The difference between Harris and Obama was that while Obama was biracial that wasn’t the focus of his campaign, his platform was, and he articulated it well. That’s the real lesson to take away from Obama’s success at the polls not let’s run a black person and hope we win.
Obama also competed against a deep field of qualified candidates in 2008. He went into the general with momentum of a popular mandate and then won in a landslide.
He would of done nearly as good if he was a white man.
On the flip side, when the republicans lost with Romney in 2012 they did a whole lot of soul searching (rather than blaming the electorate and moving closer to the center to court mythical ‘moderates’ which is the ongoing failed strategy of the democrats), and in 2016 they had an extremely competitive primary where trump came out on top with a mandate as popular with the base as Obama in 2008.
She quite specifically DIDNT run on those things, like Hillary did…so…
So every racist and misogynist will say she did anyways.
Including the ones on Lemmy.
I think she, and to a greater extent the policies of the Democratic Party since Carter just cost America the Republic but there is literally nothing a black woman could do to convince some people she’s competent in her own right.
Competent at neoliberal corporate cronyism, mind you. But Harris’s qualifications by herself are rock solid.
She quite specifically DIDNT run on those things, like Hillary did…so…
What I would like to know the most is why 14 million registered Democrats failed to vote in this election, especially given what is at stake. Because if it was for some stupid, single issue, then fark them, good and hard.
it’s because the dems tacked hard right to appeal to the mythical “moderate conservative” while telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off for months and months on end. people were shouting from the rooftops that this was going to cost them the election, and damn wouldn’t you know it, it looks like it did! will they learn from it? probably not!
Having fake primaries sure didn’t help.
If you need to ask, then you haven’t been paying attention
The only other explanation is that those 14 million Democrats DID vote, but that their votes weren’t counted due to election day farkery. But I’m not ready to go down that rabbit hole without solid proof.
It’s possible, but I doubt it.
Occam’s Razor says people stayed home because the Democrats ran a shitty centrist who tried to appeal to the nonexistent ‘moderate Republican’. The Democrats have been doing that as long as I’ve been alive.
I want them to do a recount. Here’s solid proof:
Trump saying people don’t even need to go vote and he didn’t need their votes to win, Trump saying he had an election day secret with Johnson, the over 50 bomb threats, Elon Musk’s bullshittery with the lottery, the ballot boxes set on fire, the numerous people reporting issues with voting, previous election interference by Russia and Russia’s ongoing war, and tbh wouldn’t it be the perfect way to start a civil war in the US by Russia, by actually stealing the election this time and letting us know a week or two later?
So let’s recount because our planet can’t survive 4 more years of drill baby drill. Let’s just do an audit of those machines and check it all out. If the audit is fine then fine. It’s the same courtesy he got.
those things certainly did effect the total number of voters, but there’s no evidence that any of the votes for trump were fake, or that votes for harris were specifically not counted or destroyed (enough to effect a nationwide poor performance).
Either there was a massive, nationwide conspiracy (for which there is no compelling evidence), or Harris simply didn’t perform well.
I think she maybe didn’t perform well, sure. That can be true. But there’s enough evidence of issues includ8ng weird shit Trump himself said, that I think we should do an audit anyway just to make sure.
We also want to congratulate our friends in the Republican party, they played a great game and we can’t wait to work with them more.
Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley is excited to see his colleagues at the DNC make the same mistakes over and over.
This is amazing.
“I saw how the DNC ignored voters, I saw how they talked down to people, and that just made my job easy. I go in and say ‘Democrats think you’re dumb, but Republicans think you’re a genius’ and these dopes eat it up like the slop they feed their pigs.
Holy fuck is this even satire anymore? I can literally see a GOP campaign official say that in private.
In private? I can see them saying it on TV and the rubes still voting for them since all they watch is Fox News and they’d never run it.
Have they tried committing multiple felonies ? Are they even watching and learning ?
They just vowed not to!
Vowed? Wow.
The reality is even worse. They’re going to “learn” all the wrong lessons. They will shift further to the right, like they always do.
And this is one of the reasons why people shifted Republican in this last election.
If the Democratic party won’t represent Democratic ideals, then out of either anger or apathy, their base will vote for the party that can do it better, Republicans, or not vote at all.
I agree with a lot of people on Lemmy that the average American is an idiot, and our shortening attention spans coupled with our changing media diets isn’t helping with that, but I see these as features not bugs.
Americans in general like their shiny toys, and one of the best ways to capture their attention is by politicians giving concessions and offering things that will benefit their lives. Think carrots on sticks more than sticks themselves.
I will never stop hanging most of the blame on the Democratic party for leading us to today conclusion after Tuesday.
People didn’t shift Republican in this election. Trump got about the same number of votes as he did against Biden.
At this point you might as well start a third party.
Some kind of Democratic Socialist Party of America maybe.
Yep, every time Dems can’t get enough votes from the left to win, because they aren’t “left/pure enough” for them, what they learn is to shift to the right to find votes.
Whereas since voters on the right will always vote for the one with the R by their name even if they don’t think the candidate is “right enough”, their party learns that it doesn’t have to move to the left to find enough votes and stays to the right or moves even further to the right.
…you don’t win over conservatives by offering light-conservatism, but the democratic party have run the same playbook since 1992…
Mindless sheep sycophant party that abuses the system to stay relivent VS super-diverse big tent party than “takes the high road” and it is still almost 50/50…tells you where the people actually stand and how badly the broken system empowers the shitty minority. Oh, before “huurrrrddduuuurrrrr but popular vote dduuurrrrrrr”…that is how many people of each ideology VOTED not how many there are. Glad I could clarify the obvious for you smooth brain twits that think you have a point.
The only ones that need to learn are the vile pieces of shit that chose to throw their vote away or not even vote. A politician doesnt give them all they want so they sacrifice the planet. Lowest of the low. Same kind of trash as maga
Every single third party protest vote could have gone to Harris and she still would have heavily lost. She managed to even lose the damn popular vote by five million votes, despite Trump having a lower turnout than 2020.
This wasn’t because people voted third party, this was because at a time when incumbents have seen massive pushback across the globe from Covid inflation and Biden was unpopular across the board she ran as completely the same as Biden but even more Right on the border.
At a time when the politically disconnected working class families that make up the record trunout in 2020 were struggling with wage stagnation, erosion of Covid gains, and greedflation eroding their savings and pensions, four more years of the same but we’ll adopt even more Republican policies and look how many rich Republicans like us was never going to get the everperson off the damn couch.
More of the same is not a good platform for ‘progressives’ during economic hardship, even if it was out of their control and less hardship than most peer nations.
Even though Trump is a disaster for many of us, most people got though his first four years just fine, and don’t understand just how much damage he did or how much more he could do if the guardrails failed.
Getting the general public out to vote requires giving them something they want to vote for, and when the biggest thing you can point to doing or wanting to do more of is some clean energy related tax breaks that is a major problem.
Had the Dems impeached Clarence Thomas for his and his wife’s role in Jan 6, had Biden improved the immigration system like promised, had he provided free National Guard abortion clinics on federal land, had he made the FDA make puberty blockers and abortion medicine available by teleheath and mail, or indeed had any major victories in the last half of his term to show, we would not be here. Had they run AOC, Bernie, Waltz, or anyone at all who could articulate a platform beyond four more years of the same, we would not be here. Had Harris focused on how she could use left wing policy to fight the effects of late stage capitalism, we would not be here.
This election was an unforced error of the highest consequences, and one brought about by a political party that was so confident that until he dies of old age every politically disinterested Amarican would be so scared by the threat of Trump that they would maintain an unprecedented level of voter turnout without them having to actually do or promise anything.
Well said. As soon as Harris started parading Biden around on campaign events and talking about “we love you Joe” I knew it was over. It doesn’t matter that a lot of the circumstances were out of his control, to many people Biden’s term is associated with hardship. The Dems had a unique opportunity to sidestep the issue by having Harris position herself as a separate candidate, distancing herself from the Biden administration and pushing a narrative of her having different and new ideas for the country. Instead they tried themselves to the status quo in a moment where the everyman is suffering and it pulled them down like a boat anchor.
It’s a damn embarrassment, and the whole world is left weeping. Fucking hell.
I blame third party AND non voters. They and MAGA are all the same kind of scum who sacrificed your democracy.
Then, you’ll deal with this over and over until America becomes a completely fascist nation. That’ll teach those third party and non-voters. At least you’ll have your moral high ground, right?
America already will be a completely fascist nation thanks to the fascist enabling non voters
Not yet, it’s not completely fascist yet, but with the way you’re acting, there’s not going to be any significant resistance towards the US becoming a completely fascist country since you’re more interested in blaming each other instead of learning from your mistakes and work together to be better. What a defeatist mindset you have.
It will be completely fascist in January. And its thanks to non voters. They deserve all that is coming.
They don’t care so yes it is on them also. Wasn’t it 10million plus less voters then last time.
20 million. And yes they all deserve it.
…i’m not sure that’s how one builds a coalition…
There wont be a coalition with fascists. You had the vote between fascism and no fascism. If you choose that you dont want to vote for either you support fascism.
Enjoy the unfettered fascism, then, since you refuse to even find allies to fight against it.
Luckily I dont live in the US. But I have family there so I think its terrible people who didnt vote ruin their lifes and future like that. Non voters are no allies. They chose fascism. They are the enemies and there wont be another free election thanks to them and all the Maga garbage who are both on the same level
So angry this isn’t even satire.
I think it counts as satire, even if the headline is a completely true statement.
Colbert was satire when he just copied what Republicans were saying, with the obvious intentions of “Jesus Christ, do they even hear themselves?”
The Onion can be satire now, and when “No way to prevent this, says the only country where this happens on a regular basis.”
seriously. they’ll have a LOT more believable articles for the next few years.
Why are all you fools like “HA! BY NOT VOTING I SURE SHOWED THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY”?
you played YOURSELVES. You’re the one that’s gonna suffer not the party. It’s like you shot yourself just to spite Democrats, and you don’t realize that it’s you who is fucked, not the Democratic party
Also the campaign was bad. Not a soul here on lemmy or anywhere else is going to personally out-message a national campaign. People are obviously more enthusiastic to vote for something than to vote against something else, and that’s what it came down to.
Be mad at your party, they threw this election right before your eyes and you plugged your ears and went “lalalala! trump voter says what!” when we tried to tell you that you needed to pressure them to do more or they were going to lose anyways.
You aren’t going to like this, but there just isn’t a reason to vote for Democrats if they aren’t going to oppose the Republicans on anything but the personality of Donald Trump.
Sure, they give us lip service, they even throw in goodies once in a while! You get all warm and fuzzy imagining all the things you can “move them” on, but even if they do “listen” to you, (seriously, you guys didn’t even like their platform, and you’re the ones loyal to them. Whose votes are they earning if not yours??) they get challenged and they throw their hands up and say “guess there’s nothing that could be done” and Republicans get whatever they want anyways.
It’s the same outcome, this one just makes you feel bad and dare I say it might actually move you to act.
Again with the “YOU” aren’t gonna like this. No man it’s you voters who fucked yourselves. The Democratic party is gonna survive and it’s politicians aren’t gonna get poorer. It’s you who suffers
Really felt the need to embody that headline huh.
The voters must come to the party, not the other way around.
So you’re saying we should all make our own party? With blackjack and hookers?
Well that would be a lot more fun while being just as effective as the Democratic party, so why not?
If standing against fascism doesn’t bring the leftists to vote, you’re doomed. And AGAIN, you only fucked yourselves. The Democratic party isn’t gonna suffer, YOU are.
I voted for Jill Stein since I live in a pure blue state and my vote doesn’t count anyway
At least the non-voters got to do something useful with the time they saved.
We’ll show them next year for sure. Maybe even get our name printed on the ballot
I think the only thing to learn from this is that if Jesus himself came down and ran as a democrat, Trump would make jokes about crucifixes and the religious right would start cheering. There is no crossing party lines
I think the only thing to learn from this is that [vehemently ignores everything the Dems did wrong]
This article is about and for you, fool.
Imagine getting worked up over a satirical comment about a satirical news article in a satirical community
Fair enough, I ate your onion 😄
In my defense, though, I’ve seen plenty of people make the exact same argument earnestly many times, especially in the last couple of days…
Oh c’mon, Kamala was pretty far from Jesus, and Trump and co. are no political masterminds. This was the dems race to lose and they brilliantly pulled it off by exhibiting what can only be described as an active disdain for anything that even smelled like progressive politics. Turns out you can’t win on “the other guy is worse.” They fucked up and lost fair and square.
Amen
Look, the Democrats are not good at running campaigns, but I will never let that obscure the fact that OVER 75 MILLION Americans were ready, willing, and able to vote for a proven rapist, convicted criminal, openly racist, riot-starting adult crybaby. Not grudgingly – they went to the polls with a song in their hearts and blood in their eyes! The fucking Democrats didn’t cause that – 12 years of Fox News telling people that DJT was God, and four years of blaming COVID and inflation on desperate economic migrants did that.
Even IF the Democrats have enough of a base to overwhelm those +75m hateboner-stroking bigots, well they knew what’s at stake and STILL stayed home. (No doubt smirking at how cleverly they avoided any moral contagion via the brilliant gambit of continuing to pay taxes but not casting a vote 🙄 .) Regardless of all that, I don’t blame them for Trump’s win either, because there shouldn’t have been +75 million Trump-lovers to overwhelm in the first fucking place.
That’s not new information. We learned that the first time Trump was elected. We learned it again when Biden was elected, even if Biden managed to narrowly outperform Trump. We’ve known what we were up against. Stop pearl clutching and acting surprised and start being more pragmatic. The Democrats are the one with a platform at the national level, it’s on them to get out their vote and they utterly failed to do that.
And that is why the right always wins. The left are lazy and take the high ground and think themselves above it. And the right just does shit. And keeps at it till they get it.
Yeah, but that’s democracy. Those 75+ million people wanted something, and they voted for it, and they got it. Anything else is irrelevant. There’s no asterisk in the Constitution with a footnote that says the election is invalid if one side consists of hateboner-stroking bigots. If Democrats want something different, then they have to convince enough people to show up and vote for something different. They have to get good at public messaging and at running campaigns. Righteous indignation changes nothing whatsoever.
Democrats would have benefitted greatly from reining in the corporate profiteering that happened from the pandemic onwards.
They needed to be the anti greed party or the wealth redistribution party or something. Something different, not more of the same.
It was hard to hear everytime they said “Actually, the economy is doing marvelous.”
Agreed, just a little left-wing populism would’ve gone a long way. I’m cynical, so I see it as that the Democrats can’t be or do those things, because the need for campaign donations has turned them into a fundamentally neo-liberal party that stands for wealth and corporate greed. Like the GOP used to be, before it departed for Crazy Town in a lifted pickup truck.
See also: Joe Biden breaking the rail strike. (Before somebody points he followed up by getting some of the unions some of what they wanted, eroding union power generally was the headline news.) Can we imagine him nationalizing the rails and forcing the companies to strike a deal with the unions in exchange for using them? It would have been a stunning political sensation, but would’ve crossed Democrats’ corporate benefactors.
Democrats would have benefited greatly from telling the public that they were going to do anything at all about 30+y of neoliberal policy that benefits Wall St at the expense of the bottom 80%. This election (and every election since Obama left office) was a referendum on business as usual neoliberal policy at the working class’s expense. You could get away with that in the 90s, but when the working class can’t earn enough to rent their own apartment or start a life they’ll vote for literally anything else, including a convicted rapist and con man.
But Trumpnisnt going to do any of this either.
Tim Walz could have afforded the campaign this rhetoric.
But they locked my boy up to where he couldn’t show his true colors.
Well of course the election was still valid. Brainwashed Fox News/X misinformation junkies’ votes count just as much as a good person’s does. More actually, thanks to the high concentration of fools in low-population states and with too many electoral votes. My issue is that a massive propaganda machine is permitted to exist, such that +75 million walking dildos are now convinced that Biden created greedflation and gave all their tax money to dog-eating immigrants, and Fauci should be executed for treason because he forced children to get vaxxed(?).
Dismantling that machine should be job #1 – it should have been since Al Franken wrote Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But I guess it’s fucking impossible to shut off the machine that keeps stamping out Republican and IINO voters. And with at least a hundred years of MAGA rule ahead of us, I suppose it always will be.
Yes, totally agreed, and I feel this discussion circling straight back to the OP point: Whose job is it to dismantle the machine, and counter the misinformation? It’s us; there’s no global referee that we can appeal to. How do we do it? Through the political process, because we don’t want violence and civil war. Since the winner-take-all voting system mathematically leads to two parties, our agent in the political process is the Democratic Party.
So, it’s not the DNC’s fault that the misinformation machine exists, but it is their responsibility to fix it, and we can certainly blame them because they’re really bad at it.
That’s exactly it. It’s hard to admit that almost half the voting population is totally on board with trump–his “flaws” are not a bug, they’re a feature. He increased the size of his base, bringing in millions of Latinos, Gen Z men, and men of all races. It’s not that they simply hate the Dems, it’s that they love what trump is offering. In spite of that it there did exist enough more voters that don’t like trump (it would have taken 5 million more) to stop him, but they either didn’t give a shit or they wanted it to happen (to “punish” the dems). That’s the reality.
And now the Democrats will remain powerless forever. I guess single issue voters can take solace in that little victory. Sadly, they will probably not be replaced by a more progressive party rising up from their ashes, but rather by an emergent faction formed via Republican in-fighting. They will still be conservative, but they’ll wear different colored ties.
So everything will be exactly the same as it is now except libs might be slightly less charitable to the new party?
Yes they well once the supreme court is stacked 7 to 2 they well never have the power to do anything even if elected.
Its not even the dems. Its the dnc. Who actually voted for biden or kamala as the person, of all democrats, to be the representative? The two party system has literally led to the death of America.
I protested in front of the DNC this year with the Palestinian supporters.
The DNC is definitely part of the problem. There are establishment Democrats there too that help decide who gets to run the big ticket. We saw it in 2016 between Hillary and Bernie.
Still, as a progressive, I believe the only path forward is to still work within the system we have else we risk fracturing and ceasing organization. We need to lead a new platform within the Democratic party, and that will be much harder given the sentiment Americans have of them as was shown in this year’s election results.
2022 wasn’t half bad though. So there’s still hope.
the system is broken, and continuing to work within it will only lead to more losses. there is no salvaging the democratic party, it is fully co-opted by neoconservatives and billionaire donors who only care about fundraising off of losses. if there is a single lesson you should take from this dogshit election, it’s that. they do not care about you, or your rights, or your life. they care about donations. their dedication is to the bag, first and foremost, above everything else.
If it was just the fact of a two party system, why did it take over 200 years to do it?
Every system breaks down, given sufficient time
Which is crazy. In most countries, all parties are despised. In US, it is more like sports team.
We gotta, otherwise we’ll see that one team openly hates the game, and the other team is still kicking around the ball and acting like moving 10 inches solves the game from falling apart.
Pokémon God save us!
Theyre not the ones that need to learn. Voters need to learn DNC is a bunch of wealthy moderates grifting voters.
What if the DNC privately wins by making sure their candidate loses?
