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Keep telling yourself institutions are going to save democracy.
The ultimate responsibility of keeping a functioning democracy lies with the people. Complaining about failing institutions or parties is no more productive than armchair political activity.
Confront people about their choices and how they let this happen. Hold people accountable for all the election promises and obvious outcomes the new administration implements.
But America really has remarkably weak and poorly designed institutions that only work as long people don't abuse it... Which is to neglect human nature and not prepare for it. America's flaunted "checks and balances" never worked
“Andrew Jackson entered the chat…”
Instead of saying that Harris or the dnc dropped the ball, consider that over half the voting population in the US chose a senile, white, male, racist, felon who increased your taxes unless you were rich and stole classified documents, that is chums with Putin.
Maybe instead of "the dnc dropped the ball" it could be considered that the slight majority of Americans are just racist, sexist, uneducated, short sighted idiots?
No one needed to know much beyond seeing how bad trump has been. There shouldn't have needed to be a "make Harris better" plan. America seen that trump shitbox and still chose him.
It's nice to blame voters for parties failing to win elections. That absolves the party of responsibility - "we were right, it was voters who are wrong".
But that won't win an election. And that attitude will gift the mid terms and even 2028 to the republicans.
The DNC fucked up - it backed Biden despite clear signs he was not a good candidate for this election, the primary process who a fig leaf of democracy rather than putting forward the party's best and brightest, it then fought concerns of Biden health and hid the truth, then when he finally stepped down late in the day it arranged a coronation for Harris. And then after behaving undemocratically repeatedly it had the gall to make the election about "saving democracy".
Voters didn't do these things, the DNC did.
Instead of demonising voters and non voters, it's better to ask what should the party have done differently to win them over and what does it need to do to win them over in the mid terms.
It's nice for you to ignore that over half the voters in this country voted for someone that they knew was a sexist, racist, felon. A slice of bread with no advertising should have gotten more votes than him.
Fucking seriously though. I can see the frustration with the DNC, but some form of action is a hell of a lot better than the total dismantle of America as it is right now. These people could have easily looked into Kamala's policies that show quite a few good ideas, and a few that I personally didn't jive with (increase child tax credits, while the people like me and my partner are staunchly against having children that will grow into a world on fire, get absolutely nothing). Didn't stop me from voting for her though, you know why? Trump has NO plan (GOOD plan, they've got PLENTY of bad plans lined up for us all!). AT ALL. So, America's idiots STILL chose this orange buffoon, with no plans at all, just sparkly words, and now we are really sitting here and trying to blame Harris, who only had 107 days to get her message out there? Come on, Lemmy. I thought you were better than this...
The government allowed lies to be told on TV and on the internet under the guise of news. There were no real consequences to those who had listeners and repeated foreign government talking points for money. We have not seen any real investigation on how much interference was ran on social media.
Nearly every human being believes that they are a good person making rational decisions, so its important to examine the environment around these people to where they can believe they made the right choice when it comes to electing Trump and sadly, it seems our mostly unregulated free speech that let it happen, because the republican party is more organized and effective in communicating their platform and slandering their opponents than democrats are, and they motivated more people to vote than the democrats could as a result. Anger and hate are strong emotions and motivators, and unfortunately the republicans keep on using them and it keeps on working.
I have no idea what you're blaming Lemmy on, if anything I'd expect the userbase here to be more active and left-leaning voters than average. People have a good reason to be frustrated, and I think pointing that frustration at the only alternative option we had for a political party failing election after election to learn how to communicate and how to deliver on what the people really want is a reasonable take.
Kamala Harris truly is Hillary Clinton 2.0.
Many of Harris’s mistakes were similar to those Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Like Clinton, Harris cozied up to billionaire donors. Mark Cuban, for instance, said he was delighted that Harris was abandoning Democrats’ commitments to progressive principles and letting the business community propose the policies it wanted. Like Clinton, Harris and Tim Walz made hubristic campaign stops in solidly red states like Texas and Kentucky rather than spending the final days laser-focused on crucial battlegrounds. Like Clinton, Harris emphasized celebrity endorsements while failing to successfully court unions. (Most notably, the Teamsters declined to endorse her after she refused to pledge that she wouldn’t break a national railway strike.) Like Clinton, Harris focused too much on the danger of Donald Trump (which is very real) and not enough on the reasons why she would be good at being president herself.
I’ll just say that all the policies she proposed seemed entirely uninteresting to me. Credits for first time home buyers and something about building new homes seemed like her main talking point. This is great for all the people that don’t currently own a home and want to but does nothing for most people that also need help.
It benefits you by reducing homelessness and poverty in general which has a much higher cost for society in the long run. Holy fuck you guys are so self centered.
Do you really expect everyone to vote in the name of altruism? How naive can you be?
That was not her message. So get off your high horse. It was “I’m going to build houses and it’ll save money for some people that probably aren't you”. Periodt
But the exit polls showed that most people felt they were worse ofd today than 4 years ago. You expect all those people to read between the lines to figure out this will help make things better for them eventually? That's not how politics works.
Which saves you money in the long run, that's what you can't get into your head, helping others get out of the shit they're in helps everyone and saves money for everyone in the long run.
It’s the job of the campaign to explicitly make this argument. They did not. They failed. It is not our fault for their failure. You making this argument is the first I’m even hearing this.
Blaming the campaign for your ignorance 👍 You have the right to continue educating yourself once you're out of school.
Lol, this has to be the most naive and hilarious bs I’ve seen in a while. Harris did nothing wrong. No notes. It’s 100% the people that are wrong. Keep living that fantasy while the rest of us try to autopsy this corpse of a campaign and see what the cause of death is.
Never said she did nothing wrong but yes, the majority of electors are.
Well my only point is that most voters are not going to do the homework you require them to do in order to vote for a candidate. She failed in that respect and that is not the voters fault. Fix the party or become irrelevant.
Democrats are not leftists, they're center right. I'm so sick of people thinking Democrats are going to fix this, protect that, and make things better. Democrats serve their corporate masters, and they'll make vague promises that they know they won't keep.
I really don't care, do you?
If people didn't vote for Harris it just means they are happy with fascists.
I care because I'm not happy with fascists, and yet, due to others' apathy, ignorance, malice, or a mix thereof I have to live in a land ruled by fascists.
Welcome to the club. In my country we have fascist in the government since '94. Lately an openly fascist head of government.
And that's because the majority of the people living in Italy simply don't go to to vote.
Pretty much this, by now pretty much everyone knows Trump and knows what he wants and what he stands for, and we had a referendum of sorts. If that alone isn't enough motivation for someone to go to the polls or request a ballot it's pretty disingenious for people to point fingers at the DNC or Harris because they weren't jazzed up enough.
Like, if someone isn't willing to stand in line for a couple hours in an attempt to ensure that their great-great-grandchildren have a habitable world in which to exist we're a pretty hopeless species, right?
This is what happens when anyone that warns someone is sick gets burnt at the stake as a witch.
When your own party is criticizing the candidate, you need to realize that 17 million more aren't going to put the effort into complaining, they're not going to hold their nose and vote.
They're just gonna stay home.
So when the politically active tries to warn the party, it would behoove the party to listen to it's base.
Anyone who didn't bother to choose Harris deserves Trump. Enjoy!
No, the American People have failed us.
It's both. Yeah, Americans continue to be unmasked as racist and all, but the DNC absolutely shat the bed here as well.
This cannot be the message.
The first, and foremost failure, is the Republican party. They are the ones who have chosen Donald Trump to lead. And secondly, they are the ones who built up an organization to turn him into the most powerful political force in America. I salute the Republicans who are still fighting the anti-Trump fight, but the cause is 100% lost. MAGA is now going to be a multi-decade ideology and there's no way to pull Republicanism out of that trap in any short-term.
That means we need to truly, armor up and organize a fierce resistance. One that can overpower and overtake the MAGA movement. This means seeing MAGA for what it is: a cultural behemoth that commands over 75-million votes today, reliably. They have Elon Musk (Twitter/X). They likely have Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta/Instagram). They have Washington Post (Jeff Bezos, who has recently replaces the heads with former Murdoch editors). They have LA Times. They have Gannett (and their 200+ regional / local papers). I dare say they own Reddit and likely were running social media interference at the lowest levels (with false stories of hopium. If you were on /r/politics you know what I'm talking about, focusing on shitty stories that Kamala was ahead)
Do you seriously think that all the major newspapers refusing to endorse Kamala Harris was some kind of freak accident? It was a preplanned move to specifically fuck us over. And it worked.
That is the nature of our opposition. They aren't idiots. They are savvy. They are resourceful. They own the collective media space. And they use their power to get Donald Trump (a shitty man who is easily puppetted with praise), because they want a shadow puppet as their king.
And now that their king is elected, you can see Cryptobros pumping their cryptocoins, Stocks in various media companies flying high, etc. etc. They know they won and they'll take the W today. But take a good look at America right now. In your depression, as you're thinking about why Kamala won, you're missing the real message.
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala's control.
This MUST be the message.
AIPAC corruption and extremely right wing ideology in the Democrat party lead to more Trump.
Get your head out of your ass. Feel your failure. Change your mind. Rebuild the Democrat party to a Left wing platform that CAN WIN.
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala's control.
Trump won because more people voted for him, plain and simple.
For 9 years now I've listened to fellow progressives wring their hands and breathlessly say "I just don't understand how anyone could vote for him!" The problem, the real problem is that for like 95% of us, this statement is the end of the conversation. If the democrats want to win, they need to sit down and really, really consider the "why" of the Trump voter.
Yes, there's racism and yes there's sexism and yes there's xenophobia and christian nationalism that all influence the far right, but there are also plenty of people voting R that don't give a damn about that stuff. As the dust settles, it's becoming increasingly clear that lots of voters voted split-ticket in this cycle, so blaming it all on dogma and party loyalty isn't going to cut it — in fact, the data is suggesting that Americans are less loyal than ever to any particular political party, so what is it specifically about Trump that resonated with so many this time around?
I don't have any exact answers to that question (which is honestly pretty embarrassing since we've all had 9 years to contemplate this), but if I had to guess, I'd say it's something to do with the fact Trump actively acknowledges that things suck right now. "Make America Great Again" is a slogan that inherently implies we're living in an empire in decline. Regardless of which side of the isle they sit on, I think most Americans can agree with the sentiment that things are getting worse, and have been for a while.
Of course, the two sides have wildly different ideas about why things suck — with the right largely blaming the decline on immigration or abortion or LGBT proliferation or some nebulous "eroding of traditional American values", and with the left blaming things on regulatory capture, military adventurism, and the general corporate cannibalization of all our institutions and infrastructure. But both sides lately agree we're heading in the wrong direction, so why is Trump's message more resonant?
Maybe it's because Trump presents them with more tangible "boogiemen" while the Democrats play ineffective defense by pointing at rising GDP or the surging stock market or low unemployment numbers — stats that do nothing to speak to the lived experiences of individual voters. Maybe Democrats need to focus their attention less on policy proposals and "hope and change" and more on "boogiemen" like the right. Stop campaigning against Trump, stop campaigning for incremental change, stop campaigning for culture wars, and start campaigning against people like Elon Musk. Start campaigning against union-busting Howard Shultz. Campaign against Amazon. Campaign against Mark fucking Cuban who hoards $6 billion for himself and then turns around and acts like he gives a damn about the working class while simultaneously padding the pockets of Democrats so that if they ever do actually win, he can be sure his tidy fortune won't be at risk.
Is rent too high? Is the price of groceries becoming a burden? Have wages been stagnant for two decades? Fucking acknowledge it— no, don't just acknowledge it, tell people they're right to feel that way and that they should be fucking angry about it. Then spend every last campaign dollar and stump speech and political add attacking the people who made it that way. Rally people against an actual enemy, the real enemy, and maybe we'll finally start voting for you without having to hold our noses. Of course, the DNC probably has too much vested interest in keeping their corporate donors happy to ever make this the message. After all, the Harris campaign raised nearly a billion dollars this cycle. Then again, what good is a billion bucks if it loses your the house, Senate and presidency?
Anyway, that's just the two cents of a frustrated liberal who isn't terribly surprised by the situation we're now facing once again. Take it with a grain of salt — I'm just as dumb as everyone else.
You're going to get downvoted because you're making some big swings here. I'd say you'll end up being 50% correct when the numbers come out and everything is drilled into.
The singular fact that nobody seems to want to say is that you apparently can now just win by lying to voters, cheating the law, propagandizing everything, and bragging non-stop about doing so. He will not do anything for people in this country or the world, nor will Vance. It's a bait and switch, plain and simple, and people are dumb enough to vote for it. This happened in Italy twice almost 100 years ago, and it took them 15 years to finally get mad enough to just revolt, and hang those people for display.
The unfortunate truth right now is there seems to not be the pushback for this in the US. People are willing to vote against themselves and their neighbors because Trump/Vance say they're going to get you money while they are pillaging you at the same time.
