Who cares?
The media is pushing this narrative about “Trump voters” so that liberals will go “FAFO” and jerk off about leopards. The fact remains that most of the people hurt by these policies didn’t vote for them.
I loathe voting for neoliberals. I’m fully aware it’s harm reduction and this ship has been sinking under Neoliberals and Fascists since Reagan converted his former opposition to the corpo take into today. I haven’t had a candidate to vote for in a general election in my entire life. I’m 40. Yes Ive volunteered in primaries for a better path.
But I did eat the rancid shit and vote neoliberal every time, because affirmation ribbons you can’t eat or live inside are still better than scapegoats. I hated voting for Kerry, Obama, Clinton, Biden, and Harris, but I took my medicine and did it with a funeral dirge in my heart telling myself it’s better that less people get hurt than more. The ship has been sinking my entire voting life regardless of party, but it’s been crystal clear it sinks faster under fascists than neoliberals. Something something to that starfish it mattered.
The people that could vote for Harris but didn’t can get fucked right along with the Trump voters as far as I’m concerned. My empathy is reserved for people too young to vote and people who voted against this.
Willful ignorance about your own society and governance is no excuse. “Teehee I’m not political I’m keeping up with the Kardashians/stupid sports GAMES” means you didnt care about anyone else, feel free to diaf.
Take that energy and put it to your politicians, and yes democrats.
I voted Harris. But at this point, i am thinking that the Democratic Party must be corralled first before trying to take on the republicans. So now i am looking for third party or independent in the future.
Keep dreaming.
Midterms are less than 24 months away. You’re not going to get a viable third party.
If you want progress, start finding and supporting the Dems you like in the primaries.
This.
You have a party of Neoliberal Reagan Republicans (mostly,) and… literal Nazis.
Ain’t it great?
The GOP turning into a Nazi party is living proof that even in the American landscape, substantial political shifts are possible. If leftists would organize and tea-party the democrats from the other flank there would be an immediate effect. The problem being, of course, that leftists start arguing over the dumbest shit immediately which hinders any real coordination.
You hit on the the Left’s greatest weakness: they fight amongst themselves until it’s too late.
The Right is unified, they eject anyone who isn’t a “Team Player.”
Groundskeeper Willie meme
What an absurd oversimplification
Nah, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Find dems in primaries that agree with you. If you can’t find one reasonable close, run yourself. That’s my mindset. Already trying to make connections to run myself
I look at is as you have a party that ran Al Gore, who won a Nobel Prize for trying to alert people to the dangers of climate change, but somehow he wasn’t better than a stumblebum like Bush Jr.
@Dagwood222 @Fredthefishlord I mean it’s stupid that it was even close, but Dubya’s brother stole the election for him. Pretty much accepted fact now that if the recounts had actually been allowed then Gore would have won. US elections are awful. https://youtu.be/jucDFrO89Ko
Ex - NYC Mayor Ed Koch made the best point. “If you agree with me 51%, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% see a psychiatrist.”
On that not didn’t Ed Koch’s incompetence with an Ice Ring help make Trump more famous in New York?
I’ve been a Repub since forever, abstained until I realized I was being an asshat and finally voted Harris for the same reasons. Hell, at the end of the day, do I vote for an economics major/ Attorney who supports the judiciary or a literal Nero who wants to make bank while the world burns?
Can we just go back to politically arguing about a balanced budget? Why does that now seem like an insane position?? I’d like to get off this ride now, plz.
If you care about the budget, you might want to take a look at the history of the economy under Republican presidents compared to Democrats…
Right there with you, I chose the lesser of two evils in my mind, simply because there were no options to pick from. I did vote Sanders simply because it was a refreshing and mature take on the things that mattered in my mind to society, not the Red vs. Blue rhetoric, finger point, gas lighting debauchery that picked up since Trump joined in with politics. Democrats are largely playing by the book while Republicans are burning it, the we need to have a third party that douses the party formerly comprised of Conservatives in gasoline and watch them burn while simultaneously archiving the democratic senior leadership. AOC is a breath of fresh air and someone that at least has some empathy and life experience to the average American, not these silver spoon fed premadonna’s that play at leaders. These people spend millions to keep their cushy gigs, while single mothers skip meals just to feed their kids. Disgusting in my mind and I am only a few years younger than yourself, enough is enough already, but it would have to be a radical hard fought battle at this point to pull a third party out of the rubble that is the politics of this country at this point. All this talk of owning the woke, well guess what, it seems more are waking up to your bullshit and you are fire selling the country cause you see the end of the tunnel and its not light.
They didn’t vote against them either.
Noncitizens can’t vote. A lot of people who voted for Harris are being harmed.
I hate to be the one to tell you that the world is not just. The idea that people who suffer must deserve it is a cop out.
Nope, they’re still full-on MAGATizing out there. If they realize anything yet, it’s only subconsciously and they’ll never admit it, even to themselves.
Narcissists will never admit they’re wrong, or apologize.
“My team no matter what!”
“This was supposed to happen to them, not me!”
Not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.
Oof, that’s a brutal headline. Wonder how many voters actually feel this way.
I appropriated this image from someone back in November & have been posting it all over the place. Nice to see someone else posting it!
It’s the information environment, stupid.
Same conclusion as everyone. If Democrats want to survive, they have got to start pushing these online information siloes shamelessly like Republicans do instead of rambling on about issues, door to door, like it’s 1950. It’s like they’re fighting drones with swords.
It sucks. But if they aren’t going to reign in big tech and literally criminal media, well, they better join the mess they’re complicit in.
online information siloes
I’m not sure that’s possible because the Democratic platform doesn’t have the sort of populist appeal that Trump’s Republican platform does. Moderation can’t compete with extremism in this domain. I suppose that the Democrats could try to pivot to their own (presumably class-based) form of populism but, at least from my point of view, one very strong reason to support the Democrats is because they aren’t populist. Having one populist party versus another would be a lose/lose situation.
I don’t have an alternate proposal. It may actually be the case that social media will eventually force every serious political movement to pivot towards populism and create its own truth in order to be competitive, but then who would make the policy decisions in a world of meme warfare?
My proposal is that Democrats start lying.
Go on Tiktok, claim you’re gonna pass a law capping rent at $500/mo.
Go on MSNBC and say “clearly we can’t do that, it will cause severe economic shock, but we’ll look at expanding rent control and increasing housing stock”
There’s no consequences anymore. Just tell people what they want to hear. Say crazy populist shit. Have your donors purchase media outlets and juice the algorithm. Have botnets spread misinfo and disinfo. Then when you’re in power enact reasonable policy.
Voters don’t like boring, reasonable policy. That’s not enough drama. Start saying wild shit.
I don’t have an alternate proposal. It may actually be the case that social media will eventually force every serious political movement to pivot towards populism and create its own truth in order to be competitive, but then who would make the policy decisions in a world of meme warfare?
Simple, obliterate engagement obsessed social media. Or rein it in.
Failing that (and it already failed in the US, seeing how we basically crowned Big Tech), well… Two populist parties is better than a monoparty. And maybe a party can get someone “cynical” who will say absolutely anything but, behind closed doors, doesn’t drink so much of their own Kool Aid.
The BEST thing the DNC can do Right Now is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING while People Suffer! That way they can Prepare their WINNING CANDIDATE Kamala Harris for a Run in 2028! It’s a NO LOSE Solution!
Aaaaaand scamer get scammed.
These are catastrophically stupid people, but you have to leave space for people to change their minds. We need each other.
Exactly. Sure we can say “I told you so” a bit but we also need to just highlight how many folks are changing their minds and it’s ok to do that.
they actually believed he only says things to get himself elected thats about it, or he would walk back the promises designed to hurt them. oh and conservatives are always addicted to drama/ propaganda, hence why they fall for scams very easily.
slow clap Turns out that they’re not all illiterate, so I guess a belated congratulations on their achievement of 8th grade reading comprehension is in order?
I think this is a very important bit:
When we say they’re voting against their interests, I think we have to be very clear. I don’t think when they vote for somebody like Trump, or George W. Bush for that matter or Mitt Romney, they’re voting against many of their social and cultural interests. They may simply apply greater salience or weight to that than they do their ability to cover their health care costs or their ability to limit their co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses or their tax rates or their local industries.
Definitely important for us to understand and also just insane that that’s probably the right conclusion too. They care more about their culture war issues than they do about their health care etc., that is at least until the moment someone comes for them. It’s such a depressing failure of imagination that such a wide swath of the voting public fails to realize how bad it could get for them until it actually does.
Also, there was a part of the article that talked about the “us (rural) vs them (city)” mentality. We need to start pointing out that there are a shit ton of rural folk in the city. Cities are our true melting pot and why they’re usually very liberal. They are surrounded by the “thems” in the rural boogie man scenario. The city people work with them, talk to them, see them on the street and they are human also.
The covid portion is going to stick with me awhile too. The rural areas should have had the least amount of deaths during covid and I think that was what Trump was counting on. They aren’t on mass transit and don’t have to see their neighbor if they don’t choose too. They had a natural social distancing. But they were 3 to 4x the death rate. The lack of interaction makes them more racist and that racism made them die more. It’s a crazy way to look at it.
