- cross-posted to:
- humor@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- humor@beehaw.org
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“To all those growing skeptical of this party’s strategies and overall agenda, let me just say we hear you loud and clear. Rest assured we will be doing everything short of interpreting that sound into words and responding to those words in any way shape or form.”
This is an all-timer.
100% Spot-On article. The Hard Times nails it again.
Pffft!!! If your idea of “learning” is to copy any of the fascist ideas of trump, then yes, they should NOT learn anything. Did Jews after Hitler go fascist… Oh wait.
I love how the left has adopted casual racism and anti Semitism from the right. Way to go
What should they really learn? I’m sick of the blame being placed on decent people not doing enough.
How about we blame the pieces of crap that support Trump who has too many disgusting qualities to list.
The blame still stops at the leading Democrats.
Consider this. How could so many people vote for someone who is such a clear threat to democracy?
Simple. Because despite everything they said, his opponents never actually treated him as a threat to democracy.
Biden appointed a Republican to run the Department of Justice, and that Republican sat on his hands, refusing to do any investigation of Trump until he was forced to do so by House investigative committees. It took TWO YEARS before an investigation even began. This delay allowed Trump to eventually run out the clock.
Trump should have been in chains on the day Biden took office. He should have faced trial in a military tribunal. Any attempt by SCOTUS to protect him should have been declared “a coup from the bench” and seen those justices charged as accomplices after the fact.
THAT is how you need to handle an actual threat to democracy. Trump should have been put on trial, through whatever means necessary. Hell, ideally he should have received a capital sentence for his crimes against the republic. He betrayed his country. He is guilty of treason. The man should have hanged for his crimes.
But that wasn’t how Biden treated it. Trump was an EPOCHAL THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, but not enough to risk angering conservative white voters in suburban Philadelphia. He was THE NEXT INCARNATION OF HITLER, but not so Hitlerian as to justify any kind of dubious legal maneuvers that a fascist like Trump would have no problem pulling off.
Biden and co have been shouting that Trump is a threat do democracy for the better part of a decade at this point. But they never actually treated him like one. Actions speak louder than words. Democrats said Trump was a threat to democracy, but they never actually treated him like one. The Democrats, through their actions, made it clear that they didn’t think Trump was a real threat to democracy, so the voters acted accordingly.
If Democrats were actually serious about the threat, Trump would have been tried by military tribunal, sentenced, and been locked away or put in the ground two years ago.
They should learn how to win, for one.
You know what they need more of? Bernie’s populist rhetoric. A promise that something will actually be different. Obama won on that promise, and then did nothing with it.
15 million people don’t go missing unless your party is dead.
And bare in mind, I’m not saying anyone should have voted 3rd party; we can’t do that without at least RCV. But something needs to reanimate the Democrats’ corpse or we will all die at the hands of the next Mussolini.
I mean, we can blame the DNC some. But we should definitely be blaming Trump voters and non-voters.
The reverse side of this (that the Onion should do next) is:
“Oh yeah. I didn’t go out and vote. Surely the 30th time in a row means the DNC will learn their lesson and then promote leftist policy like I want!”
TBH I’d be afraid of them learning anything with headlines telling them to blame Palestine supporters and Minorities.
It’s the same picture
I don’t think thats a very accurate assessment to say that all Palestine supporters are minorities or vice versa.
I mean the “left” msm and the DNC lol
The only “The Onion” rather than “Not The Onion” part of this is the idea that they would announce it.
Also the idea of future free and fair elections appears unlikely.
I’d say “The Onion” part of this is that the democratic party doesn’t need to learn any lessons because it’s doing exactly what they want to do. The people who will refuse to learn from this are the people who still put faith in them and the democratic system in general.
Sure democrats would prefer to win but the most important thing to them is making sure that policies to the left of the republican party are never a serious threat to the donors they both share. That’s pretty obvious at this point, right?
Ding ding ding
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.
Holy shit. They really think Harris was “far left”??
How can this be a rejection of the far left when Harris campaigned as a moderate (e.g. Cheney)? If republican voters are going to think Democrats are communist regardless of how moderate the Democrats are, maybe moderating isn’t a good strategy. If the only choice is between right-wing and lite right-wing, right-wing voters will choose the real thing. Even then, Trumpists will still call democrats communists.
Many left polices are popular when they aren’t labelled as left
Thats the fun part, people consider dems “far left” because… Reasons, I guess? This country is so far right just the idea of building more housing counts as communist.
True. Even in California, the affordable housing measure and rent control measures both failed.
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.
No war but class war, buddy
Hardly surprising coming from the Star Trib these days… I knew it was bad when they refused to even endorse a candidate.
wouldnt matter if they did learn from it if the crap trump campaigned on goes through and he becomes a “king” in this country
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.
I agree with Flying Squid. It’s bizarre to think any sane person would now decide that the right strategy is to hate on minorities, or ditch all pretty normal behaviour such as adhere to the FUCKING LAW, NOT LIE (and spare me the #FalseEquivalence, it’s jaywalking Dems vs serial rapist Trump) and listen to effing EXPERTS. Dems should stick to their principles and await the serious shit show which is gonna happen with mass deportations, tariffs and even MORE INFLATION.
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.
Your post is CLASSIC misdirection and misrepresenting what the Dems actually did. IF these elections were fair, and I’ve reason to think they were not, then they got lost on higher gas prices. Which is A PRETTY STUPID AND SELFISH reason to vote for/not care about mass deportations. And they lost it on not attacking trump on the border and on the economy.
Who said “things are good actually”?? Seems to me that Harris had plenty of policy proposals that would have resulted in a meaningful improvement to the bottom line of the average American.
Biden has also been better for the average American than trump was. For fucks sake, Trump actually got away with raising taxes on all of us to support his tax cut for the rich, simply because the average person is too low information to grasp the idea of a tax cut that expires!
So yeah, plenty of actual reasons to say that one candidate is better than the other, without needing to be wowed by an actual messiah who can dismantle our fucked up system and solve everybody’s problems.
They repeatedly touted our economic recovery was ‘the best in the G6’.
Even when our economy is ‘good’ it’s shit for most people. That’s the problem with being a neoliberal status quo party: it doesn’t help most of the people they need to vote for them
Biden did very early and then learned to not say that again.
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?
do you think people voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they thought he would be a terrific president?
they voted for Biden because he made meaningful concessions to the progressive caucus. He gave Bernie a prominent roll in his campaign and made promises about student loan forgiveness and raising the minimum wage, on top of affirming people’s anxiety about covid and a pledge to address it.
Harris had none of that. She didn’t primary against progressive candidates, didn’t have to address progressive concerns, and when there was vocal opposition to any of her policies she said “excuse me, i’m speaking”. She was more right-moderate than Biden was, even if only because she didn’t face the progressive primary he did.
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.
running token candidates beholden to them is very shady but brilliant strategy by the superpacs :
if they loose: blame it on sexism, racism bigotry to divert the attention from reforms in dnc for progressive leadership. and even if they pretend to be sad about it, the megarich elites and donors get taxcuts and endless price gouging from republicans.
if they win: token candidate passes some token laws which gets either blocked in senate or so poorly implemented that they actually end up giving billions to megacorps for no visible benefit to people. case in point: https://www.atr.org/kamalas-broadband-bust-42-billion-996-days-zero-homes-connected/
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.
rather than … moving closer to the center to court mythical ‘moderate
Looking back at 2016 I think Trump won exactly because he went for the middle: middle working class. I know we all thought he was going hard right (and he did appeal to them for certain reasons), but he campaigned to the middle class and won them.
Primaries also benefit from the same effect that makes every movie and TV show a reboot: Name recognition. The long primary cycle keeps their name in the news so people get familiar with it so they’re more likely to vote for them.
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.
lol, you believe this? I don’t find it hard to believe that they put Biden though a primary, just to have him drop out…
IMO running Harris was the plan from the beginning. You know, which was kind of the problem, hijacking the primary.
To use your own words, you believe that?
This was not a grand conspiracy geez. Biden’s “primary” was perfunctory because we learned you never primary the incumbent. If he didn’t perform badly at the debate he probably wouldn’t have dropped out.
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…
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.
Wait, you think the republicans represent democratic ideals better…?
They pretend better
At this point you might as well start a third party.
This way Gore can lose all over again!
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…
The only way to win over conservatives is a full-throated embrace of fascism. Turns them out like crazy.
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 popular vote that trump won in addition to the electoral college? That popular vote? Democrats (the party apparatus) need to come to term with themselves and look in the mirror for answers as to why there’s a second trump term on the horizon.
Read, comprehend, then speak.
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
Which do you think is better? Dems giving people what they want to earn their vote or trump winning?
Dems cant give people what they want because everyone wants different things.
What do you think is better? Preventing fascism or doing nothing and watching a fascist get into power?
Medicare for all or universal healthcare is incredibly popular. Peace is also popular.
Spectacular example of avoiding the question but answering it with it. You want to watch the fascism
What do you think is better? Preventing fascism or doing nothing and watching a fascist get into power?
I think preventing fascism is better which is why I want a popular candidate because that’s the best way to prevent fascism
We know that Biden’s/Harris’ 2024 Campaign failed to produce enough turnout to win against Fascism. What could they have campaigned on to improve turnout? Universal healthcare is one of the many popular progressive policies, popular for both Democratic and Republican voters, that they could have ran on but decided not to.
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
Would you prefer they DID vote for Trump? I voted for Harris because she was the only real option but after what the DNC keeps doing (see: fucking Bernie in the primaries and then not even having a primary this year) I really can’t blame anyone for not voting. The Dems need to have their come to Jesus and remember that the people don’t owe them anything.
I dont make a difference whether they voted for Trump or not. They both picked fascism. Primaries dont mean shit especially if they already have a president a power. It was a mistake to have Biden run again but that doesnt excuse not voting for democracy
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
