Wait, is this satire? I only noticed 3/4 through the article.
This is a satirical source. Haven’t seen one comment that didn’t take it seriously.
Bernie Sanders reflected on it stating that it was the Democrats failing the working class that won Trump the election, and people in the Democratic Party denounced him for it.
They already learned nothing from 2016. If they didn’t learn before why would you believe they’ve learned this time. It’s a situation where satire runs too close to reality so of course people take it seriously. In fact the “she didn’t get elected because she’s black/woman” reasoning already shows they don’t plan to learn from this time either. The answer to dems losing isn’t “we weren’t racist/sexist enough”.
Yep. They all got got lmfao
It all depends on what our biggest corporate donors want
Saying the silent part loud.
I love the hard times. All yall ate the onion lol
"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.”
Unlike prior revolutions in which the new regime was established after the old, we should write a new constitution in advance.
Start with a framework. Maybe take the Constitution of the United States and make some no-brainer changes (getting rid of the EC, say. Or election by ranked choice)
And then, we develop it. Run clauses by legal scholars, hold town halls. Get it on the web. Debate about the benefits of competing clause versions.
So that when there is a movement, a resistance (and there will be) an organized rebellion, the people will not just have an enemy to fight against but something to fight for.
Maybe take the Constitution of the United States and make some no-brainer changes
Or take one that already works well for centuries. Scandinavian countries, Austria, Swiss, are generally good at this.
Sure!
So my original fantasy (during the Obama era) was to create what would start as an wiki of all† the constitutions of all nations of the world, translated to all† languages.
Then there’d be a workshop section where amateur legal experts could take known clauses and tweak them so that they’d be better (say, revising all the US federal elections so that they’re ranked choice, and fixing all the instances of two-party procedure so that they accommodate any number of parties. Or, for another example, fixing UK Parliament so that it is appointed by sortition from all qualifying citizens.)
The point of all this when the world isn’t on the precipice of despair is twofold:
1) It provides a resource for new societies to look at what other constitutions look like, so they can pull from what works, which means that coups d’etat are more likely to result in something other than a provisional dictatorship that accidentally becomes permanent. Because we have new states rising from the ashes of the old frequently. And…
2) It provides a place to crowdsource amendments to constitutions already in place (or to change current non-foundational ordinances). Right now, here in the US, we depend on our legislators to write laws, and they rely on their staffers who often have corporate allegiances, when they don’t receive bill text directly from corporate or special interest lobbyists directly. So it would create a place for the public to talk about it and have its own input.
Such a website was a no-brainer to me, so much so that I had assumed that it existed somewhere online. But no, no-one has made it.
I don’t have the skill it takes to start what might eventually become a sizeable project with lots of political enemies, like Wikipedia or Wikileaks. But maybe here on Lemmy creating an interested team would be easier.
For now it’s a pie-in-the-sky idea, as I wouldn’t have any idea how to begin it.
† This is the internet definition of all, id est as many as we could crowdsource.
We already did these things eighty years ago. But, you forgot why we’ve an EC. Admitting you’re powerless over your chronic ignorance and apathy is step 1.
Maybe don’t be a dick
Our issues are so bad we’ve back to back hurricanes in Florida and the White House. But, you’re more concerned with feelings. Eighty years of your ideology hasn’t worked so well. Perhaps you should reconsider.
The Hard Times is a very real punk news site that you should not question. Just absorb the information as truth and move on. The historic satire site was founded in December 1976. It’s made by a group of punk and hardcore kids from all the different sub-genres of the DIY hardcore scene. Any resemblance to actual persons or band names is coincidental.
The DNC often deals with this, because the nature of federal politics in the US requires them to appeal to the general public, which has left-leaning interests, and then businesses and oligarchs for sponsorship which have right-leaning interests.
Remember they made the Democratic Party primaries less democratic after Carter was elected because he was too left wing. And they’ve only been able to nominate neoliberals since.
So no, those of us on the left have no candidates. And since its a two-party FPTP system, we only can vote against the worse popular guy by voting for the slightly better other popular guy.
In this case, assuming the election went down as it appeared, the majority of the US voted for the racist autocratic dictator rather than another neolib. (Granted, Biden went further left than we expected and I had hope Harris would as well. Walz certainly seems to understand the US public, but none of them are without ties to industrial interests. We’d still only be able to expect a couple of scraps.)
What this tells me is that most Americans don’t get it. They think they have a choice. And now they’re going to endure the consequences of their folly.
Remember they made the Democratic Party primaries less democratic after Carter was elected because he was too left wing. And they’ve only been able to nominate neoliberals since.
It’s amazing that a naval officer/peanut entrepreneur/devout Christian was “too left wing”, especially since he got beat by a Hollywood union boss from California.
Mind you, we just had an anti-elite rebellion led by a thrice-divorced billionaire failson of a New York City real estate magnate.
What would it look like if they “got it”? They’d still have chosen one or the other, I don’t know how I’d distinguish between this outcome that indicates they don’t get it and one where they apparently do.
As best as we understand the motivation of the constituency, they felt the economy was bad under Biden, that immigrants were increasing crime, weighing down our social programs and taking our jobs, and that Trump will fix everything with his concept of a plan.
In reality, Biden was dealing with the after-effects of Trump’s economy, plus the COVID-19 epidemic, and while prices did increase, the US has recovered better than any other nation, so he can’t really be faulted on the economy, especially after Trump’s initial response to the epidemic of pretending like it’s not already in the community, and politicizing mitigation efforts like masks and social distancing.
Then, immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don’t want, are paying taxes, and commit fewer crimes than the general population. So all of our concerns about immigrants are demonstrably false.
And if Trump’s previous methods of fixing the United States is consistent, then he’s only going to break things. An example would be his efforts to repeal the ACA, which turned into the skinny repeal that is, killing the program without a replacement, because making a better healthcare program was too hard for the GOP.
I remember all this, and it’s troubling the short memories of the American electorate. It’s not the first time, though. They should have remember not just how bad it was under George W. Bush, but how awful Republicans became during that time. Street Republicans were outwardly endorsing torture and suggesting that waterboarding wasn’t really torture. It’s like they lost all moral direction or even basic sense in favor of party loyalty.
Now as more votes are processed, and as we’re able to see how demographics voted, our review of the 2024 election might change, but right now it looks like huge chunks of the electorate are just forgetful and completely daft. More likely they’re just racist and bigoted more than they care about their own self interests.
If they got it they’d know that putting a Democrat in office and then pressuring them can get results, which is how we ended DADT and DoMA. The GOP doesn’t care what the public thinks.
It’s worth tapping the quote (accredited) from Linden Baines Johnson:
I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and the fact that no one really recognized that is alarming.
“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.”
The best line in the whole article
sounds a lot like the same thing they said in 2016 and now that we know that they’re doubling down on their stubbornness here and in other examples; we should expect a repeat of 2016 & 2024 in 2028.
I think after 4 years of Trump, if there are still elections in 2028, we’ll see a Democrat elected president simply because of the fact that how bad it is under Trump will be right in people’s faces. In 2032, however, we’ll definitely see the Dems lose to somebody even worse than Trump for exactly why they lost in 2016 and 2024.
The Dems don’t learn anything and lose, then 4 years later they win because the Republicans made things worse, and then they learn nothing, double down, and lose again, starting the cycle all over again.
This is how it goes. People are uninformed when it comes to politics and generally stupid as fuck. Biden dealt with Trump’s terrible policies and the aftermath of the pandemic. Prices went up. Biden bad. Elect Trump. Unimaginable terror but good economy. Elect Trump’s kid or some other dipshit. Economy goes to shit in a way fucksticks can understand. But now it’s too late.
It’s The Onion all the way down
The Democratic party isn’t a viable alternative to the Republican party. They’re too friendly to corporations, not doing enough to show teeth or enthusiasm, and definitely not explaining why Republicans are the worst option. Let’s assume that D is politically bankrupt after taking right wing medias beating for the last 40 years. SO HOW DO WE FIND A NEW ALTERNATIVE TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? And how do we get everyone to migrate?
First get rid of FPTP.
THEN and only then can we form a new progressive party.
Or, and hear me out - stop desperately trying to reform an unreformable system and ignoring that it is working exactly as it was designed to, abolish it, and build something better instead.
I think we’d all love to. The constitution is fundamentally broken and should be completely rewritten. It’s founded on ideas that just aren’t true now, if they ever were. The idea that the states are more like countries than counties is the biggest one. The idea that we can and should protect ourselves from the tyrrany of the majority by having independent branches of government and countless ways to stop and stall things is another huge one.
But here’s the biggest problem, not enough of the country agrees that the system is broken, and even smaller portion of those who do can agree on how it’s broken or what changes to make. So no, we can’t just abolish it. We can either (1) fix it enough to get to the point that we may be able to have the stability it would require to safely transition to a new constitution or (2) see things get so bad that enough of the country is on board for revolution. Both options suck, but option (2) has a pretty bad record compared to option (1) in my view.
In other words, “no, I won’t stop desperately trying to reform an unreformable system and ignoring that it is working exactly as it was designed to, instead, I’m just going to insist on playing by the rules of this system that was designed to work against me over and over and over again expecting a different result to magically manifest in to reality”
And if neither party supports that reform, do we just keep voting Democrat until the end of time?
No way to prevent this, says only party where this regularly happens.
That’s funny, but I don’t think it’s quite right.
Establishment parties across the EU and OECD countries (mostly liberal democracies) all had their incumbent parties lose ground in 2024, for the first time in history.
Graph of EU/OECD election changes
People know they want something to change, but right now it’s only the fascists promising to do so.
No will to prevent this. The DNC would like you to quietly believe that they are a progressive party. They wear the costume (and have a few truly progressive players), but the party is not as progressive as they’d have you believe. Their elite are beholden to lobbying, grift, and self enrichment just like the republicans. Progressive democratic socialist policies always hurt someone’s profits, so the DNC can’t move too far left. They can’t move too far right either without alienating their base. So they attempt to do very little.
This is why they purposely fucked Bernie out of his nomination.
Democrats are afraid of there not being elections in 2028. What they should be afraid of is the DNC moving even further right as they are planning to do right now.
Democrats: “Moving right a little didn’t work this time. Next time let’s try moving a little more to the right.”
“Clearly we didn’t move right far enough. We should have moved right further. It is what the voter wanted”.
I’m kind of amazed that more politicians don’t just promise to try to implement all the highest polling ideas. (Spoiler: Most are progressive and socialist policies.) Especially presidential candidates running against potentially catastrophic fascists.
Because they exist to protect their corporate benefactors and popular policies don’t allow for that
And why do they serve them: All points back to the insane amount of money necessary to run a campaign (esp. at higher levels, vs billionaires, etc).
Can you believe the democrats spent this much money and still lost as badly as they did?! It blows the mind!
I’m sure the totals are so absurd that I can’t really comprehend the numbers. But Citizens United set the rules of the game. And Democrats don’t have that sweet cult advantage.
Embarrassing, but so is Trump and Vance winning so many working class votes, while being extremely wealthy anti-labor anti-union cunts, backed by world’s loudest and richest dipshit, which will demand more tax cuts (for them), tariffs and austerity (for us). “But Biden prices went up!” SMFH.
Don’t downplay inflation. That’s how Harris lost in the first place.
Sure. Costs are too high. People are angry. But angry people are not very reasonable or logical, and easier to manipulate. They just voted against any helpful progressive policies, in favor of tariffs, austerity, oligarchs, fascism, chaos, etc. This was very dumb.
To me, the core problem is that Democrats lost the information war, esp. with the average low info voters (“I get my news from Facebook/TikTok”). It didn’t help that Biden funded genocide and Harris ignored progressives.
As my straight white female 30s friend (were in vermont so it’s inconsequential) said: “I can’t afford another four years of this. I did better under the other guy although I hate him.” When I asked her about reproductive rights since she’s a straight woman of childbearing age she said “we’re protected in vermont. If that changes I’ll change.” (We have a state constitutional right to abortion here)
This woman doesn’t hate queers, she doesn’t hate minorities, the only thing she hates is inflation making her work harder for less and less.
And then there’s the wars. Biden/Harris royally fucked up. the billions we send to Ukraine and Israel are deeply unpopular with average people who see rising homelessness and increased natural disasters and shitty government response to it (we’ve been hit hard in vermont with massive flash floods and landslides from rain bombs, it barely makes the national news). The American people are hurting and our government is pissing away money on foreign forever wars. Even with all the insane pro Israel propaganda to the point that our free speech rights are threatened over it, people still don’t support it.
Part of the problem is that polling has been fundamentally flawed for a while now. Polling in 2016, 2020, and 2024 all showed Trump as losing and the polling agencies had to artificially weigh pro Trump supporters higher in the polls because they weren’t being adequately represented. It seems that a major portion of the problem is that some number of liberal/socialist poll respondents don’t end up actually voting and some number of conservative voters don’t end up responding to polls.
