“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him.
Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”
Hope and change. That’s the message Obama won consecutive terms with. The Republicans have always thrived on fear and insecurity–and hate, which is just ripe fear. To quote Yoda, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.” The red scare, the Southern Strategy, urban crime, WMDs, terrorism, immigrants, China–since the 1950s, Republicans have monkey-barred from fear to fear.
It’s a natural fit for conservativism. What is conservatism if not the fear of change? And when you’re afraid, you want a strongman to lead you, someone who takes pride in our military and law enforcement. Someone who shows no fear, who has swagger. It’s also a perfect fit for someone like Trump who would as soon lie as breathe. When you’re conjuring terrors, truth is just dead weight.
Kamala didn’t run on hope and change. She ran on fear, too. She tried to beat Trump at his own game with none of the advantages of his shameless distain for the truth or a Republican Party and media ecosystem at home with fearmongering. She aped his disdain for immigrants and opposition to China, but of course her main bugaboo was Trump himself. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with our nation’s current circumstances, she offered only stasis, while Trump offered revolution.
Non-college graduates know they’re getting fucked. Trump says immigrants and China is to blame. Kamala has nothing to say. She could point to the billionaires, the tax dodging corporations, the thriving defense contractors, the predatory medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the monopolies bleeding consumers dry in every corner of the economy.
She could paint a vision of affordable healthcare for all, an end to medical bankruptcy, an end to college debt, a thriving green energy blue collar economy, free early childhood education, a guaranteed jobs program, a universal basic income.
She could acknowledge the people who feel left behind and say, “I hear you. This is what I’m going to do for you.” Instead, her cries of fear just assured those folks that Trump really was going to fuck shit up fighting for them, that the people who sold them down the river are shaking in their boots. Of course, Trump isn’t actually going to make their lives better, but he promised he would, and that’s more than Kamala could be bothered to do.
Republicans can blame immigrants, LGBT, black people, brown people, women and much more.
All Democrats had to blame was Trump.
Democrats can never beat Republicans in the blame game. They must offer hope. They can never beat Republicans in threatening despair.
Move on from the Democrats. It’s over. They had their chance with Bernie.
Liberals would choose fascism over adopting left wing elements into the party. They’ve made their choice and will now live with it. Repeated failure by leadership to choose a candidate people actually like is what brought us here. Never forget that.
Maybe blowing up the Democratic party would be best for everyone.
He is an expert, after all. He’s the guy whose 3rd party campaign in 2000 siphoned enough votes from Gore in Florida to flip the state (and the election) to Bush.
And people were saying the same stupid “Bush and Gore are the same” shit in 2000.
They need to fire the leaders of Democratic party. Find new blood and new direction. Swing to the right didn’t help them.
So they did that once, Hillary was all set to take the nomination in 2008 then this young charismatic guy took the nomination. Obama served 2 terms and the Republicans lost their mind over it…
… but maybe the Democrats did too? Because Hillary still thought it was Her Turn in 2016, and there were a lot of machinations to make sure they didnt run a Socialist. Then I distinctly remember all the shenanigans to insure that Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020. And we all know what happened this year. I actually think Harris was a good candidate, I just wish she got the chance to prove it in a meaningful primary. (Edited to add: if she had lost a primary, all it would have meant was that Democrats would have found an even better candidate.)
The Democrats do have a deep bench of Governors and Senators who might make really good Presidents. They even proved that strategy worked in 2008. I wonder why they are so afraid to prove it in a primary.
Disagree, Harris would not have been close to winning at all if there was a primary. Even Tim Walz would have absolutely smoked her in a primary.
While I’m not as sure as you are about that, if it had happened that way I wouldn’t have minded at all. I liked Harris as a candidate, and feel she would have made a fine President. but I also like other Democrats.
We’ll have to watch Walz. His current term ends with the 2026 election, and while he’s not term limited he has already been in office for two terms. This campaign might give him the bug to try again in 2028.
Obama, sadly was a failure. Better than any other president since FDR and Carter, but that’s not saying much. America wanted change and all we got was the ACA from him and a few less terrible trade deals. Obama deported more people than Trump and never fixed the decline in the middle class. I turned 18 when Obama first ran and was so excited for all the “change” and nothing improved sustainably for the average American. He could have solidified himself as the best ever but road the middle too often and now the party is officially dead.
We keep using that line about deportation but the problem is deportation is popular. Speedy removal and asylum in Mexico are popular. It’s easy for people to blame immigrants.
In the same polls Americans support deportations but also legalization of immigrants in about equal measure.
https://www.vox.com/policy/368889/immigration-border-polls-election-2024-trump-harris
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
Republicans have primed Americans into thinking illegal immigrants are criminals bringing in crime and drugs into the country. Which is completely fabricated and untrue. However, since Biden, Democrats have failed to counter message and instead adopted the right wing on immigration. That’s the entire reason we see this contradiction. A genuine counter message would be popular. And it’s essential considering that Trump is going to start mass deportations, which means concentration camps for millions of Americans
I agree, under the heading that if they can cart anyone away that easily, they can cart me away that easily.
The issue is the same with trump.
A lot of stuff is dependent on people “doing the moral thing”.
The DNC is a private organization, and if they decide to keep making the terrible decisions they’ve been making, there’s not a lot we can do about it.
Their platform for a decade has been “what are you gonna do, vote trump?”
So I really really think that today being the day after the election is the day we start talking about a third option in 2028. There’s no reason to expect the same people who have been running the DNC to magically change this time or even just get out of the way for the best of the country.
We can’t just “find new leadership” because when a Republican wins, the DNC votes for its own leadership and almost always elects the same kind of people if not literally the exact same people.
Their platform for a decade has been “what are you gonna do, vote trump?”
The people: Yes
But seriously, the Democrats need to get better candidates, and they need to take a long-hard look at their policy agenda. The people don’t want it and will literally vote for Trump before what Democrats are offering.
They’ve already started the talking point that they swing too left and that’s why they lost
Yeah, courting far left people like Dick Cheney was the problem. Next time they will just run Ivanka Trump and if you’re against her, you are a misogynist.
Just kidding, they won’t run her until she’s at least 60, everyone knows people who are younger than that can’t politics.
Fuckers will NEVER learn.
They don’t want to learn. They’re both right wing parties.
https://democrats.org/contact-us/
Their system is so bad they accepted “gofuckyourself@fuckyou.com” as my email so go have a blast. I encourage everyone to do so.
I told them all to resign and congratulated them on chasing the mystical moderate all the way off a cliff.
