We need a new party for the working class. The democrats are no longer that party and it cannot be saved.
You’re right. MAGAxMAHA has absorbed the working class and is in the process of shedding the RINOS. Looks like Dems have scooped the RINOS up
For a non-American this thread and other like this are hilarious: the people who spent the last year campaigning “Vote Not Trump” now blame everybody else but themselves for how their strategy of having a candidate who did nothing to appeal to voters and sold fear of the other instead, failed miserably.
So they post tons of such “it’s the fault of everybody else” memes as topics were they and other members of the tribe make posts with wild ass reasons for why it really is everybody else’s faults and responding to such posts from others by basically saying “yeah, you’re so right”, like one gigantic circle jerk, pretty much a continuation of what they were doing for a whole fucking year - a big fat circle jerk whilst not paying attention to anybody else - only now they’re doing it with sad faces.
Sure, it’s the 14 millions who stayed home that are to blame, not the massive incompetence of the DNC and the mindless tribalist muppets trading dumb Trump and Vance memes whilst thinking that their “leaders” deserved a win merelly for wearing the right pin on their jacket and not being Trump, without needing to actually have policies that appealed to their natural voters.
“Bloody natural Democrat voters, not going to polls and doing what they’re supposed to do!”
What a heady, heady mix of stupidity and sense of entitlement.
Reminds me of the whole saying: “Only two things are infinite - the Universe and Human Stupidity - and we’re not sure about the first”
Lets be honest: The Not trump vote, probably made the election results as close as it was. And that might be difficult for some to wrap their head around - trump is unlikable, but: To anyone dealing with the fall out of certain choices Biden made attacking trump era policies (I’m thinking of one in particular), it’s a bit of a no brainer. This brings us to three key issues that are causing problems in US politics, but western politics in general:
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The Stay in Mexico agreement is the perfect example of how Opposing political representatives have a “everything the opposition does is mostly evil and bad, and it needs to be killed as soon as possible” - and this goes for EVERYTHING. If we could have sane, nuanced discussions and come to agreements and policies we would see a LOT less whip lash, and a LOT MORE cooperation. But people who think they have the moral high ground - doesn’t matter the side - uses that as a justification for their actions, no matter how harmful those actions are. To say that illegal immigration is a problem is an understatement - it creates downward pressure on ceertain wages, which is then used as justification because hard working americans don’t want piss poor wages.
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We have seen migration problems bleed into regional crime issues, tent cities, and so on.
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There are a handful of very democrat cities that are suffering dramatically from catch and release policies to the point that corperations that provide necessary essential services to make a city viable are leaving the city. They are simply closing up shop. And the attitude from the democrats is not to solve the underlying problem - it’s to try to make it illegal to close up shop in the city or area. Well: The only other option is to drive up prices, or basically make it impossible to get in and out without exactly what you have paid for.
All of this comes to a reality that we have seen a march towards Institutional Authoritarianism for DECADES, since about 1970… well, a little sooner, but if you look at a lot of shifts you are going to find that about 1965 through to about 1975 is a big shift in a lot of governance decisions, and this is no different. More, and more federal agencies were created - and laws were more and more written such that it was agency rules that dictated the specifics instead of clear written law by congress. In function, it was a divestment of power from Elected officials to Appointed agencies - and over time, the Bureaucracy has been ever more empowered to dictate the direction of many of these organizations, not the elected officials or congress: And yes, Democrats are the biggest fault in this, though republicans are… barely better in this regard.
So: How do we fix this?
The answer is: Smaller government. Simpler regulations are cheaper and easier to be in compliance with, and require less resources to audit. Simpler taxes are this with added benefits - in that, by simplifying, you crush the legal loopholes used to hide money from scrutiny. And part of the simplification is you remove basically everything that is eligible as a tax credit.
And this applies for EVERY SINGLE regulatory body, every government agency, all of it.
You can’t tax a nation into prosperity, you can’t regulate it into prosperity. You can tax a society into equality by making everyone miserable - but since the politicians are human beings as well, you can bet they will NOT be living a miserable life meaning it will never happen. Those two things are the core of stratifying a society - and again, they have increased in count and size consistently. And if you think taxing the rich is a great idea - income tax on the rich was the first income tax in the US, levied to pay the debts of the civil war. Pretty soon governments decided that taxing everyone else would be better then taxing just the rich: After all, it’s just fair… right? And pretty soon, the regulations, and rules shifted such that the rich pay significantly less as a portion of their income as does literally everyone else: Oops?
It’s almost like Equal opertunity serves society better then trying to force equitability. It’s almost like Free association, is better then trying to force everyone to associate. It’s almost like Freedom from government oversight is better then a government up in every bit of your business. And it’s like Free trade is good for the wealthy - and bad for about everyone else in the long term: Because it’s not about YOUR benefit, it’s a bout the owner classes benefit.
I think it would be obvious after 4 decades of Neoliberalism that you can’t deregulate your way into prosperity and in fact the very opposite happens: you end up with consumers constantly swindled, widely sold products that cause long term problems like cancer, all manner of systemic problems having grown uncontrollably (most notably Negative Externalities) and lots of markets turned into cartels and monopolies (with prices up, quality down and improvement stopped) - enshitification is the product of deregulation, as is the housing market bubble, the internet access local monopolies in large parts of the US (and associated high prices for shit service compared to the rest of the World) and a lot of other things.
“Small government” is a content-free slogan rather than a solution: absolutely, in some areas there is too much “government” (for example, the oversized military spend), yet in others there is too little (a National Health Service would literally make Healthcare in the US consume half of what it does in GDP terms so “big government” there would actually be the smart solution business-wise). It’s a problem of how Government is managed, which is a hard thing to do and solve and were the devil is in the details, not just a simple sounding “solution” of “just make it smaller” that sounds good but solves nothing.
Migration is a complex problem. I think that legal immigrants should be treated as guests because they were literally invited in, but that does not extend to illegal ones.
Immigration (as an economic strategy of a country) can indeed be a problem, especially if it’s done too fast and with low integration because whilst immigrants bring themselves as workers, they also bring their needs for products and services and that’s more works that needs to be done or in other words, more jobs - so when they arrive they are workers competing for jobs but over time they also cause more jobs to be created because they too are consumers buying products and services which have to be produced by even more workers - whilst the low integration is a problem because of cultural clashes between the immigrants and the locals (maybe more of a problem in Europe than the US) because people coming from different countries don’t have the same assumptions as the locals on how on is supposed to behave in certain situations (some being small details and other much bigger) and hence can behave in ways that other see as weird or even anti-social, which in large numbers generates conflict. With time living in a new country an immigrant will adjust to be a lot more like the locals, but if the influx of immigrants is too many in too little time there are too many clashes with those freshly immigrated who haven’t learned to behave more like the locals and people in a host country end up feeling that immigrants are unpleasant people , even bad people.
Immigration (the legal kind, approved by Governments) is being used to paper-over flaws in the way a country is being managed (for example, in my own country politicians caused massive house price inflation and other problems, mainly affecting young adults, so the end result is lower birth rates and hence an aging population, which is then made up with immigration, and this is so extreme that in this country literally half of university graduates leave the country and then they’re replaced with immigrants with much lower educational levels) plus it’s massively good for the wealthy (both because it increases worker competition for jobs when they arrive and because it eventually pushes up the size of the Economy as a whole, and whilst normal people’s prosperity relates to the size of the Economy per-capita, the wealthy are the ones taking slices from the whole of the Economy so for them and them only, growing the Economy by adding more people is a gain), so problematic Immigration is really a consequence of problems at a political level (and that includes Corruption) - the country is not being managed for the good of most people and high Immigration is both part of that directly (it makes the Wealthy wealthier) and indirectly because it’s used to paper over problems caused by that political mismanagement (like in my country young adults leaving or having fewer children because life is way too expensive for them here and salaries are low, so then immigrants are imported because there is a lack of workers).
Immigrants themselves, however (as I say, the legal kind, hence people like you and me who were invited and changed their whole lives and invested time and effort in the country they came to) shouldn’t be treated as the problem - they’re just people doing their lives the best they can in a perfectly legit way. Look at the Politicians for the people to blame for Immigration reaching problematic levels.
Anyways, the more general point I’m making is that a lot of the problems you see have been created by very much local people in positions of power doing what’s best for themselves and for those who will pay them (and most definitely politicians in the US are Corrupt as fuck), and afterwards scapegoating the problems they themselves caused on something or somebody else and the easiest target there is are the most powerless people in the country (who don’t even have a right to vote) - immigrants.
I think we are on the same page as Immigration: Can be good, too much is generally bad, and the Immigrants unfortunately get flack when the problem is the government. And unfortunately - fixing the problem is going to suck for a wide number of prospective immigrants. What so many on the left don’t seem to get: It is not the American tax payers job to give a rats ass about people who WANT to move to the US. It is the US’s duty to ensure the people being allowed to come in WILL BE a NET BENEFIT to the society. And this means: They must end up being a net contributor. As it stands - we see government funds going to support migrants illegal or legal. We see growing crime rates - with information coming out that statistics were manipulated purposefully or accidentally to look better: But the truth wins out.
Smaller Government - not small government - I want to clarify this: I don’t think a small government works. I mean, if you are in a hamlet where everyone knows everyone, everyone comes together to solve issues as they crop up in a big town hall that encompasses everyone: Sure, small government works. But we are talking about an entity that has to deal with hundreds of millions, over a vast area, with various regional concerns and interests… it’s a NIGHTMARE. But Big government is also not the answer.
When I talk about reduced regulation - I’m not talking NO regulation. I mean: If you want to tax - flat rate it, have it low, get rid of as many deductions as you reasonably can. No longer do you have “I pay 35% income tax in my bracket but have 23000$ in deductions” - instead you have “I pay 20% tax rate on everything made over 30,000$”. And that can work - really damn well. You can do it for business as well - first, I dunno, 500,000$ in revenue isn’t taxed, at all - anything over 500k is taxed at 3%. I know - insanely low. But a company right now that makes 50 billion in revenue through tax games and loop holes can end up paying 0%… and that is more common then not when you get into large corporations. So: Simplify the tax code. People will be mad at first, until you state “This will help small business by reducing their tax burden, while ensuring large corperations like Google, Microsoft, Wallmart, and so on will pay their share for the benefits they reap for operating within this nations economy. We understand that some of them may feel the need to pass the costs on - but we strongly feel the market can, and will be better able to compete with these entities as a result - which will, in time get you better paying jobs, better prices on your products, and more option in where you shop”. And for once - the argument that corperations are greedy assholes might have some merit.
Why I like Medium Sized Governments
Maybe I should define what I mean.
If small Government is one that does basically nothing, and Big Government is one that expands itself whenever it wants to do more - then Medium Government is a government that looks at it’s current activity list and decides: Is any of this non-critical? Can we simplify and attain the objective?
to me: That is what government should be constantly doing - If it has staff pushing paper around for all intent and purpose, and that paper needs 5 signatures, and it needs 8 audits before it’s approved: Why? Can you do it with 2 audits, and 2 sign offs? Well: Probably. And considering the sheer amount of errors and mistakes that make it through the overly bloated systems we have today - my guess is less is actually more, and the entire reason? Because with less - people are forced to take ownership: They can’t just pass on the buck, they are accountable to what they sign off on, what they do.
And so we get to the core of it: Big Government is accountable to no one and no one person is accountable to anyone. Small Government does so little it doesn’t worry about accountability. And so, we get to another reason why medium sized governments are better: They are, by their nature, far more accountable to the people.
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Thanks to the campaign and candidates that were so bad they failed to motivate enough voters. Most people aren’t glued to politics and it’s the parties job to go to where those people are and get them interested. Harris, Biden, and the dems failed horribly at doing that
If voters needed additional motivation to vote against that, it’s entirely their fault. “You didn’t convince me enough so now I’m going to kill you”, a line that a cartune villain would say, and we all understand that it’s villain. But " you didn’t convince me enough so I vote for that one who is going to kill millions" is apparently an OK take
Most people aren’t glued to politics. It’s the job of the campaign to get people’s attention and give them a reason to vote. They clearly failed at that because they lost. You can blame human nature but a good campaign takes human nature into account and this campaign was not a good one.
Do you want to win or do you just want to blame the people? If you want to win you have to find a way to motivate them whether they are being reasonable or not
If they aren’t “glued to politics” they will not get any of the messages, so message itself is clearly not the issue here. You will never appeal to voters that don’t care about anything, they can’t hear you. You will never appeal to online left, they don’t care about politics, only about purity contest. You might appear to non-voters, it doesn’t matter they will find an excuse to not vote anyway.
The issue with this election wasn’t anything Dems could do or not do or did wrong. The issue is that America runs on hate and hateful part is united, and the other half isn’t and never will be and half of it actually runs on the same hate just scared to agree.
The only mistake Dems made this time is they forgot what America actually is. Next time they will run regressive right wing old dude and win again, but it will not be a win for anyone.
Win that I want, win for progress is impossible because America doesn’t want it.Progressive policies are actually popular. Universal healthcare is popular, raising the minimum wage is popular. But the Democratic party will only run on half measures that satisfy no one because they are beholden to their corporate funders
Progressive policies are actually popular.
Not according to voters patterns they aren’t. Comments on Reddit, threads on Lemmy and shits on Xitter doesn’t do anything if by the end of the day people who are incredibly active in those threads just don’t vote. It is either because it’s actually not a lot of people doing a lot of noise, or a lot of people who don’t know how American democracy operates, and it doesn’t matter if there is a difference. Promises of progressive politics don’t bring votes, simple as.
When polls come out about individual issues they show Americans in favor of progressive policies. If the Dems can’t turn that into election outcomes it’s their failure
Those polls mean shit, if people who vaguely “want progressive policies” then turn back and either vote directly against them, or just don’t do anything. You can yapp whatever you want, want whatever you want, but if you don’t vote for it, or at least against polar opposite, you might as well put your head up your ass and express your opinions to the audience there.
People who saw Trump, and didn’t vote against him for a candidate that is obviously, demonstrably better on all the issues you can care about, didn’t do it because that candidate wasn’t better enough, they did what they did because they OK with Trump. As to who’s fault it is… I don’t know, human nature probably, lack of education, lead paint, huge number of factors.
Dont copy paste shit in multiple comments, first of all. Supremely lazy.
Secondly, no. There is a certian point where a reasonable person votes against something, and we were way past that point
Do you give up because people aren’t reasonable? Or do you find a way to appeal to them despite that? If you pick giving up then you’re letting fascism win
At no point did I suggest giving up, it’s just frustrating to have such a slapdash coalition
Big ups to those people who “voted against genocide”.
Special shout-out to the folks that voted third party because “my state will be blue”
folks that voted third party because “my state will be blue”
Admittedly not all the votes are in, but…
- Pennsylvania - Trump up by 130k votes, Jill Stein got 33k votes
- Michigan - Trump up by 84k votes, Jill Stein got 45k votes
- Wisconsin - Trump up by 28k votes, Jill Stein got 12k votes
Are all Jill Stein votes from protest voters? Nah, there are diehard Green supporters out there.
Are there other 3rd party candidates? Of course, but how many RFK (more votes than Stein in WI) voters could she have converted? Almost none.
This was her blue wall road to victory, show me the electoral path to victory ruined by third party voters who would have otherwise voted Democrat.
This election was lost by people not showing up to vote. Trump is sitting at almost 72M votes right now compared to 74M in 2020. Harris is only at 67M now, compared to Biden’s 81M in 2020. While there are still votes to count, there aren’t 15M votes left to count.
Whether it was lack of interest, protest, or whatever reason, 10% of voters stayed home this year.
My election registration got canceled three times this year. The last two times it was because of a “duplicate”, and they were counting my canceled registrations as duplicates. I have no idea if my ballot got counted, or if it was discarded.
I vote blue in one of those red states…
I thought my state would go blue. Went out to vote anyway and voted blue. Brought my spouse out to vote as well. Our state did not go blue. Country is fucked
Utterly bizarre. I expected Trump might squeak out an electoral win, but the popular vote as well? Thanks everyone who stayed the fuck home. You sat by as fascism was ushered in to the US.
Alright! So Palestine is free now, right guys?..right?
If Kamala lost the election because she wasn’t in support of Palestine then why didn’t she just support Palestine?
I suppose that is one way to misread what was typed. GJ
What are you saying then?
I already said it…it isn’t my job to make you read it better. If you actually want to know then you will try again and do better, if not then you can shout into the void until you feel better.
Maybe make your one issue election about your country and not others? And I mean if you really cared about Palestine, you wouldn’t have stood off to the side and let Trump through, cause now you’ll get to watch the complete annihilation of Palestine, and even more of your tax dollars will go towards the genocide
With Kamala you had someone you could work with and who responds to bad press and would have buckled to your demands. Now you got Trump who gives zero fucks about what you don’t like
I’m not American and you didn’t answer my question.
If pro-palestinian one issue voters lost Kamala the election, why didn’t she appease them? Why are the voters to blame and not the democrats?
Because they shouldn’t have beeded to be convinced. Trump was obviously the worse choice for Palestine. The most basic realpolitik shouldve told them to hold their nose. They are to blame for putting their ideals over the lives of everyone around them and even those they want to save.
Ok you go say that to their faces. Tell them they should suck it up and vote for an administration that is funding a genocide against their people. Tell them they’re being “idealistic” when they speak out against a genocide.
Liberals are amazing.
Not half as “amazing” as protest voters that think not doing anything will result in a change for the better.
We voted. We tried to stop this. If you didn’t- then you have no place casting aspersions at those that did.
For lots of these people it can’t get any worse. Gaza is being absolutely devastated, what do they have to lose? I’m not trying to argue that not voting democrat is a good idea, but I don’t think you are engaging with the situation these people are dealing with. It’s easy to argue from the sidelines that Trump is worse for Palestine, but I can’t imagine having to actually vote for an administration that is actively committing genocide on my home land.
Democrats got absolutely fucking destroyed in the election. I beg you to reflect on the strategies used by democrats and liberals. Have some compassion and try to understand the motivations of voters instead of blaming them for the failures of the democratic party.
You cannot win the support of people by shaming them, it simply doesn’t work. Please stop doing it.
Put one in front of me, I gladly will
ok tough guy. Let me know when you’ve told a Palestinian that they are stupid for not voting democrat because Trump is going to murder their family even harder than Biden.
It wasn’t the one issue, it was just the one that stuck with people who needed an excuse to not show up and vote for a woman.
You’re doing the exact same thing. You are refusing to acknowledge any criticism to the Harris campaign and blaming voters for the loss.
Misogyny absolutely played a role in this election and I do not want to downplay the racism and misogyny that Harris had to work against, but she ran a fucking awful campaign. She sucked up to fascists, ignored her base, and belittled the concerns pro-palestine protestors.
I’m speaking now.
Saying she ran an awful campaign is a judgement, one neither of us qualified to make legitimately (correct me if I’m wrong and you have some relevant professional experience)
The voters spoke and said they did not see enough of a difference between Harris and Trump to vote for Harris, and the ones that saw a difference voted for Trump.
Harris was out there making her platform and politics known, performing at debates.
Saying she ran an awful campaign is a judgement
I mean yeah but if this is your mindset then why are you on the internet talking about politics? Am I supposed to meekly say, “Democrats tried their best but it just didn’t work out!”.
No I’m not an expert but I followed this election cycle quite closely and I listened to experienced commentators and weighed their opinions on the matter.
The average american is worse off than they have been in a long time and Harris did not adequately address that. She campaigned on securing the border and continuing to support a genocide. She didn’t promise to take on corporate greed, or to tax billionaires, or to make sure all americans have access to healthcare. She didn’t give voters anything to get excited about. Her campaign was laser focused on telling voters that Trump is bad and that they should vote for her.
Many people, myself included, think that was a terrible strategy. The election results seem evidence enough for me but apparently some people think election results are not a good indicator of whether or not someone ran a good campaign.
“If liberals are so fucking smart why do they lose so goddamn always?”
- Will McAvoy “The Newsroom”
I don’t think it’s fair to blame voters when it’s the politician’s job during s campaign to convince people they’re worth voting for.
Adopting unpopular centrist policies and aligning more and more with centrist Biden’s policies as the campaign went on is just going to fill voters with apathy.
The Democrats, once again, didn’t give us a candidate to vote for, only one to vote against. And I think the American people are sick of that carrot-stick routine, the Dems need to actually adopt popular policies.
And the establishment Dems are going to fight that tooth and nail.
Why did you need to be convinced to vote against Trump?
I voted for Harris. Roughly 60% of American voters who are eligible don’t vote.
Harris needed to convince those voters that she was either worth voting for, or Trump was worth voting against.
She failed to convince them of either, so they stayed home, along with 14 million Dem voters she failed to convince to vote blue like they did in 2020.
How was anyone not already convinced to vote against Trump again? Its not like he changed in four years
We didn’t. Most people did. Candidates running for office are a popularity contest. Biden has low approval ratings, Harris said she’s Biden and wouldn’t change most polices.
Trump is much much worse, and I voted for Harris in California despite knowing it didn’t change how North Carolina or Iowa could have gone.
At some point “I’m not Trump” gets tired and going “I’m just like the guy in office who was so unpopular he dropped out, but I will give Republicans what they want on border policy and appoint them to my cabinet” reads more like Diet Trump than “I will give you policies that sway people away from fascism.”
Even a single life less harmed is worth it for that vote. People clearly arent that ethically committed if they needed to be convinced to vote against this
Ah yes the free Palestine crowd…lol wait until they see what Israel will do with no US restraint demands.
Well, what’s important is that Harris never listened to people who care about Palestinians. Surely, we will all be better off that the Harris campaign decided to hew closely to Biden’s policies, court Republicans for her cabinet and chase suburban Trump voters. Clearly, this is entirely the fault of individual voters, and we all agree that the campaign, corporate media organizations and monied interests bear no responsibility for this whatsoever.
Whats important is the outcome of policy. Frankly, Gaza is a fucking excuse. You didnt wanna show up, whatever the reason, and you were perfectly happy to sell all the women and non-whites and lgbt folks and everyone else outside of the
AryanMurican master race up the river. Including the fucking Palestinians. Trump will be worse for them. We all know this, it is not up for debate. Yet instead of try ro mitigate this genocide you care so much about, you use them as a shield to justify your inaction. Every single Harris voter was willing to do more for Palestine than you are ever going to be capable of.Well we know that’s not true. Harris herself was in fact a Harris voter, she had so many chances to take a clear stance on Palestine, and she waited until the very end to even try.
And you have no idea what the previous commenter has done with their life. It’s easy to say that someone on the internet never did anything other than vote third party or stay home, but you just don’t know. There are many wonderful human beings who don’t vote how we might appreciate but actually are working hard to make their community a better place.
If you voted for this it doesnt matter how hard you try to make the commity a better place. You have clearly failed
