I’m actually getting a bit upset at these idealists. They have this childish notion that democracy works in this tit for tat way where politicians “earn” your vote by instating policies that benefit you and that you believe in. Like grow the fuck up already.
The left: Infighting is why Kamala lost!
Also the left: In this essay I will detail every faction of the left that is guilty of infighting, and why they are wrong…
I voted for Kamala…
It’s the Democrats fault.
Yup. They fucked us royally and I’m sort of waiting to see if people organize around this. The DNC needs to go. They’ve known about Trump since 16 and this is the campaign they run? They’re trying to elect him at this point, I don’t know what else to think.
Democrats: here’s a rock and two nickels
Republicans: here’s everything you’ve ever wanted and all the libertarian shit you used to jerk off to.
Liberals after the election: how did we lose??
Republicans: here’s everything you’ve ever wanted and all the libertarian shit you used to jerk off to.
“But I know that he won’t really give them that, and if they’re stupid enough to believe that, we don’t need their votes anyway”
~Every Democrat I’ve argued with since Tuesday
If the goal of a campaign is to get people to vote for you then they failed spectacularly
Lmao ditto
Anyone saying that it isn’t the Democrats’ fault is delusional. To win elections, you have to win favor with more people than the opposition, and Democrats failed to do that
Every argument I’ve been in since Tuesday has basically boiled down to “we didn’t try to get more votes because we shouldn’t have to”
I don’t know, at this point I’m starting to ask myself if it’s the Democrats fault if the majority of the people agree with the opposition? If she had won the popular vote and lost the electoral college I might have believed that it was simply appealing more to the Democratic base or appealing to less enfranchised liberals, but she lost the popular vote by a long shot. Not only did she lose, but she lost after the other guy has had 4 years of public attack, federal crimes, rape convictions, Project 2025, and basically promising that Palestinians and Ukrainians will get fucked. Hell, the percentage of women that voted for Trump went up in this election.
If people didn’t turn out because Democrats aren’t appealing to leftist ideals enough I fear the message heard by the DNC isn’t to appeal to even more progressive or socialist ideals, but to adopt even more moderate policies. Just facing the facts, but the political left is an unreliable voter group and it’s extremely entitled. Instead of trying to be a foil to Republican ideals Democrats are more likely to try more moderate options. Think of it as creating an alternative instead of being an opposite, Coke and Pepsi instead of Coke and Sprite. It feels like the needle of America’s social equilibrium has permanently moved to be more conservative.
I think the problem is that Harris was barely appealing to any ideals. If she had run hard on medicare for all and raising the minimum wage, I think she might have gotten the popular vote. Instead, she promised more of the same that we’ve had for the last 4 years.
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No, it’s the democrats fault!
“Permanently installed”?
Trump talking at “The Believers’ Summit” on July 26 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida:
I don’t care how, but you have to get out and vote. And again, Christians, get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.
Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.
I think it was both playing chicken against each other. Dem leadership refused to listen to “progressives”, I E.: things that most Americans wanted, and the voters refused to vote until the Dems listened to them.
So they crashed into each other and now the country is going to burn down.
If these last 10 years have taught me anything, it’s that most Americans are not progressives.
Exactly this. Americans don’t care about progress, they don’t even care about human rights. They care about the economy. Clinton was right, “it’s the economy stupid”.
They don’t identify that way but most Americans are in favor of progressive policies when asked
The best example is the minimum wage increase in Missouri that recently got put into law. Sinema killed the federal bill a few years ago but somehow deep, red state Americans are not progressive? People love progressive policies, they just don’t like the words associated with it.
Evidence might suggest otherwise
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American politicians are not progressive. America has not had a true progressive in decades. Today’s democrat policy has been overwhelmingly stagnant. Status quo plus a tiny tax cut for the working class.
The millions of Democrats who didn’t vote shows a rapidly growing apathy towards the party and their inaction
They had Bernie, but they backstabbed him in two primaries, to please the corporate donors. And maybe there’s the squad, at least two of them are still around.
Voters voted a fascist ‘as a punishment’ knowing full well what was going to happen?
That’s akin to blaming your significant other for your decision to cheat on them.
Dear voters who pulled this shit: Go get some big pants on and wear some blame. While you’re at it grow the fuck up.
I voted for her. The Democrats are still at fault.
Yep, fuck the non voters for their ignorance, fuck the Dems for being a lesser evil in the first place.
The lesser evil is literally the better candidate.
The trump voters and the people who sat out the vote have that on their consciences.
They are still evil though, why it always a choice of “evil vs evil”? We don’t have to have this electoral system, we don’t have to have these candidates, humanity can do so much better. The only way anyone against genocide or the corporatist status quo could show disagreement is by not voting. If democrats always have the lefts vote no matter what, then they wouldn’t even have to be lesser evil.
This thinking got you a Donald Trump presidency again.
I’ve been a proud American my whole life and now I’m in the middle of a move to another country to protect my family so I’m pretty bitter about this topic right now.
This thinking is a small minority of thought among voters. Thank you for believing us leftists are such a powerful bloc though. I can’t move to protect myself and many others can’t, I’m glad you are privileged enough to escape. If the democrat establishment actually believed Trump was such a major threat to democracy and life why wouldn’t they do more to stop it? They can use the national security state to kill whoever worldwide, couldn’t they have said Trump was a threat to national security?
Not voting does nothing. Now you have trump. And who ever else is next. If the left don’t vote nobody well care about them and they can sit in their house winning about nobody represents me.
False choice fallacy. Both can be the problem.
There’s a perverse bunch here on lemmy that are blaming the Democrat Party for their failure to vote. They justify it by essentially saying that because they weren’t catered to (being further left than centrist platform Harris ran) that it’s the democrat’s fault we got trump. That’s some republican-level victim shit. “We did the opposite of what we should and things didn’t get better!”
No, motherfucker, you sat this one out in a battleground state so we got a fascist and that’s better than Harris? WTF kind of logic is that?
They get to blame everyone and pretend to be smarter than other people because their third choice candidate can’t be wrong. This way they can blame the DNC for themselves not caring about all the groups trump will adversely effect and they can then also blame republicans when they eventually do it, all from the top of their high horse.
Those groups were suffering under democrats, currently. Why do you think even minorities and immigrants voted for him.
The democrats wouldnt even acknowledge peoples suffering, much less admit they had a hand in it.
Why dont you repeat the lines about how america is great under biden, all sunshine and roses.
They’ll suffer more under trump
Maybe maybe not.
Theres no reason anyone could justify thinking “maybe not.” I’m glad you’ll be alright tho. It’s good to know that you’re sufficiently insulated from any of that.
Every. Single. Election. People. Blame. Voters. And. Nothing. Changes. Maybe it’s the lame ass corporate candidates that need to change. I voted Kamala, but it was fucking obvious as shit she didn’t stand a chance.
The vote is the only thing we have control over.
You think allowing a dictator to take the reins is gonna get you what you want? Really? Explain to everyone how sitting this one out, an election that may cement Republican power and place Democrats as a token but useless party fore the remainder of the foreseeable future, will fix what you see as wrong with the Democratic party?
Any other election I might have agreed with you.
But not this one.
Own it.
This meme makes me so mad. It completely misses the point that the government is supposed to be working for us. They are here to make our lives better from our collective power. The right to rule is derived from the will of the people. You are misunderstanding how government is supposed to function on an essential level.
Making it out to be the voters fault because we didn’t like the shit sandwich that the were serving us is absolutely incorrect. Harris had zero progressive ideas in her platform. She ran on basically the same platform as the GOP.
As soon as you start putting the onus on the voter, you are putting our politicians up as the aristocracy. You make them into our ruling class. This is incorrect. They are supposed to execute the will of the people.
I’m just absolutely shocked that so many people are acting like the voters failed, when the DNC has done this to us so many times lately.
When the mass deportations -Trump’s cornerstone promise- are full throttle, please come back here and tell us some more about why Harris, a normal person, was the choice to be shunned as President.
Virtually every single demographic, including immigrants, shifted towards Trump this year. Harris, a normal person, was shunned because she was less effective at convincing people (even the very immigrants at risk of being deported) to vote for her than her opponent.
This meme makes me so mad.
people who didn’t vote make me mad.
It completely misses the point that the government is supposed to be working for us.
sorry, I tried to include the idiosyncrasies of a democratic government but the meme genie told me I had to keep it under 255 characters.
They are here to make our lives better from our collective power. The right to rule is derived from the will of the people. You are misunderstanding how government is supposed to function on an essential level.
I think the only one here who has failed to grasp the function of a government is you. A government is meant to control the people. to ensure the safety and continued prosperity of society. has been that way for thousands of years.
Making it out to be the voters fault because we didn’t like the shit sandwich that the were serving us is absolutely incorrect. Harris had zero progressive ideas in her platform. She ran on basically the same platform as the GOP.
yes because the voters are never at fault. just like in 2016, right?
As soon as you start putting the onus on the voter, you are putting our politicians up as the aristocracy. You make them into our ruling class. This is incorrect. They are supposed to execute the will of the people.
either your vote matters and you take responsibility for it, or it doesn’t. pick one.
I’m just absolutely shocked that so many people are acting like the voters failed, when the DNC has done this to us so many times lately.
I’m done here, you clearly have no idea what the fuck you’re taking about.
Acting like I’m the one that doesn’t know what I’m talking about is laughable.
It sounds like you have very little knowledge of any political theory. The basis of democracy is that power HAS TO come from the will of the people. The people exist first, and then we make government. It’s not like someone set up a tent in the middle of a field and people come up and apply to be governed.
If a party is losing elections like this, then it means that they are not representing the will of the people. That means that they are failing at their job, which is to represent and execute the will of the people.
Why else would we pay taxes and give a huge portion of our money to the government? Remember, taxes come from us. The US Government doesn’t magically just have unlimited money. They get money from us, and they are supposed to spend how we tell them to.
You’re talking like we have some sort of set ruling class, and all of us little peasants failed our lords and ladies because we didn’t vote hard enough for them.
That’s an extremely authoritarian view of government that borders on being pro aristocracy. Kind of like feudalism.
Acting fed up with me and like you’re so much smarter than me that you can’t even explain your position is such an amateur attempt at covering up your own lack of knowledge.
Do better.
dude, I’m not acting. I’ve got shit to do outside of whatever this is.
besides, I doubt you want to keep this going as well.
clearly, you will never understand my point of view and I will never accept yours.
You are an ignoramus and an authoritarian. The government is not meant to control the people. Im surprised you have the wherewithall in your brain to find your polling station.
Coward.
It’s more that the left never shows up. Harris ran on abortion rights and democracy, and the left can’t even show up for their own human fucking rights and for mfing democracy. If they can’t show up for that, they won’t show up for literally anything.
You’re in this picture whether you like it or not.
you’re going to be in this photo, you just don’t know it yet.
Don’t worry, as an actual lefty I already know. You’re the one who’d push me into the cart.
How can I push you when I’m in the cart with you?
“Get out of the way! Truck! Truck behind you! Run, it’s not slowing down!! For the love of god, move!”
“I think this guy wants to hit me with a truck” *wet crunching*
This, this was the real problem. Something like 5% of registered Republicans voted for her. Dems usually win the popular vote. There are enough of them to win this, but they choose to alienate them.
Ah yes, a perfect example of what OP was talking about. Good work finding it so we can point and laugh at the people that keep looking for someone to blame for their own choices.
Yeah, and your comment is a great example of the Democrats 2024 outreach strategy: a smug, self-righteous attitude that failed to get you any votes.
This is voting for your own best interests as a part of a country.
What kind of fool believes that is supposed to require outreach? Would you rather visit an inept doctor because they make you feel more like a big boy by courting your feelings?
If voters must have outreach to not show up, that means they see no difference in their own life between the candidates.
I don’t know what to tell you man, you need to get people excited to go vote for you, otherwise they don’t show up. It’s election 101. Harris didn’t do that for her base, so she fucking lost. You can bitch about voters all you want, but it’s not gonna change reality, so maybe that time would be better spent figuring out why they didn’t show up. Again, I’d start with the fact that she ignored her base for the fucking Cheneys.
I understand where you’re coming from but I think there is an atmosphere tinging the conversation (and there are a lot of threads happening so maybe I’m the one doing that, not trying to be perfect here)
I’m not bitching about voters. I’m saying people are blaming Democrats, or Harris, or whoever they want to, but one side showed up with more people. I see you are continuing that as well by saying she ignored her own base.
More people showed up for what Trump was selling. Harris was certainly not ignoring her base in favor of the Cheneys but I think you mean they relatively to your expectations (?).
If she were leaning more right, then I guess that was the correct choice because that’s who showed up to vote.
I think she did ignore her base, mainly the working class. It’s not just that she campaigned with Cheney and stuck to hard-right positions on Gaza and the border, but her economic message was entirely about opportunity for the middle-class class. Her working-class message had a few good features, like grocery price controls, but they were small measures shunted to the sidelines. It wasn’t a broad economic message like BBB.
The campaign was predicated on a series of incorrect assumptions on who would vote for her. Women? They’ll vote for me because of abortion. Muslims? They’ll vote for me because Trump is worse. Working class? They always go Democrat, I don’t need a strong economic message. PoC? C’mon, like they’ll flip for Trump. Wow, we’ve got so many demographics on lockdown, we should try and flip some conservatives! It’s not like my constituents will be so unenthused by my campaign that they won’t bother to come out.
Doesn’t make that person wrong. If you need to be properly reached to keep yourself from voting for sweet potato Hitler, I’m sorry but you only have yourself to blame
Did the commenter say they voted for Trump?
The people who voted for Trump over Kamala are not the leftists on lemmy. I’ve actually only seen one or two people say that they’re going to vote for Trump for some leftist reason. The majority of people said they would vote for her anyway, and a minority of people said they were abstaining.
You sound really foolish mischaracterizing your opponents. The democratic party failed. Kamala Harris failed. There was no sabotage. She campaigned a conservative platform of military, border control, unwavering support for Israel and said she was going to maintain the status quo. When asked what she would do differently from Biden her gut response was “nothing”. It was a spectacular failure and highlights every single way that the democratic party has entirely lost touch with reality.
Cost of living has tripled in the last 4 years. Now try telling white working class straight people who weren’t living paycheck to paycheck 4 years ago that you’re going to do everything the same as the guy that came before you. The same guy who broke up the rail workers strikes. No, us trying to explain fascism or project 2025 to them did literally nothing. They don’t understand it and don’t care. They know that their financial situation got worse and that the democratic candidate said they wouldn’t change anything. That’s all they understood. They don’t know what’s fact or what’s fiction, and they think Trump is a brilliant businessman. It doesn’t matter that he’s not if they all think he is.
The DNC failed. Stop trying to defend them for God’s sake. How are they ever going to actually pose a challenge to far right populism or fascism if you relentlessly defend them from all criticism?
Woah chief, I’m not defending anybody and I didn’t ask who anybody voted for. If you can read then you see what I said is exactly what I meant: if you voted for sweet potato Hitler you only have urself to blame, not the democrats. And if you need someone to “reach you” properly in order to not vote for sweet potato Hitler you only have yourself to blame
The democrats fucked this up big time, but I’m not going to blame them for the fact that people are too stupid to not vote for the end of our way of life. That’s a personal responsibility that 70 million Americans failed at
It sounds like you just don’t understand how politics works.
If you cannot persuade the low information voters, you are failing as a politician. The Democrats, if you believe they wanted to win this, spectacularly failed at the most intrinsic of requirements as a politician: to win over the dullest spoons in the drawer. Society is largely dull spoons. This is the job.
I have seen nothing in the lead up, nor since their catastrophic loss that indicates that Biden, or Harris actually wanted to win. To the contrary, they look happier than they have been in months.
I read that sweet potato line as implying that the commenter themselves had voted for him, my bad.
I do agree that every human being has a duty to not vote for Hitler. I mean, that was supposed to be the point of the post world War 2 Western education system. Didn’t work out for a lot of reasons.
But I also believe that many people don’t understand what “voting for Hitler” even means or that Trump poses a threat to them. They don’t understand politics. They don’t understand the way the capitalist economic system functions. They think of it as some ethereal force that gets worse when you control it and gets better when you don’t. They think rich people are brilliant geniuses who have divine knowledge of the economy that allowed them to become so rich. They don’t get it. The political strategy of progressives has to account for that. The democratic party isn’t a party of progressives. It’s a party with a minority of progressives in it, but beyond them, it is the party of the status quo. The status quo has gotten worse, that much people do understand. And they chose the guy who said he was going to change it. He said he’ll fix it and they believed him.
And if you’re a politician and people don’t vote for you, you have no one but yourself to blame. I wish Harris hadn’t run a dogshit campaign, but she did, and I’m not gonna blame voters because she was bad at her job.
It’s funny how when she losses it’s a dog shit campaign but nobody was saying that before the election.
Just because you’re not aware of something, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There wetr plenty of people in the media who said the same thing. Hell, you can go through my post history and see how many times I said, “seems like she needs to shift her stance on Gaza,” or, “why the fuck is she campaigning with Liz Cheney?” before the election.
You’re entitled to your opinion but I’ll readily blame people who vote for a wannabe facist dictator
People are responsible for their own votes
There’s nothing wrong with blaming them, but we still need to figure out how to get their lazy asses into the booths in 2026, 2028, and beyond.
You can go ahead and blame them, but apparently they heavily outnumber you so I’d get the fuck out of the way if I were you.
Oh, you mean you’ll blame them on lemmy and never associate yourself with one of them in the real world because you live in a nation split into echo chambers. Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m sure that helps.
It may cost a lot of lives, but at least you got your moral high ground. Must be nice having the mental age of a 5yo and be content.
It may cost lives, but at least the Dems stood on… Well nothing. They could of catered to the non voters. Given them something when it was clear that this was happening. Instead they did nothing. They attacked college protestors, they muzzled waltz, they adopted Republican immigration policy, became pro wall, tried to say they were even MORE anti immigration than Republicans. They literally just ran as the 2020 trump in 2024.
Like. You saw it coming. I saw it coming. They saw it coming. And you want to blame the voter instead of the party that did NOTHING to get it. They were told as clear as physically possible what to do to get that vote. At some point, which we are past, it’s on the party.
I voted for Harris as a harm reduction vote. And I do wish my fellow leftists could of come out for that. But I can’t blame them at the end of the day. The Dems couldn’t stop being the corporate party for 4 years out of desperation. They thought they could win by becoming the Republican party instead and lost. Bad gameplan. It failed. They lost all 4 seats of government with that plan.
They’re both right. If you didn’t vote for Harris, you were incredibly misguided. But it’s not my job to get Harris elected, it’s the DNC’s.
It’s everyone’s job to fight a fascist takeover, though. Election subversion is part of the playbook.
The Republicans didn’t create the democratic campaign. Fighting fascism is everyone’s job but that job would’ve been much easier if the alternative didn’t run on “we’re not as bad a Trump”.
Genocide is not a dealbreaker for ora.
Between the two inevitable options, Harris was willing to negotiate a ceasefire. I realize there’s theoretically faster options but I was unwilling to make minorities all over the world die on that hill. It’s purely a place of privilege to think there’s no difference between wiping Palestinians off the map, and stopping the war in place.
No, she wasn’t willing to negotiate a ceasefire. Listen to her. Ironclad with Israel until the end. It’s too late for the democrats now.
Under their watch almost all of Gaza is destroyed and 100,000’s people dead and displaced. Generations of families and nearly every single hospital, university, school, and mosque destroyed. This is anihilation.
This is what democrats mean when they say they want a ceasefire. They could have stopped it right at the outset, but they choose to say “Israel has a right to defend itself” and continues to arm Israel as it’s been slowly genociding them for over a year.
She may have said something about a ceasefire, but just as Biden talked about all of his red lines that Netanyahu blew through, they are just words.
Maybe now she can become a champion for ending the genocide because Trump will be doing it instead.
Kamala Harris isn’t alone in wanting the ceasefire but she’s in the extreme minority among her peers (i.e. congress). But let’s say you’re right, let’s pretend she has the exact same views on Israel as Trump. In that case the only things on the ballot were the safety of people abroad in Ukraine, the refugees domestically who are at risk of being sent back to hostile territory, Queer people, especially transgender people who are running out of safe countries to be, what about anybody who wants to criticize America without the US Millitary being sent after them. Even though you see all these minorities as worthless, they’ll be coming for you eventually. First they came for the socialists.
The thing you don’t understand is whatever they are doing in Palestine they are willing to do to you. What do you think all of the death and destruction Israel has brought there is going to create? Peace and happiness? Kumbaya guitar circles? I wait to see what karma brings.
Maybe those were the only things on the ballot for you. You know what wasn’t on the ballot for you? The winning issues. Do you know why?
Because to the democrats it was more important to keep arming Israel than forgiving student loans, a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, the dramatic rise in the cost of living/drop in quality of life, cleaning up the East Palestine train fiasco, etc.
The hardest I have ever seen democrats fight for something was when Trump was in office. They fought him on everything. I thought that energy would carry over if they won in 2020. It didn’t. They let the parliamentarian shut down the party with a penstroke.
It’s too late. The DNC is dead. They appealed to corporate and centrist issues. They get called the left, but really they are the center right.
If the democrats really wanted to win and make positive change, they would have chosen Bernie in 2016 and 2020, but they did everything in their power to make sure he lost, prefering to lose to Trump rather than improve the lives of not-rich Americans.
