“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
FTA:
The crucial statistic is that not everyone’s ballot gets disqualified. One study done for the United States Civil Rights Commission found that a Black person, such as Maj. Turner, will be 900% more likely to have their mail-in or in-person ballot disqualified than a white voter.
Okay, I went into this expecting cope, and it’s an actually good article, worth a read or at least a skim. So, let’s do something about it.
The time to have done something about it was in November. But feel free to try.
I really don’t see another choice. I don’t blame you for leaving, we thought about it too, but it’s not realistic for some of us.
I realize that, and I’m sorry. Like I said, feel free to try. I just don’t hold out hope for success any time soon.
Ok, what do you suggest?
That we all stop moping about November and start networking with people on the ground. I’m not looking to the DNC for solutions, they’ve already got top level staff talking about working with Trump however they can. The best place to start doing that, imo, is to start showing up to governing body meetings- city councils, county government, whatever you can do, and start meeting other local activists. A lot of times, you’ll find some that are already part of larger, national networks for action, or they’ll be part of local mutual aid groups, which means that you’re talking with an entry point to a pretty big group. Share your concerns about election suppression and share this article with the people that you meet, talk about what you can do locally together to make a difference (remember, a lot of these are state laws and decisions).
This is 100% actionable, I’m going to a community activism meeting later this month and I plan on sharing this information, though I’m not in one of the affected states. I met this group by going to city council meetings and making public comments about the need to improve our housing stock.
Thank you, this is great information. I agree local politics is the best place to start.
The perma stun proceeds at pace
Re post text: For context, Washington state is mail-only voting, so that number would (I assume) be for all votes, not just specifically requested mail-ins. I didn’t see it in the article, but I wonder if that is predominantly “centralized” or “distributed” in nature; i.e. are technically-valid ballots from all voters being incorrectly rejected by the county elections facilities office at different rates across racial lines, or are there other factors like targeted disinformation, education, local infrastructure, or socioeconomics that disproportionately affect Black (or other types of minority) voters that would make them more likely to produce a technically-invalid ballot?
Those might get the same statistic, but would seem to indicate very different sorts of problems and approaches.
You can vote in-person in Washington if you want to, if you lost your ballot, etc. Also, I think most people here use the drop boxes rather than their mailbox. If not most, still quite a lot.
I work in elections in Washington, there is only mail in voting plus county drop boxes. Yes you can say you lost your ballot or didn’t get it and come in for a replacement, but we give you the same mail in packet you world receive at home.
Yes you can drop it in the drop box in our office or you can take it home and mail it. But any voter can drop their mail in ballot off in our office as well. We don’t have polling places or voting machines, or a way to separate out and assign race to a ballot so we could somehow treat those differently. They all come in as a big stack for processing.
Why do ballots get rejected? Mismatched signatures is the biggest reason. If your signature doesn’t match what we have on file we mail you a form to fix it, we also text and email you. Maybe from demographic groups are less likely to respond? The other one is people who forget to sign, which follows the same procedure.
What I can say is that is there is some sort of disparity, it isn’t happening in the ballot processing room.
Your average citizen would consider dropping it into the dropbox at the location where they just got their ballot to count as in-person voting.
Maybe so, but in that case doing it at home with your own mailbox meets that same criteria.
My point is that there isn’t a different “in person” process. There’s only one process; you get a mail ballot packet, you fill it out, and you drop off in a mailbox or county drop box.
But there isn’t only one process. You can get a ballot and/or vote in-person if you choose to or need to.
Yeah, no.
Even if you choose to pick up your mail in ballot in our office, and even if you drop off in the drop box in our office, you still got a mail in ballot and dropped it in a county drop box. Everyone can do that, you weren’t special or different, just needy.
I’m not arguing that you still get a ballot sent to you. But you are wrong in saying that there is only one method. I had to vote in person once because they sent me an incorrect ballot.
Sometimes you’re not right and it’s okay to accept that and move on.
Edit: and the election site points out where you can go to vote in person. Also, I didn’t go to an office because it was a whole arena dedicated to voting in-person.
Maybe that was back when they still had in person voting in Washington, but it’s just one type of ballot packet and mail or drop boxes now.
Maybe they held your hand and called it in person to make you feel better, but there’s no different process in Washington State that’s different than the mail in process.
Hard to trust any site that uses AI slop in their images.
If they are willing to use AI images, why wouldn’t they be willing to use AI in their writing or in how they interpret the data for their writing?
This whole article could be based on logic or data that AI just hallucinated.
Greg Palaat has been reporting on issues like this for over 25 years.
His book “Best democracy money can buy” is an awesome read, but it’s fucken infuriating corruption he exposes never gets punished.
Okay, sure. Still is a valid question, though.
Also, that doesn’t exactly provide concrete and evidence that he didn’t use AI for this. Only that he has experience in writing without it and provides a character reference.
Plus, he should be aware AI is a bad look and makes it seem like it’s possible AI was used elsewhere, like in his writing, even if untrue. If you don’t know about his credentials and history, like myself, then it’s the simplest next step of logic that they could have used AI elsewhere and we can’t know where without him stating where AI is used.
Additionally, in that case, he should be understanding that using AI for his images helps further diminish a field that his own is similarly being diminished by the same tool and using that tool in that way legitimizes that type of use. Basically, if you make money off of what you’re publishing, then just pay an artist. It’s not difficult. Then you can easily avoid people reasonably questioning whether or not you used AI in the creation of the article.
Dem pols are always too afraid to exercise the power they have when they win. Always. When Biden won, DC and Puerto Rican statehood should have been the first things on the agenda.
The GOP is never afraid to exercise as much power as they can get away with.
Biden never had enough control of the whole government to get those things done without Republican buy-in.
A Republican controlled house won’t send a bill like that to the Senate. A Republican controlled Senate won’t send it to the President.
You can be upset at Biden, but we’ve rarely ever given a Democratic president a Democratic Congress to help him get anything done.
Biden never had the power. But Obama did. He squandered it imo but you’re welcome to disagree.
Uh, no. He had a Democratic congress the first half of his term. Part of why he lost them is Dems are so tepid with exercising the power the voters give them.
Nothing the Dems do, or even try to do, gin the base up into excitement. The base never feels inspired that the Dems are striving for the goals they claim to represent and want.
This, 100%.
I remember when Democrats had a filibuster proof majority under Obama.
And they still failed to pass single payer healthcare, because of former VP candidate Joe Lieberman. Like, talk about lack of party discipline.
Republican politicians at least deliver what they say they will deliver.
They didn’t actually have a filibuster proof majority for much of that time. Franken’s win in Minnesota was contested, and he wasn’t sworn in until 9 months after the election.
I wouldn’t really say Republicans deliver what they say they’ll deliver. A week before election Trump was saying he’d have grocery prices lower on day one, and then as soon as he was elected he suddenly became aware that was complicated and the wouldn’t be anything he could do about it. Part of his campaign the first time around, too, was that he would provide a brilliant replacement for Obamacare, but after four years he’d done absolutely nothing on that front, and four years after that he still insisted he was going to do that, but admitted that he only had “concepts of a plan.”
They carry out a lot of the culture war aspects of their promises. And they carry out the promises they make to their billionaire megadonors. Everything else they hope gets forgotten about.
That’s some thorough analysis, holy cow…
Once again, Trump said (during his first term, I believe) on Fox News Republicans would never win another election if minorities vote. They know this. They consistently make it harder and harder for people to vote, while targeting minorities.
Once again, Trump said (during his first term, I believe) on Fox News Republicans would never win another election if minorities vote.
He was wrong. A big part of the '24 GOP wave came from young male latino and black voters who were entranced by the get-rich-quick promises of Trump/Vance. Online hustler culture on social media has been a huge driving force behind conservative voter expansion.
How 5 key demographic groups voted in 2024: AP VoteCast
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Trump’s share of Black voters rose slightly, driven largely by younger men
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Slightly more Hispanic voters supported Trump in 2020
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Narrow gains with (white) women benefitted Trump
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Trump saw a modest increase with men
Republicans have been leveraging their “business friendly” credentials to win over poorer POC voters for a while. And as Democrats adopt the same strategy, we’re running into the same problem as in 2000 and 1988 - voters aren’t able to distinguish between candidates on economic issues.
For POC women voters, the divisions are more stark. But for men of any shade, Dem decay in social media (their active war on left-leaning TikTok being a huge unforced error in an environment that’s trended hard-right since the Obama admin) and their refusal to deliver on college debt relief, cheap housing, cheap mass transit, or public health care is leaving Republicans with a huge discontented block of younger voters to poach.
-
get the fuck out of here with this horseshit
both parties Democrats and Republicans both use voter suppression based on what their check writers want
for example there is bipartisan efforts to keep United States citizens locked up for a list of nonviolent offences such as Bidens tough crime bills and now immigrants and women are on the list too
the education system is also used to suppress votes - no democracy without a properly funded education system
bipartisan effort to keep the minimum wage at $7.25 is another way to suppress votes - tired, overworked people do not vote with an informed healthy mind thus subverting democracy more
state of healthcare is another way voters are suppressed - health people would not vote for the current state of things
the politicians’ check writers also suppress by controlling the media that is consumed along with the entirety of culture deleting content as needed to keep us in line
and the list goes on we need to throw both parties out and start fresh
I guess the 78 voters suppression laws red states introduced is exactly the same as the 0 suppression laws blue states introduced.
of course not the blue states have to word their suppression laws differently
if both parties appeared to be the same then they could not continue this charade we call US elections
both parties are bought and paid for by the same oligarchs but if they acted like they were for the same thing then citizens would catch on even with an underfunded education system and we have to keep the bread and circuses going for as long as possible
Both parties this both parties that, why don’t you try using both sides of your own brain.
Funny how all the bipartisan stuff they mention truly is Republican stuff…
It’s also amusing that they don’t seem to know what voter suppression is.
Because both parties use voter suppression to their advantage
They won’t. All they post is “both sides!@!#&$+$($:” over and over again.
Keep in mind that minimum wage makes it harder to get a job in the first place (supply and demand) and a higher minimum wage causes inflation.
Just… something to note there. If minimum wage wasn’t so high more 16 year Olds would get jobs while they still live with their parents and can afford having low wages - so they have experience later.
Effectively what we have right now is a paradox where you need experience to get a job, but every job requires a certain amount of experience. This is because of the minimum wage, companies literally cannot afford to train people on the job.
While many of those things may effect people’s ability to vote, how many of them target republican voters? I’m pretty sure that’s what “this shit” that you want them to “fuck out of here with” is talking about.
Reading through their list I can think of specific examples for each point on each side (except the education point though that may be more local or referring to something less specific i.e. religious charter school support) - though that isn’t to imply equality. On most of these points Republicans are pretty clearly worse generally speaking…
Still, I think it was an interesting comment because, while a lot of people dismissed it out of hand, it isn’t wrong to highlight that both sides are guilty of all (except education) these things and to excise this rot will take a lot of effort.
This is why Kamala accepting the outcome “No matter what”, to prove she’s better than Trump…
Was the dumbest thing she could have done because it was just playing into the GOP’s hand.
The Republican game is “You go high, we go low, because low gets us elected and furthers our agenda.”
I thought their game was “Low, no matter what.”
I think the game is “there’s always more barrel to scrape.”
No one actually ever considered kamala might win. As soon as Biden dropped out, anyone that actually knew something knew Democrats had thrown in the towel.
That’s absolutely not true. They had the best campaign since Obama and they did amazing job in that 3 weeks or so, and contrasting disaster of a shitshow that Trump put on made it even clearer.
In the end Americans turned out to be way worse people than predicted, but that was absolutely not obvious.Remember when I said “anyone that knew something.”
Sorry you didn’t fall in that group
Guess I don’t know shit then
Guess not
Oh please. We had the same shit in 2020 and we had a record turn out.
Don’t put the blame on voter suppression when it’s American stupidity and apathy that’s the cause.
It is in the end stupidly and apathy. But, you can’t deny that voter suppression is also a big thing and it should be addressed.
Did you read the article and everything the author listed out that happened additionally over the past 4 years? The changes to vote by mail alone were drastic.
But it can be both. Voter suppression just making it way harder for Democrats to win. And ultimately impossible.
deleted by creator
Voter suppression includes manipulating people into not voting, such as “both sides are the same” and “your one vote doesn’t matter”. I’d probably include pushing people to vote for non-serious third parties, although it may not technically be “voter suppression”.
Imagine not doing your work as a president for 4 years in order to manipulate to not vote for you LMAO 🤣
We all know. Nothing was or will be done. Now they can rig it from the inside. Was a fun run!
Democrats had the opportunity to fix this when they were in office. They chose to protect the filibuster instead.
Did they or did Manchin and Sinema, who go figure are no longer Democrats, stop them?
By “restrictive voting laws” do you mean voters having to show ID? Like every other country on the planet?
Most countries that require this also give their citizens free IDs.
https://today.umd.edu/umd-analysis-millions-of-americans-dont-have-id-required-to-vote
And “just get one” is not a solution when you live in poverty and don’t even have the transportation to go to the nearest license branch, which could be miles away. If you still have the proper documents, which sometimes are ridiculous in terms of what is needed.
And then, if you’re black and were born in the South during (and even sometimes after) Jim Crow, it’s entirely possible that there is no official record of your birth because no hospital would admit your mother.
Why don’t you ever try and actually meet the other side in good faith?
Opponents of voter ID have a very simple line of argumentation, and very clear issues that would need to be solved. Why do you think proponents of voter ID never attempt to solve these issues?
Why do proponents always insist that voter ID has to be implemented in a way that happens to hurt minority voters disproportionately?
Why don’t you ever try and actually meet the other side in good faith?
You first
Opponents of voter ID have a very simple line of argumentation, and very clear issues that would need to be solved.
Like?
Why do you think proponents of voter ID never attempt to solve these issues?
You don’t name them or they’re aren’t an actual issue
Why do proponents always insist that voter ID has to be implemented in a way that happens to hurt minority voters disproportionately?
They don’t
You first
No, I won’t allow you to disadvantage minorities, no matter how often you ask.
Like?
You’ve literally never listened to anyone opposing your view? Or why are you asking me?
You don’t name them or they’re aren’t an actual issue
No, I think you’re a bad faith troll and won’t invest more time than strictly necessary. If you’re not a bad faith troll, it’s literally one search away!
They don’t
You literally started your comment doing exactly this
No, I won’t allow you to disadvantage minorities, no matter how often you ask.
I won’t allow you to stereotype minorities as people incapable of doing things, especially something as easy as getting an ID.
You’ve literally never listened to anyone opposing your view? Or why are you asking me?
I do it everyday, you just don’t have an answer
it’s literally one search away!
Should be easy for you to name them then
You literally started your comment doing exactly this
I literally never said anything about that. Literally
Oh, it’s a bad faith troll, what a surprise, who could have seen it coming, oh no
I just responded the same way you did
If you really think that, I’ll give you one last chance. I’ll explain why your response to my serious points was wrong. You can explain properly why you disagree, without resorting to strawmans or insults or anything. Deal?
My position is: minorities will be disproportionately affected by voter ID laws, since it’s on average objectively harder for a poor person to get an ID (due to transportation, scheduling due to possibly multiple jobs etc.), and minorities are disproportionately poor. You could mitigate this disproportionate effect by first ensuring easy and equal access to ID for all citizens. Even if you disagree on any of these points, you should at least be able to accept that you can get what you want if you give me what I want, and giving me what I want doesn’t hurt you in any way.
So, why do you still ask me to make the first move? Why can’t you see that you’re blocking yourself from getting what you want here?
I won’t allow you to stereotype minorities as people incapable of doing things, especially something as easy as getting an ID.
Strawman racist bullshit, disguised as uplifting affirmation of equality. Tell us you don’t see color while you’re at it.
I did the same thing they did. Why don’t you tell us how you *acknowledge your white privilege *
I try to acknowledge my white privilege by voting for politicians and laws that attempt to mitigate that privilege, by extending it as widely as possible, to as many people as possible.
Your unexamined privilege is demonstrated in claiming things like satisfying voter ID laws is easy when it is not for many, for a variety of profound and serious reasons.
I SENTENCE THIS USER TO ONE HOUR ON THE CHAIR OF CHEER
I sentence you to a lifetime
Like?
You don’t name them or they’re aren’t an actual issue
The biggest and most obvious is that ID isn’t available to literally everyone who can legally vote without cost to the end user of any kind, and as a consequence requiring such an ID is tantamount to a poll tax. Federal ID that’s fully subsidized would be the easiest solution, and if done right you could even optionally fold most state ID systems into a federal one with things like being licensed to drive being an endorsement on the federal ID.
Notably, the same people who demand photo ID to vote also tend to be the people terrified of a federal ID as a concept.
Look at Spain. We have been using our IDs for decades and it’s a great way to solve that problem. You just go to the voting table, show your ID (DNI) and vote. That’s it. And it works for everything related to anything official.
But because of the voting system we don’t have gerrymandering (or at least not that much).
That works great for Spain (and most other countries) because it has a compulsory national ID. This doesn’t exist in the US, so introducing such laws shouldn’t be done before easy access to such an ID exists for everyone.
In the US case it should be a federal ID. With a 6 or 7 letters ID should be more than enough. And compulsory at 13 y.o. You can drive, you have an ID.
Yep, that would be a good solution. Yet conservatives never advocate for this.
No, this article is talking about things like rejecting registration based on minor clerical errors like ink color, rejecting provisional ballots arbitrarily, and restricting the availability of ballot boxes. That sort of thing.
On the voter id question, by the way, the argument isn’t about whether or not you should have ID to vote, it’s about whether you can get ID in the first place.
Most countries in the world either issue IDs to everyone or allow you to prove your identity with things like bank statements and utility bills, or just somebody else who can vouch for you. The problem with US voter ID laws is that they only give you a few options for acceptable documents, and then make it hard to get those documents.
or allow you to prove your identity with things like bank statements and utility bills, or just somebody else who can vouch for you.
My state’s voter ID allows all of those things and more (including the voter registration card given to you for free when you register and whenever you update your registration as well as SNAP and TANF cards), although here the “somebody else who can vouch for you” has to have ID themselves and has to sign a sworn statement on penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are and that they have known you for at least 6 months.
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable approach.
By comparison, North Carolina attempted to implement a voter ID law in 2016 that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court because it deliberately targeted black voters.
It’s not as difficult to get ID in many other countries
It’s not difficult in the US
It’s harder than it should be
Harder than going to the place that gives them out and asking for one? I’m not going to hold your hand
If only it were that easy!
It is, I’ve done it many times
I am very happy it has been easy for you. From what I have read that is not the case for many
Are you white? Are you not living in poverty?
So the new campaign is that the DNC did nothing wrong, they were just thwarted by voter suppression?
Couldn’t be they completely fucked up by campaigning to a center that doesn’t exist any more. The DLC’s triangulation bullshit is dead and needs to stay dead. Every Dem from the Clinton era needs to get that through their damn heads, they should have retired a decade ago anyway.
They didn’t campaign to the center, they campaigned to the right. It was incredible obtuse and stupid.
Biden barely squeaked into office on promises it became clear he was never going to even try to keep, and then Democrats proceeded to alienate a bunch of groups that voted for him. Groups that only voted for him reluctantly the last time.
My hypothesis is that voter suppression had a lot to do with it. Harris was no more of a crap candidate than Biden was in 2020. It’d be nice to see some solid research one way or the other.
I’m also with you on getting rid of triangulation, since the lack of principles it requires is almost as corrosive as fascism, and you end up with a party 1 mm to the left of whoever the fascist-du-jour might be. It’s a morally bankrout strategy that delivers next to nothing.
Harris was no more of a crap candidate than Biden was in 2020.
Biden was able to get away with it in 2020 coming off Trump’s first term and the shitshow that was COVID’s handling under his leadership. Harris didn’t have this benefit, being second in command in the incumbent regime, was unable to capitalize on any of the points the Biden administration could claim as wins, while stubbornly refusing to put any distance between him and herself on his unpopular stances. Add in that this was occurring while popular sentiment was clamoring for an inspiring campaign that wasn’t the usual DNC paint-by-numbers, march to the right campaign of, “Well, actually, while I can appreciate Hitler’s passion for the arts, animal welfare and the health risks of smoking, you’ll find that we, uh… disagree about the best way to deal with the Jewish question. Thank you, you’re seen and heard, even you Jews out there. Vote for me, 'cause the other guy’s Hitler, and I’m not entirely Hitler.”
The entire Democrat effort (or lack thereof) was a massive unforced error on their part. Instead, they keep sidelining any candidate who seems to actually excite people and inspire them with hope for the sort of systemic change they want, unless they find they can eventually drag them into their usual shenanigans.
Personally, I think they’d also do best to drop their tokenism with candidates that trot out the same means-tested policy drivel. Rather than go harder on the adjectives next time and hope people show up to vote for, “The candidate who would be the country’s first female, Chinese, Navajo, amputee, Leprauchan president in history,” have policies that don’t include the means-testing and would broadly lift up the working class and poor voters, while also addressing historic inequalities for the many groups that have been disadvantaged and/or excluded from US society for its history. You can tick all the diversity boxes you want with the candidates, but it’s patronizing to think people will blindly fall in line for such a candidate assuming they’ll represent them, when we’ve seen that it’s mere lip-service paid to very real issues impacting the lives of millions of Americans, which will be promptly forgotten upon taking office, if it lasts that long.
It’s a combination of everything, DNC has been spineless and bought out by corps, voter suppression techniques from Republicans skewed votes in their favor, white rural voters came out in droves to vote for trump, the Harris campaign failure to meaningfully address the genocide or get enough messaging out to address people’s financial troubles.
The voter suppression problem is a symptom of the spineless and bought out DNC problem. Dems should be talking about nationwide voting laws and how red states aren’t democratic and don’t have legitimate rule of law constantly, but that would be too radical and unpredictable for the corps to feel comfortable with, so instead they focus their legislative efforts on just cutting checks to all the state governments for this infrastructure initiative or that climate bill or whatever, which helps assholes like Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp run the systems of patronage and oppression that keep them in power (also, those checks are eventually ending up in the corps’ accounts, so they’re happy too).
They don’t talk about voting laws during the campaign because it loses.
Contrary to popular belief, they’re not idiots.
If you get all the corporations to turn against you, especially the media companies, you lose. Ask Bernie.
They’re not doing everything right, certainly, but it’s also not a simple problem to solve. There are some very fine lines to walk for Dems. Kamala tried to walk those lines and failed.
She offered a $50k credit towards buying your first house. Does Gen Z remember that?
Meanwhile Trump could shout “hail Hitler” tomorrow and all the corporate media (and then 50% of the voters) would make excuses for him.
We need voters to seek out primary sources. We need them to be more resistant to manipulation. The problem isn’t getting the information out there; it’s getting people to hear it. How many people who didn’t vote for Kamala went to KamalaHarris.com? And how many of those seriously considered what she had to say?
The problem is that saying nothing is more of a winning strategy than saying something. People always want to tear you down, and more words give them more ammo. So every politician’s website is filled with fluff and platitudes.
The problem is Fox News telling people what to think 24/7 in a way that they actually listen.
Honestly, The Daily Show and Colbert Report of around 2000-2015 were one of the best things this country had going for it, and we were hardly aware of it.
Because no Gen Z sees 50$k towards a house and is impressed. That offer alone shows such a ridiculous disconnect between the dems and the populace. Yes that would be beneficial for a very select minority of Gen Z, but for the vast majority.
Not close to helpful, radical or on level to Trump’s promises (lies).
They want sweeping change, they expect politicians to lie and embellish. If the politician offers something so minor when they are expected to embellish then the avg voter probably expects even less or nothing at all.
At least significant promises can get people excited. Even if they are obvious lies to those paying attention. Sad reality is vast majority of people of any generation pay almost no attention whatsoever.
I think people seeing her message might have helped. But the difference maker would have been a message people actually want to get behind. That would have spread organically.
Now whether the DNC was cooked either way following the publics perception of Bidens term is another thing. But a strong message will always prevail - even if it is a lie.
You’re right, the DNC should be working to expand voter protections and ensure that freedom is protected and it sucks they’re bought out by corps.
The genocide voters are idiots. Harris spent too much time trying to court “moderate” republicans.
Congrats, the dems passively let a decades old tradition of passively supporting Israel go mildly unchanged and the idiots let a genocide accelerationist into power. Not stopping a genocide is not the same as accelerating it.
For being a supposed liberal, you seem to have a hard problem accepting the validity of other people’s beliefs.
Voting is a cultural thing. People have different beliefs about voting. Your way is not the only way. Your way is not the “right” way simply because it is your way.
Some people, like yourself, vote looking forward. They pick which candidate they believe would be the best. They view voting as a job interview. Others vote looking backwards. They seek to hold their leaders accountable. They view voting as a performance review.
Which way is “correct?” Neither. There is no “correct” way to vote. And it’s extremely chauvinistic and close-minded to assume that your way is the only way.
In truth, any system or movement needs both types of voters. You need a balance of both types of voters, otherwise a political party is lost. You need forward-looking voters to win elections. You need backward-looking voters to ensure that winning elections actually does your party any good. If you only have backward-looking voters, you’ll never win an election. If you only have forward-looking voters, you’ll end up with leaders so ineffectual that they don’t accomplish anything even if they do win.
Stop shaming your brothers and sisters simply because they have a different voting culture than yourself. Your beliefs are just one side of a coin. Try to keep an open mind. Try to actually earn the title “liberal.”
What the fuck are you on about? I’m talking about voter suppression and progressive masquerading astroturf dissuading people from voting, not talking about how people should vote. Pay the fuck attention to the conversation in the thread.
The end result of progressives being dissuaded from voting because “Genocide Joe is not stopping Israel’s genocide” and other voter suppression tactics has resulted “make the genocide even worse Don” getting into office.
Stop shaming your brothers and sisters simply because they have a different voting culture than yourself.
Your whole argument here reads like a middle-school debate kid trying to apply moral relativism for the first time.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you vote. But sometimes, like now, it does. People have a moral responsibility for their actions, including how they vote. Those who vote for fascists are responsible for empowering those same fascists. There’s no way to weasel out of that.
It all sounds a bit like saying that the Civil War was just a difference in opinion about cultures. But politics has real consequences for real people’s lives. Sometimes you have to make choices, and the idea that they’re all somehow morally equivalent is a load of nonsense.
I really hate that this is the top comment. Two things can be true at the same time. Dems messed up in the previous election and narrowly lost against the worst candidate to ever run for president,AND voter suppression is real and will become a much larger problem going forward. Under Trump, nothing is stopping Republicans from enacting voter suppression laws the likes of which you have never seen before. Trump won’t need to steal the election for his third term (yes he will run if he’s still alive!), because the states will do it for him by suppressing the votes.
Now you may think that you are protected from a third term by the constitution. You may think you are protected against things like poll taxes, tests etc. But do you honestly believe the SC is on your side?
The Dems messed up this election. Voter suppression will ensure that there will no longer be fair elections in the future.
You’re still worried about fair elections? The concept of elections is on the line right now. Setting up the fights on Panama, Greenland, and Canada, is about making sure the US won’t stand against Russia/China, and no one else is capable. At that point, there won’t be any more elections by the people. Just the oligarchs that agree with dear leader.
My only protection is that prevailing winds tend to put me upwind of likely nuclear targets for most of the year.
I’m never gonna stop sharing this
There’s this, and then there’s Sideshow Bob’s lines on the matter:
This has been in my head since 2016. I firmly believe that there really are people out there that find this kind of authoritarian rule comforting.
Conservatives have a heightened fear response so that tracks
The Democrats have plenty of problems, but none of that compares to Republicans who are worse in every conceivable way. Propaganda, foreign interference, and domestic voter suppression won this for Trump and his goons.
I get the argument, but at this point, nobody is contemplating whether to vote Democrat or Republican. It’s between Democrat and apathy.
Comments like these sound as if during WWII the French were saying “well, the French army has plenty of problems, but Nazi German occupation is worse in every conceivable way, so there is no point criticising the French army”.
Everyone knows the Reps are Nazis. The problem with the Dems is not that they are not less bad than the literal Nazi party, but that they are unable to effectively fight the Nazi party. The problem is that Democrats fail to demonstrate that voting for them is better than not voting at all to a large part of the electorate.
Exactly. Democrats ran on “vote for a Democrat to save Democracy!” Millions of voters shrugged and asked, “what good has democracy done for me?”
The problem is that a lot of people, also on here equate people saying that “this is going to alienate voters” with saying “this is going to alienate me”, and then go into personal attacks of “are Republicans better then?” or “you’re the problem because you don’t vote”.
No, the problem is and was that large swathes of the population that you don’t interact with won’t vote if you don’t give them something to vote for, as they don’t see Trump as the threat he is, since people’s opinions are saturated with the 24 hour news cycle. Point is “Trump bad”, while true, doesn’t win elections. You have to do something more, and the DNC is very much tending to do the bare minimum besides fundraising.
The problem is that a lot of people, also on here equate people saying that “this is going to alienate voters” with saying “this is going to alienate me”, and then go into personal attacks of “are Republicans better then?” or “you’re the problem because you don’t vote”.
Centrists only did that because in all cases, they supported the behavior that was alienating voters and didn’t want it to change. Even if that meant trump again.
I wouldn’t even say that, it’s just there really were a lot of trolls going “whatabout?”, especially here, as some people want the US to fall, and honestly Trump is the best candidate for that. Mix in a bunch of other trolls screaming “bluemaga” for the heck of it, and you couldn’t have a decent conversation anymore.
I’m just saying we shouldn’t fall into the trap of going into a circlejerk again, it’s past the election, it would be great to have the conversations that are needed but we couldn’t have before the election. There are some great people in the Dem party as well, again, Lina Khan’s work was inspiring, and despite recent events, it did make a huge difference. We need more people like her.
And on the other hand, Luigi has shown that there is a broad societal base wanting this constant madness to end. People just want to live, all people, even Republicans.
it’s past the election, it would be great to have the conversations that are needed but we couldn’t have before the election.
The “we can’t have this conversation right now” thing was a fucking excuse to continue enabling the genocide. Centrists will never admit they were horribly, monstrously wrong to support genocide.
It’s all they ever were, and all they will ever be.
The problem is that Democrats fail to demonstrate that voting for them is better than not voting at all to a large part of the electorate.
That’s where the propaganda and foreign influence come in. Their entire effort centered around muddying the waters so people couldn’t be sure what the reality was. And voter suppression certainly makes it easier for people to say fuck it.
Yes, there was foreign propaganda, influence, psyops, etc.
Look at Luigi. All of that propaganda failed to contain a very wide, bipartisan swathe of the population who was elated at the CEO’s death. Even more moderate people agreed that healthcare sucks even if they don’t like people, even murderers, gunned down in the street.
And Democrats still refuse to run on a platform of complete healthcare reform. And before you say “but Republicans would vote it down”, make them! Put it forward every week, every session, make a presidential run on it, make overreaching executive orders that fuck with insurance companies, forcing them to sue, every week. Have random low ranking Democrats make speeches about “well Luigi was in the wrong, but such things are inevitable in this system” to get in the papers with controversy. Just like Reps did it with the wall and other stupid stuff. Make it every week’s topic who exactly is standing in the way of establishing a proper healthcare system.
And there are other issues like that. Cost of living for example.
Fight, damnit, do something, or you will lose your country.
Do you remember Obamacare and Republicans voting to repeal it literally hundreds of times? Where did that get us?
And now we have less control of the government. We can’t even force a vote. The speaker can just refuse to allow it. There is no fight we can win. The best we can hope for is slowing the destruction.
That’s my point. Instead of the Republicans voting hundreds of times to repeal it, Democrats should have been voting to expand it, anchoring the debate away from Reps. They should have thrown in a massive expansion, and forced a vote around that, again, hundreds of times.
This is not even going low, just fighting.
You’re exactly right. Instead of going on the offense the Dems just think “well this won’t pass so why bother?”
Meanwhile the Republicans are out here writing bills to give Trump a third term. Do you think the fact that it won’t pass matters one iota to them?
73 days. That’s how long the Dems held the filibuster-proof trifecta that allowed Obamacare in the first place. They haven’t had the power to force anything through since. It took everything they could do just to defend what little progress they made. The tactic you are talking about can’t work if the other side can just filibuster everything.
There is no fight we can win. The best we can hope for is slowing the destruction.
This is the attitude whether we give Democrats a majority to squander or not.
And now we have less control of the government.
You are looking at solutions within the system. Those are not the only solutions. When the system is rotten, go around it.
There is no fight we can win if we acquiesce to the rules imposed on us by the oppressors. That has always been true throughout history. And yet progress is often made.
Until Trump won a second time, there was still a possibility of fixing this within the system. You may be right that there is no solution within the system now. Finding a solution outside the system will bring violence and suffering beyond anything most living people have experienced, so I’m not exactly eager to give up on other methods.
The problem is that Democrats fail to demonstrate
And compounding that problem is people being angry at the Dems for this failure instead of trying to help.
“Clearly you’re not worth voting for because you can’t convince people to vote for you.” Great.
“Clearly you’re not worth voting for because you can’t convince people to vote for you.” Great.
But it’s not that. It’s “please do something because you’re abandoning wide swathes of people and are going to lose, and lose our best chance against the fascists this way”.
The problem is that Dems don’t like progressives’ help, they would rather get help from Cheney than Sanders.
abandoning wide swathes of people
Because forgiving college debt and giving you $50k towards your first house and bringing prescription drug prices down is abandoning you? Fixing our rail system is abandoning you? Repeatedly saying they’re going to tax billionaires is abandoning progressives?
It’s not like we give them enough to have the power to actually get big things done. When we do give them a little, they have to bring in the vice president to break ties in the Senate.
In this regard, it’s not like Republicans wield power any better. They couldn’t even repeal the ACA. It’s just that they get more credit. First, they get credit for every Dem initiative they stop (even if it’s not real). The reverse isn’t true. Second, everything the Republicans do get done tends to be negative and stings more than the positives.
I know you want to abandon billionaire money. You want Dems saying the right things to you, in a closet where nobody hears them. Because if you don’t have money, you lose elections. Period. That’s a big problem that needs to be solved, but it can’t be solved by people who lose elections.
The Dems absolutely could have tried to appeal to the progressives more instead of moderates. Clearly, in hindsight, it’d be worth trying something different. But I doubt it would have worked. People weren’t happy, and they were going to take it out on the incumbent party. And right now they’d be hearing “why didn’t they appeal to moderates?”
My point is that it’s more complicated than just “appeal to progressives instead of moderates”. The Dems have more realities to deal with than we give them credit for.
Because forgiving college debt and giving you $50k towards your first house and bringing prescription drug prices down is abandoning you? Fixing our rail system is abandoning you? Repeatedly saying they’re going to tax billionaires is abandoning progressives?
Tax billionaires how? Any concrete plans? Any proposed laws that were brought to the floor as much as repealing Obamacare was by the ghouls?
And trying to win by forgiving student debt that they themselves made undischargeable as recently as 2005 is good, but it’s just trying to clean up after themselves. Unsuccessfully.
And giving $50k towards a first house, when houses are nearing a million is not going to do anything other than drive housing prices even further up. How much public housing have they built? Have they even proposed putting a tax on large-scale corporate homeownership or price gouging, houses sitting empty?
I’m not even going to mention Gaza.
But the elephant in the room, Joe Biden could have nominated anyone, literally anyone for AG. He nominated known conservative Merrick Garland, who then proceeded to let Trump go after 34 felony convictions and who knows how many hundreds of actual felonies, to become US president.
In this regard, it’s not like Republicans wield power any better. They couldn’t even repeal the ACA.
At least they tried. How many times have Democrats brought a vote to tax billionaires or megacorps, even if it failed, just to keep it on the table?
I know you want to abandon billionaire money. You want Dems saying the right things to you, in a closet where nobody hears them. Because if you don’t have money, you lose elections. Period. That’s a big problem that needs to be solved, but it can’t be solved by people who lose elections.
If money is more important than getting votes in order to win an election, then the US is not and has not been a democracy. That said, the Dems got all the money ever this election. Where is the win then?
The Dems absolutely could have tried to appeal to the progressives more instead of moderates. Clearly, in hindsight, it’d be worth trying something different. But I doubt it would have worked. People weren’t happy, and they were going to take it out on the incumbent party. And right now they’d be hearing “why didn’t they appeal to moderates?”
Has that ever happened? Once? Or has it been dozens of elections in a row, always appealing to “moderates” - actually wealthy donors - and leaving progressives to rot. And then blaming progressives for the election loss. Damn, Lina Khan, the one woman who was arguably doing her job well was possibly on the chopping block. How do you get people to vote for this?
The Dems have been the perfect Weimar to Trump’s Hitler. May they be remembered as “fondly” as them.
Thank you for this, it’s speaking exactly the unending frustration I have with these lines of “thought”.
That said, the Dems got all the money ever this election. Where is the win then?
Why are you blatantly lying about this? Any chump can look at the wall of CEOs Trump has next to him for his victory speeches and see where the money was backing.
And compounding that problem is people being angry at the Dems for this failure instead of trying to help.
We should be as happy as you are that the only thing Democrats actually stood for in the past 4 years was Netanyahu.
A more concise way of putting it is that, if we’re going to resist and reject Trump, don’t expect meaningful help from the Democratic Party. That’s not what it is. Meet your neighbors. Organize at that level. If need be, form cells.
99% of the times Democrats fail to effect change, it’s for losing a vote that comes close to 50/50 - be it for presidents, senate representatives, etc.
People do not understand that their only quote-unquote “failing” is that we literally don’t give them power in any usable, reliable form, and that they don’t represent a hive mind.
I’m not criticising them for not having the votes, I’m criticising them for not writing and standing behind the bills in the first place.
There are three insane third Trump term bills already in Congress, where were the three Medicare for All or police reform, or anti-price gouging or tax reform bills in Congress days after Biden’s win? Or Obama’s win?
The Trump bills won’t pass, sure, but we are here and talking about them. Where were the Dems doing this?
I beg of the Dems to please stop the cope and start making moves.
It’s always “funny” when people act like systemic racism is some reformable problem rather than a major foundation of the entire system.
The system of humanity.
It is not natural to be racist.
Very natural to be afraid of things you don’t know/can’t control
Racism is a product of people exploiting that
It’s actually very natural to form in/out groups. The issue is getting the species as a whole to overcome it.
In/out groups are natural, but the establishment of those groups on ‘racial’ lines is totally constructed. The concept of race itself doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, it’s a fixation on specific phenotypic traits.
Notice how racial bias is fixated on skin color while other phenotypic differences are largely ignored; people with different colored eyes or hair, different nose shapes, different hair textures, etc. 400 years ago skin tone was similarly trivial, but that changed with the rise of chattel slavery.
The core tenet of tribalism is “They aren’t like us.” That might be based on skin color, hair type, clothing, smell (from different diets), behavior. Modern racism (from the last couple hundred years) likely has some elements of more traditional tribalism with relaxed standards so the people a few hundred miles away can start to wrap their heads around the idea that Irish, for instance, are more or less the same as British.
I do hope people can get to the idea that anyone from a given point on this planet (so far) is just a person and not an outsider, but it looks like we have a way to go.
The core tenet of tribalism is “They aren’t like us.” That might be based on skin color, hair type, clothing, smell (from different diets), behavior.
That’s just not accurate. Its historically been cultural, not phenotypes.
Prisoners of war, which were different skin colors, tended to be accepted into the group once they adapted the captor’s customs.
For the last 200 years, a significant amount of slavery has been limited to certain phenotypes. I agree that prior to that, it was less prevalent. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a historical model of slavery based on phenotype, it’s just more recent history.
On the other hand, the Irish were enslaved by the British centuries before any Africans were. And it’s not because they had no contact. Everyone in Europe who had any power and influence was aware of Mansa Musa, and there were plenty of Sub-Saharan Africans in Iberia and other parts of the Caliphate in Europe.
Being black was just not the liability it eventually became. Being nearby but in a different country was a much bigger one.
This is what I was trying to say but didn’t have the foresight to elaborate and that seems to have earned me some downvotes lol
In-group out-group bias is very unfortunately ingrained into our brains.
So do nothing?
What would you suggest people do about this now that America is a fascist dictatorship?
This conversation is so frustrating to witness. Particularly because I remember you were such a strong proponent of Harris though the election cycle, which suggest you have political sense enough to care and know things are bad, but now that the cards are different your plan is to disconnect and feel hopeless? If you truly believe that America is a fascist dictatorship, and realize that we have the largest military in the world, don’t you feel moral imperative to at least try? If the solution you were striving for didn’t work, why is your next move give up rather than look to something like black radical thought, which has for much longer being explaining how the solutions to these problems don’t come with ballots.
I literally asked what is suggested people do.
Am I supposed to come up with the answer myself? Because I’m extremely stupid, so that isn’t going to happen. I wish people would realize that.
I literally asked what is suggested people do.
I feel like this is an obtuse description. There are better ways to ask what should be done that do not read as defeatist if you’re genuine.
No one is expecting you to come up with solutions, that’s why I recommended black radical thought, as these are folks that have been on the front line of fighting and experiencing America’s decent into fascism.
Well I’m sorry I didn’t ask what should be done the right way, but I still have no idea what to be done.
Please tell me how I am supposed to ask what people suggest other than asking them what they suggest.
For fuck’s sake, all I want is an answer. You sure as hell aren’t giving me one.
I can see you’re upset, but genuinely, I think it leads to a better community on lemmy in general to approach with good faith. The point overall being, if you are asking in earnest, and are hoping for answers about what possible way forward we have, I would hope that you recognize that there are better ways to communicate that. I’m sorry it’s upsetting that certain langue is interpreted differently, even if the core is the same, but it’s the reality.
Given that reality, being upfront about your worries and feelings of helplessness is valid and helps to connect rather than dismiss. With that, expressing the lack of knowledge as a personal aspect, rather than framing the exhausting of options you’re aware of as the end of all options, would help show that you are looking for whatever is next.
As for ‘an answer’, it’s not something I can easily give because these are complex issues. The reality is it can’t be distilled down to “Get out and vote” because the problems extend beyond that, and any real answer that match that simplicity would along the lines of “organize” but I assume like me, you’d find that sort of broad advice hollow.
I can’t say what you should do because it depends on your local politics, what you’re able to commit, where your politics sit, and ultimately what you think your place would be in whatever is done. With that I recommend black radical thought because I find it best encompasses the tools needed to learn for the reasons I mentioned. Along side learning, I think reaching out to local political groups for work that can be done would be a great way to see what options and opportunists marginalized folks are making for themselves.
In short, if you fear for the well-being of, black/brown, indigenous, immigrant, queer, or everyone else that will suffer under the coming wave of fascism, do as Mr Rogers says and look for the helpers, and if you can, help them.
