I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Kamala supporters should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they’re ok with their candidate enabling genocide
It was gazas best chance at actually existing. Also she was the only one with a chance at 270 electoral votes
Your turn. Why did you vote for someone who couldn’t get to 270? Do you not realize you literally helped trump?
Voting is not supporting and my state went blue so no I didn’t. Also that’s not relevant to the conversation at hand. The point is that she was a shitty candidate that supported genocide and mostly ran on not being Trump. But when people correctly point that out, many such as yourself get more angry at that person instead of the shitty candidate. What it feels like is you’re married to the dnc, and when someone accurately tells you that they’re abusive and they’re cheating on you, you shoot the messenger.
No one is inspired to vote for the lesser evil. Be mad at the dnc for running a campaign of “we’re not going to help anyone but at least we’re not Trump” instead of actually trying to be good. Working people are your allies, not the elite trying to divide us with stupid electoralism.
why they’re ok with their candidate enabling genocide
I don’t think this is a fair analysis of any real person’s position.
That’s a real comfort to all the genocide victims
It certainly isn’t. Victims of genocide are unaffected by any individual’s mindset. I fully agree with your position; I’m simply advocating for an exploration of that mindset to inform better future choices.
May not be their mentality, but that is the reality when you show more contempt for those mad about said genocide enabling than for the figure you’re advocating for despite them enabling genocide
She used the only power she had to try to negotiate a ceasefire. What you are saying simply isn’t factual.
The only thing she wanted to change about bidens administration was to add more Republicans, the same administration that was regularly sending arms to Israel. Palestinians weren’t allowed to speak at the dnc. She had plenty of opportunities to show support for the Palestinian people, every time she supported Israel instead.
She didn’t add as many republicans as Trump did. Trump want to put American boots on the ground in Gaza for the US to take control. How many Palestinians did Trump allow to speak?
If those are your concerns, you chose poorly.
I yelled, but voted Kamala, and encouraged others to do the same. I always wanted to try and push the democrats to not be Republican lite and actually taking a meaningful, impactful stand on fucking anything besides being very passionate about not inhabiting Trump’s body. I wanted to see the democrats say “you know what? Genocide is wrong, whether it’s our allies doing it or not, and this is genocide” instead of “well, we’re going to keep handing them bombs, but we promise to wag our fingers at them while we do it”. I don’t want to hear your goddamn excuses, there’s always some fucking excuse why the democrats just had to spill all their spaghetti. I just wanted to do what I could to push them to show some intestinal fortitude and do the right thing, and I honestly believed (and still do believe) that that would have motivated more voters to turn out than purely relying on “less bad than him”.
No, I don’t regret trying to make the world I want to see; one without genocide. I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
Thank you for sharing, genuinely. The way other conversations here have gone, many probably thought you were a Russian bot or something for yelling that you cared about human rights atrocities funded by your taxes. :(
How do you change voter behavior?
You don’t. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it’s to change the rules to what the people want. If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.
Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.
I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.
On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.
On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.
Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…
Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can’t use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.
You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.
The Republicans understand this.
This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: You don’t run for office with the electorate you want, you run for office with the electorate you have.
Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.
On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.
On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.
Most Americans align closer with progressives than any other group when it comes to policy. But messaging has been coopted by the Republicans to make people instinctively hate “socialism” because of the Red Scare Propaganda.
But Democrats block progressive policy because it makes their donors angry.
So really there’s nobody willing to represent the majority
I’ve become pretty skeptical we know where the majority is. The question determines the outcome of the survey. The measuring stick is flawed and error bars are many times larger than the difference being measured. Frankly, the thing being measured has more dimensions than are being measured.
And it’s worth remembering how the party got here. The left and labor coalition failed to beat Nixon twice, Ford’s losing had little to do with the left, and it utterly fell apart against Reagan. The Democrats only started to get traction at the national level by going to the center, using the DLC playbook. I’m as angry about the abandonment of labor by the Democratic party as anyone, but the reason for it is not a mystery. By the same token if the left doesn’t build the structure for a more left leaning Democratic party to operate no one should expect the party to move.
The hard thing is, I don’t know what that structure looks like, but it’s not enough to be “correct”.
YOU’RE skeptical.
Stop projecting because you are too lazy to go learn about the world around you.
Saving. That survey is hard to find if you don’t search the right terms.
And yet they would not turn out to nominate Bernie… Talk about lazy.
I’ve read it. Many times from many outlets reporting on more than one survey. The first time I found it comforting.
However it’s not hard to find conflicting data. Methodology determines outcomes of these surveys, every time.
Today I’m less comforted. But ultimately, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re that far apart.
Well that’s a lie, with voter suppression and gerrymandering you can have your dream electorate!
It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza
Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted
so why arent we pointing the finger at them?
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience.
You should. They only bring about worse situations at best. Pretending to be moral when what you’re doing is the opposite is pure hypocrisy.
Remember, the most constructive thing you can do is get mad at other, equally powerless people like yourself! This is how political change happens.
Remember! People aren’t powerless! Voting is a power! Not voting is not how political change happens
It really does baffle me that some people think a lack of an effort will bring about change.
Removing your support from a party you previously supported is an effort to bring about change. Evidenced by the democrats trying to figure out how to get people to vote for them again.
I bet you think divorce is a bad thing too.
How are you enjoying the divorce so far? Got what you wanted out of it?
Well the DNC is now forced to either pull their collective head out their ass or destroy themselves in spite. We’ll see how it goes.
It wasnt a personal reference. The point I’m making is that it tends to be overwhelmingly bad relationships end in divorce, as they should. It would be awful if people were forced to stay in bad situations like that.
The democrats have a horrible relationship with their party members, and so many chose divorce, rightly so.
Divorce isn’t something from nothing, so I’m not too sure what that false equivalency is supposed to do for you.
You cannot expect action from inaction.
They can’t answer since they were bots
🤖 I LOVE [america] SO MUCH I MUST VOTE FOR THE [blue] CANIDATE NO MATTER WHAT I AM TOLD
Hope you like the consequences of [not voting blue for virtue signalling]
I voted blue. I am just willing to not idolize the candidates I vote for.
My original comment was against people who incited to abstain or to vote third party tho. Yeah I agree with never idolizing a politician
have gotten multiple answers. opinion debunked. get real.
There are a lot of people who decided to fully support a genocide and lost. So all they have left is their support for genocide. They’re not going to be able to use principled opinions anymore.
The spot won’t come out.
Weird how you got downvoted for the simple truth. 🧐
they were all bots /half joke
At some point I think it’s projection, downvoting everyone they disagree with and then blame “tankies” when bad takes get called out
I will never regret choosing to vote third party no matter what happens. I will not regret my vote even if Trump marches me personally into a gas chamber. The sooner you get that through your heads, the better. You will never be able to “scare me straight” by pointing to the Republicans, no matter what they do.
The reason things have gotten as bad as they are, to where we have to choose between genocide and genocide-lite, is because of a complete unwillingness to have a spine and draw a red line, out of fear of letting the other side win. We have sacrificed every single standard and principle in the name of that fear. This “common sense” strategy of unconditional support of the lesser evil is actually completely insane, and easily falls apart under scrutiny.
However, if you cannot be persuaded that we are correct, then it is better that you see us as stubborn and irrational. Because a stubborn and irrational person will only be persuaded by giving them what they want, and not by words or anything else. If you want to make sure the Democrats actually win next time, the best strategy is to pressure them into conceding to our demands. Which, if you think about that for 5 seconds, it makes our approach seem a lot less stupid and irrational, but what do I know, I’m stupid and irrational.
It must be easy to stand from on high in judgement of others when you aren’t the one that stood to lose anything, because It’s the ones that have nothing to lose that always go all-in at the table.
Your lack of regret clearly illustrates that your decision was influenced by a colossal amount of entitlement.
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Reposting the explanation without the language they used towards me.
You wanna talk game theory, let’s talk game theory. Two people are given $100 to split. One person makes an offer, the other choses to accept or deny - if they deny, nobody gets anything. What is the “game theory rational” outcome? The offer made is a $99-$1 split, which is accepted, because $1 is better than nothing. What actually happens when this has been done irl? The result is offers less than about $30 get rejected, and so the offers tend to be more equitable. Chosing to take nothing may be less “rational” on the surface level, but by establishing it as a credible threat of denial, this “irrational” approach achieves a better outcome.
Normally, if I played that game with someone, I’d probably just offer a 50-50 split, but if it was one of you, I’d only offer you a dollar, because I know you’d take it. Because literally your whole ideology is built around accepting shitty deals, rejecting the deal would invalidate your entire belief system.
The reason that people are prone to the “irrational” strategy in that game is that the “rational” strategy is only rational within the confines of the game. In real life, the game doesn’t end there, and if you signal you’ll accept a $99-$1 split, that’s all you’ll ever get in the future.
The vote wasn’t between genocide and genocide lite. It was between genocide lite and genocide, plus additional genocides, some domestic, plus economic sabotage, plus the emergence of a new evangelical southern Baptist military regime.
I don’t think that narrowing the scope of the voting gap to just you is helpful, so I don’t want to use this as a moment to level scorn. I just want to be very clear that the premise you presented is wrong. Very wrong
They were mainly upset that we don’t have a choice to not support genocide.
Which just betrays their utter ignorance of US history. Slavery and genocide built this country, of course we’re gonna support it.
From what I have seen they seem pretty aware of the history of white supremacy and genocide. I don’t know that this is particularly good analysis.
Expecting it to change any time soon was their naive mistake.
Sure, the material consequences if you, specifically, live in a swing state. I do, so I voted for Kamala. But this take, applied outside of states that were up for grabs, is asinine. But hey, nuance is for people who don’t want to just keep trying the same failed approach to presidential elections every 4 years and would rather bitch about anyone less moderate than them.
But this take, applied outside of states that were up for grabs, is asinine.
What take? Philly D’s post question or my own response to it? (/gen I am just missing what you are referring to promise!)
I took your response to be supportive of Philly D’s post, but sorry if I misunderstood.
Yeah no worries I was more looking to genuinely engage with the question he asks. No blame before the question is answered :)
I guess your title really gets to the heart of my take on this. If there aren’t material consequences for most of the people who voted third party I really don’t understand the anger a lot of people feel towards them. In swing states sure, but for the rest of the people? It just doesn’t make sense to me unless there’s some fundamental misunderstanding about how our elections work.
Everyone is so focused on the genocide angle, but governments left and right throughout the world who were in power during the post COVID inflation spike got the boot. Most economist with froth at the mouth about “deflationary spirals” wherein people who have been waiting 15 years to buy a new pair of pants will wait a couple more years to buy it when prices start going down and thus cause an economic downturn. However, the general public believed that “getting inflation under control” meant going back to the original prices, something the (independent of Biden) federal reserve would never let happen because deflation = bad. Once the inflation spike occurred, Biden could have had 0% inflation from Nov 2022 to the election, and people still would have voted him out due to prices being too high.
They also failed to make a compelling case about what caused this and how they planned to fix it - in part, because they weren’t willing to blame the rich, or take risks in general. Of course, inflation increased globally but as a politician you can’t just roll out a chart and say “see, it’s not actually that bad, other countries have it worse.” Even if it’s true, it doesn’t acknowledge people’s concerns or convince them you’re going to fight on their behalf. Just as Harris refused to distinguish herself from Biden’s Gaza policy, she also failed to distinguish herself from his economic policy, when asked what she’d do differently, she had no answer.
This is probably, even more than Gaza, why she lost. Because she was representing a declining status quo. It’s just human nature to roll the dice to try to turn things around rather than accepting slow decline, which is why we can’t allow fascism to be the only alternative to the status quo.
If Kamala had gone up there and given it some Bernie-style fire about how the rich had been price gouging on gas and groceries and she was gonna take the fight to 'em, she probably could’ve won. And it’s not like that narrative isn’t true. Forget technical jargon and go out there like:
“When you’re paying $10 for a dozen eggs, that money doesn’t go to the people stocking the shelves, it doesn’t go to the store manager, it doesn’t go to the government, it goes straight to the top, to billionaires just like Donald Trump! The Biden admin did the best we could, without stepping on any toes, but when I’m in charge, the gloves are coming off! We will take the fight to billionaires like Trump and I promise you, we will get those prices down! They can afford it, we can’t!”
Instead it was like:
“Um, actually, sweaty, if you look at this graph you’ll see that the stock market is actually doing great and Joe Biden did a terrific job, complaining about grocery prices is really all in your head and honestly kinda problematic.”
But they probably get more money from their donors by doing it this way and losing.
Imagine believing that Trump’s genocidal policy is somehow different from genocide joe and kamalacaust. It’s a continuation that they actively enabled and now support.
Do y’all understand how watching these creeps support a genocide for more than a year might have caused them to lose?
And you’re still crying about it and blaming voters instead of opposing genocide. Pathetic and gross.
Imagine believing that Trump’s genocidal policy is somehow different from genocide joe and kamalacaust
Why did Bibi want Trump to win so badly?
This is simply not true. When Gaza is gone I hope you realize what you helped do.
Thank you for your analysis. This is valuable and I appreciate it.
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It’s all so…obviously fake.
My bad!
I’ve made a note not to interact with your posts!Congrats!
Whatever dude! Enjoy your day :)
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
Exactly this! You can’t just “lesser of two evils” your way through life as you slide towards hell. “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a choice, it’s a hostage situation.
Choosing the bigger evil ain’t the way out of it though. Unless you are an accelerationist that believes things have to get worse before it can get better.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media. Their messaging isn’t great and I’ve seen a lot more left-leaning youtube channels talk about them but not outside of that.
Then again, I’m also not American so I don’t know.
Lastly, the non-voters are as much to blame in my opinion. If you didn’t know you should have voted, that’s on you.
Giving subisidies to green energy companies and improving the GDP doesn’t tangibly improve people’s lives in 4 years and that’s what people wanted.
It also takes longer than 4 years to rebound everyone out of the spiral Trump left the nation in. I think messaging around realistic goals and checkpoints could go a very long way to allowing people to understand no President is going to save everyone in a single term, or probably in 2 terms, especially if they have a crater to climb out of just to start at zero. Real change is a long term goal, it would take multiple administrations working towards a goal.
Americans are not educated enough to understand any of that.
They’re hurting finantially, so they get mad and vote out the incumbent.
Democrats push policy like the avg american went to their ivy league schools.
Yeah. No matter how I look at it, this seems to be the only real solution that would have helped.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
If they could have resurrected a Unicorn live on stage and it could have magically cured cancer in the radius as thanks: people would still be shitting on them all over the internet.
It becomes more simplified if you just look at the US as a one party state with two divisions that serve the same one party leadership.
The time for voting is over. It’s time for fighting now, and I don’t think “I told you so”s are helping us unite and work together right now.
Both can happen at the same time. We don’t need to love our ally to fight against a shared enemy. Especially when you feel your ally helped empower them.
Can they though? I mean to some extent maybe but I think it needs to be carefully articulated and respectful. The typical one line takedowns are just signals of tribal affiliation, they don’t persuade anyone and just increase animosity between us.
I agree.
Democracy is being dismantled as we speak. Agency by agency, loyalist by loyalist, executive order by executive order. And instead of building community, helping each other and organizing with those around you, I see people, who supposedly care about democracy, about human rights, about those they accuse; and what are they doing? They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing. Thereby further dividing the populace and making the takeover easier for the fascists in power. Be careful: You are telling on yourselves and your values. And we can see you.
They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing.
you reap what you sow, these are the same people that were proclaiming EXACTLY what you’re proclaiming now, just a few months before the election, 6 months prior, a year prior, two years prior. We’ve been saying this the entire time, nobody listened, nobody has started listening, and nobody will continue to listen, what are we to do if not watch the world burn?
This is exactly what I am talking about. Do you care about democracy or not? Do you care about human rights or not? Do you care about Palestinians (Americans), African Americans, Latino Americans or all the others that are being blamed or not?
If you do, you don’t just play the blame game, sit back and ‘watch the world burn’ as you’ve put it. As long as you’re divided, you’re powerless.
Instead of blaming, you unite. Instead of antagonizing, you organize. Instead of resignation, you fight.
Liberals have decided people opposing genocide are the problem rather than politicians willing to lose to even more fascist politicians, rather than accept less genocide.
“liberals” have decided that people who make their only personality trait being opposed to one specific event of genocide are quite annoying and probably not very productive to be around. Especially in the off chance that the one thing they care about turns out to be wrong. (this is the problem with issues voters, and this is why nobody likes them)
