I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don’t, you weren’t paying attention.
Plenty of us were critiquing Clinton’s campaign on those merits and were consistently talked down to in shocker the same way we’re being talked down to now. Shocker, she lost. I remember saying a few weeks before the election “We’re about to get Brexited.” I put my vote down for Clinton, because Trump is fucking insane, and that was clear before he was President. It was clear in the fucking 1980’s.
Being able to critique our leaders is supposed to be what is the difference between us and conservative voters. They’re the cult who unquestioningly believes all the bullshit that comes out of Trump’s mouth and diapers. I find it weird that people think we should be more like them in regards to our leaders like that would be a good thing.
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The fact that one can win the popular vote and still lose is a yuuuuge part of what’s wrong with our fucked up voting system.
One single current supreme court justice was appointed by a republican president who won the popular vote.
There’s six of them.
That’s an astounding fact that speaks to the much deeper problem.
The SCOTUS, the Senate, and the Electoral College are all relics of a government designed by and fore landed gentry that explicitly did not want a popular government in control.
I still tend to look back on GHWB as probably the most moderate, institutional-minded GOP POTUS of my lifetime, yet I see Thomas as probably the most radically right-wing and corrupt Justices of my lifetime.
Thinking about it now makes me want to ask, “how could that have happened?!” But then I think back and remember how it happened.
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Popular vote should just be the vote.
Unfortunately it’s just too popular.
I wish, but once again, the system is set up to give those tiny states way too much power. Overrepresented in the Senate, House, and Electoral College votes.
We’re always one Brooks Brothers Riot away from the election being hijacked by a handful of well-placed political operatives.
There hasn’t been a single time a republican has won the popular vote since like 1988 except the one time there was a fake war behind em.
Bush Sr. won the popular vote in 88 and Reagan won the popular vote in both 84 and 80. You’re right about 2000 and 2016 but let’s not exaggerate.
Must be 88 not 76
I’m pretty sure the war was real, millions of dead Iraqis would probably agree (if they weren’t dead).
I think you may mean the justifications for the war were fake.
Because the war was very, very real.
Yes that’s what I meant.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was poorly run, but she didn’t invent Trump or get millions of people to vote for him. Trump was set up by 25+ years of extremist Republican media - people like Limbaugh, Murdoch, O’Reilly - and enabled by the “liberal” mainstream media, who wouldn’t stop talking about his stupid shit for the 2 years leading up to the campaign, and are doing the same thing this time.
Just a reminder that Clinton had deep press connections and so acting like her elevating of Trump didn’t impact other media sources is a bit disingenuous. It was a campaign strategy to elevate Trump, and that included working with “friendly” journalists.
Did people forget that Correct the Record were literally keyboard warriors employed by the DNC to go and do exactly the kind of shit I’m complaining about online. Shitting all over progressives and forum sliding?
You forget the democratic party isn’t the progressive party. Look at New Hampshire. When Bidens not on the ballot people are writing him in. Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
It sucks, and it double sucks because fascism is looming and the Dems are pretending everything is status quo. They sit in a high tower thinking progress is something serfs will win all on their on and when they do they’ll be just as protective of the status quo. It’s delusional but we need these guys or we need to turn the 50% of Americans who don’t even want to be involved.
End of day we can criticize Biden but we don’t fucking have to keep on bringing up Hillary.
Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
Wrong. You can expect the neo-liberals to fall in line in the exact same way they expect progressives to fall in line.
Progressives are not uniquely enlightened, and you cannot reliably expect them to be the “bigger man” indefinitely.
You know, Ill agree with you. I just don’t think an election where Trump is on the ticket is the right time to test it.
I will keep bringing up Hillary every single time Trump & 2016 are mentioned together. We got one because of the other and people like to “forget”.
Trump was an outsider candidate that took advantage of anti-establisment sentiment. He was barely a republican before 2016. He won because Hillary was incompetent and the DNC didn’t pick up on the anti-establishment vibes, and picked the most establishment candidate possible. Yes Republicans have been attacking Hillary since Bill got elected, but that wasn’t news to Democrats that didn’t care.
Roger stone began working on the Trump campaign in 2012.
I believe he also ran Trump’s 2000 campaign for president.
I know this isn’t necessarily the point of the post, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to bring it up anyway—
I can’t help but fear that the 2024 election is going to be an example of the DNC “reaping what they sowed.” In 2020 it felt like the DNC did whatever they could to push Biden through as a candidate despite more youthful, progressive options (and Bernie, who wasn’t youthful, but was progressive and in line with what a lot of the US left wanted). In many wants it felt like they did this because Biden was:
- More moderate in willing to bend to the political interests of lobbyists
- An easier option to beat Trump
In some ways I understand why it happened, but I was terrified of the situation we currently are in back then. Fast forward four years and now we’re left with a very elderly Biden versus an even more extreme Trump; and now it’s not a sure shot that Biden is going to win. Instead of uniting as a party and building up a new candidate who truly represented the people’s interests in 2020 the DNC decided to kick the can. As a result of that can kicking we may be facing the end of American democracy as we know it in 2024. It’s sickening to me.
No, that’s definitely part of the point!!! Excellent addition, thank you.
building up a new candidate who truly represented the people’s interests
You realize the DNC has no interest whatsoever in this, right? Like the Wasserman/Clinton fix was exactly this not happening.
I thought Biden was to be an easy way to get Harris in. I didn’t expect him to last the whole term.
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Actually a really good point
SHOULD’VE BEEN BERNIE
BERN
Abso-fucking-lutely.
It’s a good point but there is plenty of blame to go around. The democrats have part of the responsibility, but the lions share sits with the republicans.
The democrats are also at fault for elevating Clinton. She was a poor candidate who was backed by the political establishment. The notion it was “her turn” had already played out with Obama and she lost handily. There were better candidates in the primaries.
The same problem is happening with Biden. He is a bad candidate but he is being waved through by the party out of a paralysing fear of trump.
But they’re all symptoms of the extremely broken US electoral system with first past the post, gerrymandering, electoral colleges and politically appointed and elected officials including judges all entrenching the absolute power of 2 parties.
In my opinion the solution would be at the grass roots with local plebiscites on proportional representation in elections to local and state government, and other positions. That would bring more meaningful change than most of the other propositions that get put on the ballots as it’d allow a route for political opposition to organise into new parties, capture funding and power and gradually build a base to fight and win other elections.
Unfortunately the 2 main parties have convinced the electorate that the status quo is vital. For example California is a “democrat state” and anything that undermines that is dangerous because the enemy might get in. It’s all bullshit. The rules are being set by the incumbents but actually the whole game needs to change.
The real problem is the cap on the size of the house of representatives. If we doubled the size, California would get about 60 more representatives and votes, while states like Wyoming might get one more vote. It would also reduce the cost of campaigning per candidate, because donors aren’t just going to give significantly more money just because more people are running.
I mean it’s fine to critique the DNC as long as we don’t ignore the current political climate. We had an insurrection, confidential documents were stolen, spies were killed.
That president worked with his party to get several justices who have caused a divisive climate over abortion, which has had several state upsets due to it being more unpopular than initially believed.
The President responsible for this is currently buried in court cases. He is the presumed frontrunner for his party despite everything listed. The most likely reason he wants it above his dictatorial speeches is that he wants a pardon for everything he’s done up until now. That at the end of the day is the problem that nothing else can really beat out, but if we really had to add anything, it’s that he hasn’t even shown to be opposed to any of the things that are negatively affecting the current President.
Like I didn’t think he was a great President, but it’s pretty much everything he did going out the door that made it clear he shouldn’t come back. For all of DNCs issues, it was absolutely the republican party at the end of the day that made the situation we have today. The DNC was just incompetent to do anything about it.
I think the general issue with a lot of anti-DNC posts lately is that they come off as “We will vote for a party that doesn’t win on any level of government, just to show our opinion”
Which…seems to ignore that one party is trying to erode voting rights, which would make it hard to fix these issues long-term, and assumes that DNC would take it they lost votes to a third party…which lets be real here, if you already think they don’t pay attention, they won’t when you do that. It also comes off as a bit insincere, since if you truly are against the DNC…you should be trying to build the 3rd parties enough to actually win in some states, before trying to take on the presidency…I there probably aren’t even enough states that know who the third parties are to possibly get them elected at this time.
So yeah, mainly my problem with a lot of anti-DNC posts isn’t so much they make the democrats to be incompetent. They honestly are. It’s that they seem to ignore the the domestic threats coming from the other party, and bury into some completely unrealistic goals currently.
And yes, I will just say it: We have failed as a civilization. No actions will prevent another genocide in the current political climate. It is supported bipartisan. It is literally one of the only things supported bipartisan.
I think the general issue with a lot of anti-DNC posts lately is that they come off as “We will vote for a party that doesn’t win on any level of government, just to show our opinion”
I think this is mostly a valid critique, but this is the part I take issue with, and why I made this post to begin with.
That we plan on not voting for Democrats seems to be the automatic assumption of anyone regarding these posts. I even agree, some of these posts come off as pretty lame and like they intend to withhold their vote. Especially when a post gets removed and they move to another instance to post the same post again. That’s just spammy and abusive and doesn’t speak to a good faith argument, so I agree, some of the people with these opinions are absolutely shitty. I’m just tired of being a target because other people are shitty.
Why not find out what people’s plans for voting are by asking them instead of making crass assumptions and gross conspiratorial comments like “Da, daddy Putin!” that come off as just as wildly unhinged as Trumpers, assuming everyone who disagrees with them is a Russian plant. It’s fucking pathetic and I see more comments like that than thoughtful ones like yours.
Anyway, thanks for a thoughtful and well considered reply.
I think you’re confusing a tremendous amount of distrust for HRC instead of the DNC. Yeah, the DNC is ultimately responsible, but now that HRC’s out of the picture, they seem to be behaving.
Critiquing Biden is not an endorsement of trump
Damn if lemmy.world could read, I’d put that on a shirt 🥲
Why did you quote that and then change “democrats” to “Biden”?
Biden had nothing to do with 2016, for better or worse.
There are literally only two options
I’m going to support a third option
A THIRD OPTION IS SUPPORT FOR THE FIRST OPTION!
In primary season it isn’t necessarily and for the presidential election specifically it doesn’t either due to the electoral college.
There are a handful of battleground states and a couple states that do split their electors in some way.
But for everyone else? Their vote is mostly an advisory vote.
There is always the risk of a candidate being so unpopular they actually drive their own party away from voting for them, but that can’t really be on the voters at that point.
You never know* if your state is going to be a swing state until after the election.
* Not literally “never”, CA or NJ aren’t going for Trump, but there are some states that may feel fairly safe that could be up for grabs.
* Not literally “never”, CA or NJ aren’t going for Trump, but there are some states that may feel fairly safe that could be up for grabs.
I love to point to WV for an example of this. It’s the reddest of red states now, but if I told you that in the mid 90s you’d have thought I was insane. The first woman they sent to Congress was more notable for being the first Republican they elected to Congress in half a century, which is even longer proportionally for a state that was founded during the Civil War.
It is not.
Oops, a tankie entered.
What does that word mean to you?
That’s the typical refrain.
Can you answer or no? Because I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I don’t engage with tankies in serious discussion because it all ends up with a lot of projected anger.
A couple of us can read and are fighting the good fight!
I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don’t, you weren’t paying attention.
Barack Obama had the opportunity to become the next FDR. Instead, we got a modern day Woodrow Wilson, more interested in shoring up domestic businesses and building out international military alliances than repairing the post-'08 damage to the housing economy or extending full public health benefits to a nation crippled by medical bankruptcies.
By the time he left office, he was running on… what? A Pacific Rim trade deal we didn’t need. A climate change crisis he’d failed to address. A slew of new military conflicts in the Middle East introduced under his administration that he’d originally promised to end. A federal court system he’d allowed his Senate rivals to hijack.
Hillary sucked. But far too little credit is afforded to the guy who had eight years to deliver on desperately needed federal reforms and - either through incompetence or unwillingness - failed to do so.
“Abortion is not my highest legislative priority.” -Obama 2009
To be fair, the federal government has very little ability to change abortion policy outside of the supreme Court interpreting the bill of rights as protecting the bodily autonomy of the mother. A constitutional amendment is the only other way it could be done
the federal government has very little ability to change abortion policy
They had the votes to pass the legislation that would federally guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion and they choose not to include it.
They had the ability to tie access to legal abortion to federal Medicare/caid funding, and they choose not to do it.
They had the momentum to put a constitutional amendment on state ballots - in much the same way Bush used “traditional family” amendments to put gay marriage legalization on the ballot in 2004 - and they refused.
They have the ability - RIGHT NOW - to pass state laws that will shield women and doctors from interstate prosecutions and they are refusing to do it.
A constitutional amendment is the only other way it could be done
An amendment is certainly one way it could be done. An interstate compact is another. Federal public money and legal protection for physicians is a third way. There are still others. None have been tried. None are being pursued. None appear to be a part of the 2024 election agenda.
SCOTUS can tell Congress to go fuck itself for literally any reason. Passing a law saying abortion cannot be made illegal by a state would have done literally NOTHING to stop Dobbs.
I am so sick of seeing this false rhetoric all over Lemmy, the only thing that would have stopped Dobbs would have been a constitutional amendment.
A law passed by congress would have set an entirely different framework thus eliminating the grounds Dobbs relied on. I am pretty sure the justices were pretty clear in the Dobbs decision itself about that.
SCOTUS can tell Congress to go fuck itself for literally any reason.
Yes. But then that reason sets off a series of dominoes, as it applies to a whole host of outstanding case law. The reason the SCOTUS gives is incredibly important and not something trivially decided.
Passing a law saying abortion cannot be made illegal
Would have overriden a host of state trigger-laws already on the books, forcing the states to re-litigate at the state level and offer liberals ample opportunity to stonewall new legislation in a host of states.
I am so sick of seeing this false rhetoric
Democrats crying that they are powerless while insisting that Republicans are omnipotent is the false rhetoric.
“Government can’t help you, it can only hurt you” is this toxic and corrosive theory that gives license to the worst kind of people to continue doing the most nightmarish things to their neighbors.
Given the state of the economy at the time, I don’t blame him for this. He also said he believed marriage to be between a man and a woman back then. He evolved. If Obama joins Joe on the campaign trail I’m willing to bet he’ll be bringing up abortion because it’s getting voters motivated.
Sure, but for the proceeding seven years FOCA was not touched. It would likely have motivated voters in the last eight too, let alone now. It is almost cynically insulting if it can be brought up again solely as a campaign tool for voter motivation.
Given the state of the economy at the time
Except that he did fuck all about that either. Zero prosecutions just billions in bailouts for failing corporations while people were losing their homes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc
Remember how the GOP decided they weren’t gonna let him do fuck-all? The only things he could ever get done was during the slim window that the Democrats just barely had a supermajority.
They could have done away with the filibuster with a simple majority.
They didn’t want to.
Not to mention the whole spying on his citizens PRISM thing happened under his watch.
Spying on citizens is the backbone of the modern government and has been since at least the Palmer Raids of the 1910s.
PRISM gave Obama a golden opportunity to back off the intensive degree of domestic espionage. But, of course, he didn’t. Instead, we spent a few months arguing over the defunding of ACORN.
o7
You have a lot of lofty ideas of what it takes to reverse shit like climate change on an oil addicted economy
“But but the filibuster”
Dude had 60 senators for two years.
Okay, look it up. He did NOT. He had that many for slightly over two MONTHS and Congress used that time to just barely get sweeping healthcare reform passed.
…and they let the Republicans in committee decide what it should look like.
And then they all happily voted for it while their colleagues voted against it so they could look blameless.
And this keeps getting pitched to me as a win despite the fact that net effect of that “sweeping reform” for me and many others was paying a fine for not buying things we simply couldn’t afford, and when I finally did end up being able to get “Obamacare” “insurance” years after it passed (I’m talking during the Trump admin, my state told me to go pound sand for that long), literally all it did was cap certain types of medical debt from a very, very short list at the roughly the cost of a luxury sedan.
Obamacare was straight up an owngoal and it cracks me up when people try to pitch it as a win for Democrats. It was a win for the Heritage Foundation, who devised the scheme in the first place back in the 90s.
tl;dr the ACA was written by a conservative think-tank and forced in committee by Republicans, when they literally did not have to give that much power to the minority party it was done by choice knowing full well they don’t compromise. And a Democratic supermajority passed it and sold it to you as a win.
tl;dr the ACA was written by a conservative think-tank and forced in committee by Republicans, when they literally did not have to give that much power to the minority party it was done by choice knowing full well they don’t compromise. And a Democratic supermajority passed it and sold it to you as a win.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re replying to a comment where I’m calling out bullshit and I’m sick of bullshit. What you’ve written is factually incorrect, why are you replying with it? What is the point?
The Heritage Foundation did not write the bill. Some concepts, like having a mandate, that were proposed by the Heritage Foundation in the 90s but never went anywhere, were incorporated into the ACA. The Democrats looked seriously at single-payer and it was not going to get the 60 votes — indeed, even the version that passed had to get rid of the public option to do so. The whole way the process happened and the timing of it illustrate that the Democrats didn’t count on any Republican support. It was also not forced into committee by the Republicans.
Do you say these things out of ignorance or malice? I’m sure I’ll never get a real answer, but I’m so sick of it.
The Heritage Foundation did not write the bill.
The Heritage Foundation pitched the idea of an insurance mandate in the 80s. Mitt Romney adopted it as the central plant of his Massachusetts health care reform in the 90s. And Obama picked it up as a “compromise” bill that would satisfy both Democrats and Republicans in the '00s.
Compare this to the original idea of Medicare/Medicaid, which was simply public financing of health care, extended to a cohort of people with the lowest incomes and highest liabilities. The component of Obamacare that has been MOST effective - both in terms of lives and dollars saved - has been extending the pool of people covered by Medicaid. The part that he ran on, the part that was central to the bulk of the written legislation, and the part that everyone now hates, is the Heritage Plan for subsidized private insurance mandates.
i’m sorry your revisionist oversimplified narrative is in conflict with what i literally watched unfold at the time because i was and am an adult who pays attention. Dems gave it away and called it a win. There’s no need to rage at me about it and i have to wonder why you’re the one with an emotional stake in this when i was the one who suffered as a result of that twisted abomination they sold to you as a “reform”.
sweeping healthcare reform
RomneyCare is not sweeping healthcare reform, especially when it doesn’t include a public option (although to be fair we can blame the loss of Public Option on Joe Lieberman).
People are still going bankrupt from medical bills and dying because they can’t afford treatment. So much for “sweeping reform.”
You must be very young to not remember what it was like prior to the ACA. You could pay for insurance for years and get denied treatment for “pre-existing conditions”. They could literally cut you off as soon as you got cancer.
And many of the people dying now are in Republican states that didn’t expand Medicaid. The ACA gives free money to help poorer Americans, but Republicans refuse to take it. That’s clearly not Obama’s fault.
I’m pushing fifty, jackass.
I’m literally constantly on the verge of not being able to afford my cancer meds and will then just die if I can’t get them.
I live in a solidly blue state.
Go on, tell me more about how my lived experience is wrong. I’ve had fellow Democratic voters shoving that shit up my ass for my entire voting life.
Then you probably remember how badly healthcare blew up in the Clinton’s face back in 1993.
The ACA, for better or worse, was strongly shaped by that experience. Obama’s biggest lessons from that debacle were 1) don’t threaten the insurance industry and 2) don’t threaten union- bargained “cadillac” plans.
The ACA was designed to not die the same way Hillarycare did. It’s a worse law because of it, but importantly: it passed.
It passed and more people got access to health insurance. Plenty of them still don’t have access to healthcare.
In my view, these half-measures are why Democrats never have much real energy behind them, because nobody gets excited for half-measures or using Republican plans just to be able to make deals with Republicans.
It was sweeping reform. Just because we are far from having something good doesn’t mean this wasn’t sweeping reform that fixed some huge problems.
The Dems in Congress had an asshole preventing them from doing more but they went as far as they could go, they wanted to go farther, but they moved things forward, not just rhetorically but legally. And it was something people had tried and failed to do at all for decades. Because some of the things that were addressed are off the table, the conversation moved towards going further in the right direction, instead of spinning in circles with the same conversations we were having in the 90s.
I see too many people on Lemmy who say this stuff about how the Democrats had a supermajority and sat around, and they are wrong on the time they had and they are wrong on the facts of how they used their time. I don’t know if it’s because they were too young to follow it at the time, they’ve completely forgotten, or they are intentionally skewing the facts to suit an agenda. But I’m so tired of seeing it.
I see too many people on Lemmy who say this stuff about how the Democrats had a supermajority and sat around, and they are wrong on the time they had and they are wrong on the facts of how they used their time.
100%…people also forget that the blue dog coalition contained people like Joe Lieberman who would not vote for any bill that contained a public option.
I get that hindsight is 20/20 and really Obama’s coalition likely should’ve just nuked the filibuster…but this was in early 2009. Not everyone knew how unhinged the Republican party would become during Obama’s tenure.
but this was in early 2009. Not everyone knew how unhinged the Republican party would become during Obama’s tenure.
This was 2009. A significant number of people had been describing the GOP as fascists under Dubya.
I’m sure you could find a significant number of people describing Reagan as fascist as well and in a way none of them were wrong, but in another sense they all were. It was a slow erosion of norms, trust, a deepening corruption, and changing actors that were more and more unhinged, and it only really seems obvious that it was headed this direction in retrospect.
And there are still people claiming on this very site today that calling the 2024 GOP fascist is abusing the word.
I don’t have a problem with people critiquing Democrats, I have a problem with them arguing that voting for democrats is bad.
Yeah, Letting the far right get voted in does not push the Democrats to the left, if anything it pulls them right. Fight like hell but protest abstaining does not achieve anything.
Yeah, Letting the far right get voted in does not push the Democrats to the left, if anything it pulls them right.
How so, exactly? (I’m not abstaining from voting in 2024 to be clear, but I don’t follow this argument)
Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
How exactly does voting for a politician who supports roughly zero policies outside the Overton window persuade the public to expand the window?
Edit:
Although the window offers a theory of change, its central element—the window itself—actually describes the norm from which reality has deviated. Zeynep Tufekci worries in The New York Times that Trump “voices truths outside the Overton Window,” while the British writer Sam Leith speculates that Corbyn may have positioned his party “dangerously far from the centre of the Overton Window.” The window serves as shorthand for the erstwhile consensus. Viewing politics through the Overton Window reinforces liberal notions about the moderate center, even as that center ground erodes.
For conservatives, by contrast, the Overton Window has always been about strategy. Though Overton himself never committed his most influential idea to paper, his Mackinac Center colleague Joe Lehman continued his work after Overton’s death in 2003 at age 43. Lehman not only coined the term “Overton Window,” he weaponized it, setting up training sessions on the concept for other right-leaning think tankers. The term filtered into the conservative blogosphere in 2006, when Josh Trevino enthused about the window as a tool for the right. “Step by step, ideas that were once radical or unthinkable—homeschooling, tuition tax credits, and vouchers—have moved into normal public discourse,” Trevino declared. “The conscious decision to shift the Overton Window is yielding its results.”
Okay maybe don’t derive your argument from yet another piece of “libertarian” think tank nonsense.
This is my sticking point as well. I’m down for any and all critique of the Democrats, but when the general election comes around the absolute #1 priority has to be preventing and removing conservatives from power. Not a single good policy comes from conservatives. They exist purely to block progressive policies. Let’s get rid of them and see what we can accomplish.
It’s bad because it is. You’re just trying to fill in the blanks that you tacked on at the end yourself.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
They don’t either.
Tribal thinking is a sign of lack of maturity. If you don’t think being, “better than TFG.” is a pathetic excuse for a party platform, you’re either a child or utterly incompetent at governing, or both.
Similarly, if anyone assumes someone attacking Democrats, a center-right party, MUST be coming from the right … they’re painfully ignorant of politics in general.
Too bad this country is full of immature children that managed to reach adult age… Regardless of how bad the Dems are, they’re still the only valid choice for someone making moral decisions. No, Biden is anything but perfect, but literally no one else can win that isn’t outright evil … partly because Democrats run a pathetic party and don’t actually fight for democracy.
Yep. That’s what makes it so downright abusive for them to dangle fascism over our heads like a threat if we don’t get behind their milquetoast bullshit half-ass glad-handing fascists fuckery. They know we don’t have a choice so they don’t even fucking try.
The job of a US politician seems to be convincing their donors and constituents that they will protect each from the other.
Campaigning on policy that benefits the voters goes against the class interests of the donors, but campaigning on “the other guy is bad” keeps the donors happy.
“Not Trump” isn’t a pathetic position, it’s a smart one. There’s plenty of Republicans that don’t like Trump (See 43% Haley in NH yesterday), and getting into specifics will only remind them that “Not Trump” is a liberal commie Democrat.
If you want to know what Biden is running on other than that, you can find it here:
That’s a nice list. Let’s see what Democrats actually do in office.
Oh what’s that? Sit on their hands and complain about how Republicans won’t play nice?
Again, pathetic party.
That was a quick shift away from “Democrats don’t have a platform”
They don’t have a real platform. You have to fight for your positions, not give them up before anything is even in committee.
When they CONSTANTLY pretend Republicans are acting in good faith when they are not, how is someone with a functioning brain going to expect them to deal with reality? They cannot even see how they’re being manipulated on the daily.
Democrats are useful idiots for Republicans. Little more.
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Weird, I don’t see record oil production there. Record as in more than any country to ever exist.
If we keep trump out but do nothing else, we’ve only delayed a fascistic movement reaching the white house, not defeated it.
Biden needs to put forward actual policies that address the conditions that are fostering the violent fascistic rhetoric, not just so that he can win in November but so that we aren’t dealing with a growing nationalism problem for the next cycle.
The people who are criticizing Biden now desperately want him to succeed by these measures, but don’t believe he’s yet done enough. Maybe if we were having this debate a month out from election day, then we should be panicked about the electoral calculus; but he has ample (or at least some) time to address the concerns being raised here. In a non-incumbent cycle, a primary would help refine the policy agenda for the general. So far all we’ve gotten is “we have to keep trump out”.
That is not a winning agenda (no matter how true it is). It didn’t work in 2016, and it likely won’t work now. Biden needs something tangible to campaign on, and right now it’s not clear that he has one.
They plan on doing the same thing they did in 2016. Beat voters over the head with “how great of a job we’re doing” while ignoring voters real concerns, talking down to them, and generally leaning on “if you don’t vote for us, you’ll end up with a fascist who wants to kill you.” Which in itself certainly feels like a threat. “We can skip the country to escape, you can’t, better vote for us!” It’s downright abusive and it has an unfortunately good chance at catching up with them this election and the only people who will pay are the US citizens.
Still voting for Biden anway. Don’t really have a choice if I don’t want fascism. Just don’t like being bullied into it by the people I’m voting for while they smugly ignore my legitimate concerns.
The problem with that is that the Democratic party survives because it’s part of a two-party system. So many GOP politicians deserve to be ousted via the 14th amendment, and Trump deserves to be in jail.
But if you do that it takes away the perception that there are two choices when you’re voting, when the reality is that we have one political party. The GOP is an opposition Force with no ideology other than “own the libs”.
Yes!
Next up; How I spilled my Pepsi and why I blame coke.
Voters =/= DNC though
We got Trump because Clinton was largely uninspiring. She made herself this bland neolib that nobody actually wanted to vote for and then mocked Trump as a non threat.
Everything you said is true but I personally think the real reason it happened was because Clinton was a bad pitch and she would’ve lost to most Republicans at the time.
They should’ve gone with Bernie just that simple
But the DNC didn’t care about the primary votes and shoved her in because “we need a female president” or some shit.
I genuinely believe your average person both wants a female president and badly does not want it to be Hillary.
I’m astonished you people have maintained this level of delusion after Bernie has lost twice.
He had his chance, twice, and the voters did not choose him, twice.
Holy shit are you fucking clueless. The are like 50 articles like this one. The primaries were rigged, stupid.
And in 2020 they bent over backwards to accommodate him, even delaying moving the first primary away from Iowa
She literally ran the same year as Jeb “Please Clap” Bush, and this was after a stint at Secretary of State where she had to do an “apology tour” for spying on other nations.
People were fed up with political dynasties that year, and the fact that the Democrats couldn’t read the room is why they lost.
The DNC literally hid behind being a private club to justify putting their finger on the scale for Clinton.
What’s that old saying? “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.”
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/
But here, where you have a party that’s saying, We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have – and we could have voluntarily decided that, look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the COurt well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.
Here is the Democrats pounding the law that the DNC is a private club, so nobody can say their own rules are fair but them. They never argued the facts about whether or not it was rigged, because they didn’t have facts to support that.
You know you can be a part of the DNC right? Like if it’s so important, have you engaged with it at all?
My state level Democratic party is where I spend most of my energy because they’re not nearly as trash as the national party.
I’m glad you’re involved, thank you!!
Why not both? She sucked AND the DNC didn’t do enough.
Bernie wasn’t a car-carrying insider like HRC. He wouldn’t play their game and they “owed” her for paying off the DNC debt.
I was saying before the 2016 primaries that the only candidate who could lose to Trump was Hillary, and the only candidate who could lose to Hillary was Trump. If either party had run a halfway decent candidate we wouldn’t be in this stupid timeline.
Moderation around here is not prepared for this trash to seriously pick up this year.
Can’t wait to hear my daily “reminders” about how everything is actually the DNC’s fault for not resurrecting Bernie’s campaign for a third time because he’d totally win this time.
The DNC purposely drew the press’s attention to Trump in the primaries to intentionally move the Republican party further right. They thought the far-right candidates would be easier to beat: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/
Democratic groups and candidates purposely took out ads promoting pro-Trump candidates in 2022. This is a very dangerous strategy.
I don’t want Bernie this time around simply because he’s to old, Biden is too old, Trump is too old. Also he ran seriously twice and lost both times. What was ridiculous was some counties had to decide the nominee by coin flip. I didn’t think actual luck had a place in elections.
Okay. Blame them all you want, just don’t stay home on Election Day. VOTE against Donald Trump as he’s the more immediate problem, then we demand voting reform…
What if Dems gave us something to vote FOR instead. What a world that would be.
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The Democrats run “centrist” right-lite candidates with crappy campaigns.
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Not voting for the Democrat candidate lets the much worse Republican in.
Two things can be true at the same time.
Okay… You’re going to have to do more to convince. I agree both of those things are true. I don’t want Biden to be the president for another 4 years because I think he’s bad for the country in other ways than Trump and he’s CURRENTLY ENABLING A GENOCIDE. But sure. Dems shouldn’t have to earn our votes. Blue no matter who. Even if their pro-life, pro-genocide, and pro taking corporate money.
So you prefer the other guy?
I prefer Biden to get out of the race so someone who doesn’t support genocide can step in and beat Trump. But apparently that option doesn’t exist in the sick, twisted little testicle you call a brain.
No, that option doesn’t exist in reality.
Removed by mod
Wow you seem nice. Seems a shame to block you.
Oh no! I’m sure I’ll miss your inane false dichotomy,
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instead
How does that conflict with what I said? Are you holding your vote hostage until the Party is perfect…?
I mean, I do intend to withhold my vote from democrats who do not share my values, as should anyone who does not feel that democrats, or a specific democrat, represents their interests in government.
But what I was getting at is that for the last several elections democrats have asked voters to come out to stop the other guys from winning. And if all you care is make sure that things don’t get worse, then by all means vote for democrats. But they haven’t made things better. And that’s not even what their offering you. They are offering you exactly what you have right now. And I get it, no one wants the other guy to win, but that doesn’t motivate people as much as Dems want it to. If they were instead laying out progressive policy platforms, maybe people would be excited to vote for them. Then people like me, who are not represented by democrats but its as close as it gets I guess, might be able to stomach voting for them or at least not negatively impact their chances of winning.
You catch more flies with honey, as they say.
I mean, my post is only entirely about people who immediately make such an assumption simply because I’m bothering to criqitue.
Why don’t you get your head out of your ass and ask me, or check any number of numerous comments in here where I said I’m voting for Democrats because I literally don’t have a choice.
But sure, all you fucking idiots coming in here and saying this shit fifty times isn’t exactly what I’m talking about.
No.
You sound like a reasonable member of society…
When self proclaimed “reasonable” people insist the only way to protect democracy is to act like it’s broken I don’t think that measure is useful. If you want to claim democracy is worth defending then I should be able to exercise the benefits of that democracy. But if you’re telling me I’m a bad person for doing that I have to ask you, a “reasonable” member of society, what benefit is democracy serving?
