Its funny how people act as if kamala lost because she supported genocide
No lol, leftists hold miniscule power in electorate, kamala lost because she ran a shitty campaign and neo liberal economics will only make things worse for incumbent.
Also I don’t think voters appreciated having her shoved in at the last minute.
she was a presto candidate for 100 days leading up to the election, against a former president that had been campaigning non stop for 6 years. She was fucked over and thrown under a bus.
I felt like she was a token black women as a VP, and not allowed to be any more than that. As much as the dems espouse equality its still a rich white man who is against universal healthcare running things.
neo libs must choose… either there is not enough progressives to demand a progressive candidate so they are not a large enough block to have changed the outcome OR they are large enough bloc to demand progressive cannidate and the democrats ignoring them cost them the election.
and they always pivot talking points
Schrodinger’s Left: small enough for Dems to ignore, large enough to make Dems lose
The enemy is both strong and weak.
Its very hard to discern the real reason Harris lost in the election. Especially with interference the Right orchestrated with mail in voting and voting IDs, they tanked the left’s momentum while gassing Trump’s reelection with actual fraud. The results of numerous investigations was that if someone committed fraud or voted twice it was for a Republican candidate… but don’t worry isn’t not like Trump controlled the swing districts and threw away votes for Harris.
and voting IDs
Just another reminder: Read the SAVE Act and start getting together valid ID under it now, don’t wait to find out if it’s going to pass first. Valid ID has other uses too so it’s not a total waste if it doesn’t pass and gets you ahead of both the line and any GOP fuckery with trying to get ID if it does pass.
Especially if you are someone who has ever changed their name, as SAVE allows for some forms of voter ID that don’t verify citizenship, but those have to be paired with a birth record with a matching name, which doesn’t exist if you have ever changed your name (such as being a married woman, or many trans folks).
The Gaza issue seems to have been pretty big
“No new wars” was a trump slogan, leftists aren’t the only ones against the genocide, pretty much everyone who doesn’t have ties with israel was pissed with US involvement.
no, she lost because 1/3 of Americans failed to vote.
Which wouldn’t have happened if she ran a good campaign.
Show me a good campaign that accepts AIPAC money. I want to know what you think a capable genocide supporting Democrat looks like.
Show me a good campaign that accepts AIPAC money.
Pick pretty much any winning campaign on either side in something like the last half century. In context a “good campaign” doesn’t mean a campaign holding up to whatever your particular markers of moral purity are (which includes but certainly are not limited to “does not support Israel”), but rather a campaign that is effective at getting elected.
what makes you think that?
they didn’t all protest the vote. I would say most of them just didn’t vote because they couldn’t be bothered.
however, enough of the protest votes would have swung the election in her favor.
Had they not lost the forest through the trees, we’d have manageable problems right now.
edit: hate on me all you want, but you know I’m right.
however, enough of the protest votes would have swung the election in her favor.
I have never seen a single piece of data to back up a claim like that. If you have, I’d love to see it
they didn’t all protest the vote. I would say most of them just didn’t vote because they couldn’t be bothered.
I would guess this is true, but this is a failure of the candidate, not the electorate. In a country without mandatory voting or a national holiday for elections, motivating your base is extremely important, especially when you base is working class people who are less likely to be able to take time off to vote. Even ignoring her centrist economic platform and genocide support, her strategy was explicitly to target disaffected Republicans instead of energizing her own base, and that strategy failed. Kamala and the incompetent consultants she surrounded herself with own this loss, and whining about the voters won’t change that.
We have 2 years to find a candidate who doesnt try to fix systemic and financial issues with changing social structures.
Have the republicans even bothered to give a name for 2028?
The fact that they’ve been memeing about Trump having a third term tells you how excited they are about their actual prospects.
Let Greg Abbot run so the right can have an aneurysm about DEI policies while having a dude in a wheelchair lead their country.
They already have a dementia patient doing it. Why not another disabled person.
Just like the musk/trump split was visible miles away, any figure running for president after trump will inevetably be shit on by trump and his media aparatus because of his narcissitic insecurities.
The best thing that could happen for republicans right now is trump dying because its only going to get more costly to not lick those dress shoes.
They haven’t dared. If they manage to convince Trump to follow the Constitution for a change, whoever his successor is will have to have his blessing.
Lol we need to overthrow the system
Harris chose to lose the most winnable election in history because Democrats know they can punish voters for being disloyal simply by allowing Republicans to win. If you demand too much from Democrats they will throw the election. It’s essentially a hostage situation, you must give unconditional support to the Good Cop or the Bad Cop will beat you to death. You don’t want the Bad Cop, do you?
If we don’t abolish this system we’re all going to die.
Only a moron would have looked at the two options we had and not picked Harris.
Was she a good candidate? Actually yes if you look at her Senate voting history. She was closer to Sanders than any other senator. She also, as VP, supported investigating Israel so they could bypass the law requiring us to give support.
Did she run a good campaign? Absolutely not. But, she basically had no time to actually run one. She needed money, fast, so she softened her stance on some things to secure it.
Was it a bad move? Yes. Was it a bad enough move to let Donald “I’m going to be a dictator on day one and you’ll never have to vote again” Trump win? Absolutely not.
Do you think you’re going to be able to reason with someone who literally just said that the Democrats threw the election on purpose because online leftists “demanded too much”?
Do online leftists hold any significant number?
Nah, not at all. I know I’m wasting my time
OK, but she didn’t have time to run a better campaign because a lot of influential people (Harris included) in the Democratic party decided it was better to hide Biden’s deteriorating condition than confront it.
Does this seem like the actions of a party that genuinely considers Trump an existential threat?
Does it matter? By voting 3rd party or abstaining you didn’t hurt the DNC. It hurt everyone else in the country and in other countries we provided aid to. Cuba and Venezuela too.
The presidential election isn’t the time for protest voting when the opposition is literally telling you that you won’t ever get to vote again.
You want to hurt the DNC? Do it in the primaries.
Does this seem like the actions of a party that genuinely considers Trump an existential threat?
Does it matter?
OK, so we’re gonna quibble over 3rd party voters again, and just dismiss the fact that DNC leadership doesn’t take this seriously. Great.
So do you think abstaining or protest voting 3rd party made them take it seriously? Did they change their tune when they lost? Do you honestly think the country is better for Trump beating Harris?
I’m not saying the DNC is flawless; I think it needs to go down in flames. But I’m also not stupid and understand the concept of prioritization.
The only way to actually reform the DNC is to elect an outsider even if they are more likely to lose the general election.
Elect an outsider in the primaries, right?
Well that’s funny, since you’re not actually prioritizing well. Talking about 3rd-party/abstaining voters is a wasted effort. You reach those people with broad, national messaging. The kind you and I, on a dinky little not-reddit, don’t have access to.
You really gonna stop and have this conversation with each and every individual you assume didn’t vote Harris? You think that’s gonna move the needle? In an electoral environment measured in the hundred millions? That’s not a very effective use of your limited rhetorical time.
Why not prioritize getting the Democrats to actually take this seriously, to run a campaign that activates non-voters?
Oh, I know it won’t move the needle, I’m just pissed that idiots chose this election to take a pointless stand against the DNC and venting my frustration. They’re complicit in all of the harm done by Trump and friends due to how our election system works.
They (the Biden admin) purposefully withheld polling data that showed he had 0 chance to win, him and Kamala. Rather than attempt to find a candidate who would be popular in the general, they canceled the primaries.
Biden admin all but promised they would run 1 term in 2020, it was strictly an anti trump ticket in a post-covid world that was sick of him.
Trump was very simply a more popular candidate in 2024 who ran a much better campaign that wasn’t hamstrung by NOT talking about Palestine, the biggest news story at the time. People entirely forgot how bad he ratfucked us on covid, they remembered the name on the checks.
Any facist who follows that playbook within the general election will do the same, especially if there’s a opposition that quite literally knew they would lose and ran anyway. American elections are a joke because the American populace is fully captured by advertising and thus remain uneducated and ignorant.
Kamala could have won if Biden left later. Her best performance was immediately after he stepped down because they kept her from talking the entire Biden campaign (she was very unpopular). The second she had time to talk it was over, Kamala is a bad public speaker and terrible on the spot.
I’ll even tell you the moment she lost it. When she said the wall was a good idea on national television to Anderson Cooper. That was it. American elections are a popularity contest, we (the American populace) don’t take them seriously.
American elections are a popularity contest, we (the American populace) don’t take them seriously
That rather conveniently runs cover for the organization that does the most to decide what kind of campaign is run.
Like, oooh millions of people are disorganized and stupid. Shocker, Mr. Sherlock. But the small, powerful node of party leadership is also stupid and disorganized. That’s actually much more of pressing concern than, lol americans dumb
Americans are dumb because the system works as designed. The rich remove value, the populace feels like they have a say in things when really the decisions are made for them at a much higher level.
The party leadership isn’t stupid, the parties themselves act like corporations with diffusive responsibilities and agendas that lead to the same ends, the party leadership is agenda driven on maintaining power. Much like the party is.
The state of American voters and voting is a result that was arrived at on purpose. The populace doesn’t actually have any power in this representative democracy at the highest levels. It’s pure oligarchy.
The DNC isn’t stupid, it’s evil.
We’re also a country made of idiots who as soon as we see somebody telling us shit we don’t want to hear we throw a tantrum and lose all ability to rationalize.
The DNC is an evil organization that is propping up a genocide and is mostly responsible to the whims of corporations. But that is because the DNC is essentially controlled by a group of republicans.
Harris ran a shit campaign because Joe Biden should have retired earlier and there should have been a big primary. This goes back to the 2020 election where Biden was basically propped up by the DNC and it turns out they propped up a senile old man with cancer.
Like any reasonable democrat running for office now should be saying we should put more democrats voters into the DNC and push out lobbyists.
Harris chose to lose the most winnable election in history
Dems already shat the bed in 2022, handing Republicans a narrow majority in the House because they refused to pursue Congressional criminal misconduct from the prior administration or do anything about state voter disenfranchisement or gerrymandering while they controlled the federal government. Nevermind the clown car of corporate toadies and unloveable hacks they larded up with corporate donations.
Little reason to believe they’d do better in 2024, given that Biden made “supporting a genocide” and “rolling back COVID benefits” his central platforms for the next two years.
How is an election “winnable” when your party is married to policies everyone hates? It’s like complaining about Mitt Romney losing in 2012, when Obama was underwater. The GOP trotted out an absolutely odious corporate turd - a man who literally penned the editorial “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” four years earlier - and married him to a nepo-baby who hates social security as VP. Of course they fucking lost.
You don’t get to talk about an election being “winnable” if you insist sandbagging the primaries to run loser candidates in the general.
2024 was Trump’s election to lose. He capitalized on people’s disgust with liberals. He leaned heavily on TPUSA, QAnon, and other effective social media campaigns to juice MAGA support. He promised to bail out TikTok, the only company that wasn’t run by an American oligarch, while Biden was threatening to run them out of business. He rallied his base voters while liberals embarked upon the worst internal voter suppression campaign since 1968. And he did it all as fascist tendencies in the US were cresting.
Harris wasn’t running a winnable campaign. She was struggling (badly) to bail out a floundering Biden debacle.
If we don’t abolish this system we’re all going to die.
Everyone dies eventually. But this government seems intent on accelerating things.
And the fact is that you tell people this, verifiable fact, and they get mad and stick fingers in their ears. They really want to lose.
Trump only got 49.9% of the vote. He has never been popular, even by capitalizing on disgust with liberals. It really wasn’t his election to lose, he’s not actually a strong candidate. He won by playing against an opponent that doesn’t want to win.
Trump only got 49.9% of the vote. He has never been popular,
Idk about you, but 49.9% of the vote sounds very popular to me.
Hell 10% sounds popular.
I don’t think the issue is his popularity. He’s definitely popular
I take issue with your use of the adjective “good” in “good cop”.
Only an idiot would look at the two options and not choose Harris. She wasn’t a great candidate, but she was orders of magnitude better than the alternative.
The time to protest vote is in the primaries.
The DNC didn’t allow us to protest vote though… they forced Biden, he proved too feeble, forced Harris, who backed Isreal, and then (yet a-fucking-gain) saw a weak voter turnout. I voted for the lesser of two evils, while holding my nose, like I needed to… but the rest of the country hates women and is too stupid to know what’s in our conjoined best-interest.
The dnc has been totally out to lunch since at least 2012. Shit I’m at a point I’d be happy to see a good Republican candidate, u ever listen to George Bush talking when he was in office? The goal posts have moved so far right he sounds like a democratic leftie by todays standards.
It was in 2008, DNC went hard on fucking over Obama, and rather than reform the DNC when he won, he washed his hands of them. Now we’re here, with a group that cares more about controlling the field of candidates rather than winning a general election.
The DNC wanted the win of “first black president” and never wanted to push for polices to allow another one to happen.
It really fucks with your mind doesn’t it? I’m not even THAT old, and even I recall when Republicans were slightly more left than modern Democrats.
Before 9/11 he actually wanted to fast track the path to citizenship. I think if it hadn’t happened he would have been a pretty ok one term president.
There was a primary, just no one of any relevance ran against Biden because he was the incumbent and that’s the way we have always done it. I’m pretty sure I voted against Biden to make a point. Did you?
The DNC can’t actually force anything. They didn’t want Bernie running at all. They didn’t want AOC making every other Dem look like a conservative. They really didn’t want Zohran to show people that leftists can win. But all those things happened.
The expression “Democrats have once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” is sadly accurate, for the wrong reasons.
The time to protest vote is in the primaries.
There were primaries?
Not really, but that doesn’t change the fact that the other option was Donald “I’ll be a dictator on day one and you’ll never vote again” Trump.
In fact, I’d bet good money that the fact that she didn’t campaign in the primaries was the reason she softened several of her stances. Campaigning is expensive, especially if you’re starting super far behind the competition.
But just looking at her Senate voting history is enough to know she would have not been a bad president.
No matter how it might appear, the DNC didn’t fucking throw the election. Jesus Christ, who upvotes this shit?
Terminally online leftists need to get out and touch grass. No party will ever pander to you because not only is your bloc essentially nonexistent in the US, but you literally have no fucking idea how any of this shit actually works in real life.
If you think that the Democratic party is losing elections on purpose as a “fuck you” to voters, you are delusionally stupid.
The only other reasonable explanation is that they’re too stupid and don’t know how to win elections.
If you think that the Democratic party are stupid, you are delusional.
I doubt it. Trump got those votes regardless of what Harris could’ve done.
People want to be openly racist and homophobic.
The reason Harris lost is because people who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home and because fewer young people voted than in previous elections, not because they voted for Trump. Democratic turnout fell by 2 million votes.
Would it have made a difference and out weighed the racism votes? After brexiit, I’ll n never underestimate the power of hate.
By the numbers, yes. Trump’s turnout increased by 1 million from 2020 whereas Democrats decreased by 2 million, and the loss of Democrat turnout was what pushed Trump over the edge. He still only got 49.9% of the vote, after all.
But it isn’t the amount of votes, it’s the states that are won/lost. I’m not from US and I know that…
Also you guys are fucking idiots.
“If you don’t pick a better candidate then I’ll just let the one who wants concentration camps and to erase all of Palestine win”
Like, seriously, look at the big picture. Do you think Kamala who would have still supported Israel would have been worse for Gaza? It’s literally not possible. You guys fucked up the entire planet in your pride.
Now I’m not saying the DNC isn’t wrong, they’re fucking morons. But you guys just gave up on global warming, gay rights, trans rights, Gaza, any sembles of the environment, public health, the entire “justice” system, the courts, your immigrant neighbours, all people of colour in the US, and women’s rights.
I cannot express how much I fucking hate people like you right now.
Go ahead and downvote me. “But it’s not right”. Yeah? We’ll choosing to let this happen is leagues worse. You guaranteed the genecide in Gaza would be the worst it ever could be you fucking morons.
Go out and pressure the DNC to not be shit, but don’t fucking say there’s no difference between Kamala and Trump.
This continues to be the stupidest, least productive way to think about elections. The lesser of two evils argument may be true, but it failed to motivate people to vote for Kamala in 2024 (or Hillary in 2016, for that matter). You can bitch about protest votes or an apathetic electorate all you want, but at the end of the day, you don’t win elections if you don’t get votes, and, “yEaH, bUt TrUmP iS wOrSe,” didn’t get votes. If the Democrats once again run a candidate who doesn’t reflect their base and once again lose the election, it will once again be their fault for repeating a losing strategy that produces losing candidates.
Go out and pressure the DNC to not be shit
How about you go out and draw the rest of the owl there? The main power we have is our right to vote, and you’re saying we shouldn’t use that to pressure the DNC to put forth a pro-worker anti-war candidate.
And how is not voting for them going to do that? They’re fine with you not voting for them, and even losing in the case of DNC leadership. Always have been.
You want to put pressure on them? Be the candidate to primary the party line candidate in Democratic primaries. Yes they will use every structural advantage they have against you. But if enough people do it constantly. The cracks will widen and show. Otherwise they’re happy to receive donations and funding from the wealthy, even if they don’t win.
To be clear, I think all national parties should be outlawed. Generally state wide ones as well. But unless you can change the political reality we are in. The only possibility is not just holding off the worst possible candidates such as trump. Though more should have shown solidarity against him. But being the candidates we want to vote for. And not letting some uninterested complacent national organization make those decision for us.
I’m a leftist who absolutely voted Harris, because the other option was horrific. I was not in love with Kamala but I did feel that she was a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better option. But I will not lie, I know several people who were basically exactly like the people you are talking about. It’s disheartening.
I think the main issue is that some people don’t have any sense of prioritization.
They’re the people who complain when they’re in the ER for a cold and a person with a gunshot wound gets to go ahead of them.
Not my girlfriend herself but a large portion of her family (who are all from Palestine!!!) wasted their votes on Jill Scott. I thought that was insane to do. Like, I definitely understood why but 2024 was NOT the time for that.
They’ll do it again.
Please shut the fuck up.
Youre spreading the propaganda that helped them justify their actions.
Oh ok my bad. I’ll stfu now.
I CaNT bElIevE PeOpLE wOuLD dO ThiS!!!
Meanwhile, you’re pulling provably false both sides bullshit. What a tool you must be.
Wanna know how to pressure the DNC to pick a candidate you like? Go fucking vote for them in the primary!
Typically, the primaries get 1/10th the turnout of the general election. That means that a very small number of people can sway the primary. Go stump for your candidate. Make phone calls, talk to your family and friends and community, explain why your candidate is the better choice.
The lack of a primary in 2024 was fucking awful, but guess what? Chances are, there is a primary going on for your state right now, get to work!
Try telling that to someone who supported Bernie, but before you do that you might want to go back and refresh youself on what happened. The DNC is a diseased carcass, change isn’t possible.
Before I consider this complaint, I need you to go back, and get the primary results from the 2016 DNC primary and post them here.
I know what the results are, but I need to know that you know before we discuss further.
Do you really think the vote results of a corrupt election somehow make that election not corrupt? How are we still having this stupid ass argument in 2026?
I guess Putin really does have 88% support in Russia. That’s what the vote says after all, so it must be true.
Are you saying that Bernie got more votes in the primary than Hillary, and the DNC manipulated the votes to make Hillary win?
No, I’m saying the election itself was corrupted in order to feed the victory to Hillary. Superdelegates, DNC-run smear campaigns, election rigging by limiting debates to reduce the visibility of the outsider. Accusations of sexism simply for not supporting the candidate with a vagina.
Manipulating votes is not the only way to rig an election, you can do a lot just by manipulating the voters themselves. The DNC admitted to this, they didn’t have to run a fair election. So stop pretending the end result of a blatantly corrupt process justifies the process.
Alright, you pretty much posted the same argument I was expecting from the other two, but just taking a little detour through the possibility that you thought the votes were altered.
Before I consider this complaint, I need you to go back, and get the primary results from the 2016 DNC primary and post them here.
I need to know that you know before we can discuss further.
but before you do that you might want to go back and refresh youself on what happened.
He lost? Yeah, fuck primaries forever!
did bernie lose because people didn’t vote for him? or did he lose because the democrats establishment push him out?
for what you said to be true, the democrats need to abolish the superdelegates, which they won’t do.
Same thing applies to you.
Before I consider this complaint, I need you to go back, and get the primary results from the 2016 DNC primary and post them here.
But you guys just gave up on global warming, gay rights, trans rights, Gaza, any sembles of the environment, public health, the entire “justice” system, the courts, your immigrant neighbours, all people of colour in the US, and women’s rights.
You forgot to include USAID.
Anyone who keeps clutching to Gaza and says Kamala would have been as bad as Trump can suck my dick.
I forgot a ton of things.
AI, your data privacy, your parents retirement, NATO, electric cars, green energy, antitrust, the chip shortage.
There’s a huge list.
Yup
It’s fucking mind numbing
i’m glad i’m not the only one shitting on 3rd party/abstainers every chance i get. high and mighty morality police, usually saying shit like “kamala was always going to lose” while simultaneously trying to push the 100% guaranteed fail action of 3rd party or sitting out.
whether they’re actually russian propaganda trolls or not hardly matters–they’re shit human beings either way
Agreed. But I’m not going to publicly endorse a dead-end DNC loser before it’s necessary. The DNC needs to act like people aren’t required to vote for them and field a candidate that can actually win votes.
That’s valid! More than valid it’s necessary. Show resistance against weak DNC libs AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, but possible ends when it’s time to vote. Then always choose the option that is best or, if necessary least damaging.
If you don’t vote against the biggest fascist, you are helping fascism along.
WRONG!
You hype the Dems in public every chance you get.
The GOP once elected a dead pimp because they don’t care.
Copilot Search Branding
Dennis Hof, the Nevada brothel owner and reality TV personality, was posthumously elected to the Nevada State Assembly in November 2018 for the 36th district, even though he died just 21 days earlier on October 16, 2018 Wikipedia+1.
Hof, who had been a Republican since 2016, ran against Democratic challenger Lesia Romanov in a heavily Republican district that included parts of Nye County and surrounding rural areas BuzzFeed News. He was known for his flamboyant style, his HBO reality series Cathouse, and his self-proclaimed role as the “Trump of Pahrump”
Yes! Primaries primaries primaries.
Go and primary every single DNC candidate that isn’t good enough, get better democratic candidates wherever you can. Put even more energy into primaries than into the election itself! But when the decision comes down to Churchill or Hitler, you better vote for fucking Churchill.
Everything else is just throwing the minorities and the future under the bus as a cost of doing business.
https://sourcenews.scot/analysis-5-of-the-worst-crimes-of-winston-churchill/
Churchill is probably viewed as worse than Hitler in parts of the world for good reason.
I think a lot of the argument against voting for lesser evil is the acceleration aspect. It’s advocating for a quicker fall of the American empire
Accelerationism is acceptable to people who think they have little to fear from a (hopefully) short spike in terrible things, because they might come out of the other side worse for wear, but they will make it through.
But for everybody who’s part of a vulnerable group it’s throwing them to the wolves, because likely, they will not come out of the other side.
Accelerationism is a great idea.
I don’t care how many people die now, because it will bring a glorious time in the future.
Accelerationism is Christianity with Lenin replacing Jesus
Except the Armageddon is real but no-one will rise up to save us when every major city is nothing but glowing embers under an ever gray nuclear sky while the remnants of humanity fight each other with sticks over the last grain silos.
So-called American “revolutionaries” make me sick with their reckless disregard for the unavoidable responsibility their country has with regards to their military. An “accelerated downfall” won’t just affect you bozos. Especially not if the means are “stoking the fire of imperialism”.
If I could press a button to accelerate the US downfall and magically contain the fighting to the lower 48 in a way that leaves whoever is left standing nuke-less, I would, but that’s not an option on the table, so barring that, please vote against the guy who really can’t be trusted with the nuclear briefcase, yeah???
Yeah…
To the people “wanting to teach the DNC a lesson”, in the nicest way possible, you’re fucking idiots.
They threw literally ever other minority group under the bus, and got absolutely nothing for it - if anything they actually got less than nothing, because Trump wasn’t just going soft on Israel, he was actively cheering them on!
I will never understand the mentality of choosing that hill to die on… Like couldn’t you guys have waited until Trump was at least off the board first.
Man was literally on his way to a lifetime in jail and bankruptcy, that he got out of scot-free because you guys decided 2024 was the time for a protest vote.
I will never understand the mentality of choosing that hill to die on…
I think it only makes sense if they’re lying about their beliefs and wanted trump to win.
I think for some of them it’s an unwillingness to admit/accept the consequences for their actions.
That might be, but it’s hard to believe many people would not see the result coming ahead of time. It’s just not a believable concept to me that these folks really believed that anything could happen besides trump being more likely to win. The most generous I can be with them is that they didn’t care what would happen.
They literally do think everything that’s happened under Trump would have been the same under Kamala.
They are deeply unserious people who have no ambitions for politics and care only about purity-testing.
They would have been different, but Kamala wouldn’t have been different enough.
Biden won and Trump instigated a coup over it. Why is that treasonous rat not in prison? Would Kamala have put him in prison? Oh, she should have said so. I had no idea.
They would have been different, but Kamala wouldn’t have been different enough.
What an unbelievable load of bullshit.
We’re going to be trapped inside this pit for as long as you can’t realize what good leadership looks like, man.
Yup, it’s up to me!
The royal ‘you’.
Just a few more braindead platitudes and your preferred candidate will shoot to the top of the polls!
I’m just pissed off we let America have so much power over the world as it is. They’re one country, for fuck sake, not the World Police.
Silver lining: Trump just killed that role like a newborn baby in lake Michigan.
I think the argument is that voting for status quo candidates aren’t actually getting us those things, either. And any small incremental gains are quickly reverted the next time republicans are in power.
I think the argument is that voting for status quo candidates aren’t actually getting us those things, either. And any small incremental gains are quickly reverted the next time republicans are in power.
And you can only believe that if you ignore every bit of progress that has stuck around in the last thirty years.
Progress isn’t a straight line up. Like anything else it dips and wobbles. But it consistently moves upward.
Yeah there are always going to be things to make progress on. But to pretend that we are not in a better place on some of those issues now than we were thirty years ago is bafflingly silly.
As an example: In 1996, support for same-sex marriage was so low that congress passed and Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing states to ignore same-sex marriage licenses from other states in direct violation of the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, and this was widely supported by the American people. In 2023, over 70% of Americans supported gay marriage while only 22% opposed. That number has dipped since, but not by much. In 2025, it was 68% support (88% of Democrats, 76% of Independents, and 41% of Republicans) while 29% opposed it.
That is an issue on which the American people have made significant progress. That progress hasn’t evaporated with alternating administrations. It ebbs and flows like literally everything, but over time it has improved.
Most are like this. Not all! Certainly some things consistently get worse, like wealth inequality. But to act like everything simply flip-flops between parties and that the Democrats are simply a ratchet that maintains the status quo and doesn’t let anything change just to let the next Republican make it worse is flat-out wrong.
Are Democrats largely spineless corporate shills? Yeah. But are they just as bad as Republicans? Fuck no. Go vote in primaries. Support candidates who will actually push for change. Giving up is pathetic.
I’m not sure if I completely follow.
Bill Clinton passed a law defining marriage between a man and a woman. And you are saying this is an example of progress made by a centrist candidate. Isn’t this the law doing the opposite, here?
And you are saying that Gavin Newsom, who has spoken out against trans rights, can do something similar? Like assuming he does the same thing, like pass a “Defense of gender” bill to allow other states to not recognize gender transitions.
Are you saying he will bring progress this way?
He’s saying that we’ve made progress in the 30 years since then, using that as an example of past public opinion.
And Newsom is an example of things ebbing, but the line of progress for trans rights has absolutely gone up overall.
What do you say to the people of WV who voted for Bernie in the 2016 Democrat primary, won him every single county, and 40k more votes than the runner up, but Clinton won the state? Should they give up, or comitt voter fraud and vote 110%?
And I do agree with that.
I’m not American and we have the same issues here.
But the answer has to be putting in grassroots support and fighting the power where you can. By the time Biden and then Harris had secured the DNC nomination it was way too late.
I think right now the world at large needs big changes, and corporate power needs to be reigned in. But you have to engage with the possibilities in front of you, even though they suck. You can and should try to create new ones, but it’s a fight, and you have to treat it like one.
Almost as if you have to actually work to have nice things.
Who could imagine??
And any small incremental gains are quickly reverted the next time republicans are in power.
Because the next ‘status quo’ candidate is t good enough, so we piss away any progress because we didn’t get the perfect candidate and stay home from the election (again)
All they can do is harp on this strawman because deep down they’re ashamed.
I cannot express how much I fucking hate people like you right now
Yes because this is about your emotions and needing a satisfying story to direct your anger at, not reality.
Elections are in some way a validation of the system. The elites point to the election any time someone complains about some policy. The entire system has been consistently getting worse regardless of who is in power for at least 30+ years. The only way we have to express our displeasure is to vote out the incumbent. I’m confident that even if Kamala had won, things would have gotten worse. Maybe they would be worse at a slower rate, but they would be worse. We need to see beyond electoral politics. Every time you vote, you are granting the rich permission to continue to fuck you regardless of who you voted for.
Every time you vote, you are granting the rich permission to continue to fuck you regardless of who you voted for.
And do you think that, by refraining from voting, you would somehow deny the rich that permission? That’s probably why all the openly corrupt, unapologetically authoritarian politicians go out of their way to ensure everyone is able to cast a ballot, right? Because they know that, the more people vote, the more permission the rich will have to fuck everyone. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your enlightened contribution here.
Hey man there’s other ways to get their dick out of your ass. Lenin, Fidel and Mao figured it out.
The majority of eligible voters already don’t vote. Low voter turnout does not embarrassment the rich and powerful, it just makes the system easier to control. Fewer voters means fewer people to answer to, fewer people to influence, and fewer people to shuffle around through gerrymandering.
For fuck sake, they are consistently trying to make it harder for people to vote. They want lower turnout. They know their most loyal supporters will still vote. They’d much rather have their base be the only ones bothering to show up to the polls. They don’t care about legitimacy, they care about winning.
I assume all those “vote third party both side same” people were bots or Russian trolls. Obviously trump was always gonna be way worse
They aren’t. That’s an easy scapegoat. Influenced by Russian propaganda, sure, but we’re all influenced by propaganda. The vast majority are ordinary citizens, who are as convinced of the righteousness of their beliefs as anyone. Dismissing them, en masse, as bots and trolls isn’t helpful.
The fact is, many of them have very valid points. Where they need to be fought is, very specifically, when they encourage non-voting. There’s no good argument for non-voting, and it’s easy to defeat them there.
I don’t think they’re all trolls. I think there are a few right-wing trolls who got stupid people to buy into their astroturf campaign and then it took off from there. IIRC, one of the people in Mi openly admitted that he was a Republican and saw it was an easy wedge issue to get people not to vote.
Are you saying the entire dbzer0 instance is administered by a bot?
Well, he did leave you another option.
True. And with the way dbzer0 embraces red-fash because they both hate libs so much…
Imagine a group thinking Palestine swung the needle at all on US elections. ROFL…
That is getting close to “flat earth” level of denial.
Kamela ran a horrible, lame, corporate platform.
Kamela ran a horrible, lame, corporate platform.
And in a reasonable world this wouldn’t have mattered. People are unreasonable.
Most importantly she committed the worst crime against the swing voters in the US by not being a man and not being white on top of that.
I think every other explanation is wishful thinking about just how sexist and racist the average US voter is.
You can blame lame platform or stance on Palestine, but I have a hard time believing that the explanation isn’t simply sexism + racism.
I don’t recall Biden having an inspiring campaign, he was simply a white male that wasn’t trump and he beat him.
Biden was also right after Trump’s first term, when anger was at its highest, and supposed to save us from covid.
I am sorry but if people still think the Palestinian conflict is the end-all and be-all of where the state of the world goes, much less, where America goes. Then they’re no better than the single-minded voters that helped the Republicans win twice.
There will ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS be conflict going on over the Middle-East with everyone there. It is NEVER-ENDING. We’ve wasted nearly 20 years dicking around with Afghanistan and Iraq. All for what? So the Taliban can take over territory in less than a week after all that effort? What a waste!
What we needed to do and should have done was hold Israel accountable and not fund them anymore. If to them, makes us look anti semitic, then so what? They’re the aggressors, they’re the ones being tyrannical bastards right now and if they can’t see that then it’s their problem they need to sort out or don’t. Whatever floats their little boat.
But also, we have so much shit to fix here that it’ll be a bit until we get there. We’ve already squandered telling Israel to stop their shit.
There will ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS be conflict going on over the Middle-East with everyone there. It is NEVER-ENDING. We’ve wasted nearly 20 years dicking around with Afghanistan and Iraq. All for what? So the Taliban can take over territory in less than a week after all that effort? What a waste!
Sorry, I’m having a lot of trouble trying to connect the dots between the US waging decades long wars of aggression in the Middle East and accomplished nothing with the idea that it’s acceptable to keep sending weapons and fueling conflict through a proxy.
“There’s always never-ending conflict in the middle east” is a rather convenient position to take for the globe-spanning military super-power that’s been meddling in the region for more than half a century.
Must be a bold response from someone who presumably never took history lessons and learned about the history of that region. Educate yourself.
I have pointed to the history, and your response is to say “nuh huh read more”
But also, we have so much shit to fix here that it’ll be a bit until we get there. We’ve already squandered telling Israel to stop their shit.
Bullshit, if we wanted the Palestinian Genocide to stop we could make Israel stop with a single phonecall.
What would that phone call entail?
“Hi Benny, no more weapons for you :) Call me back babe if you want to talk about it.”
When Netanyahu calls back in a panic, simply repeat the phrase “stop the genocide or we will never give you military assistance again” until he hangs up.
It really doesn’t matter what words you choose, Israel is a colonial outpost of the US, we utterly control the trajectory of the nation and to pretend otherwise is to swipe an absolutely astounding amount of military, monetary and political enablement under the rug that we have showered endlessly on Israel while it slaughters Palestinians.
And then the US pro-Israel lobby call their senators who inform that if Mr Caller still wants to be employed in a few days, the guns need to keep flowing.
And then that politician spectacularly loses in the next election even though they outspent their opponent by 10 times and it helps sink the idea that AIPAC is still powerful or holds any sway over the opinions of the average person in the US.
It ultimately doesn’t matter. Regardless of the outcome of the election, things weren’t going to change in the short term. It wasn’t an issue that was relevant to the election because of this.
At least there was a small chance that Harris was toeing the AIPAC line to get last minute campaign funding, then would change her stance back to what it was when she was VP.
I didn’t follow her campaign remarks on the genocide super closely, but what I did see from her was always a political non-answer.
I didn’t follow her campaign remarks on the genocide super closely, but what I did see from her was always a political non-answer.
They decided that, “kill them all and build a Trump resort there” was better than a political non-answer.
Regardless of the outcome of the election, things weren’t going to change in the short term. It wasn’t an issue that was relevant to the election because of this.
It is voters that decide what is relevant, not the politicians.
It is
voterslobbyists and corporate media that decide what is relevant, not the politicians.FTFY
Then the voters are stupid. There was no realistic option in the 2024 election that was guaranteed good for Palestine. Period.
By abstaining from voting, you said that you were fine with two+ genocides instead of one.
You don’t always get perfect choices for political candidates, but in this instance one choice was orders of magnitude worse than the other. And now instead of getting 4 years to try to push progressivism, we get an untold amount of time fighting against trump and his handlers.
No, this is not how it works and the Democratic party will not win until it stops with this condescending voters shit.
If politicians refuse to listen to voters, the system is irrevocably headed for collapse, it seems like maybe you are in denial about that?
So you were one of the people who were cool with letting Trump enact Project 2025.
It’s not like his behavior is a surprise. They literally published exactly what they were going to do and are doing it.
Protest voting or abstaining in the 2024 presidential election didn’t hurt the DNC, and it didn’t teach them a lesson. It hurt you and every other vulnerable person in the country. It hurt people dependent of USAID, it hurt the Ukrainians, it hurt Cuba, and it hurt Venezuela.
It certainly didn’t help Palestine.
Stopping putting words in my mouth that I did not say and have an actual conversation with the person in front of you, not this strawman you keep shoving in front of me while I am trying to make a different point that you refuse to listen to because you are sure I did something and am proud of it that I have repeatedly said I did not do.
Yes, and try running a presidential campaign on that and see how it works out for you.
Democrats tried to play the demographics, and they lost. Their courting the center was 100% a utilitarian move.
If they had gone all out on Israel/Palestine, they would have lost BIG. Unfortunately, it’s only very recently that people have staretd to come around regarding Israel.
The most popular politicians in the US are vocal about stopping the Palestinian Genocide, so yeah I absolutely would take that strategy if I was going to run.
Do you have… any basis for your beliefs or is this just all feelings and no facts for you?
Those people don’t fucking vote.
And that is a very recent turnaround. It’s only been very recently that people have started to come around on Israel.
Those people don’t fucking vote.
Give sources for your evidence or stop repeating lazy narratives like this. You devalue this entire conversation by diluting the meaningful parts of it with your arguments towards people you imagine exist and are most definitely in the room right now with us like some kind of ghost you keep insisting is present that none of the rest of us can see.
I just don’t believe that at all. The power the US holds has long faded into a shadow of its former self. I’m not even sure Trump could convince BB of the best breakfast spot in manhattan. Regardless of what the POTUS wants to happen in the Middle East, the Middle East will continue to do its thing.
Get out of here with your poetry, the bombs Israel drops are made in my backyard.
The idea that we don’t have decisive leverage over Netanyahu is absurd and laughable.
I find it funny how many people do seem to believe that the US or the EU funds Israel. Clearly clueless about the Israeli super resilient economy…
The EU is indeed the biggest funder of Gaza and that seems to give it exactly zero influence there :/
The meme is unironically true though. I hate the candidates that the dnc puts forward, but I hate the opposition more. 2016 and 2024 kinda shows how the meme is unfortunately rather accurate, and I heard plenty of people advocating for not voting for Kamala because of stances that trump was objectively worse on.
Let’s flip that over.
Leftists, you have two years to put forth an incredibly well-funded candidate that’s more palatable to the ultra-rich, corporate sponsors, left, and the right than the DNC/RNC candidates. You need more than 50% by a decent margin because they’re not going to let you in, you need half the boomers and genexers and youngbloods out there to write in a name.
OR
Once again, you’ll be here figuring out weather you’d rather vote for DNC or not at all and let RNC take us for another ride.
Ah, yes, the DNC, famous for having worked out so well in steering the party away from being nigh-indistinguishable from their main opposition. An excellent position from which to mock those dissatisfied with, let me check my notes, ah yes, how the DNC itself shat the bed in the last elections.
So you want me to vote for the RNC? You’re throwing out mixed signals here. You… happy wither where we are?
No, you want to play this dumb game of Schröndinger’s leftists, where we are simultaneously a group too small to merit making any concessions to, yet also such a massive force that our not voting for Dems apparently decides elections all on their own, thus fair grounds to single out for extra scolding this go around of it. I’m just pointing out the DNC leadership is suspiciously holding pistols of the same caliber as the weapons that put those nice holes in their feet. We got here with them insisting they know what their constituents really want better than even the constituents themselves do, and it worked out swimmingly for them the last go of it.
I’m calling you out specifically for engaging in such stupid and disingenuous activity with your nonsensical flip. The DNC are not the last bastion of political genius in this country, and managing to lose the last election should be an indictment of their strategies and platforms employed. Going to the right to become the GOP-lite didn’t work, so obviously, the solution is to browbeat leftists and whip out some non sequitur about them raising their own candidate with the funds to beat the entrenched political establishment, rather than maybe considering for even a fraction of a second that the DNC’s own strategies and their tendency to cave and give the GOP everything they want on a platter while also gaslighting constituents about key factors like how well the economy is doing might have a tiny bit to do with their inability to win elections or get policy pushed through.
But yes, it’s the leftist who have ruined everything by not voting for Kamala last go of it. Just a thought, but if any single group is so powerful as to singlehandedly decide the outcome of national elections like the blue MAGA brigade has been whining about leftists doing on here since the elections finished, wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to actually listen to those people and throw them a bone on occasion? But no, it’s clearly the leftists fault for not waiting their turn when Kamala had seniority in the party, and they need to be punished and ridiculed further, even if it costs the Democrats more elections.
I didn’t say any of that
I said
Leftists, you have two years to put forth an incredibly well-funded candidate that’s more palatable to the ultra-rich, corporate sponsors, left, and the right than the DNC/RNC candidates. You need more than 50% by a decent margin because they’re not going to let you in, you need half the boomers and genexers and youngbloods out there to write in a name.
OR
Once again, you’ll be here figuring out weather you’d rather vote for DNC or not at all and let RNC take us for another ride.
Tell me where I went wrong specifically
I’m sorry to learn your inability to parse meaning from text extends to even text you yourself wrote. Maybe you should seek treatment.
The text you quoted essentially absolves the Democrats and DNC of all responsibility, placing the onus on leftists to either put together someone with enough money and backing to displace the entrenched political parties who dominate our politics, or shut up and take whatever is offered by the DNC lest they become the new whipping boy, yet again. You’re already gearing up to blame leftists for the DNC tossing the next election, and you don’t even know who their candidates will be, or what platform they will run on. 2028 could be the corpse of Nancy Pelosi running on how mean people are to Israel, and shouldn’t we let them just massacre a bit more to vent some stress, and you’ve already laid the groundwork to blame leftists if they don’t fall in line to vote for the DNC with your asinine “flip” or the original image, which conveniently absolves the DNC of any responsibility for their own repeated failures to win elections.
By that logic, no one should have supported racist America and colonist Britain against the Nazis.
i won’t say i will “support” them per se, but i will tolerate them as long as they are fighting the nazis.
Damn you and your logic!
I’ve posted this a lot, and I’ll post it again.
Read up on Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. Back in the 1970s televangelist Falwell decided to get involved in GOP politics. He had a simple formula; he’d send his people to any local Republican event. If twenty people total had shown up the last time the club picked the new county clerk, Falwell would have fifty there. Those dogcatchers and justices of the peace were soon Congress members and Senators and governors.
Western leadership didn’t tweet their every racist thought to the public. If they knew back then, that Churchill had more in common with Hitler than even his own top military officials, he wouldn’t be as highly regarded as he is today
Everything you wrote is wrong. Sorry, but I can’t say it any other way.
First, being racist was the default position for any Western leader in that era. FDR having Black combat troops was a hugely controversial idea. People knew what Churchill had done in India.
Read ‘The Autobiography of Malcom X.’ There were plenty of Black Americans who believed that the system was perfect. Plenty of colonized peoples thought that ‘the Mother Country’ had done them a favor by civilizing them.
If everything I wrote was wrong, why are you literally agreeing with me?
Contrarianism is a disease
they draw the line at genocide
So we’re just going to hash this out every single day for the next 2 years, huh?
Edit: I do find it interesting how many replies to this comment are vague enough that you can’t determine which side of this argument they’re on, but I guess I did start it myself.
And yet still in 2028 we’re going to have people arguing between the milquetoast Democrat and a republican who wants to make camps for undesirables and telling anyone left of center to stay home.
And we’re also going to have any centrist telling people that they should’ve spoken up before, while telling people to shut up, and accept the inevitable milquetoast Democrat now. I remember how much we used to make fun of FOX News for whataboutism. How the hell did the Democrat voters become the party of “What about Trump?”
How the hell did the Democrat voters become the party of “What about Trump?”
It’s not “what about trump” it’s “vote for the person closest to you or get the one the farthest away”
I could give a fuck less about trump, and I’m going to be hungover the day after he chokes to death on a hamburder. I care about advancing left wing goals, and crying you didn’t get your way and staying home only hurts that.
Grow the fuck up and actually understand how electoral politics works in this country, because it seems you lack a basic understanding of how the two party system works. We have 2 viable options for the presidency, and people need to come to grips with not getting their perfect candidate because perfect is the enemy of good. If you don’t believe me, look around and tell me what of the current trash fire would have also been done by a milquetoast dem?
I understand the US electoral system very well. For example, in the WV Dem primary, Bernie won every single county, and 40k more votes than Clinton. Which is why Clinton won the state. And it does seem to be “What about Trump” since you can’t give me a reason to vote for a milquetoast Democrat without including Trump in your equation. Also, both Obama and Biden deported way more immigrants than Trump, so if you’re trying to harm reduction, Trump is a better option for that. Stop letting Democrats that want to increase funding for ICE, the border wall, are for regime change wars, and deport more immigrants than Trump be the spoiler candidate.
Unpopular opinion. When it comes to electoral politics, that centrist is right. Voting won’t fix anything. Only better candidates and parties will. That is, of course, outside of some sort of revolution or cultural awakening. And if that’s your plan, shit or get off the pot.
The general election is absolutely the wrong time to protest vote.The right time to protest vote is in the primary. The primary is the wrong time to think about running. The right time to think about running is all the years before the primary. All things many actually on the left struggle to achieve. And then being incensed when a party that doesn’t represent you doesn’t represent you. Who could have known?
We’re good about protesting on the left. Perhaps to a fault. But outside maybe the DSA. We suck at getting people we would want to vote for, in organizations that stand a chance of winning. You can’t effectively elect someone who wants to represent you if there’s no one capable of winning that wants to. And it isn’t a catch 22. Collectively a lot are sleeping on basic actions we should be taking.
Forget third parties till we reform the voting system. They think we are cuckoo. Maybe we should start acting like cuckoos. Maybe we should stop being the ones being cucked, supporting and raising politicians that don’t represent us. And start doing the cucking ourselves. Like the DSA. Put people we want to vote for in any major party primary we can. Yes, even Republican. Till then they aren’t going to represent us if they don’t have to.
The dumber the dog, the more repetitions it takes to teach it.
The older I get the more relevant this scene from ‘Life Of Brian’ becomes.
whether you agree with them or not, shaming and ridiculing them is not going to make them agree with you.
I agree completely. Though I personally practice harm reduction at the ballot box, I don’t believe that brow-beating people who express a reluctance to vote for a lesser evil into practicing harm reduction is an effective means of garnering their vote. Though it’s easy to become frustrated with non-voters or third-party voters and place the blame on them for fascism taking over, the responsibility is really spread across the whole population, and most importantly our electeds and party officials who have consistently failed to present a positive and opposing narrative to the fascists.
Here in Texas, our leading candidates for Senate (James Talarico) and governor (Gina Hinojosa) are taking refreshingly reality-based positions on Gaza and seem to be developing campaigns aimed directly against billionaires. I like what I’ve been hearing
If Trump runs again you’ve fucked up. He can’t just run for a third term.
Trump can be long dead and buried, yet I feel like he’s still going to be running in every US election for the next few decades. The majority of his supporters have only doubled down on his brand of politics, so there will always be another Trump.
Yeah, he’s going to be the new Reagan they pray to for decades.
My concern is that if he were to drop dead tomorrow that a large portion of his followers will just say something dumb like he’s gone undercover in an attempt to take over the deep state. And then proceed to add him in as a write in ballot for the next several decades.
Those votes would just get thrown out in that case, so if that’s what they want to do, they are welcome to do so.
Yeah, that would actually be a great scenario for us. Dead Trump splitting the Republican vote for the next 2 decades would be chef’s kiss.
An element of what you say is true, but he’s also a cult of personality that they’re really going to struggle to replicate. Trump literally only cares about himself and has taken zero (0) steps to develop successors. Right now, JD Vance is poised to lead the movement, and he has the personality of a potato
That fat, orange, cheeseburger-powered fuck will die before he could run for a third term
