'Uncommitted' leaders stand by 2024 strategy after Trump floats Gaza takeover
Trump's latest idea has renewed Democratic criticism of pro-Palestinian activists who encouraged voters not to back Biden or Harris in the presidential election.
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Harris left a vacuum by not visiting Michigan families impacted by US-supplied bombs to help create a permission structure for their trust
Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific, but as on so many other issues
Shut the fuck up.
Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific, but as on so many other issues
Shut the fuck up.
if you're going to quote her, at least quote the full sentence of what she said. here's the same quote, with the part you omitted in bold:
"Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific, but as on so many other issues, Democrats had a chance to persuade voters they were the better alternative and they blew it."
That completely changes the context. Sigh. Thanks for posting.
If your opponent was overtly in favor of ethnic cleansing, and you weren't, then pretty much by definition your position on the issues wasn't the core of the problem.
My point was that anything that came after "but" should get interrupted by someone shouting, "What the fuck? No! No but!"
If your opponent was overtly in favor of ethnic cleansing, and you weren’t
"overtly" is doing some pretty heavy lifting there
if Trump was "overtly" in favor of genocide* what was Biden's position?
the Israeli military was (and is) committing genocide, with US-supplied weapons, and Biden insisted on continuing those weapons shipments (including in his lame duck period, when he could have stopped them without political backlash, if he actually cared to).
he repeated the genocide-denial talking point that the death count from the "Hamas-run" health ministry was artificially inflated.
at best, you could maybe say Biden was "covertly" in favor of genocide? he would certainly deny it, but actions speak louder than words, and there's a lot of actions that he took that were complicit in the genocide.
meanwhile, Trump on the campaign trail was somewhat "covert" as well. from March 2024:
“You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump said on Fox News on Tuesday when asked about the war. “You had a horrible invasion that took place that would have never happened if I was president.”
When asked on the program whether he supported a cease-fire in Gaza, Trump demurred, avoiding an explicit position on Israel’s military effort that has now also left more than 30,000 people dead in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The likely 2024 Republican nominee has not provided his own position on U.S. or Israel's strategy throughout the five months of the war.
if you're politically savvy, it's not hard to read between the lines and understand what "finish the problem" really means. but that's still a dogwhistle. it's still "covert".
the point that I think those Uncommitted activists were making is that Democrats had an opportunity (and I would argue, an obligation) to be overtly against genocide. and to back that up with actual action, and not do some wishy-washy "we think death is bad. also we're sending Israel another multi-billion-dollar military aid package" crap.
this is a widespread, ongoing problem with Democratic campaigns - don't just point at the other guy and say "he'd be bad, so vote for me" but make a positive case for "I'd be good, so vote for me".
I try to avoid the "ethnic cleansing" euphemism
“overtly” is doing some pretty heavy lifting there
No it isn't.
if Trump was “overtly” in favor of genocide* what was Biden’s position?
Biden's position was in favor of a cease-fire, repeatedly pushing for one and having the Israelis sabotage it, trying to provide humanitarian aid, putting sanctions on settlers, pausing some weapons shipments, reinstating aid for UNRWA, while also providing Israel with the literal shitload of weapons which every US administration since Israel's formation has also provided.
Trump's position was nominally in favor of a cease-fire, unpausing all the weapons shipments, cancelling aid for UNRWA, saying we needed to move all the Gazans somewhere else, not saying a peep about the commencement of killing now in the West Bank, while also providing the shitload of weapons et cetera including unpausing some of the ones Biden paused. Also talking about landing US troops there, deporting students who protested for Palestine, making Netanyahu the first foreign leader to visit the White House, IDK, I can probably think of more.
Under Biden, the US and international community wasn't doing nearly enough to stop it. Why all of that applied instantly to Harris, I have no idea. Why Trump's absolutely clear indications that he was planning to be 10 times worse, so much so that I think there's a real possibility Palestine will be destroyed by the end of his term, didn't matter enough for you to be concerned about them, apparently, I have no idea. But no: There is a huge difference between being friends with a serial killer and selling him weapons, already a massive crime, and going out serial-killing with him and encouraging him to do more killing and think bigger.
If someone was concerned about Palestinians, they needed to try to make sure the Democrats won the election (while also ideally working for quite a bit fucking better than the Democrats). Now, a whole lot more of them are going to die. If someone says that their opposition to the Democrats in last year's general election was founded on concern for the Palestinians, they're either confused or lying. Well-founded criticism aimed at the Democrats to be quite a bit better than their currently genocide-enabling selves doesn't change that.
and you weren’t
You do actually have to convince people of that, though (especially when you've been supplying bombs to the ethnic cleansers), and if you don't bother to show up then you won't get to be part of the debate.
This whole election was a near-perfect example of a "theirs to lose" team flubbing it.
The fact that Pelosi said after the election that their strategy wasn't the problem, is proof they can't win in this field anymore because they don't understand the stakes.
Does this apply also to something like the Green Party?
Like if the Green Party is polling at 0%, and people are widely convinced that they were mostly just a Russian effort to mount a spoiler candidate and have no interest in voting for them inside the US, is it fair to blame that on the Greens and mount extensive analysis of how bad they fucked it up this year, as they have every other year? And say that anything in their policies doesn't really matter if no one is interested in voting for them?
I actually completely agree with you, as to the Democratic strategy in general being terrible, and that being a big problem in this election. I'm just curious if your allocation of blame apparently in only that direction, also applies to other parties and other situations.
isn't the media at least partially to blame. they've been all but ignoring the greens forever, even though they give enough coverage to let us know that they know who they are and what tehy stand for. if the media started blitzing green candidates like they do republicans or democrats instead of republicans and democrats, don't you think they'd do a lot better?
isn’t the media at least partially to blame
if the media started blz fzz gbzz don’t you think they’d do a lot better?
Yes, that's a very astute point you made, I'm fully in agreement.
blz fzz gbzz
what does this edit mean?
I am saying that when you apply the exact thing you just said to the Democrats, I agree with it completely.
I'm saying that with the Green Party, it apparently becomes important that the media presents the case accurately, which they're currently not doing, which is terrible journalistic malpractice. That's the first time I've heard that statement from anyone but myself in this conversation. I agree with it of course, for both the Democrats and the Greens, but it sounds like some people here are applying it only to the Green Party, and apparently staying silent on the media's absolute betrayal of the American people by not making it clear what was at stake in this past election.
I'm not trying to absolve the Democrats of their complicity (either as regards war crimes in Gaza or as regards an overblown and mostly useless campaign apparatus). I'm just saying, like I keep saying, that blame can be shared. The media shit the bed letting people know how much worse Trump was, and the Democrats being flamingly bad in some areas doesn't change that, because Trump was objectively worse even than the low standard the Democrats set, by miles and miles. It seems like every time I talk to a certain population of people, it's entirely the Democrats' fault that they did bad, not just partially their fault, and I am very interested to observe that the media has now suddenly popped into the equation, now that I framed the question as being about the Greens, instead of the Democrats.
If the Green Party underperformed compared to past elections, absolutely. If you're asking whether I think the Green Party getting 0% is solely a function of their policies, then obviously no, because that would require ignoring the entire way our 2-party, FPTP system works.
I'm not a fan of the Green Party precisely because I do think they have bad candidate strategies, and often look down their noses at voters just like establishment Dems like Pelosi do, when people tell them they're losing for more reasons than just the FPTP system and Super PACs.
I'm all for people doing analysis of elections, and if you've seen some that indicate that GP actually functioned as a spoiler party this election, I'd be very interested to see it. I am, however, very wary of people throwing around "spoiler" as an accusation, because that's the exact thing that establishment politicians say to excuse their ignoring 3rd party platforms rather than adapting their own platforms to capture those voters.
If enough voters want something to tank your chances at winning, and you just ignore it, that is on you, not the voters.
Interesting.
Blame can be shared. We can blame Biden for continuing half a century of support for genocide as long as it’s a close US ally that’s doing it. We can blame the media for creating an environment where more Americans support Israel than Palestine, in one of the most morally unambiguous situations that has ever existed on the planet. We can also blame short-sighted political operatives who were unmoved by warnings that their efforts to “help” in Gaza by advocating against Democrats in this election were going to accelerate the genocide tenfold, if they accomplished anything at all. Now that the warnings are working out precisely as envisioned, I have very little sympathy for “Arabs for Trump” or anything resembling it.
I’m actually not sure how much we can blame Harris, since she was handed a totally impossible situation where attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters. We may disagree about that. But regardless, I think the pretty reasonable claim “the Democrats have their heads up their ass as far as Gaza” is in no way a counter argument for the claim “and the uncommitted movement was, in retrospect, a big mistake.”
attempting to change course on Gaza would have lost her significant support from Israel-supporters, and I strongly suspect gained her pretty minimal support from Palestinian supporters.
this is inadvertently a perfect summation of the problem.
you're framing "what position should Harris have taken on genocide in Gaza" entirely in terms of would it have gained or lost her voters.
a 1938 poll asked people in the US if they supported allowing more European Jews to move to the US. 71% said no. advance that page by two slides, a 1942 poll found 93% of Americans supported internment of Japanese immigrants, and 59% supported internment of American citizens with Japanese ancestry.
opposition to genocide...is sometimes politically unpopular.
have you seen the first episode of Black Mirror, the one where the British PM gets blackmailed into fucking a pig? there's a somewhat-minor plot point in it, that I think got overshadowed by the rest of it. the PM is getting the results of real-time polls on Twitter, and based on the poll results he's constantly flip-flopping about whether or not he'll fuck the pig.
Republicans have principles. they're all bad principles, to be sure, but there are things they consistently believe in. Democrats have no principles. they'll campaign on anything they think will get them votes.
Republicans are anti-abortion. Democrats are pro-choice...except when they campaign for anti-abortion Democrats
Republicans are anti-immigrant. Democrats are pro-immigrant...except when they try to campaign on "border security" out of a misplaced belief that they'll win over "moderate" xenophobes"
Republicans are in favor of big business fucking over regular people. Democrats defend regular people...except when someone like FTC Chair Lina Khan goes after businesses connected with Democratic party donors
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over, and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long. Neither of them were even close to being enough to fully reverse 50 years of fuckery, or even make much more than a sizeable dent in the problem, but they were big swings at pretty much the two biggest problems in America today, which came with quite a bit of success starting from a near-apocalyptic position. Because the media and the Democratic campaign apparatus are equally total shit, no one knows that either of those things happened. Biden focused a lot more on getting them done than on publicizing them, or working on much more visible problems like the price of eggs.
If you ask certain people, they will tell you something along the lines of "well, I didn't hear about that, and it's the Democrats' job to earn my vote."
Biden took the biggest action on climate change ten times over
oh wow, are we at the "bringing up non-sequitur talking points" point of this debate already?
Federal data show the Biden administration approved 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years, outpacing the Trump administration’s 6,172 drilling-permit approvals in its first two years.
The Biden administration cleared the way on Wednesday for a controversial Arctic oil project, recommending that drilling proceed in an undeveloped section of the Alaskan tundra.
While the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, suggested that the project move forward with a more limited footprint, the changes would still allow ConocoPhillips, the company behind the development, to extract the full volume of oil it is targeting.
In a sit-down interview with CNN on Thursday, Vice President Harris said she wouldn’t ban fracking if elected president, a reversal of her position during her first presidential run.
The Democratic nominee attempted to explain why her position has changed from being against fracking to being in favor of it.
like I said, climate change is a complete non-sequitur from the conversation we were having - but if you look at it beyond a surface level, it still underscores the point I was trying to make. Democrats' opposition to climate change isn't based on principles, it's based on "say whatever we need to say to get elected".
and reduced income inequality for the first time in I have no idea how long
sigh. sure, let's play this game of non-sequiturs.
from the Census's own website:
Using pretax money income, the Gini index decreased by 1.2% between 2021 and 2022 (from 0.494 to 0.488). This annual change was the first time the Gini index had decreased since 2007, reversing the 1.2% increase between 2020 and 2021
which sounds great, until you scroll down...
In contrast to the 1.2% decrease in the Gini index calculated using pretax income, the annual change in the Gini index calculated using post-tax income increased 3.2% from 2021 to 2022.
so yeah, income inequality decreased...if you use a statistic that doesn't matter in the real world (income before taxes). but inequality increased if you use a statistic that reflects actual people's actual pocketbooks (post-tax income).
and even using the misleading pre-tax figures, the supposed decrease in inequality was from high incomes decreasing slightly, while low incomes stayed the same:
The 2022 data suggest that declines in real income at the middle and top of the income distribution drove the decrease in the Gini index.
At the 90th percentile, 10% of households in 2022 had income above $216,000, down 5.5% from the 2021 estimate of $228,600.
However, at the 10th percentile, 10% of households had income at or below $17,100 in 2022, not statistically different from 2021 ($16,890).
so Biden gets a talking point about how he reduced income inequality...but for actual low-income people, nothing materially improves. again, this underscores the point I was making. Democrats don't have "help poor people" as a principle, they just want to get votes based on a perception that they help the poor.
if a campaign had a principled stance of improving material conditions for poor people, then it probably wouldn't do things like have Uber's Chief Legal Officer as a campaign advisor. but I'm just a random guy on the internet and not a Democratic campaign strategist, so what do I know.
oh wow, are we at the “bringing up non-sequitur talking points” point of this debate already?
You claimed that "Democrats have no principles. they’ll campaign on anything they think will get them votes." My point was that on the two biggest problems of the day, the last Democrat to be in office worked hard on it, and that's relevant here.
If you're talking only about campaigning, saying that regardless of their principled performance in office, their messaging is incoherent dogshit that matches whatever they think people want to hear but doesn't even do a good job of that, we can agree completely.
And, actually, on most Democrats we can agree as to that they just don't do much. I just think Biden was an exception, with Gaza as a notable return to the norm, which was tragic for everybody.
Democrats’ opposition to climate change isn’t based on principles, it’s based on “say whatever we need to say to get elected”.
Biden was the first US president who ever took any kind of big action on climate change. We needed to do ten times more, and we needed to do it 20 years ago, but if your metric for "opposition to climate change" is based purely on campaign statements, not on anything that people actually do, then I would request a reframing of the landscape.
Of course, as far as "normal" Democrats, you're completely right. Biden was an outlier. Most of them don't seem to give a shit.
You listed all the favorite talking points about individual things that Biden did bad on the climate. If you look at the entire picture, it looks like this:
https://www.statista.com/chart/27935/how-the-inflation-reduction-act-will-affect-us-ghg-emissions/
Or like this, if you consider infographics suspect:
so Biden gets a talking point about how he reduced income inequality…but for actual low-income people, nothing materially improves. again, this underscores the point I was making. Democrats don’t have “help poor people” as a principle, they just want to get votes based on a perception that they help the poor.
Here's a summary of what you're talking about:
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
Relevant excerpt:
Between 2019 and 2023, hourly wage growth was strongest at the bottom of the wage distribution. The 10th-percentile real hourly wage grew 13.2% over the four-year period. To be clear, these are real (inflation-adjusted) wage changes. Overall inflation grew nearly 20%, or about 4.5% annually, between 2019 and 2023. Even with this historically fast inflation, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic recession, low-end wages grew substantially faster than price growth. Nominal wages (i.e., not inflation-adjusted) rose by roughly 34% cumulatively since 2019.
There's actually a specific reason why high-end wages dropped, during that time: Biden pursued deliberately inflationary policies, during the worst of the Covid recovery, to keep unemployment low. The alternative would have been to let unemployment stay high, depress wages, but make the rich people happy by keeping inflation lower than it would have been. He did the first one. Are you interested in me digging up an article on the details? They're pretty interesting.
2022 was the inflation year, when absolutely historic inflation slammed every country in the world, and in the US it was worse (temporarily) because of Biden's specifically working-person-friendly policies. Again, if you're genuinely interested in this stuff, let me know and I'll look up an article, I just don't want to do it if you're not planning to engage with it. It's not surprising to me that if you hit the pause button exactly in 2022, real wages looked the same as 2019, since 10th percentile wages were already steadily rising, but inflation was around 8% that year.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/
After that, even after Covid, wages at the 10th percentile grew very steeply. High-income earners continued to lose out a little bit, the middle of the scale stayed pretty much even, and low-income earners saw their biggest gains since LBJ. Again, if you're interested in more than the articles I already sent, let me know, and I'll dig up some more details.
This is all by way of response to you saying that Democrats don't actually do anything, more or less, they just run around making things worse and asking for money and votes. Actually, as far as most Democrats I think that's pretty accurate (although voting for them so the Republicans don't get into office and start killing people on purpose still seems sensible to me). But Biden was an exception.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I also do not primarily blame Harris. If you look at my post and comment history, you'll see that I was backing her since the second Biden dropped.
She did make missteps wrt Gaza, but I think in retrospect it was probably too late for her by then anyways, given how long Biden stayed in, and how much damage he did.
The uncommitted movement was during state primaries, it wasn't supposed to be during the general as well. I think that it was coopted (or at least boosted) later on by right-wingers and Zionists to expressely hurt Dems, rather than just oppose their stance on Gaza.
At an individual level, I don't blame anyone who is Arab and could not bring themselves to vote for the party who was, even during the election, supplying weapons to kill their fellow countrymen and neighbors. I have a friend who is Palestinian, and he told me that he saw a clip in the background of a report on the "war" on CNN of a building being bombed, and it was an apartment building where one of his friends used to live. Just casually being demo'd on TV.
Now, Arabs voting for Trump is another matter entirely, and there is and never was any excuse for that.
Yeah. I pretty much agree with 100% of what you just said and I've been echoing some of the particulars of it for the last couple of days (in particular, as much as I think "uncommitted" after the primary was a mistake, I get it). I've also had that experience of watching TV with someone who was watching homes get destroyed in a place that they knew personally. It's not a great experience.
