it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior
I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
The genocide(and poor national level performance) was the last straw for many people who have been lifelong democrat voters. After 30+ years of seeing dems bring ferocity and strategy and boldness to primaries only to sit in office, renege and fail on many of those promises even in times when they have a supermajority. Then to see only a few dems actually screaming on the floors of congress. As well biden refusing to use the bully pulpit.
I don't believe any of them wanted this outcome. I do believe they felt their vote was only going to promote a regime that would continue the trend of genocide and protecting wall street over the needs of desparate citizens. Billions to kill and profit then pennies to the people.
I believe the fault lies entirely on the DNC and not the voters who saw no benefit in promoting the party over the other.
It's wrong, a dem in power is worlds better, but i understand seeing it as pointless in the moment. There is no good answer, only a less wrong one...
To answer the question, pass useful legislation and don't promote genocide. Legislation like universal healthcare, constitutional abortion(and other women's healthcare), raising minimum wage, universal pre-k, Union support, decriminalize drugs(esp. Weed), and to reverse inflation to name only just a tiny few..
TLDR: 30yrs of "lesser of two evils" kills voter motivation. Blame the party not the people.
In the end you’re both still the ones committing genocide. Not the people who didn’t vote for it (not voting is a vote)
Stop trying to make this delusional talking point happen. Typical shitlib manipulation
Ps you don’t even live in a democracy…. Shitlibs did more to organize state violence against college kids protesting than they are doing to resist fascism. Thats why you fuckin lost and will always be losers and will take all of us down with you
Your downvote tears sustain me, not going to weasel your way out of being complicit in genocide. You went out of your way to consent to the corrupt state, and you refuse to tear it down. Everything that happens is your responsibility, regardless of which of your functionary parties are ruling. They all do the same thing and are on the same teamgame which is to perpetuate empire, capital accumulation and colonialism, only difference is strategy.
The only tears here are from rolling our eyes too hard. You're being downvoted not based on the merit of the arguments you bring, but on how you present them.
"We offered nothing and lost to a liar who said they would get something if he came back into office. Why did we lose?"
"We said everything was going great when the public was facing hardships and being targeted by systemic and economic inequality, and the dude lied and said he'd solve it. Why did we lose?"
"The last guy was unpopular and didn't push back on Trump to get him jail. And then we said we'd do nothing different as Americans are facing homeless and their bodily autonomy being ripped away from them. How did we lose?"
"We courted Republicans who openly hate our voter base, alienated them by saying we don't need you, and Republicans are too brainwashed to vote for anyone but Republicans. Why did we lose?"
"We let the campaign be run by the same people who already lost against Trump in 2016. Why did we lose?"
Clearly, the dems need to be lying more.
No, I'm serious, they need to actually start hitting back in kind if they want to preserve even a sliver of the country. This moral high road shit sounds great but boy, does not seem to work in practice.
We need to make a parallel yet distinct figure of speech to “leopards ate my face” for this behavior. Not to lessen the meaning of fascist leopards but kind of as a contrasting representation of the successes of evil. Something like…
“I fed the hawks, never knowing they would prey on my flock!!”
We have one
"I did not speak up..."
Hawks decimated my sheeple.
I dont think Dems have any power left anymore. The latest DNC was worse than clown world. And the unhinged ranting by Dem reps against USAID to Somalia ??? or Yemen ??? or BURMA ??? Are effing kidding me ??? Are there no sensible Dems reading the room ???
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience.
You should. They only bring about worse situations at best. Pretending to be moral when what you're doing is the opposite is pure hypocrisy.
Democrats then: "We'll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they're forming PACs like 'Arabs for Trump.' We don't need their votes."
Democrats now: "We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn't vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It's actually your fault that we didn't bother appealing to you."
To the DNC and right wing Dems, its always someone else's fault why their candidate failed to appeal to the voters they are trying to represent. No accountability for their failure.
"We don't need you! We never needed you! Every one of you is a paid Russian actor! We will win with Chaney and Romney!"
"GOD PLEASE WE NEEDED YOU! WHY DIDN'T YOU TRUST US?! WE CHASED AFTER THE REPUBLICANS TO MAKE YOU LOVE US!"
White-men for Kamala :'D
So basically, still in denial about how Trump and Netanyahu are going to absolutely wipe out Gaza from history now while gaslighting'ing as hard as r/conservative. The overlap with the way Trump voters handle politics is astounding.
What does any of that have to do with what I said? I'm talking about the strategic decision the Democrats made to not make concessions to the people inflamed by the genocide in Gaza. In no way did I deny that Trump is far worse than Kamala/Biden. Pointing out that Kamala/Biden made a conscious decision to not move left on this issue isn't gaslighting, not that you're even using the term correctly
i hate the big d Democratic party. i dont like their platform, i don't like their candidates. i voted for harris in2024. the time to make political statements and form a movement is now. do you know what you are supposed to do during election season? VOTE!
Yeah, ive said exactly that countless times right before the election, criticize her all you want after the election but ffs, elect her and the average response was something along the lines of "but genocide Joe!" or just nothing .
Also, all those fuckers are gone now, you're not hearing anything about it anymore so I'm guessing that a lot of them could also have been right wing trolls just pushing people to ensure trump would be voted in
I want to believe that was a large scale, coordinated influence operation, but the truth is probably a bunch of scattered, uncoordinated young folks tring to make a statement
The democrats tried everything except for actually grappling with the subject. Now blaming the voters completely misses the point .. that the dems where supporting Israel and clearly stated they would continue the current path. Trump had the decency to lie to the constituents. And now they cope by convincing themselves it's part of his plan. The voters where duped.. but the Dems did this.. not the voters.
I will always doubt elections so long as I cannot verify my vote was actually counted in the final tally.
I always think of Florida in 2000. The hanging chads represented votes denied.
Relevant: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hDd21pEmP4g
Clinton Eugene Curtis, testifies that he made the software (probably used to rig the 2004 election). He explains in detail regarding being hired by Congressman Tom Feeney in 2000 to build a prototype software package that would secretly rig an election to sway the result 51 / 49 to a specified side to flip flop the election in favor of who they want to win.
I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.
Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s
Look, I've spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane "lesser evil" slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.
Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn't guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin' Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?
Y'all couldn't vote for Nader in 1996, because "he can't win." Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we'd get... well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.
As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn't change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren't going away. The wealth inequality wasn't shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn't on track to make the serfs' lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.
Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential... Y'know, denial, that power that we've all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO2 in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?
Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.
The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.
Truth
Well here's one Arab American for Trump views.
What a dope. It’s a mystery to me Why anyone would GAF about what a dope like this guy thinks
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That's not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Or worse, to exacerbate racial tensions, is one possibility I fear.
Yeah. I thought this sort of shit would've been cut down after those CIA layoffs trump did or whatever, or, that's what everyone's been jokingly saying, at least. Probably it's more along the lines that social media companies keep selectively propagating this shit because they're a revolving door with those three letter agencies anyways. Saw a LOT of black liberals posting with starbucks cups and mcdonald's after the election, and talking about how they want to buy beachfront property in gaza, because the michigan vote didn't come through for Kamala. Most of those people probably weren't conforming to the boycott in the first place, and more broadly didn't give a shit at all, but still, incredibly harrowing stuff, there.
Anyways yeah I agree with the other guy, if you wanted to spurn discussion, you probably would've been better off posting some shit that's not like, immediately just blaming the protest votes? Is in better faith more generally? Probably wouldn't gain as much traction exclusively because of that, as is the case with the site, but you'd at least not be contributing to that sort of bad faith discussion as much, which I think the initial post is doing.
It isn't a straw man, it is observation .
Well, no, because I've been asking myself the same question for a while now. And I don't have that agenda. Lol
Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.
Haha no hate I just think it's funny you arrive at the same "Russian troll" conclusion as the people trying to relitigate the Gaza voters :P
e: i think i misunderstood your comment, retracted
Like anything, it's probably a mix. There were plenty of actual Americans on the pro-Gaza side, and there were probably some Russian trolls as well. Now, there are some actual Americans trying to vent about the election. But it would also be naive to think a fair number of them aren't Russian trolls. It's not like the utility of manipulating an adversary nation's political discourse ends after an election.
Since there's no practical benefit to relitigating this old fight, however, it makes sense to just dismiss anyone bringing it up as a Russian bot. There's nothing to be gained by reopening this old wound among the left, but there is plenty to lose.
Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side
This is beyond voter shaming, though. This is asking what the fuck were they thinking.
Emphatically correct based on everything I learn. I could never imagine changing my vote based on shaming and I don’t know why so many choose that tactic anyway, even after the thing is over.
This is why the aftermath of the election has been particularly frustrating to me - a LOT of comments are just shitting on Muslim voters and kind of acting happy that trump is so terrible - often ‘liberal’ voters.
What the heck? We have to keep the doors open and politicians have to get them through the doors
How do you change voter behavior?
You don't. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it's to change the rules to what the people want. If you can't do that, the people don't want you.
It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza
Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted
so why arent we pointing the finger at them?
I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.
On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren't solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you're often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.
On the other hand, I keep thinking I'm making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn't blindingly obvious to everyone.
Like the lady says, It's like rain on your wedding day...
Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can't use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.
You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.
The Republicans understand this.
This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education
Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.
I yelled, but voted Kamala, and encouraged others to do the same. I always wanted to try and push the democrats to not be Republican lite and actually taking a meaningful, impactful stand on fucking anything besides being very passionate about not inhabiting Trump's body. I wanted to see the democrats say "you know what? Genocide is wrong, whether it's our allies doing it or not, and this is genocide" instead of "well, we're going to keep handing them bombs, but we promise to wag our fingers at them while we do it". I don't want to hear your goddamn excuses, there's always some fucking excuse why the democrats just had to spill all their spaghetti. I just wanted to do what I could to push them to show some intestinal fortitude and do the right thing, and I honestly believed (and still do believe) that that would have motivated more voters to turn out than purely relying on "less bad than him".
No, I don't regret trying to make the world I want to see; one without genocide. I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
I wish OP would add this to their post. EVERY IRL leftist I know voted Kamala even though they absolutely did not want to. My comment history is littered with we saying exactly this. I truly can't imagine the kind of person posting/saying the OP quote. Like, she lost. That's the way it's phrased for a reason. It was her and the people making decisions for her that are responsible. SHE lost. Don't get me wrong, we're all obviously worse off, but why aren't they upset at the dem establishment?! If the protest voters were "so important" (they mathematically were not) then don't you think the dems are morally responsible not just for the genocide, but then for losing just to perpetuate it? They're all like "where are the complaints now?!" Like they are too stupid to understand how pressure works on public officials and that resistance is a limited resource that needs to be rationed. Unfortunately, most actual leftist are organizing resistance efforts and don't have time to complain about dems any more because that time has passed. I'm very wary of people saying things like OP because it's such a clinically bad take it feels like trolling/propaganda. Good luck with everything.
I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
Fucking.
Thank you for sharing, genuinely. The way other conversations here have gone, many probably thought you were a Russian bot or something for yelling that you cared about human rights atrocities funded by your taxes. :(
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
Give them something to vote for.
This. We saw the energy and joy when Biden dropped out, and it was reflected by Harris almost matching Obama’s small donor numbers. Hope. Change. They were simple campaign slogans, but people coming out of the Bush era wanted to believe, and had a candidate to believe in.
It’s a damning indictment that my most genuine electoral engagement, in my entire adult life, was voting “Uncommitted” in the 2024 Democratic primary. That was my most enthusiastic, “I 100% support this” vote ever, because almost every other time has been against something/one, or accepting lesser. From ballot initiatives, Senate races, down to the local comptroller chair.
Contrast that to my vote for Kamala in the general afterwards. It’s so unbelievably hollow to say “our democracy is strong” when the choice is always ‘well they’re better than them’.
Exactly this! You can't just "lesser of two evils" your way through life as you slide towards hell. "Lesser of two evils" isn't a choice, it's a hostage situation.
I had some vote blue no matter who nitwit yelling at me the other day about this. i asked them what are we supposed to do when 2028 is Mitt Romney (D) vs Trump (R). They said you vote Romney.
People who voter shame others when both parties have crossed their personal morals are the reason the Democats don’t ever run on anything substative. They have forgotten they have to earn votes. They’re not owed.
And they have forgotten that when they lose, real people suffer deeply for it. The democrats sin of apathy is often worse than the republican sin of cruelty. At least the republicans are honest about how they want to screw over the country.
The lesser of the two evils didn't go after the bigger evil, offered nothing, said the economy was doing great as people suffered higher rent and groceries, and then wondered why people listened to the lying devil saying that they would fix their problems.
They don't want to offer solutions, they want votes.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
If they could have resurrected a Unicorn live on stage and it could have magically cured cancer in the radius as thanks: people would still be shitting on them all over the internet.
Yeah. No matter how I look at it, this seems to be the only real solution that would have helped.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media. Their messaging isn't great and I've seen a lot more left-leaning youtube channels talk about them but not outside of that.
Then again, I'm also not American so I don't know.
Lastly, the non-voters are as much to blame in my opinion. If you didn't know you should have voted, that's on you.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media.
The problem is that they made big promises in the early Harris campaign, then continuously abandoned them and watered them down until the campaign became a shadow of its former self. Equally problematic is that they continued to shift to the right and adopt policies that are unpopular with their base. I mean remember the border wall? And of course let's not ignore the elephant in the room that was Gaza.
The time for voting is over. It’s time for fighting now, and I don’t think “I told you so”s are helping us unite and work together right now.
Both can happen at the same time. We don’t need to love our ally to fight against a shared enemy. Especially when you feel your ally helped empower them.
Can they though? I mean to some extent maybe but I think it needs to be carefully articulated and respectful. The typical one line takedowns are just signals of tribal affiliation, they don't persuade anyone and just increase animosity between us.
I agree.
I'm stayin' in the race!
I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
Everything I don’t like is a psyop
It’s not wrong to say that the right/outside actors made the issue more pervasive, but let’s not exonerate the “adults in the room” who decided it was better policy to unflinchingly support war criminals and a slow motion genocide, instead of defusing the wedge issue and forcing Bibi’s hand. Israel is nothing without US political support and weapons. Recognize “who’s the fucking superpower” and act like it when your client state gets out of line in a way that’ll cost you domestically. China does it with North Korea all the time when they got testy. Russia routinely interferes with domestic politics of CSTO members.
Nor should we pretend that all criticism was astroturfing. Some of us wanted to drop Biden before “we beat Medicare” made him obviously unelectable. And called it that Harris was going to lose swing states like Michigan for maintaining Biden’s posture on Israel. If team blue is all I can realistically vote for, I’m going to call out shitty policy that loses elections and kills voter enthusiasm. It’s up to you to listen and understand that we need to do better
There was definitely a large amount of foreign influence pushing that narrative.
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn't want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on "our team".
And given the shitty system we have, any vote, or non-vote, that wasn't for Kamala was a vote for trump (by way of it being one less vote he needed to win). Can't walk into a chess tournament and start putting checkers on the board just because you don't like chess...gotta change the game first or you just lose and get kicked out.
Yup that is a conspiracy theory and super not cool of you.
It's mostly information warfare from the various social media. There have already been a few analyses showing that pro-Republican anti-Democrat sentiment was algorithmically pushed on tiktok, Facebook, X(obviously), Instagram, YouTube, etc. I do believe a lot of people even here on lemmy were Russian/Chinese just stoking the flames because a divided america is good for them.
They were on the correct side of the value system, but could not bring themselves to agree to the tactical compromise.
Genuine question, why should I keep agreeing to a compromise that every time I look back has run farther and farther to the right and away from what my values are. You can say protest and advocate for change but when that happened they where shamed arrested and expelled. The railway union was forced into an unfavorable contract by the democrats. At what point is it that this compromise is less a compromise and more a pacification, and me lending my support to another right wing extention? Where is the red line? are individuals not allowed to have positions where if you support them they will not suport you? or even if you get enough of them?
why should I keep agreeing to a compromise
Motions broadly at everything Is this not enough to look past your ideals in a rigged system?
Look, I get it and I share your values. But come the fuck on. You guys got had by the One Issue being pushed around while everyone else told you not to and now the US lost everything and there's lasting damage and many more people will end up suffering and dying for many other reasons. 20/20 vision now says Harris was the right choice all along. It's frustrating.
Now go actually look at the outcome of the railway union thing.
The ratchet effect is real and people should abandon both parties.
That being said there was 0% chance someone besides a D or R would win the 2024 election, so D was the objectively correct choice for anyone who isn't rich.
That being said the protest voters didn't actually impact the election in a meaningful way, and the insane pushback against them now is part of a propaganda campaign to keep the poors fighting.
We can now say that anyone who could and didn't vote for Harris in magastan is a genocide enabler.
That's the dark secret that no one really wants to talk about. We're all genocide enablers. Every single person decided to enable genocide. You didn't vote? Genocide enabler. You voted third party? Genocide enabler. You voted for Harris? Genocide enabler. You voted for Donald Trump? Whew boy, genocide enabler and then some. No matter how you cut it the American populace has and is enabling genocide. Every single fucking one of us.
I think that's why there's so much rancor on this topic. People don't want to admit that to themselves. I enabled genocide. You enable genocide. Everyone in this thread enabled genocide. Till we all admit it acknowledge that we're not going to move forward.
I've been saying since the election that anyone who voted for Trump or abstained in protest is complicit in Trump's regime of terror. Trump and his staff spent months on the campaign trail telling the public exactly what they would do when they took power, showing everyone exactly who they are, and now they're doing all of it. No one has the luxury of claiming ignorance.
But but but, how were we supposed to know? We were too busy not paying attention to anything important!!
Now that you got you dopamine, feel better?
Great, now it's time to stop pushing propaganda that makes poor people infight.
That’s not how logic works.
Yes it is and it’s such a good example of logic that its archetype is now a formal part of game theory in the prisoner’s dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
Like most people... I live in a state where my "vote" literally doesn't matter at all.
It's hilarious how "adults" assume that voting actually matter and that there's a meaningful difference between the two flavors of the state.
I was up and down many threads immediately before the election straining with every fiber of my being to explain to people the variety of ways in which their democracy is actually a sham and isn't effective or reflective of popular will or sentiment.
The most I got in return was that, nah, none of that applies, because I just don't really feel like it. It's infuriating.
Every 4 years the machine churns, every 4 years people forget everything that happened the last time, forget every detail of the system, and just decide to kind of, sloganeer constantly rather than discuss critically, because that brings them some sense of control over the way things are going. It can be prefigured into their personal narrative of events, and how much they, personally, put on the line, how much they tried to change people's minds. A participation trophy for their rubber stamp, for their ticking of a certain box, while the real rulers are off in washington making the real decisions. Ultimately it's kind of fruitless, I think, or should only be viewed along the same lines as being personal slop-entertainment, or "self-improvement". Anyone who's not honest with at least that much can't really be trusted to speak on these things, I think.
It’s hilarious how people still think that something good will happen as a result of inaction. But no, all your refusal to participate said was that you are fine with the outcome either way. That you trust others to decide this for you. Refusing to choose doesn’t negate the results. Just as doing nothing won’t create something. If it helps, I can explain it in simpler terms:
• You can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question.
\
• You won’t ever get anywhere if you don’t make plans to ever be somewhere
\
• You can’t rightfully expect any change for the better if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum it takes to make it happen.
Even simpler:
• No vote ≠ no election.
And additionally, do you not understand that saying “but I live in a red state! My vote doesn’t matter!” Only proves to everyone that things like gerrymandering are effective ways to manipulate votes? Because, congratulations… you’ve inadvertently discovered exactly why they do it!
Blue votes in red stats are FUCKING VITAL.
You know, it’s sadly funny in a very bleak way- how you all excused your poor decisions as “making a statement!” and “sending a message!” when the messages you should have been sending is that you will do WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES to stop a rapist felon that laid out exactly what he intended to do to us- from taking away the rights of your brothers, sisters, and others. Even if it meant voting blue in a red state.
But you didn’t. So sit down, accept your responsibility, and if you’re fucking lucky, you’ll be given the chance to do better next time.
🤦 Can we get this in actual text or maybe a cool link to the actual content for those of us who need it for accessibility & the rest of us who don't like trying to read pixelated garbage? 😭 Screenshots of text 👎. Accessible text 👍.
Philip DeFranco 👊🏻 @PhillyD Genuine question. Not aiming to dunk on etc.
But for the Pro Gaza folk who yelled Genocide Joe and Killer Kamala and abstained, voted Jill Stein, or even voted for Trump what is your reaction to Trump saying US will own Gaza?
Same thing in your eyes as Harris or regret now or?
They were mainly upset that we don’t have a choice to not support genocide.
Which just betrays their utter ignorance of US history. Slavery and genocide built this country, of course we’re gonna support it.
Sure, the material consequences if you, specifically, live in a swing state. I do, so I voted for Kamala. But this take, applied outside of states that were up for grabs, is asinine. But hey, nuance is for people who don't want to just keep trying the same failed approach to presidential elections every 4 years and would rather bitch about anyone less moderate than them.
Considering this group you're pointing out wasn't big enough to make Harris win maybe Democrats should focus inward on their own failures instead of playing stupid ass finger pointing games with people left of them. Y'all lost despite your stance on genocide, not because of it unfortunately.
Many stayed home, how can you quantity their reasoning? They're absent, but what you can say is for those that are capable of voting, didn't care much they trump could win.
how can you quantity their reasoning?
Well instead of pretending it's unknowable we can look at the demographics of who voted for Biden in 2020 but refused to vote for Harris.
It was Boomers, genX, and older Millennials. Who were white men/women and hispanic men. Most likely stayed home because these groups have well known deeply rooted misogyny.
Young people, gaza protesters, didn't vote, the same as young people vote every election.
I absolutely agree. It is horrific to see people going through the most dehumanizing of treatment by the Democratic party getting screamed down by white moderate liberals for not falling in line exactly as the Zionist machine wants them to.
More like "we fed you the result of your own actions and now you don't like the way it tastes cuz you got worse than Harris"
No matter what else happens the fact will never change that you could have picked Harris and actually saved Gaza. But instead you pretended game theory wasn't real and let it be destroyed by trump.
It's sxephil! Haven't thought about that guy in like a decade
I would love to have a conversation with someone who actually abstained. At least on Lemmy, the level of snark seems to drown out whatever actually was going on in their heads and I don't see a lot of constructiveness in that pattern.
I know a few people who probably abstained. One was massively uninformed by talking points of misinformation and thought Harris was the devil. The other hated trump but were true republicans from way back, they would never vote for a dem.
I mean I did not abstain, I voted PSL, however I would have abstained if PSL was not available in my state. I get its not the same thing, however half the time it is construed as the same, if you would like to talk about it.
Edit: I should mention for clarity, I was going to vote that day anyway because of a state constitutional amendment that I wanted to oppose, however I was going to abstain from POTUS elections if PSL was not on the ballot.
Yeah I really tried to engage with some of them before the election, and it was impossible to break through the snark and the disingenuous/naive arguments they were spouting. I would also love to have an earnest conversation with someone who withheld their vote, but based on how how they explained themselves at the time, I’d doubt there’s a ton of critical thinking going on. Which kind of makes sense at least for Palestinian Americans whose families are being slaughtered. For them the raw emotions are justified, and I can’t fault them for not voting, even if it was ultimately against their interest. But they’re the only group I’ll give a pass.
I will never regret choosing to vote third party no matter what happens. I will not regret my vote even if Trump marches me personally into a gas chamber. The sooner you get that through your heads, the better. You will never be able to "scare me straight" by pointing to the Republicans, no matter what they do.
The reason things have gotten as bad as they are, to where we have to choose between genocide and genocide-lite, is because of a complete unwillingness to have a spine and draw a red line, out of fear of letting the other side win. We have sacrificed every single standard and principle in the name of that fear. This "common sense" strategy of unconditional support of the lesser evil is actually completely insane, and easily falls apart under scrutiny.
However, if you cannot be persuaded that we are correct, then it is better that you see us as stubborn and irrational. Because a stubborn and irrational person will only be persuaded by giving them what they want, and not by words or anything else. If you want to make sure the Democrats actually win next time, the best strategy is to pressure them into conceding to our demands. Which, if you think about that for 5 seconds, it makes our approach seem a lot less stupid and irrational, but what do I know, I'm stupid and irrational.
The vote wasn’t between genocide and genocide lite. It was between genocide lite and genocide, plus additional genocides, some domestic, plus economic sabotage, plus the emergence of a new evangelical southern Baptist military regime.
I don’t think that narrowing the scope of the voting gap to just you is helpful, so I don’t want to use this as a moment to level scorn. I just want to be very clear that the premise you presented is wrong. Very wrong
It must be easy to stand from on high in judgement of others when you aren’t the one that stood to lose anything, because It’s the ones that have nothing to lose that always go all-in at the table.
Your lack of regret clearly illustrates that your decision was influenced by a colossal amount of entitlement.
It becomes more simplified if you just look at the US as a one party state with two divisions that serve the same one party leadership.
Kamala supporters should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they're ok with their candidate enabling genocide
why they’re ok with their candidate enabling genocide
I don't think this is a fair analysis of any real person's position.
It was gazas best chance at actually existing. Also she was the only one with a chance at 270 electoral votes
Your turn. Why did you vote for someone who couldn't get to 270? Do you not realize you literally helped trump?
Voting is not supporting and my state went blue so no I didn't. Also that's not relevant to the conversation at hand. The point is that she was a shitty candidate that supported genocide and mostly ran on not being Trump. But when people correctly point that out, many such as yourself get more angry at that person instead of the shitty candidate. What it feels like is you're married to the dnc, and when someone accurately tells you that they're abusive and they're cheating on you, you shoot the messenger.
No one is inspired to vote for the lesser evil. Be mad at the dnc for running a campaign of "we're not going to help anyone but at least we're not Trump" instead of actually trying to be good. Working people are your allies, not the elite trying to divide us with stupid electoralism.
She used the only power she had to try to negotiate a ceasefire. What you are saying simply isn't factual.
The only thing she wanted to change about bidens administration was to add more Republicans, the same administration that was regularly sending arms to Israel. Palestinians weren't allowed to speak at the dnc. She had plenty of opportunities to show support for the Palestinian people, every time she supported Israel instead.
Imagine believing that Trump's genocidal policy is somehow different from genocide joe and kamalacaust. It's a continuation that they actively enabled and now support.
Do y'all understand how watching these creeps support a genocide for more than a year might have caused them to lose?
And you're still crying about it and blaming voters instead of opposing genocide. Pathetic and gross.
In two short weeks. He’s managed to put into place an ultimatum where the Palestinians either leave their homes forever, or become one with the craters their homes will become if they don’t-
… and you are STILL here expecting anyone to believe the bOtH siDeS bullshit?
Pathetic and gross indeed.
Imagine believing that Trump's genocidal policy is somehow different from genocide joe and kamalacaust
Why did Bibi want Trump to win so badly?
This is simply not true. When Gaza is gone I hope you realize what you helped do.
Thank you for your analysis. This is valuable and I appreciate it.