True Story

Leftist memes did not lose dems the election. Voter apathy and the sheer popularity of fascism did.

I'm not necessarily attributing blame here, but I'm pretty sure that OP is suggesting that leftist memes helped lead to this apathy. Say what you will, Trump voters were excited for their candidate... somehow, despite the list of reasons not to being far too long to be listed here. But many on the left either were just lukewarm on her, just considered her the lesser of two evils, or were protest voting third party or abstaining for one reason or another, mostly over Palestine. And there were memes galore to make clear to everyone what the general mood was. It doesn't exactly inspire enthusiasm to those that need that a lot of enthusiasm to even bother (those people are frustrating, btw). I don't know how much it actually contributed to or propogated the apathy versus how much it just reflected the apathy already there, but a case could be made either way.

They didn't lead to the apathy - they pointed out the existing apathy would cost Dems the election. It's like saying the person who said you need to wear a seatbelt caused the wreck.
You're exactly right about people being excited for Trump and lukewarm on Harris, but that's entirely on the Democrats for picking the platform and strategy that lost to Trump in 2016.
Harris had a notable and surprising lead when they announced Biden was out - then they changed nothing else. People didn't just not like the candidate, they didn't like the policies. They only changed the candidate and thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn't work.
- thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn't work.
  What kinda ass country is this?
  
  Oh boy, if you haven't, read its history. Its real history. Wild stuff.
Kamala isn’t on the left. The democrats aren’t on the left. This is a false dichotomy. They’re all capitalists. You can’t be on the left and be a capitalist, so leftists had many more disagreements with Kamala than Palestine.
Now, if you want to look at a great analysis of fascism and the false dichotomy in American politics, read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
It is on the candidate to inspire people. Yeah, the left was lukewarm to a candidate that was trying her best to court Republicans. How else could you expect that to play out?

Why do you think the turnout was so low? Millions of idiots were pressuring people to withhold their vote over Palestine in a colossal self-fuck. That is if you assume these people spreading that are really that stupid. Some were, but I think a large percentage were paid trolls. And their campaigning worked. Russia owns the United States now

Yeah there are only so many times Biden can go "hey isreal, you'd better stop that genocide or else!" While doing nothing whatsoever and even giving them the weapons to continue the genocide before people go "well they aren't going to do a damn thing about this"
- and that's why I voted trump! /s
  
  I'm not supporting that idea nor voter apathy. But i can certainly understand why Kamala lost Michigan, Dearborn has the largest muslim population in the country. I can understand why so many people there might be apathetic or uninterested in voting for a party that has put forth no pushback or even plans to stop an ongoing genocide against people of their faith.
  Again, Trump will absolutely be far worse by just greenlighting isreal.
  
  Trump will absolutely be far worse by just greenlighting isreal.
  Something every human had the means to see coming. They just either didn't care or plugged their eyes and ears to it.
  
  I'm not disagreeing with you. All I'm saying is that I understand why say a Palistinian American might be adverse to voting for the side actively faning the flames to a genocide including their own family members. I can imagine waking up and being told you should vote for the side that supplied the bombs that exploded half your family and going "why? So the other half can also get bombed? My whole family is going to die either way" and that being their rational for not voting.
  
  Wh vote for the side that didn’t interfere when someone else bombed your family, when you can help elect someone who will encourage them to bomb every living relative too
  
  JFC. What is with you people? I don't understand what you want from me. I voted blue straight down ballot in a swing state and I yelled at my lefty friends to do the same.
  All I am saying and have been saying is I understand why people whose friends and family are being exterminated might not want to vote for team actively arming the people commiting a genocide.
  Hell, theres another post right now on lefty memes about how the harris team knew saying they'd stop arming isreal would give them a jump in the polls.
  
  It wasn't the time before we lost either.
  Saying you understand why something happened isn't being smug or in any way happy about the outcome.
  Stop externalizing your poor mental state and take a break from the internet or something.
  
  Oh you mean they didn't show up to support your preferred minority issue? huh. I wonder how the arabs felt this entire campaign?
  No one owes you their vote. You need to earn it. Your support of the shit behavior towards arabs (and others) demonstrated by the democratic party and its candidate is what caused this.
  go home trick. connect with your community. get support. if you need some help lines to call I can find them.
  
  Yep! Why didn't they vote ?! Why didn't they choose the genocide eneblers, it's only been 1 yearsince it started!! Those abstinent peaple are surely responsible for what Trump gonna do. But the Kamalla voters aren't responcible for it. They are the right choise !!!
  
  🎶 Put The Blame on Me Boy, Put The Blame on Me Boy 🎶 (i know i change the lirics a bit), Not the fault of the Dems funded by the Israely gov, they just rather get their money plein and simple. And God forbid never change your mindset.
  
  Again, Trump will absolutely be far worseby just greenlighting isreal.
  The aim of a genocide is the same whether there’s someone with a blue tie approving it or a red tie approving it. Israel wants to displace or kill every Palestinian and break their culture and heritage.
  That’s what genocide is. You can’t get worse than that, and that’s what’s happening.
It can't possibly be because that's a real concern. They had to be paid actors. You sound like Infowars after a school shooting.
- yeah because cambridge analytica was also a hoax
  
  Are you seriously comparing a fucking genocide to an info op?
  
  You still don't get it do you? Blaming the people you need to persuade is not a winning strategy. They aren't going to magically like you suddenly.
  
  What's the point in playing nice with somebody who won't engage in good faith?
  
  Exposing them for others to see.
  
  tracy needs some help. shrug. don't write them off yet. depression can be a hell of a time.
  
  Holding people accountable for their actions that affect you is an entirely just and necessary thing to do.
  
  I hold the Democratic party entirely responsible for trying to win by stealing Trump's base instead of working with the left. The voters cannot themselves be to blame in this kind of election because that assumption destroys democracy. If I must vote for one of two bad candidates then the parties are never pressured to even pretend they represent the people. This isn't hard, 19 year old college freshmen learn this stuff.
  
  Yes, and the people at fault are the democratic party, their consultants, and people like tracy who can't get over their vaunted 'lesser evil!' world view to realize just how fucking toxic as individuals they are. we're engaging because tracy needs the release and others need to see how toxic it is.
I see, so in order to save "democracy" people should have supported Genocide.
Honeslty maybe the Democrats should have seen this coming to themselves for supporting, and I will repeat it once more in case you don't understand, GENOCIDE.
Imagine voting for 100% Hitler because another guy could be 150% Hitler.
- I'm on this kick of pointing out that the utilitarian ethical calculation still works with 100% Hitler and 100.1% Hitler. Harm minimization, baby!
  
  yeah its why no some takes utilitarian's seriously. Hi friend I have this new policy where you give me your left arm and I don't take your legs!
  
  You say that, but "vote blue no matter who" is exactly this argument under the paint.
  
  And I've been telling people for years thats a terrible fucking saying as well. (Also notice how little play that saying had this cycle.) Statistically speaking you may have lost your arm but you'll still have the ability to write and walk! Sorry left handies! Nothing can be done for you! (Left handies are the arabs in the gaza story, lgbt in others etc)
- So by your logic, in Nazi Germany, you would have supported Hitler if there was another guy that was even worse than him ?
  Do you even have a red line or can politicians just screw you over indefinitely for as long as there is someone worse !?
  
  Also if the Democrats really wanted to win this elections, they would have run a different candidate that the one that is supervising Gaza right now !
  You can also go back and see that people said in a lot of pools that they saw the economy as a big issue for them. If the average person in America sees that their economic situation is getting worse with Biden and wants change, you don't run his VP for president !
  The Democrats don't care about you and they don't care about winning. They are funded by the same billioners that fund the Republicans. They just want to kill minorities and cut taxes for the rich as much as Republicans but they don't say it as clearly.
  The Democrats are just controlled opposition that takes away votes from the non-fascist parties in the US.
  
  Trick, you're still not doing so hot. go take another day off and drink yourself silly, touch some grass etc.
Another contributor to low turnout was massive voter suppression. It'd be interesting to see that quantified. Hundreds of thousands of voters were being purged in each of several states. The single-issue Gaza vote was lost in the noise of those gross examples of electoral manipulation.
- I'm sure you're right. It's hard to know where to focus the blame most, but I am livid that this country is worse than my worst fears. On a certain level I am losing any desire to even care specifically how/why. I wouldn't have considered not voting before this but now I honestly am 99.9% of the way to saying fuck it all.
Only 10% of the electorate even cared about Gaza. You're giving the American people entirely too much credit.
- I don't know what point you think you're making, but after yesterday I give the American people zero credit. Millions of voters stayed home pretending it was about gaza. It's not my job to psychoanalyze them but I do know their actions contradicted their stated goal and that makes them frauds.

I distinctly remember hearing about unusually high voter turnout.

It just wasn't blue voters.

There's a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I'm old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it's trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn't think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.

While it's depressing that we're reminded of the power of dumb at hateful people yet again, we should remember that nothing actually changed in that regard this election. We're just discovering what's always been there beneath the surface. I don't think the malaise we're feeling now is so much about what Trump will do - sure scores of people will die from bad policy, but that's nothing new. Rather, we're upset about what this reveals about ourselves. But we shouldn't be upset about the act of revelation, because it tells us what we need to fix.

To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don't understand or won't admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.
Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.

If Harris had campaigned on the issues she would have had so many Republican women jump ship. Just look at how many of them voted for abortion in Missouri.

It wasn't 'voter apathy' it was a misplaced sense of voter moral superiority. It's the thing leftist rhetoric has been weak to for a very long time. That love of withholding support except for perfection. The idea that compromise or chosing a lesser evil from two bad options dirties you. It doesn't matter what you lost if you personally took "the high ground".

This cutting of our noses to spite our face was exploited all to shit this election. They lulled people by appealing to the same zeal of righteousness that they know divides us fundamentally knowing that when push comes to shove people will turn up their noses on principle of not being personally catered to and forget that their ability to help at all is contingent on the freedoms that one party was explicitly putting on the chopping block.

It will be a while before people can admit that they were duped and there's a lot of fault to go around, particularly in those funded astroturf campaigns designed to bait the hook... The right have been watching us for the past decade they knew how to divide us and it is on US that so many of us fell for it.

You really think the 15 million people who voted for Biden but not Kamala was "misplaced sense of moral superiority"? Why?
- Because that explanation makes them feel better
- Because the alternative involves accepting that moving to the right has failed as a strategy, and they don't want to do anything else.
- Yes I do. Because The situation in Gaza was not an election issue for Biden. There was a fantastic amount of campaigning, a lot of it bought and paid for, that turned that genocide into a single issue vote with tis holier than thou reaction of withdrawal from the entire system toted as the answer. It is political suicide to run a mainstream Pro-Palistine presidential campaign in the US. A candidate of one of the two main parties need unilateral support from their donation streams and encumbant systems and the Republicans knew that. They know that's the devil's bargain every DNC candidate has to sign to even get a shot.
  Republican money supported Jill Stein to serve as a spoiler candidate to engage those with a naive veiw of the system but still wanted to vote and then they helped pipe that message through all manner of socials that if enough people withold their vote then Kamala would have shift her position... Because they knew how enticing that is. The idea that you don't have to compromise your integrity and that that will be rewarded. They turned this into a single issue campaign for so many people knowing that they didn't need to shift their position even a little. They could let their Red capped demogogues talk about literally beheading people and those high on this intoxication of absolute righteousness would ONLY care about an issue that Republicans can flaunt their support in favor of.
  It was misplaced moral superiority in part that got us here because if you were lulled into not voting or voting third party because one candidate wasn't "leftist enough" when the alternative is someone popular with an entrenched imobile base of support who wants to make sure leftistism dies dead then you failed to get the assignment.
  
  This is just astoundingly out of touch. When I asked "why", I was looking for evidence. What evidence do you have to support your supposition? Nothing.
  To the contrary, polling says that only 10% of people cared about Gaza. The American people are largely tuned out of politics. Democrats' first instinct is to always blame leftists, but the problem is that people don't want to vote for more of the same.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
Dude, wow okay. let me inform you how voting works.
a person (or group) has ideas, and says 'hey friends, support me so I can implement these ideas'
people then look at your ideas and say 'oh that sounds grand!' or 'No thanks, pass'
the person who gets the most people to say 'oh that sounds grand!' wins.
now here is the thing. harris 'grand idea' was a fucking genocide, and no support for labor. this isn't about fucking moral superiority. its about a complete fucking lack of morals by harris across the board.
If you walk into a fucking room of people and tell them to 'join you for some genocide' dear fucking god do I hope they tell you to fuck right off. Now unfortunately 30% of the population is down for genocide. another 30% are willing to go along with it if you threaten them enough (or won't impact them personally). and a final 30% is like 'lulz newp'. Why the democrats thought it would be good policy to try to out compete genocidal fucks at their own game for votes is beyond me.

Do you remember the number on this “incumbent advantage”? The establishment didn’t just switch out Biden on a whim. Biden literally fucked his chances at winning at the debate. You are barking up the wrong tree
- Biden was never going to win. He is actively losing his marbles. It was so painfully obvious even Democrats had to accept it.
  Yes incumbent advantage is real, but Biden had so many other disadvantages that he'd have never won.
  It sucks but it is what it is.
  
  Biden was never going to win. He is actively losing his marbles. It was so painfully obvious even Democrats had to accept it.
  And yet now everyone has to pretend that a single coherent thought comes out of Trumps mouth in any given 5 minutes.
  
  Did I say I'm happy about trump either? No. It just is what it is. The democrat party knew that pushing for Biden last election had a chance for this to happen.
  
  Can I borrow your crystal ball sometime?
  
  Sure, it makes for a great lens. You can use it to read the writing on the wall.
  
  Oh, I misunderstood. I thought what you were saying is that you can somehow magically know all possible realities for sure despite that being impossible. My bad.
  
  Oh you mean like the guy he was replying to?
  
  It is an advantage useful when it’s not enough to win? Do you not remember the numbers at the time?! For all the pro genocide and ignoring of his base, going on TV and having a senior moment for an hour ended all discussion on the matter. The fact that the internal fighting in its aftermath is proof that Biden did not have the confidence of his base. Harris is the current vice president, if you wanted an incumbent advantage that it’s what you had. And to argue that “burden would have won i told you so!” Is to argue from ignorance. You don’t know, and all evidence pointed to it not being so.
  
  I mean, if they really really really wanted that incumbent advantage, Biden could have stepped out.
  
  What i do know is that confidence in Biden was in the shitter. Wile republicans have never had any consideration about trumps mental decline as long as he was their monster, left wing voters are fractional based on attaining left ideals, of which Biden did not achieve. Add on to that where Biden was in Obvious decline, it’s no wonder that there was infighting on his viability. The fact that there was even a discussion means that the incumbency was worth fuck and all.
  You should be angry but all evidence points to your “i told you so!” Is incorrect. Trump won the popular vote, end of.
Encumbant advantage? In this economic climate, it's exactly the opposite. People who are feeling increasingly fed up with a world in which they cannot make ends meet vote against the status quo.
4 years of Trump got people to vote against Trump. 4 years of Biden got people to vote against his VP.
Biden himself would lost even harder than Kamala did.
- I'm basing my analysis on the observable trend that incumbents lose when the economy is poor. As well as, y'know, Biden's abysmal poll numbers after the debate, the reason he dropped out in the first place.
  You're the one who started insisting incumbent advantage would've been a thing here, where's your crystal ball?
  
  If you want to "do everything you can to win", step one is not running the guy who was borderline incoherent in the debates. Staying by that would've been shooting yourself in the leg.
  Did we watch the same debate here? There was never any advantage coming out of that one.
  
  You don't have to tell me the other guy is terrible. I know he is.
  But did you actually watch the debate? The fact that he came out of that debate arguably looking even worse than Trump - in the eyes of voters, don't even try to argue this one - was a clear red flag.
  There was never any 'advantage' here, and Biden stepped down because even he knew it.
  
  If you actually think you will get hunted down...buy a goddamn gun. Take classes, carry every day. Arm yourself and your friends.
Hey, I know you don't know me, but I want you to know that depriving us of what you can bring will only make it worse. I've found that I can keep myself alive by living for the people around me. Right now what's keeping me going is touching base with everyone, seeing how they're doing, asking them if they've made any plans, and telling them about my plans to move forward. Direct action just got a whole lot harder and more dangerous, but giving up now only makes the problem worse. One foot in front of the other, until you get the rhythm, Then follow it. I believe in you.
- If you're able to move and see a Dr you're doing better than most.
  I was suicidal for other reasons and found my way out of the hole I dug myself in. I honestly hope you can too. It sounds like you're a passionate person and you can place that passion somewhere that does good for the world.
Please don't kill yourself. We need you for the revolution. Doesn't matter who you are, what your skills are. If you can hold a gun or make soup, we need you.
- Communism?