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?
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Okay I'm getting sick of the whole "the dems failed us" bullshit.
WE failed. WE let this happen. WE had the choice between an obvious dictator or continued democracy.
You can shift the blame all you want but at the end of the day it was an obvious choice. You can come up with any other excuse you want. If you didn't vote for Harris you are to blame. Period. End of fucking story.
Edit: The dems should've been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win. The fuck is wrong with people to not see that?
While I can understand your perspective, it's one of those unfortunate cases where ideology clashes with reality.
Yes, Trump never planned on following through on actually helping people. He lied, and people bought it. And yet it's no ones fault Harris's that she decided to tell people "things won't change if you vote for me".
A nation of voters isn't made up of individuals who you can convince, it's a crowd of people following certain dynamics, just like any other large grouping of things. You can either accept that and work with this fact to steer the crowd, or you can ignore this fact and lose because you're trying to go against the flow. And in the end, the only people who had any meaningful control was Harris' campaign.
Imagine you're a shepherd, and your flock is running towards the edge of a cliff. Sure, you can plant your feet and say "they shouldn't run off the cliff", but the only end result will be losing all your sheep.
I respect your argument, but I still refute it.
There was a saying someone shared recently: Give them the third best option. Because the second best comes too late and the best never comes at all. Essentially, do not let perfect be the enemy of the good.
I agree that Kamala should have developed more of a campaign around frustrated white young men, and working class America. That was a mistake, but I also think it was an easy mistake to make when scrambling to take over from Biden’s campaign.
If we go 4 years from now, 8 years, 30 years, I think every candidate we see will be imperfect and will make mistakes. The only time we’ll ever see a perfect candidate is when they lie about their accomplishments and overstate themselves. Americans need to be able to spot those flaws themselves, and that will not change in any election cycle. I should not get into the White House by promising every working American a trillion dollars.
I'm not asking for a perfect candidate, not sure where you got that from.
My whole point is that Harris' positions got her some number of voters. We now know that this number was too small, and we also now know that they knew this fact.
Harris could have changed her positions to get more voters, but she didn't. How is this not completely her fault?
Again, I'm not asking her to be some perfect politician. I'm asking her to look at the polling results (which we know she had) and to adapt her campaign based on those, which she didn't do.
I have never respected this circular logic. You could use this argument to make any position a "bad one" as long as biases, foolishness or gullibility on the part of the listener override any convincing points. At some point, it is possible for recipients of a message to be bad listeners, and for voters to be irresponsible in their naivety towards a candidate.
Okay, but we're not talking about any random position, we're talking about "nothing will change with me" being a terrible position if you want to get elected by people who aren't doing so well.
At some point, the senders of the messages have to accept blame. Otherwise things will never get better, as the least shitty option will get ever shittier.
It is not completely her fault because voters have agency and accountability.
The larger the group, the more predictable those behaviors are. It's everybody's fault, but she's a single person who could've changed the outcome unilaterally.
I wish I didn't just become more misanthropic knowing people just kinda turn their brains off in crowds. Obviously, that is the situation, and the Dems should've worked with it. But I don't think it's wrong to be frustrated by that either
Yet each individual voter had almost no impact, while she had an incredibly large one.
Did you forget noone chose kamala? Twice in a row the democrats have taken popular choice away to put in their best corporate sponsor. We have had better choices every time and the democrats say fuck you anyways.
She didnt scramble to take over the campaign, she killed it out of the gate before moneyed hands got ahold of her and restricted what she could say and how. She showed us a good campaign and then threw it away. You remember that too right?
Nobody is looking for a perfect candidate, just one that actually wants to help the american people instead of use the government as a global pyramid scheme.
It's pretty clear to me though, that the scramble with her campaign was far less to do with pushing ahead the party's corporate interests, and more a mistake of realizing age and perceived senility were affecting their chances with Biden, and being too afraid for buildup time to get another primary. I have no idea what you're citing around corporate interests, I've already agreed that she wasn't pushing a strong message.
The other problem is how you phrase your last paragraph, because you're highlighting the specific problem you'd like fixed, when voters all across America all had different issues they wanted prioritized, and many opposed each other on. Palestine, trans rights, government waste, federal aid vs education vs full employment, etc etc. It isn't so easy to pick and push one message that will uniformly win you votes. It's also easy for people like me to come under the belief that people felt life under Biden was fine and that the country was steadily getting better, and that change from that path would've been bad. It is very easy for that to be more of a communication problem of a rushed campaign, rather than insisting corporate corruption. Again: Basic mistakes. Mistakes not nearly so bad as "I grab treasury dept and gut the government"
At least trump is doing what he literally said he would. His voters are getting a lot back in return at least from their perspective. Many republicans want the federal government reduced dramatically, and they are getting it.
Tell us how you will use the power you might be elected for, thats it. Simple objective. And you are right there are some conflicting interests that can't both be appeased, but keep in mind both kamala and trump said they'd end the war in gaza.
Democrats pitched a horrible campaign, and its hard for me to believe that the companies supporting the democrats had no hand in what was considered approved messaging.
The fact trump was more transparent and personable speaks volumes about the kamala campaign as well.
The elite are all in on it. She almost certainly lost on purpose.
The dems should've been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win. The fuck is wrong with people to not see that?
Everyone sees it, thus our point that the Dems are to blame because they didn't fucking win. You guys trying to absolve them of their sins act like the reality of voting is that everyone will vote perfectly logically for the lesser evil when that has never been how voting works
the dems failed us
the dems should have been able to run a wet paper bag and win
sounds like identical statements to me
Not really considering it was the voters who willingly voted for Trump just to spite Harris.
It's literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
it was the voters who willingly voted for Trump just to spite Harris
it wasn’t. if every spite vote for Trump had been reallocated to Harris, the election wouldn’t shift by even more than one electoral college vote swing state.
I just feel like simply blaming democrats is the easy way out. It feels like this whole fuckin country failed.
im with you there brother
if every spite vote for Trump had been reallocated to Harris, the election wouldn’t shift by even one electoral college vote.
Just making shit up I guess... Or do you have access to some dataset nobody else has?
i’m making this claim based on the uncommited movement numbers.
i also corrected a slight over statement as i forgot about the case of michigan. thank you for your input.
I share your sentiment. If you had any sort of idea, even the faintest inkling of trump, literally a corpse should have been elected, I think many of the electorate don't know anything about their politicians, and just vote a certain way "cause that's how we've always done it". The last election, elected a dictatorial fascist, and the alternative was to pinch your nose and apply pressure for Kamala to go left.
"The party cannot fail, only be failed" but unironically?