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Political Memes @lemmy.world
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  • While you should vote for the best possible option, I feel like these kinds of posts are constantly shifting responsibility away from Democrats for their own short-comings.

    A couple of weeks ago I voted in the European Parliament elections for the option that had, in my view, the best possible agenda: socially progressive, ecologist, economically left-leaning, decent foreign policy and coherent voting records. But the campaign they ran was absolutely terrible, starting by the candidate. Even though she is admittedly an accomplished woman who has had a very solid career, she doesn't know about the concept of charisma. She wasn't selected because she was the person who would perform the best in debates or in speeches (and she definitely wasn't), but rather, because she was an option that would provoke little conflict among the different factions of the coalition. That was the sign that the internal dynamics of the coalition had degenerated and were acting out of their own inertia, rather than seeking the best possible outcome.

    Expectedly, we got about half the seats we were aiming for.

    The very next day, the leader of the coalition resigned from that position. Even though she's a great minister (making policy), she's proven she isn't good at keeping the aparatus under control in order to achieve good results (doing politics). It's a painful process, but a necessary one where mistakes and short-comings must be admitted in order to grow into something more virtuous.

    Having read US liberals for years, I grow more and more convinced that they're instinctively hostile to constructive criticism of their party's aparatus. And, when your country's voters declare themselves to agree far more with your party's policies than those of their direct opponent, and yet they can't bury their opponent into irrelevance, you have to admit that your party is doing electoralism wrong, and must question why.

  • People still underestimate the damage the GWB presidency has done to the US' international standing and the living conditions of the average citizen. But sure, Gore was a huge bore with a giant stick up his arse.

  • So the key to getting a better government is to lower our expectations.

    • Nope, something that terrifies many lefties far more. Forming coalitions and showing solidarity to actually win victories and a chance to govern. We can even call it the Sanders method.

  • “Boring” “Unlikeable” “Stiff”

    “Can sit down and have a beer with him” “Tells it like it is” “I like him ‘cause he’s not a politician”

    I wouldn’t be too hard on the electorate, although I 100% agree with the problem description and that counter-educating them out of being duped by these framings is important. But they didn’t come up with the framings. There’s a whole ass science of how to resonate with people emotionally and produce behaviors you want, and professionals have been studying it for over a century now to sell toothpaste and beer and deodorant, and it works. It’s actually one of the primary focuses of hard scientific study in our society, much much more so than addressing climate change. And so, when they turned that whole machine in favor of particular candidates and against other candidates, it’s not surprising that it worked on a whole fuck of a lot of people.

    Now let’s start to talk about how “I could NEVER vote for a genocide” and “Here comes the biggest election of our lifetime, just like every other one before that 🙄” fits into that framework…

  • Ok, well, put out more likable candidates that get votes then. Stop expecting people to vote for a candidate just because they "aren't the other guy." You want people to vote for your candidate? Stop cherry-picking the next anointed one and saying "here they are, vote for them!"

    Goddamn. And Democrats wonder why people think they (we, since I'm registered as one) are so out-of-touch and condescending.

549 comments