Not Likeable

Democrats need to fall in love. Republicans just need to fall in line.

It's like you read the meme and went yep, totally their fault. I'm ok with my life gets shittier until I fall in love with a politician. It's not my fault. I am owed this.

Is there a term for the political version of an incel?

Like. lets talk about what happened.

it's reasonable to claim that Gore actually won in 2000. There were sixty one thousand votes that had not been machine-counted because of rampant, clearly partisan, bullshit reasons (among them "hanging chad",). the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual count of those ballots with SCOTUS, lead by Scalia, decided to stay because the recount would give Bush a veneer of "illegitimacy". (gee. wonder why, ya fucking partisan hack.) To be perfectly clear, Gore lost Florida (and the electoral college) by 570 votes. The decision in Bush V. Gore to stay the manual recount basically handed Bush the win. (and, I might add, cast doubt on the legitimacy of bush's win. it was handed by a court that had no business ordering that stay. But did anyway, because they're partisan hacks. I'm not angry, honest.)

Kerry flip-flopped more than a fish out of water, making it hard for independents and centrists to know what his positions actually were. 2 years prior to the election he was, for example, staunchly against gay marriage (and lets be honest, the US was very hostile to gay marriage then. There's been a massive sea change in that, but it hadn't happened yet.), but in 2004 signed a letter urging Massachusetts to not outlaw gay marriage. Further, he had the personality of a cold fish. and his running mate was an empty suit with nothing to back it up- who couldn't even deliver his home State of North Carolina.... In short, you had a couple warm bodies running. At the time, Bush was still riding high off 9/11 and the Iraq war and americans were still angry at that; the war wasn't unpopular yet. Katrina hadn't happened yet, and Bush was still reasonably popular. So, of fucking course Kerry lost.

Hillary. Where do we begin? her emails? lets start there.

Sure, "HeR EmAiLs" and "LoCk HeR uP" is an idiotic rallying cry of MAGA morons everywhere. But, even so, she conducted official Sec of State business on a personal email routinely. It's such a great rallying cry because it actually has some teeth. it should be scandalous. Even if she was perfectly not-at-all-corrupt, it looks that way. I- and most everyone else- would be legitimately fired for conducting that level of business off a personal email. it should be 100% unacceptable. Not saying she should have been locked up or grilled the way she was. But seriously. It looked bad. and it played in the news.

Then we got Benghazi. an American ambassador died in a terrorist attack. There's some things that hindsight says they could have done differently. Republicans latched onto it for political theater, with 10 different investigations and multiple sessions of grilling Clinton, who even then was the presumptive nominee to replace Obama. there was some funding that her office denied, she might not even have been aware that "she" denied it. Hindsight's a removed. Anyhow... the republican shenanigans played well in the media.

Oh. "Super Criminals". Hillary was very unpopular with minority voters- particularly Black and Latinos. sound clips calling for law-and-order tough-on-crime calling black people "super criminals" didn't help. there was a lot there, especially with her attitude, but in the end they simply didn't show up for her. Even if you look at women voters, she under-performed compared to Obamma. (i mean, he looks mighty fine in a tan suit... sorry, sorry. couldn't resist.) Like, how unpopular do you have to be as a woman, to lose women voters from Obama's election, when you're running against Donald- "grab them by the pussy", "When you're that rich they let you do it", "Octopus-Arms" -Trump.

Lets also talk about how she boosted trump specifically because he was "a clown" or whatever. She gave us trump and then proceededly arrogantly not campaign in key states.

oh, and there's more that I just don't have time to get into... but we got Whitewater, Travelgate, filegate; and shit rolls down hill so lets toss in Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky scandals. Like there's a lot of smoke there, and there might be a couple fires, or maybe they're just really not that corrupt as people and it's all a big missunderstanding. but again, that plays in the media, and it looks bad. Hilary was the definition of The Establishment™️ running against an anti-establismhent candidate. Of fucking course she's gonna lose, and she really didn't help matters by fucking around with not campaigning in key swing states because, "naw, it's fucking trump".

Yup. so aside from Gore, there's really rather good reasons to have not liked them, and the DNC idiots thought they new better and ran them anyhow... and we got fucked because of it. blaming voters for your own stupid blunders seems to be a DNC favorite. And they're doing it again.

Right!?

Young and charismatic. That's all that is necessary for Dems to sweep elections. Proven time and time again. With a hearty message of progress and love.

It's that fucking simple.

(signed someone who ultimately voted for Hillary and Biden but they were far from my 1st preference in the primaries).

Edit: Typo.

It's not just the president, you need to vote for house of reps and Senate. Obama only had control for 2/8 years. In that time he got the ACA. The remaining 6 years of Obama the GOP were more than happy to block everything. They even shut down the government. If you need charisma to feed your emotions every 4 years, yeesh.

*Oh I caught on, it's the thiny veiled Biden bad, hinting he has no charisma and nobody wants to vote for him. "They just have to run someone else nudge nudge. Someone else to run the party wink wink." Nuts to that, Biden is doing great.

No!…it’s the voters who are wrong. Better blame theme some more, as that will surely boost our historically abysmal national voter turnout come November.

/s

I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary. And now we have an absolute joke of a Supreme Court that will suck every single nanoliter of jizz from the corporate dick any time day or night.

You're totally right they should just put their hand inside the magical candidate bag where all the charismatic candidates are stored, say the magic formula, and pull one out. How stupid can they be!

When the other side are fascists openly running on a platform of doing fascists, needing to feel excited to fall in line and vote against them just makes you a fascist who thinks they can get bribes out of it.

That is really the best way to put my frustrations. IT IS NOT MY FAULT YOU DON'T LIKE ME, ITS YOURS. It is literally a popularity contest and you are worried about losing to a criminal. But sure, we are the crazies, not you. This country has never needed another party so bad.

Who’s the DNC? We need names. Also the voters, i guess?

Because the DNC is conservative. They don't want a left leaning candidate. That's not who they intend to represent. They represent money. That is all. They will let the Republicans pull things to the extreme right and then they can hang out right of center and now there is no other choice.

Because the base likes centrist wet napkins. I'm not sure who you're picturing as the base democratic voter block but they're not exactly a bunch of radicals.

The DNC is bought by big money donors just like the RNC is. Those big money donors would rather see a fascist in charge than a socialist.

History repeats itself once again.

Reminds me of when the army tried to simplify uniforms by measuring a bunch of soldiers for data and making an average size medium, large, and small that ended up not fitting anyone well at at all.

People always trying to push Biden bad. This is the candidate that won. He is popular. This is what the base likes.

Everytime the Dems move left they lose. Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton. Bam lost the election. Thanks 3rd party voters. Hillary tried just a tiny little bit with the map room to fight climate change, after hopefully the population warmed up with Obama. Bam lost the election. Thanks protest no-voters!

Imagine what the landscape would be if they won. If you want the Dems to move left, you have to give them victories. Because when they lose, they go to the center to find voters.

That’s a great conversation to have the next time its relevant.

But it was stolen due to 5 hard right justices

Mmmm. Yeah.

Yeah seriously; this post sucks.

AOC for President with Biden as VP. It would destroy the Republicans... they'd have strokes within a few days. With Biden as VP all the boomers that actually like Biden will be onboard.

Yeah!

I would add that there ARE things you can do to help stop the genocide, that are not refusing to vote. I absolutely believe that the demonstrations, protest votes, calls to congresspeople, and so on, are part of what’s behind the changes to the US’s Israel policy recently (sanctions on settlers, pause in the weapons shipments, stuff like that - that’s nowhere near enough and no excuse for Biden’s support for Israel during the “war” and before it, but also, nothing ANYWHERE near that has happened in 75 years of consistently war-criminal support by the US for Israel).

All that stuff makes a difference and can help stop the genocide. Refusing to vote does nothing to stop the genocide and risks putting someone in office who is much much worse (actively wants to kill more Palestinians.)

Oh Trump would accelerate the genocide.

He has already said that they're taking too long and the Gaza strip makes for great beachfront property.

With Biden, at least the Palestinians might get a country of their own.

With Trump? They'll be buried under the condos overlooked by the Trump Tower.

Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won’t compromise on anything. That isn’t how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn’t happen in one election cycle.

It took fifty years of consistent Evangelical support, along with their advantage of low population density, to get to a point where Roe was overturned.

Politics isn't slow: It's glacial.

Very well said!

We only have 2 options for president.

This kind of thinking is how you end up with only two options.

A third option emerges when enough people say "I am not voting for either of those two".

You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.

Or, it means you're not okay with either.

We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP).

Canada has FPTP voting and still manages to have four federal political parties.

Australia has ranked ballots and effectively has a two-party system that hasn't changed in 80 years (though they do sometimes manage to get some independents elected to parliament)*.

I'm not saying the voting system is irrelevant. But the true obstacle to multi-party democracy is the fact that voters think in a polarized two-party way (that you are currently reinforcing).

* This is a description of Australia's House of Representives. Their Senate uses proportional representation, and does have more than two parties. And technically Australia has three political parties in the House of Representives, but two of them have been in a permanent coalition since 1946 and are often treated as a single entity, with the result that Australians consider themselves to have a two-party system.

You will be ok voting for genocide. Gotcha

I preferred Bernie and was excited for that. But Hillary was winning primaries in swing states that actually matter, like AZ, NV, FL, OH. Are you certain blaming the DNC on that one isn't to some extent right-wing propaganda? Repubs know how to drive a wedge if they see a popular runner-up.

You may have been taught in school that democracy is an ideal system. But when you become an adult you learn the truth about it. It's not actually about getting the perfect person that everyone agrees with in power. Because that's impossible, people don't agree on anything.

Democracy is really about preventing the worst people from having power. You will never be voting for someone that you 100% agree with because that's impossible, no one agrees on everything. But it's your duty as a citizen to determine who is are the worst people on the ballot and determine which way to vote to either remove those people from power or prevent them from getting it. That's what democracy really is. Welcome to adulthood.

Cross reference the states the conservative cutouts are winning in the primaries with whether or not they are swing states and number of EC votes, then get back to us. In 2016, Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. What do you want to happen for that shit, bank it on states like WV (+42 R) suddenly flipping blue?

Because there isn't an overwhelming swarm of people voting for anyone who isn't Repub, the Dems have to chase the reliable voters, who are more conservative.

It is the voters who are wrong, by staying home election after election or throwing their votes in the trash instead of pushing against the sliding window.

I don't like the Dem choices but IDK what the fuck else they are supposed to do once the primaries start. Running the candidate who wins with Dem voters in swing states makes sense as a strategy.

Aren't you saying that voters are wrong voting for candidates you don't like?

Bernie Sanders over here, consistently battling for the working man, despite both parties doing everything in their power to ignore him.

I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country

Me too. When will we nominate one of those?

I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country.

I actually think they do run most countries. Unfortunately they are scheming cowardly types without morals in addition to that.

She did a pretty good job sabotaging herself by cleaving the party in two and then expecting everypne to just forget about the viturol thrown at the left the entire time

Were they perfectly fair to him? No, they said mean things about him and gave Clinton some debate questions.

Did they sabotage him? Absolutely not. This narrative is pretty equivalent to the stupid baseless "they stole the election from trump!"

Obama also backtracked from Freedom of Choice Act immediately after entering office, which was a significant blow to the effort of protecting abortion rights.

That's the Democrat's only gambit. Never make any progress and keep as much rights as possible contingent on the next election to try to force people into accepting lesser evils.

God Obama didn't "let" him. It was in the hands of the Senate and there was nothing Obama could do. Stuff like you posted is revisionist history, and for what purpose?

So if non-voters in ohio, wisconsin, utah, et. al. would have voted. Right?

Al Gore

too centrist

I am fascinated to wonder who is upvoting this.

I mean, it’s true that the left base didn’t completely show up for him. Enough of them showed up that he won the popular vote and the electoral college, but if the vigorous activist left that was focused on WTO and GATT and other non electoral issues had been on the ground in the same way that Roger Stone’s machine was, they might have been able to stop Bush from stealing the election, and we might have had action on climate change back before it was too late, no global war on terror affecting hundreds of thousands of lives, no ISIS, no 2008 financial crash, and we might not have had all the failures to take US intelligence’s warnings seriously, that led to 9/11. Plus God knows what else actual forward progress.

Reframing “the US news media is so corrupted by propaganda that the average viewer can’t determine who is better between Gore and Bush, by a large enough margin to overcome a pretty blatant coup” as being all Gore’s fault somehow, is the most Lemmy-fake-leftist thing I’ve seen today, and I’ve seen someone praise the USSR’s justice system and someone else say that Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap.

“Too centrist”

Get the fuck out of here

You’re right about Hillary though, that part is true

Schrödinger's Left

Simultaneously stupid babies on the fringe who don't even warrant acknowledgement, AND the singular cause of every Democratic loss of the past 30 years - no adjustments to make, no lessons to learn, just blame the left and take 5 more steps right.

It's not that revisionist. I definitely remember "have a beer with him" being said.

In retrospect it was probably a phrase coined by the media to lure the lowest common denominator to GW. But it worked and it stuck.

Lin Manuel made a reference to this in "The election of 1800" in Hamilton:

Talk less! (Burr!)
Smile more! (Burr!)
Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for! (Burr!)
Shake hands with him! (Burr!)
Charm her! (Burr!)
It's 1800; ladies, tell your husbands, vote for Burr! (Burr!)

I don't like Adams!
Well, he's gonna lose, that's just defeatist
And Jefferson?
In love with France!
Yeah, he's so elitist!
I like that Aaron Burr!
I can't believe we're here with him!
He seems approachable?
Like you could grab a beer with him

I think this election is a little different in that we have a known threat that is significantly worse than the alternative. It's not an exaggeration to say that Trump is a threat to democracy and to anyone that doesn't want to live under religious law as interpreted by the Republicans.

The other candidate is harm reduction presidentially personified. That is the best choice we actually have, and the consequences for disincentivizing left leaning or undecided voters is much worse than Bush, and that's saying something.

Vote against Christ flavored dictatorship, and encourage others to do the same. And not some impossible 3rd party bullshit.

There's been a flood of these type of memes lately trying to voter shame.

Well ranted, and I don’t disagree but it’s simply the case that voters not showing up gave us the shitshow we now have. It would have been very different, and you can blame the candidates but the fact is none of them are Jesus or Batman or whothefuckever is going to be all things to everyone.

And, at this point, after 2016, i do not give a single fuck about it. Get to the polls vote Biden and removed after we’ve saved this country. Everyone gets a full three-and-a-half years to promote whatever their answer is, and if they don’t get it done by then, or have any other useful purpose, time to shut up and get to saving us from Idiot Handmaid’s Dream Reich.

This tweet or whatever - It’s not an academic treatise. It’s making the point that we can’t sit back again and let cheating fascist billionaire sycophants run away with it again. LIKE WE DID. Didn’t like Al Gore? Don’t care. Kerry too “stiff” for you? Shut the fuck up, we’re fighting goddamned war criminals. Hilary too - whatever - for you? Well no shit, me too but i’m voting for her anyway.

Be precious later. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW.

Accuracy is not the goal, smug indignation is. You never have to examine your beliefs if you just blame someone else for the loss.

She won the most votes so not sure how much of a difference that actually made. The problem is our dog shit electoral system.

Well “those voters” made the country and the world much, much worse than it could have been. So fuck them. Thanks a lot “those voters”. Shitheads.

TIL Dems are responsible for the EC, FPTP instead of proportional representation for Congress, the cap on number of representatives, gerrymandering, the decades of propaganda, Southern Strategy and so on. Thank you for informing me.

Yeah I ultimately do not like their choices. They have to run candidates who will win the swing states because a cult of rabid idiots who have more voting power per person than the rest of us consistently and reliably show up and vote entirely Repub from top to bottom of the ballot.

I mean, sure, fire the heads of the party and put new people in. Fuck 'em. But they aren't going to be able to win just by running candidates who appeal to the majority of the country, because the majority of the country's votes are diluted since they reside in densely populated cities. That's a sickening reality we all have to deal with.

It's Gerrymandering. That's the answer to the question: why?

A fucken men

Bernie would still win easily, but the Democrats would litterally watch the word burn before nominating a progressive.

At least gore had a chance until he got rat fucked by the Supreme Court and his opponents brothers state

They kind of did. Biden did a good job of shutting trump down instead of trying to have a normal debate like Hilary

I'm still hoping for TNG, but people forget they had to go through WWIII and being the Vulcans' pets before they got to space communism.

Rather Star Wars 20 to 0 BBY.

Which is quite similar to Firefly.

Idiocracy would be an optimistic variant, lots of positive idiots, killing each other mostly by incompetence, occasionally a plane falls from the sky.

IRL evil is not idiotic.

🍃

Change the Senate to population proportional seats and eliminate the electrical college. This country would change in a big way in a few years or less. Easier said than done though.

We would probably also not have a climate apocalypse to look forward to that will kill millions and displace billions.

Al Gore would have stopped 9/11

Kind of like how Clinton stopped the bombing in '93?

Wasnt uh.. Werent' the rules rolled back under Clinton? Glass–Steagall . Yeah that was it. Glass–Steagall, which basically separated commercial and investment banking.

Depends. Someone could have seen the writing on the wall and said hey we gotta do something before this goes nuts. Gore strikes me that he would have listened.