A gentle reminder to not blame your allies today. The only person you should blame for Harris's loss is Kamala Harris (and maybe Joe Biden).
[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @delaney_nolan, which says, "Biden/Harris saw this polling and decided to keep unconditionally arming Israel". Below the tweet is a screenshot from an article, which states: "In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they'd be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they'd be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely."]
Trump has repeatedly said Netanyahu can do as he pleases, has repeatedly disparaged all Muslims, has repeatedly shown a political kinship with dictatorships.
Biden/Harris were protest targets in spite of it being the entirety of Congress that votes on/gives foreign aid because these protests were propaganda bent on disenfranchising Democrats and nothing else. The protests will wither to nothing now that pants-sh1tter rapist is going to be president.
You were duped. You fell for it. Gaza has zero chance now.
You have to convince people to vote for you, you can't just rely on them voting against the other candidate. That's why voter turnout was lower than previous elections.
How many more elections will Democrats have to lose before they'll lean this lesson?
Trump has repeatedly said Netanyahu can do as he please
So has Harris.
Biden/Harris were protest targets in spite of it being the entirety of Congress that votes on/gives foreign aid...
It is the Secretary of State who brokers deals. Congress follows the Executive branches lead for MOST funding. The Secretary of State answers to the President and Vice President.
You were duped. You fell for it. Gaza has zero chance now.
They never had a chance. You made sure of that. And, I'M SPEAKING HERE, all of the people in this echo chamber are to blame. We had a key opening when Biden was ousted to make change happen, to demand an open convention, to force the party left, to force a viable candidate, but instead, all of you latched on to Harris' dick and went to war, not with Republicans (you guys apparently love Republicans, Love them Cheney endorsements, want em in the cabinet), you went to war with undecideds and pushed them third party.
This is your fault.
Edit: And even after the loss, the clowns here that call themselves mods are deleting my comments because people are actually upvoting them now, and it makes them salty.
Biden/Harris fucked up on more than just Gaza. Biden took action to address inflation, but Americans have continued to feel like their economic situation is worse off than it was 4 years ago. This is because grocery store and gas prices remain inflated, while the average American's income has stagnated. In short: corporate greed. Biden has done little to address corporate greed, and Harris did little to assure Americans that she would combat corporate greed or make Americans feel better about their personal finances. All evidence suggested that she would be even cozier with the billionaires than Biden was. Not hard to see why people stayed home when they felt like their choices were a billionaire and a billionaire-sympathizer.
In short, STOP BLAMING YOUR ALLIES. Trump's win is HARRIS'S FAULT.
Trump has repeatedly said Netanyahu can do as he pleases, has repeatedly disparaged all Muslims, has repeatedly shown a political kinship with dictatorships.
Right, and Harris shouted down protesters and wouldn't denounce genocide. So if you are voting on this one single issue, you probably decide not to vote for either candidate, because they both cross your red line. However, most voters aren't single-issue voters, and Harris didn't provide much else in the way of policy to excite voters. Just vibes-based messaging and the occasional neoliberal economic policy.
So I repeat: Trump's win is Harris's fault. She had all the cards, and she flubbed it because she didn't want to piss off her billionaire donors.
I feel like you as someone with pronouns in his bio should probably know that there are issues that the 2 available options differ in. So don't try to wash the blood of trans people, women and other minorities in the US off your hands. You're going to have to live with that because it ain't coming off
And Trump will be better for Palestinians how exactly? Anyone who prefers inane grandstanding instead of picking the lesser evil (no matter the topic) is a moron. That's how politics work. The ideal candidate doesn't exist and will never exist. If you ever come across one who 100% mirrors every single one of your opinions, get your head examined.
Edit: Also, every single credible poll out there indicates that American voters - idiotically - picked Trump due to their dissatisfaction with the economy. Middle Eastern wars were not high on the list of priorities for most voters.
Especially considering trump's opinion on them and Israel's stance on the election (wanting a trump victory) those should have been major red flags about a trump victory if you cared about Palestinians.
Voting the lesser evil is often how politics works. You pick the candidate you yu hate the least and try to mobilize more people in the future to get the policies you want.
The Israeli public should have realized that Biden actually helped them by not agreeing to every one of Netanyahu's whims, yet here we are.
I've seen far too many people parrot uneducated talking points like "America is arming Israel unconditionally", which has been very much not the case under Biden. Why are people ignoring that he, just to name one example, withheld arms deliveries and threatened more restrictions unless more aid shipments were allowed into Gaza and the humanitarian situation there improved? I'm generally pro-Israel, even though I detest Netanyahu, I believe that the wars against Iran's proxies are justified (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis all attacked first without provocation and none of them are anything other than murderous terrorist groups), but I have no issues with these kinds of demands.
I fear that without Biden/Harris, the sparring match between Israel and Iran might get much more heated than it is already, potentially even escalating into an all-out war. Trump has the potential to cause a great deal of instability in the entire region (which would impact the rest of the world as well) and dramatically increase the suffering of ordinary Palestinians, Lebanese and Israelis (as well as potentially Iranian civilians as well) by antagonizing Iran, by removing demands from the Israeli government to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, by performing stupid stunts similar to his administration's recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli territory (which will only inspire terrorist attacks and hostile acts from Iran), pulling back on pressure on the Houthis (because Putin might demand it), etc. pp.
World politics are messy, but at least under Biden, one could always assume that there was a reasonable, experienced politician surrounded by knowledgeable experts trying their best. They didn't always succeed and even where they did, the results were often imperfect, because we are not living in a perfect world, but there was a certain amount of reliability that one could count on. The second Trump term on the other hand will be a severely cognitively declining Trump surrounded by sycophant yes-men stumbling his way through and creating a new idiotic crisis every week, this time without the kind of "old-school" Republicans in key positions that prevented Trump from following his worst instincts the last time around. This applies to both the current wars in the Middle East and every other aspect of foreign and domestic policy.
you don't have to convince me, friend. The fact is, winning a national election involves building a coalition with people that you don't see eye-to-eye with 100%. The Dems don't have a great coalition to begin with - if they win their highly-educated base and nobody else, they lose the election 100% of the time. They have to win over other people, mostly the very few groups of undecided voters. And in this election, it was clear that one of the few undecided groups available were Arab-Americans that cared a whole lot about what has been happening on the West Bank. And Harris did fuck-all to court those voters, so they decided to stay home.
0.639% of the US population. This is a tiny minority of no relevance to American politics. Trump has 51% of popular votes already, not that this matters, because the districts that carry Trump to victory have few voters with this kind of background. Arab Americans could not have changed the outcome of this election, even if 100% had voted for Harris.
No, it can be more than one person's fault. It's Harris's fault, and it's also the fault of the people who decided fascism was an acceptable alternative to capitalist liberalism.
I mean, you could try to understand what led people to that POV, and then build a coalition with those people so we can win next time. Or, we could just sit here and point fingers at each other til the end of time while the GOP continues to court more and more voters to their corner.
I'm all for being angry about this. It's the day after the election, I've been anxious all day. It sucks. But let's point our ire at the correct people: the Republicans that voted for Trump, and the Harris Campaign that did a piss poor job of courting undecided voters.
Assuming we get a next time. There's a non-zero chance we never get anything beyond sham federal elections from now on. They own the supreme court, and the supreme court has shown it doesn't give a fuck.
There is no next time. Don't you understand? The people who hated Harris more than they hated fascism, voted in a dictatorship. The goal from here isn't to win the next election, it's to get our trans friends out and start a revolution. Trump's reign will only be ended by violence. We aren't getting centrists' and moderates' help with that. They are the enemy. They are the complicit citizens of a nation we are going to war with. Some of them will try to stop us, and we need to be prepared to kill them.
They made their decisions and you made yours. If you decided that we'd be better off with Trump, that's on you. Own it.
Putting Trump in office makes Gaza worse. He's promised us as much. Maybe you proved a point to the Democrats, and maybe you didn't. Maybe now they'll lean even harder to the center. Who knows. That's a gamble you took, and you made steep sacrifices to make that gamble.
Gambling with someone's life to make a political point does not make you their ally.
I steadfastly refuse to accept an apology on behalf of single-issue voters. Those abstentions and/or third party protest votes got us here. Anyone who refused to coalesce around (or at least hold their nose and vote for) the biggest "not Trump" candidate was failing to see or even acknowledge the bigger picture and larger threat. And now we all have to pay for that.
The electoral votes in a state go to the single candidate with the most votes. "Not Trump" was not a candidate. Furthermore, a third party candidate was never going to win. So, I will absolutely blame these so-called "allies" as I find them to be worse than the people who voted for Trump (at least they were honest about what they were doing).
I sincerely hope there is a future election where they have learned something from this. In the mean time, good luck everyone.
most of the people you have probably argued with online about Harris and genocide probably did in fact hold their nose and vote for Harris. The people that stayed home were young people and Arab-Americans that have become disillusioned with the Dems, and the genocide was just the last straw. Many people who voted for Biden 4 years ago have found that their economic situation is worse than it was 4 years ago. Harris did little to convince people that her policy would be substantially different from Biden's. Most of her campaign's messaging was vibes-based shit like "coconut-pilled" and "we all need to heal" and "Madam President". In the rare instance that she talked economic policy, it was clear that she would be like Biden, except with more neoliberal cozying up to corporations.
The people I know who are plugged into politics simply sucked it up and voted for Harris, because they are realistic about things. If you are following the news like that, it is obvious that Trump is worse in every way conceivable. Most Americans are busy, poorly-educated, and not that plugged into politics. They get their news from Facebook or TikTok. For those people, it is the candidate's job to bring them on-side. Harris failed at that, plain and simple.
How about instead of blaming the people that Harris failed to convince, we talk about how we can invite those people back into our coalition? Personally, I'm ready to throw the Democratic party in the bin and start something new.
this is where i'm at. Maybe instead of loudly shouting for months that people should just get over the genocide and hold their nose and vote for Harris, Harris and the Dems should have been working to convince Americans that she would actually work on the issues that people care about? Americans are feeling like things keep getting more expensive and while their wages stay the same - what was Harris doing to address that? What was she suggesting that didn't feel like a band-aid on the problems with our top-heavy economy? Some stayed home because of the genocide, but more than that, Americans just weren't convinced that Harris would do anything to improve their economic situation.
I apologize for nothing. I didn't vote for genocide, the stripping of trans rights, the building of cop cities, the placement of Republicans in the candidate, increased hostilities on the border. I have nothing to apologize for.
You, on the other hand, voted for all of those things and STILL lost. Why? Because those are right wing policies, and Republicans are right wing. If the policies are right wing, the Republicans win. That's how its always been. Not that hard to wrap your brain around.
We painstakingly spelled it out for you in slow motion for a year, and you kept your head lodged firmly up your master's ass.
So quite the opposite, I wouldn't accept the apology you lack the self awareness to extend me.
In the Weimar Republic, the Social Democrats (SPD) were the largest party as late as 1930, and had control thanks to a coalition with centrists.
In 1931, the Communists of Germany (KPD) -- who had long taken offense at the compromises of the SPD -- caucused with the Nazis to topple the Prussian government and remove the SPD from power, believing that Nazi rise would accelerate the collapse of capitalism and would trigger a "German October," a proper communist revolution that would eliminate the Nazis and solve the shortcomings of the SPD.
On April 1, 1933, the Executive Committee of the Communist International stated:
Despite the fascist terror, the revolutionary upturn in Germany will inexorably grow. The masses' defense against fascism will inexorably grow. The establishment of an openly fascist dictatorship, which has shattered every democratic illusion in the masses and is liberating the masses from the influence of the Social Democrats, is accelerating the tempo of Germany's development towards a proletarian revolution.
They were... incorrect. Their gamble cost 85 million lives, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced back to the knock-on effects of the war. Accelerationism is creating a monster to defeat an enemy you cannot, then being startled to discover you can't defeat the monster either, and then blaming your original enemy for the product of your own hubris. No matter how you justify it, no matter what issues drive you, refusing to find common ground and build coalitions against the fascists helps nobody but the fascists.
Hard to see people as allies who are willing to let the world burn because the only other option wasn't perfect. The campaign fucked up, for sure, but every voter that stayed home shares blame in this.
Same. I can’t see you as allies if you throw trans people, immigrants, disabled people and homeless people under the bus to protest a policy that will be even worse under the opposition.
A lot of people (probably the majority) that stayed home didn't do so because of Gaza. They did so because they are too busy to keep up with the news, and nothing they heard about either candidate was compelling enough to get up off the couch on election night. It was Harris's job to reach and then convince those people.
I'm sure the trans people whose lives are now in danger will sleep much better tonight knowing that the blood of those Palestinian children who are going to continue dying because Donald Trump has promised not to even try for a ceasefire isn't on your hands, because you didn't vote for Kamala Harris.
Nah. I'm blaming our American people for this shit. Isreal or not, it was absolutely stupid and embarrassing to let that senile dumbass back into the white house. I would have rather had a slice of buttered bread running the country than this embarrassment.
I'll remember how this was all Kamala's fault when Trump starts rounding people up. I'm sure it will bring me great comfort. I'm also sure it will bring great comfort to the people of Palesine because Trump DEFINITELY isn't going to keep arming Israel, and we know he's way more susceptible to public pressure than Harris would have been.
So so so many people keep pointing at Trump and saying "But he's the worst/we're all doomed/holy shit you need to vote blue no matter who" and comments about "perfect being the enemy of the good" so we should hold our nose and support Democrats.
I feel like I'm the only person who remembers how hyperbolic we all were about Mitt Romney or John McCain being existential threats to democracy. South Park literally made fun of everybody at the time pointing at how running such a divisive campaign let them distract the public from their real goal of stealing the Hope Diamond (obviously). How many of us would BEG for Romney at the top of the Republican ticket at this point?
So sure, Trump is the threat now. When are we supposed to stop rewarding mediocre neoliberalism then? If it wasn't 2016 or 2020 or 2024 then when? Trump will eventually die and some new Republican will take his place as the leader of the party. EVERY Republican will be the next existential threat and we'll be scolded and told to hold our nose yet again and vote for the Democrat. If someone can tell me the "end date" where I don't have to choose between the lesser of two evils, I'd love to know when that is.
I don't blame other citizens for voting how they do. Everyone has to decide for themselves their red lines for support and in the privacy of the voting booth who they want to support. I do blame Democratic leadership for not learning a single lesson from 2016 about hand picking candidates and browbeating everyone into thinking that's OK.
You're exactly right, and this is my point. I'd bet damn near everyone commenting in this thread voted for Harris. It doesn't matter, we aren't the swing voters. And the swing voters are the ones that decided this election. There is nothing we can really do to convince swing voters, unless they are already our friends or family. It was Harris's job to come out with bold policy proposals and messages that would convince those swing voters. Instead, she peddled the same milquetoast neolib shit that has been losing Dems elections since the 90s.
OK, how do we know we're "beating fascism" and can back off? What stops Democratic leadership from arguing that the most boring ass middle of the road fiscal conservative Republican on the planet is "Trump 2.0" and must be stopped?
I don't disagree on what you said at all, but so much of this is a war of messaging and marketing. If an amorphous "leadership" just keeps arguing the Republicans are all fascists regardless of what their actions/deeds/etc...actually suggest, how then do we push back on that narrative without being called a Russian plant or Republican sympathizer? In an age of clickbait, outrage manufacturing and people isolating in their own news spheres, it's super easy for those with power to just lie and stay in power.
So until failed neoliberalism stops failing, we have to keep supporting it? Seems a little backwards. If mediocre neoliberalism was beating fascism, I'd be more okay with getting behind it.
Why keep supporting the losers and thinking they'll miraculously turn into winners?
After Biden dropped out, I was cheerleading for Harris. I didn't like her policies, but she had much better chances than Biden, and it seemed like she understood what pitfalls to avoid.
Didn't matter. The DNC doesn't understand what is needed to win. They're still running a playbook from 1996. They think the undecideds are in between them and the GOP, when in actuality they're to the Left.
Instead, the DNC has now absorbed a bunch of "never Trumper" repubs who clearly aren't willing to vote for a woman, but will let a geriatric white guy eke out a win if you promise not to do the social justice.
I think the DNC being a "big tent" party has allowed it to accept a large number of very questionable supporters, who for instance won't vote for women, and who think that Cop City and broken windows policing is totally fine akshually, and whose jaws don't drop when someone says to "send social workers into the homes" of black parents...
Ultimately, we probably will never know exactly which demo(s) sat out, and everyone will end up just interpreting their own side as the right path forwards. Depressing stuff.
Neoliberalism doesn't beat fascism though and that's the point.
Fascism is capitalism's immune system to eliminate dissent and critical ideas.
And then when everyone is united against the fascists who've rounded up the socialists, the students, the ethnic and sexual minorities, Neoliberalism steps back in, wipes the blood off of its hands, and says "wow, wasn't that bad. Let's stick with me from now on".
Fair point. It's the day after the election. Anger is a valid emotion. Today, I'm choosing to direct my anger at the Harris campaign for doing fuck-all to court undecided voters. Not the people in this thread; I suspect almost every American here went to the ballot box and voted for Harris/Walz, regardless of their opinions about Israel.
When I say "undecided voters", I mean the single mothers in Pennsylvania that are so completely underwater because they have two jobs and everything is so expensive now and they probably have medical debt and other bills weighing them down. The people that don't have time to watch every Harris interview and decide whether or not they are "coconut-pilled". Those people saw what Harris was selling, and the message they received was "more of Biden, who did fuck all for me". In the face of that, and when you have to move heaven and earth just to get the time to go vote, why would you bother?
I mean, if you're referring to the people that voted for Trump, I'm right there with you. It's absolutely mind-boggling that a rapist and convicted felon won the popular vote.
I mean, I feel like it is quite fair to blame the people who voted for Trump for Harris's loss tbh. I don't really buy the "the dems would win if they didn't just refuse to try to win over conservatives and instead promised to go all-in on progressive policy that I've seen lately. I wish we got more progressive policy too, but it's not like they don't have any idea what people want, they have whole teams of people whose job it is to figure out that kind of thing. If promising some more progressive policy was a clear winner, why wouldn't they do it? The answer I generally see implied or stated is that the dem establishment doesn't want that policy, but that isn't really an adequate explanation, because politicians are perfectly familiar with dishonesty. If supporting some progressive policy they didn't like would win them power, they'd just promise it and then just not do that thing upon getting elected. It's happened for state and congressional races before, so it's not like that's never been thought of.
I don't think Harris's loss is down to refusing to say the right words to inspire her base or anything like that, it's down to the fact that, somehow, Trump is very good at inspiring his. She gave it a decent shot, but it's very hard to win an election against a massive cult of personality. He, and the people that support him, are the problem here.
If promising some more progressive policy was a clear winner, why wouldn’t they do it? The answer I generally see implied or stated is that the dem establishment doesn’t want that policy, but that isn’t really an adequate explanation, because politicians are perfectly familiar with dishonesty. If supporting some progressive policy they didn’t like would win them power, they’d just promise it and then just not do that thing upon getting elected.
Because their personal motivations are not "maximize the chances for a Democratic win", but preserve the power of themselves and their allies with money and influence. If these policies become a centerpiece of the election and broadly popularized, it becomes dangerous to ignore it and advances the saliency regardless of the outcome, pushing it closer to someone actually doing it. A campaign that says "the rich are abusing workers to fill their pockets and the government should tax their wealth until there are no billionaires and provide benefits to the workers" is dangerous to the rich people, even if its initially proposed by someone with no intention of following through.
In an election with stakes like this one though, doesnt maximizing their chances for a win also serve that? Like, being rich offers you some protection from the law, especially in a corrupt regime, but when the other side is an actual authoritarian, half-assing it so that they win while also being publicly against them is dangerous to one's personal safety. Even rich people dont tend to get away with being against authoritarians, when they are in charge. If all you care about is power and influence, and you dont actually have any values beyond that, and one side is an authoritarian, then being on their side serves your interest, and being put in power to stop them serves your interest, but publicly failing to stop them puts a target on your back and gives you no power and influence by which to ward it off.
The same thing is looking like it's going to happen in Canada
Current Liberal government is going to hold out all support for a genocidal country doing genocidal things for no apparent obvious reason and any moderate voter out there will avoid them for them it.
It doesn't matter what your politics are ... if your political party openly and wholeheartedly wants to support something that does no benefit to your country, ruins the lives of others and supports a maniacal regime, and does it at the cost of millions and billions of dollars -> why would you want to vote for them?
I don't get it .... sure Israel is pretty important but why would political leaders obviously tank their entire prospects just to save the support of a country that has very little to do with their own other than to cost everyone money.
I want to build a broad-based coalition that marginalizes these fascists so we never again have to choose between a fascist and a genocide-enabler. But nah, let's just stay in our echo chambers and tear each other to shreds while society crumbles outside.
Good question - I did some digging. It seems the poll was commissioned by IMEU and conducted by YouGov, who has historically been a high-quality pollster. The poll seems to have taken place in late August. IMEU has this article on their site about it. I am not seeing any article on YouGov's site, but frankly their site is a bit difficult to navigate.
Having trouble seeing those who (non-)voted for ending democracy, women's rights, and oppression of LGBTQ+ and non-christians as allies. Not enthusiastic about the candidate? I don't care. If they're going to do less harm, they're the only ethical choice. The basic numbers showed that one of two candidates would win. Ignoring that and the suffering that would be caused to vulnerable groups by one candidate for ideological purity is a hard thing to forgive.
And I can't respect those that are willing to selfishly sacrifice others for their own sense of moral purity, rather than pragmatically save as many as possible. Actions and choices speak louder than any philosophical statement and allowing fascism, all-out genocide of the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples, and oppression of women and LGBTQ+ to win speaks loudly of one's character.
The people you want to blame aren't here in a politics community. Maybe a few posters here did a protest vote, probably in a safe state where it didn't matter, but most people here voted. The people who didn't vote (in numbers meaningful to winning) weren't sitting down to think about what the world would be like in each outcome and then saying "eh, it's fine either way", they were marginal voters who just didn't really think it was important because politicians either don't care about them or don't follow through on promises. They're just going to check out when you call them or the other politician names, because it's a tiring endeavor that they don't care about. You definitely have people in your life that say "they're not political" and check out as soon as politics is brought up. You're never going to reach those voters by expressing your disdain in a forum for politically engaged people, the only way to get to them is to actually motivate them to vote en masse with legit campaigns to inspire them that their lives will get better if they take this action.
Sorry but is there a source for this poll? I’m curious how this data was collected? (And am always skeptical of data cited in a toot without a source).
Edit: Just saw it is said to be YouGov survey from
June with a small sample size, although no link is provided.