This is why I hate group projects

I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you're doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.

Trickle down, but for voting too!

Oh, and I guess that's what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.

It only works in aggregate.

It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think

that's that what they call every week, when a mass shooting happens, right?

I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.

What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.

Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our "way of life"?

Show me the part where it mitigated giving the entire government to nazis

Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.

Plus the "shitty health care" you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.

All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.

Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.

He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it's not great healthcare, it's still better than before.

That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra "pro-life", which means abortion rights weren't gonna happen.

Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.

But let's not let facts get in the way of our outrage or anything.

Obama had a filibuster proof majority for a grand total of 73 days and they did Obamacare. Dems haven't had that since.

No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.

The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It's not the left that's refusing to compromise.

And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party

There's no room for our system to allow a third party in. They'll just be crushed by the two other parties. It's a rigged system. Money wins. No other party will have the money to win state votes and keep them.

A literal monkey elected to office would do less harm than Trump and the modern Republican party. We can keep arguing that the Dems are the lesser of two evils but until they radically change and grow a spine it's only delaying the inevitable descent into chaos.

As for Dems responding to protestors, are you forgetting so soon how the Dems responded to the Palestine protesters over the summer?

Harris Democrats saw their constituents mad at them and they responded by telling them to go fuck themselves, so I find your analysis questionable.

Why do people pretend that each election is in isolation? That if somehow we had all just voted for Harris even harder that America wasn't headed down this path anyway. This shit has been a plan of American politics since Ronald Reagan.

I'm not an "accelerationist" by any means. But it's just silly to act like this is a problem with voter turnout and only if we had "voted harder" it would all be fine. No. The entire system is fundamentally broken. That's how we got here.

TBF I voted extra hard for Harris and I'm still wondering why Democrats are voting yes on Trumps cabinet picks and why an 83 year old Bernie Sanders is out drumming up the masses while Hakeem Jefferies tells Jon Stewart that we're all too stupid to know how amazing Democrats are.

ALSO, Democrats don't seem to give a shit about the genocide, including you. So IDK what the fuck you expect me to say. I voted for harm reduction because I knew exactly what Trump was going to do, but that doesn't mean I gave up all of my rights to complain about the shit job that Democrats do.

Can I complain about the fact that the Biden/Harris admin prioritized continuing a genocide over beating Trump?

So disingenuous. The DNC targeted voters that don't even exist. Their strategy on the economy was to gaslight voters and tell them that nothing would change from the president who had a 38% approval rating. A president who spent 4 years yelling at then that everything was fine in the middle of a housing crisis with record inflation.

The whining about "unfair" criticism is unbelievable. Give me a break. The Democratic leadership is completely out of touch with voters. Kamala never should've let them run her campaign.

"That something" also included the largest medicare expansion in history and $25k first time homebuyer assistance.

"We offer nothing" and "nothing will change" are fundamentally the same thing when things are objectively bad.

Keep telling yourself the voters are morons until we lose in 2026 and 2028. If Democratic candidates don't convince people to come out and vote we are lost.

But that's the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn't do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.

Also, I don't think the Democrats are suffering. They're all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.

I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.

The country doesn't want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.

That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.

Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should've had none.

This is a little bit dishonest. It's not about the length of time you support a party but how much general support they have. You absolutely should support third party and grow the voter base on local and state and even push for larger support. But the spoiler effect is very real. In major elections where voting third party will elect the individuals most likely to harm you and your lifestyle in the most severe ways, and it is extremely obvious that third party has no real horse in the game, you hurt more than yourself. I agree Dems either need to figure their shit out and cut out the cancer or they need to get the fuck out of the way, but until third party candidates stand a real chance at national change for good, i will only be voting for them in elections they either stand a chance in or where showing support for them will help grow the voter base while limiting harm. Mid terms, vote 3pt. Primaries, vote 3pt. General election? Vote to minimize harm while maintaining a potential win.

I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.

However... there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn't win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won't be listing the republicans on my ballot)

So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that's on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.

or put forward more progressive Democrats,

Beat this drum.

SHOW UP TO THE FUCKING PRIMARIES.

I remember it being fucking dead in my polling place back in 2020 for the primaries compared to the general.

Weird how the Greens who get less votes than the Libertarians in every election somehow throw the vote to Republicans, when the Libertarians:

• Are in all 50 states, the greens often are in just over half
• More voters are registered Libertarian than any other third party since the 1980s
• More people voted for Libertarian than Green in 2000, 2016, and 2024
• Yet somehow Green voters are blamed in all of these despite if every Green voter was given to Democrats they wouldn't have won, but Libertarian votes would have
• And you never see Democrats getting mad at the serious third party that people actually vote for in swing states, but they have taken ideas from the Green party like the Green New Deal

Harris made it a performative point to tell her anti-genocide constituency to go fuck themselves at every campaign stop because by god she was going to continue arming a genocide and you're gonna fucking like it, just like her friends from the GWB administration and Congress do.

They literally did that though. See the Obamas shitting on black people who dont immediately have the impulse to vote for kamala.

People throw this terminology around too lightly. If you truly lived in a fascist dictatorship you wouldn't say a word about it as you and those around you would be taken off at gunpoint never to be seen again. Either deleted or placed in some labor camp until you expired.

Get fucking angry, show some humanity, entertain, drive views, algorithm pushes your content, you brainwash the idiots instead of letting your opposition.

i dont necessarily agree with this, it's going to make things worse, sure abuse the environment while you can, the kamala campaign literally did that, and it worked great. It just didn't provide turnout.

I don't know why you went out of your way to use the mocking "gEnoCiDe sUpPoRtErS" while, when, an actual genocide was being committed. You can disagree with the strategy of not voting for genocide supporters in elections, and there may even be compelling reasons when the alternative is trump, but mocking the people who prioritise not supporting genocide isn't a very high moral ground in my opinion.

More than attempting for third parties to win, the whole "conditioning the vote on an end to genocide" was attempted at forcing the democrat administration to end the genocide under threat of losing the elections, not "let's make sure that X third person gets elected". The democratic party was clear: we will not compromise in our support of genocide even if it costs us the elections. So they lost.

And you insisted that they had no value and weren't worth listening to anyway so fuck em

"Untested" reads like a major endorsement compared to establishment Dems.

If you've got a time machine, feel free.

The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn't control every branch of government, but doesn't have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can't stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.

In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of "we aren't the Republicans" can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.

Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.

Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.

And I can't say that I blame them. Biden's presidency... or his campaign... or Harris' campaign...

It was a shit-show all the way through. Maybe next time the Democrats should try catering to their voter base.

Yes, and that does not imply what the democrats think it does.

I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to "pick a side" even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.

America, you did this. Stop trying to make it someone else's fault.

If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!

If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!

If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!

This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don't have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don't care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.

Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).

Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.

Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column....

it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.

Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:

Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!

A serious third party needs to start with congressional seats. Not the presidency.

So when people promote voting reform and making a third party we won't be called splitting the vote and enabling Trump, right?

Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn't even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.

Also, you genuinely need to look up, "unanimous consent." It's a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It's one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump's agenda if they had the willpower.

Separate reply, this isn't tiny marginal bullshit, we're talking millions of votes

I don't disagree, but not like my preferred candidate was on the ballot, I still voted tho...

Assuming that the third would be biased toward one candidate rather than being probably just as evenly divided as those that did vote.

We know the restrictive voting laws were biased. We do not know that the "didn't bother to vote" has the same bias.

This is bullshit and this group is likely just out there to cash in on the election. What they claim to be suspicious patterns is just basic statistics.

If machines have a higher number of votes it is just to be expected that the spread of the results get smaller and towards the end result. The larger the sample size, the smaller the spread.

And the early voting machines had up to 250 votes per machine, whereas the election day machines only had around 125. At least in the graphics this group used in their own report. If you scale the graphic of the early machines only until 125 votes per machine they look similar.

Also on election day there were about 3000 machines as opposed to 1000. And here another basic truth comes up. If you repeat a sampling more often, the distribution of results becomes more even.

These guys are just describing basic statistic effects and claiming them to be suspicious, probably to collect donations and run with the money. Also their website is dubious about who they are exactly and what their credentials are.

There is legitimate criticisms and leads to investigate, but these guys are not one of them.

Beyond the statistical realities that Saleh mention, the general point about drop-off is also weird.

It implies that the GOP cheated, but declined to cheat in down ballot. This seems odd, if they had the will and capability to just change the votes, why would they skip the down ballot elections? Further another similar site pointed out the drop-off was uneven, that it was suspiciously higher in Montana than Michigan. To imply the GOP cheated more in Montana? When your theory indicates a bigger effort to cheat in a safe state than a swing state, then there's something going on.

The drop-off effect is easily explained by the reality that people weren't voting for a Republican or a Democrat, they were voting for or against Trump. That mindset is wholly separate from Republican v. Democrat. It's almost an Apples v. Oranges to try to compare a race with Trump to it to any other race (which is why the GOP is desperate to run him again, because even they don't understand how he engages the base and he is a useful idiot).

I'm glad to see it investigated and I wish that the voting populace didn't do what they did (and accept that without the suppression, the results might have gone the other way). However I don't think fraud has been proven in any significant degree.

Perhaps the democrats should emphasize vote in person on election day if at all possible, and mail-in is a last resort, rather than saying "voting is easy, just mail it in". It's obvious that they are having great success in discarding legitimate mail-in ballots the way they see fit.

Good potential* evidence to add to the pile, thank you for bringing it up!

Edit: *

Which is fucking terrifying and why I've (and others) been screaming that nobody is coming to save us, we have to save each other. Put down the identity stuff for now and rekindle the militant labor movements we used to have in this country. Withholding our labor is the only way out of this - they need us a lot more than we need them.

We would need a constitutional amendment, meaning state ratification. Ain't no way that's happening.

The Democratic Party actively crushed attempts at ranked choice voting. What planet are you on?

Edit: Its fine to downvote but lets not pretend it didn't happen https://dcist.com/story/23/08/07/dc-democrats-sue-to-stop-ranked-choice-voting-initiative/

then you can start a fucking civil war over it, it's literally the law, federally, and in most states.

Exactly. Democrats are better than Republicans by a long shot, but they're paralyzed by rich oligarch capture.

And tens of millions of Democrats didn't vote.

No, they have had power but they have absolutely shitty leaders who defend capital above all else.

Look at Jeffries right now....do you think McConnell ever said "oh well, what can we do?...we have no leverage. We're not gonna bother swinging at every pitch."?

And Schumer...JFC what a milquetoast fucking wimp. Doesn't fight ANYTHING; just wants to hold votes to "get (GOP) on the record" as obstructionists. What a fucking pussy.