I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
Exactly this! You can’t just “lesser of two evils” your way through life as you slide towards hell. “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a choice, it’s a hostage situation.
I had some vote blue no matter who nitwit yelling at me the other day about this. i asked them what are we supposed to do when 2028 is Mitt Romney (D) vs Trump ®. They said you vote Romney.
People who voter shame others when both parties have crossed their personal morals are the reason the Democats don’t ever run on anything substative. They have forgotten they have to earn votes. They’re not owed.
And they have forgotten that when they lose, real people suffer deeply for it. The democrats sin of apathy is often worse than the republican sin of cruelty. At least the republicans are honest about how they want to screw over the country.
Here is Chomsky explaining why yes, that is the more logical choice
https://chomsky.info/an-eight-point-brief-for-lev-lesser-evil-voting/
I had some nitwit self-described Chomsky-anarchist the other day who sounded a lot like you, went real quite after I shared that.
Choosing the bigger evil ain’t the way out of it though. Unless you are an accelerationist that believes things have to get worse before it can get better.
You can’t get out of a hostage situation by making out with either of the two bank robbers.
no one is making out, but you if it’s life or death you would listen to their demands until help arrives/opportunities arise.
This ‘logic’ (and metaphors are not logic) is why help isn’t coming.
then are people actually punching the robbers themselves?
The reality right now is the bigger robbers are now taking things even more brazenly.
By not voting, you are telling both robbers “both of you are free to do whatever you want”
God I hate the stupidity of blue MAGA.
I did vote. You don’t know me.
Your stupidity, and the reason you can justifiably be called blue MAGA, is that you don’t understand what the primary responsibility of the politician is, and instead blame the political parties failures on the voters. Because the Democratic Party can never fail. They can only be failed, right?
There is one group that can and should be blamed for identifying, and then happily handing power over to fascists. Hint: it isn’t the voters.
Blaming the voters is some Stockholm syndrome level bullshit to protect the campaign consultants and other unelected assholes that got rich off of this loss. That is who you are protecting.
The lesser of the two evils didn’t go after the bigger evil, offered nothing, said the economy was doing great as people suffered higher rent and groceries, and then wondered why people listened to the lying devil saying that they would fix their problems.
They don’t want to offer solutions, they want votes.
Yeah. No matter how I look at it, this seems to be the only real solution that would have helped.
Gaza was bombed into a parking lot under the Biden admin. Harris was going to continue Biden’s policies. Liberals are just mad because now the policies Trump is implementing affects them. They never cared about Palestinians.
They gleefully wanted blood on the ground, they’re just upset it’s not them doing it. Now they can pretend to care again.
Give them something to vote for.
This. We saw the energy and joy when Biden dropped out, and it was reflected by Harris almost matching Obama’s small donor numbers. Hope. Change. They were simple campaign slogans, but people coming out of the Bush era wanted to believe, and had a candidate to believe in.
It’s a damning indictment that my most genuine electoral engagement, in my entire adult life, was voting “Uncommitted” in the 2024 Democratic primary. That was my most enthusiastic, “I 100% support this” vote ever, because almost every other time has been against something/one, or accepting lesser. From ballot initiatives, Senate races, down to the local comptroller chair.
Contrast that to my vote for Kamala in the general afterwards. It’s so unbelievably hollow to say “our democracy is strong” when the choice is always ‘well they’re better than them’.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
If they could have resurrected a Unicorn live on stage and it could have magically cured cancer in the radius as thanks: people would still be shitting on them all over the internet.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
Money out of politics? From the DNC? Do you seriously believe this? When was the last time Hardis talked about this in her campaign?
They voted on campaign finance caps and limitations in 1995 and 2002 which passed and was sued by Citizens United in 2007 when 5 republican leaning SCOTUS judges struck it down as unconstitutional, and the DNC tried to pass more campaign finance laws recently with HR 1 For the People Act in 2019 and 2021 and again as Freedom to Vote Act in 2021 and 2023.
So yes, the DNC have actively attempted to pass campaign finances for over 20 years. That’s a core part of their platform.
Admittedly I didn’t know that, but also where was any of that in their 2024 platform? When was the last time Harris included getting money out of politics in her campaign speeches?
I think they focused too much on emotions and cowboys in their advertisements as well, but it’s not like they never stated their intentions. People just don’t talk about this stuff in social media, these days, and thats sadly exactly where most people hear about politics in general.
The reason I’m asking is that the Harris campaign progressively dropped or watered down its promises throughout the campaign. For example the wealth tax promise started out good (I don’t remember how much) and ended up as an unfulfilled Biden-era promise. Statements or promises from the early part of the campaign, let alone from before the campaign, don’t reflect the choice voters had at the ballot box. One example would be the DNC going from rejecting the border wall to promising to build it.
The US Tax Laws dont expire until 2026.
Trump and the GOP wrote the last round in his previous term and we gave him the power to write this next round as well.
The fact is despite all of the great bills passed under Biden and all the great things the regulatory bodies did by going after big businesses, we gave them a neutered congress that couldnt even pick a senate majority without VP Tiebreaker, much less clear the 60 votes needed to bypass filibuster.
The Democratic platform is really quite leftwing. It contains things like increasing the minimum wage, getting money out of politics etc etc. The problem is in how they run campaigns. The role of consultants is far too big, and this lets the GOP set the agenda.
Example: The GOP talks about the border constantly->media reports on the border-> voters in focus groups report caring deeply about the border->Dems campaign on the border (arguably their weakest point).
If Kamala had campaigned heavily on healthcare (say expanding Medicare), she could have shifted part of the focus away from the border and towards healthcare (the GOPs weakest point), which shifts the momentum.
The same happened with many other topics. The campaign talked about the economy (whatever that means, but somehow voters associate this with GOP), rather than raising minimum wages or building homes (a strength of Dems). Climate change was never even mentioned throughout the campaign.
Dems have to find a way to lead the conversation, rather than follow a conversation set by the GOP or they will never win.
The DNC platform in general has a lot of leftwing policy yes. However, they’re very… noncommittal about it. The party leadership is a bunch of geriatric centrists who only pass some progressive policy among an ocean of status quo centrism. However, that part alone is… fine. It’s not good, but not really a big problem. The big problem is how they sideline their leftwing platform whenever there’s an opportunity where they think they can do that without being flayed by voters, such as in this election. I’ll paste my reply to the other guy here.
The reason I’m asking is that the Harris campaign progressively dropped or watered down its promises throughout the campaign. For example the wealth tax promise started out good (I don’t remember how much) and ended up as an unfulfilled Biden-era promise. Statements or promises from the early part of the campaign, let alone from before the campaign, don’t reflect the choice voters had at the ballot box. One example would be the DNC going from rejecting the border wall to promising to build it.
Part of this is bad campaigning, yes, but it’s also undeniable that they actively attempted to shift to the right in this election. They didn’t campaign on progressive economic policy because, if they did, they’d find themselves obliged to make good on at least some of those promises, which would piss off their donors. I mean remember the “nothing really comes to mind comment”? Talking about the wrong things is one thing, but when asked about the right things the Democrats gave very wrong answers.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media. Their messaging isn’t great and I’ve seen a lot more left-leaning youtube channels talk about them but not outside of that.
Then again, I’m also not American so I don’t know.
Lastly, the non-voters are as much to blame in my opinion. If you didn’t know you should have voted, that’s on you.
Giving subisidies to green energy companies and improving the GDP doesn’t tangibly improve people’s lives in 4 years and that’s what people wanted.
It also takes longer than 4 years to rebound everyone out of the spiral Trump left the nation in. I think messaging around realistic goals and checkpoints could go a very long way to allowing people to understand no President is going to save everyone in a single term, or probably in 2 terms, especially if they have a crater to climb out of just to start at zero. Real change is a long term goal, it would take multiple administrations working towards a goal.
Americans are not educated enough to understand any of that.
They’re hurting finantially, so they get mad and vote out the incumbent.
Democrats push policy like the avg american went to their ivy league schools.
It’s not even really that, it’s just that home loans of like 10,000 to people who have made rent for the past 2 years and have a salary of over 80,000 but not over 200,000 and own a small business and own at least 2 cats but not over 3 cats and have a birthmark in the shape of a strawberry, isn’t very enticing or hopeful policy. Neither is campaigning with liz cheney when like 200,000 people are being killed with US bombs.
That’s sorta the problem with the Harris/Walz campaign, and why I’m thinking this was malice rather than stupidity. Their policy on their website and a lot of the early rhetoric was very progressive, which led to Harris getting the highest single day of donations and the largest number of small donations the DNC has ever seen.
After the money had poured in from all us poors, including my $20, the campaign started shifting its message further and further rightward to appeal to more and more corporate donors, all the while still asking progressives for more money. Eventually, the speeches being given stopped matching the previously posted policy platform at all, and we started to get the absolute insane shit like Obama telling black men to fall in line.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media.
The problem is that they made big promises in the early Harris campaign, then continuously abandoned them and watered them down until the campaign became a shadow of its former self. Equally problematic is that they continued to shift to the right and adopt policies that are unpopular with their base. I mean remember the border wall? And of course let’s not ignore the elephant in the room that was Gaza.
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I was, I think pretty obviously, talking about their 2024 election platform here.
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“DNC gave me nothing in return so I’ll let the US slide out of democracy”
Smart. Those pissed off voters? Fuck them.
How do you change voter behavior?
You don’t. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it’s to change the rules to what the people want. If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.
It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza
Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted
so why arent we pointing the finger at them?
Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.
I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.
On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.
On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.
Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: You don’t run for office with the electorate you want, you run for office with the electorate you have.
Well that’s a lie, with voter suppression and gerrymandering you can have your dream electorate!
Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.
On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.
On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.
Most Americans align closer with progressives than any other group when it comes to policy. But messaging has been coopted by the Republicans to make people instinctively hate “socialism” because of the Red Scare Propaganda.
But Democrats block progressive policy because it makes their donors angry.
So really there’s nobody willing to represent the majority
I’ve become pretty skeptical we know where the majority is. The question determines the outcome of the survey. The measuring stick is flawed and error bars are many times larger than the difference being measured. Frankly, the thing being measured has more dimensions than are being measured.
And it’s worth remembering how the party got here. The left and labor coalition failed to beat Nixon twice, Ford’s losing had little to do with the left, and it utterly fell apart against Reagan. The Democrats only started to get traction at the national level by going to the center, using the DLC playbook. I’m as angry about the abandonment of labor by the Democratic party as anyone, but the reason for it is not a mystery. By the same token if the left doesn’t build the structure for a more left leaning Democratic party to operate no one should expect the party to move.
The hard thing is, I don’t know what that structure looks like, but it’s not enough to be “correct”.
YOU’RE skeptical.
Stop projecting because you are too lazy to go learn about the world around you.
I’ve read it. Many times from many outlets reporting on more than one survey. The first time I found it comforting.
However it’s not hard to find conflicting data. Methodology determines outcomes of these surveys, every time.
Today I’m less comforted. But ultimately, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re that far apart.
Saving. That survey is hard to find if you don’t search the right terms.
And yet they would not turn out to nominate Bernie… Talk about lazy.
Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can’t use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.
You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.
The Republicans understand this.
This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education
If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.
If you can’t do that, it’s not democracy. It’s a charade to pacify to public and manufacture legitimacy for the current regime.
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That’s not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Cool. Neither party was palatable for a huge amount of people, wonder why.
Let’s say you’re completely right. How does insulting people’s poor choices 4 months ago help us in the present? We can’t create resistance and solidarity if we hold grievances from the past.
Or worse, to exacerbate racial tensions, is one possibility I fear.
If you agree with them, then why did you post this?
it’s generating productive discussion
also there’s nothing really to “agree” with or not; it’s a question only and I have been doing my best not to come down with immediate judgement toward those answering the question
Gives some serious “just asking questions” vibes.
The image definitely provides a pretty clear perspective. People seem to be reacting to either agreeing or disagreeing with that perspective. Why is the main focus on those that abstained rather than on those that voted Trump? I don’t really see any productive conversations happening. Just the same people reiterating the same talking points. The data makes it clear that Gaza was not a big issue for voters, and no one is really going to change their mind on either side of that even if it WAS the deciding factor in the election. This seems like a distraction and a great way to sow division.
Yeah. I thought this sort of shit would’ve been cut down after those CIA layoffs trump did or whatever, or, that’s what everyone’s been jokingly saying, at least. Probably it’s more along the lines that social media companies keep selectively propagating this shit because they’re a revolving door with those three letter agencies anyways. Saw a LOT of black liberals posting with starbucks cups and mcdonald’s after the election, and talking about how they want to buy beachfront property in gaza, because the michigan vote didn’t come through for Kamala. Most of those people probably weren’t conforming to the boycott in the first place, and more broadly didn’t give a shit at all, but still, incredibly harrowing stuff, there.
Anyways yeah I agree with the other guy, if you wanted to spurn discussion, you probably would’ve been better off posting some shit that’s not like, immediately just blaming the protest votes? Is in better faith more generally? Probably wouldn’t gain as much traction exclusively because of that, as is the case with the site, but you’d at least not be contributing to that sort of bad faith discussion as much, which I think the initial post is doing.
Well, no, because I’ve been asking myself the same question for a while now. And I don’t have that agenda. Lol
It isn’t a straw man, it is observation .
Y’know what this thread has made me realize? All the dumb memes of “the left fighting the left” are bullshit. I can respectfully debate other people on the left with me. I can change their minds about some things, they can change my mind on some things, we can come to compromises. I don’t agree with the communist 100%, but I agree with them at least 70-80%, and would happily work alongside them to accomplish that 70-80%.
You know who loves infighting though? Centrists who have deluded themselves into thinking they are leftists. You can find comment after comment in this thread from right-leaning centrists, gleefully demanding that they were “right all along” and how everything is our fault for just not being as smart as them. There is no political group that loves infighting as much as them, even more than the fascists. They want to spend the next four years trying to find out all the ways they can assign blame to the left, instead of organizing and doing anything.
I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
There was definitely a large amount of foreign influence pushing that narrative.
Everything I don’t like is a psyop
It’s not wrong to say that the right/outside actors made the issue more pervasive, but let’s not exonerate the “adults in the room” who decided it was better policy to unflinchingly support war criminals and a slow motion genocide, instead of defusing the wedge issue and forcing Bibi’s hand. Israel is nothing without US political support and weapons. Recognize “who’s the fucking superpower” and act like it when your client state gets out of line in a way that’ll cost you domestically. China does it with North Korea all the time when they got testy. Russia routinely interferes with domestic politics of CSTO members.
Nor should we pretend that all criticism was astroturfing. Some of us wanted to drop Biden before “we beat Medicare” made him obviously unelectable. And called it that Harris was going to lose swing states like Michigan for maintaining Biden’s posture on Israel. If team blue is all I can realistically vote for, I’m going to call out shitty policy that loses elections and kills voter enthusiasm. It’s up to you to listen and understand that we need to do better
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn’t want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on “our team”.
I get that; I do. But there was no better alternative. I’m all about changing our electoral system, but at the time of an election is not the time to do it. How is Trump better than Joe of Kamala?
He’s not, don’t get me wrong. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris still supported genocide. If I voted for her, I’d have been voting for this fundamentally evil policy. Frankly, I’m not interested in doing that, and I stand by that.
By not voting for her, you enabled even worse for Gaza AND the dismantling of the US government and protections for many folks like transgender people and women. Great work.
A vote for Kamala is a vote for Kamala.
Any other vote or not voting is one less vote trump needs, and is a vote for trump. (Statistically it would have been a blue votes because they tend to be people that don’t align with conservative views that are pro Palestine)
They will never understand that.
Both are bad on Gaza, so it is irrelevant. One could be talked to and has some sense of empathy and could potentially be swayed, the other is going to destroy Gaza without remorse, ruin lise for the most vulnerable Americans, and make sure the US is a a part of the new Axis powers on the wrong side of the global power struggle. These people chose the second option.
And given the shitty system we have, any vote, or non-vote, that wasn’t for Kamala was a vote for trump (by way of it being one less vote he needed to win). Can’t walk into a chess tournament and start putting checkers on the board just because you don’t like chess…gotta change the game first or you just lose and get kicked out.
My crazy idea here is maybe the DNC should run candidates people actually like. There’s no way in hell if they ran a primary Kamala would have won the nomination given how unpopular she was as VP.
Find me one Kamala voter as excited for her candidacy as the average Trump voter was for him, and I’ll find you a dozen who were only supporting her because whe wasn’t the other guy. Same story with the Biden campaign in 2020 and Clinton before that.
They could have run a dead fish didnt matter for this election. “Boohoo, don’t like candidate” isnt a valid excuse this time. Sry, it’s the weakest argument outside “oUr PRoTEsT voTe DiDnT matatTer” (mathematically true I’d you ignore any that may have been swayed by their constant pushing of a single issue instead of of everything at risk).
What? Running a candidate people like is probably the most important thing in an election. And the DNC knew from polling that she was unpopular as a VP. Seriously what on earth are you talking about that having a candidate people like doesn’t matter.
Yup that is a conspiracy theory and super not cool of you.
It’s mostly information warfare from the various social media. There have already been a few analyses showing that pro-Republican anti-Democrat sentiment was algorithmically pushed on tiktok, Facebook, X(obviously), Instagram, YouTube, etc. I do believe a lot of people even here on lemmy were Russian/Chinese just stoking the flames because a divided america is good for them.
I think there are significantly more “useful idiots” than actual state actors trying to sow division. Most of them probably had good intentions, they just refused to listen to reason.
It’s a funny and depressing situation that Lemmy users are so adamant that no one could possibly have a different perspective than them and if they do they must be Russian assets.
Despite those exact positions being reflected in real human American/western political voices–when it shows up in our special little space suddenly it’s spoooooky foreign astroturfing. I believe the kids call that behavior “cope.” XD
Oh there’s certainly real belief too but the “loudness” is certainly amplified beyond what it would usually be. A lot of those accounts have been entirely silent on the conflict since the election which is suspicious to me.
Can you cite a few of said accounts so I can take a look? For me, I still see a lot of pro-Palestine sentiment. But to me, it makes nothing but sense that after the election people stop talking about… the election, y’know? You’ll notice MAGA voices also stopped talking about the election too, haha.
I got better things to do than go back and find them. Just a trend I noticed. I still see pro Palestinian sentiment (which i agree with) but i don’t see the level of blame assignment Biden and Dems got. I see some outrage about like the golden pager but not about rereleasing 2ton bombs. For people who seemed so single-issue its odd.
I mean yeah why would anyone talk about the election anymore unless they’ve got some new take or perspective on why dems lost.
Can you cite a few of said accounts so I can take a look?
They won’t, it’s a talking point they were always going to deploy and has nothing to do with evidence. Of course, political discourse was always going to die down after the election, and there’s also several accounts they’re not seeing because they got banned (lol). BlueAnon isn’t based on reason.
Of course there’s absolutely evidence of pro-Republican, anti-Democrat manipulation. But find me evidence algorithm manipulation of pro-Palestine anti-Democrat sentiment. Otherwise you are doing some pretty hateful fearmongering.
The “everyone on here is a Russian bot” narrative here is so embarrassing. Get real.
I certainly didn’t say everyone just that they’re here and they enjoy stoking the flames. Propaganda is everywhere from all sides.
The “sides” are not even remotely the same
All the .ml crap that is suddenly silent was often revealed to be pro-ccp accounts doing exactly that.
Source?
Downvotes aren’t citations, I’m asking for proof of China’s actions. Don’t downvote and ignore the truth like Republicans.
Go read old posts, I’m not here to spoon feed you out of your ignorance.
So that’s a no on giving a source on that claim like Republicans…
Edit: Downvotes aren’t citations.
Why would I save links to ML clowns getting called out or shown to be shills? What an absurd thing to request. Source: Lemmy. Dig deeper on your own, it’s not my job.
> Pretending we didn’t see it happen already
Allow me to remind you of Rally Forge’s “America Progress Now” and Jeff Ballabon’s “Jexodus” as two recent examples.
Cite a proven example of pro-Palestine manipulation, and we can discuss it. Otherwise, no.
Both examples you provided are trivial as they don’t interface with literal apartheid or genocide. This is a significant difference being overlooked, and without evidence, I have no reason to believe this conspiracy.
New “Leopards Ate My Face” dropped. In this fun twist, however, after seeing the Leopards Eating Faces party feed people’s faces to leopards multiple times, the user continues to give the party the benefit of the doubt when confronted with the likelyhood that it’s happening again.
So no example, got it. It’s fine for you to engage in fearmongering and unevidenced cynicism. I choose not to. My regards. Free Palestine.
There’s a big difference between being realistic and fearmongering. For instance, if there was no history of domestic and foreign entities utilizing astroturfing to undermine democracy and people were saying it’s happening now, that’s fearmongering. Considering that there is, however, and that it seemed to work last time, it’s naive to assume that it wouldn’t happen again, especially when similar patterns of behavior emerge, including the presence of a new hot-button topic that can be utilized. That’s realism.
Also, how incredibly low of you. By ending your negative response to me with “free Palestine,” you’re clearly trying to imply that I am somehow with my responses showing some implicit support for Israel’s genocide. Again, how low of you.
It’s about to be free of Palestinians. GJ protest voters!
The time for voting is over. It’s time for fighting now, and I don’t think “I told you so”s are helping us unite and work together right now.
Both can happen at the same time. We don’t need to love our ally to fight against a shared enemy. Especially when you feel your ally helped empower them.
Can they though? I mean to some extent maybe but I think it needs to be carefully articulated and respectful. The typical one line takedowns are just signals of tribal affiliation, they don’t persuade anyone and just increase animosity between us.
I agree.
Funny how this always only applies after the election after things have gone South. Any asks to come together during the election where fighting together actually matters is met with derision and “how will we force DNC to change otherwise?”
I’m done. Dirtbag leftists have shown they are not and never will be real allies. Their naiive ideals and the sound of their own voices are more important to them than the suffering of marginalized communities in the US.
We’re done with you.
I voted and did the liberal things. I’m not sure what more you want from me. If you won’t help us fight then that’s your choice but spare me the infighting please I am so over it.
Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.
Haha no hate I just think it’s funny you arrive at the same “Russian troll” conclusion as the people trying to relitigate the Gaza voters :Pe: i think i misunderstood your comment, retracted
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
This is a real propaganda campaign
Only speculation, but I believe you are right. This only started 2 days ago after Trump’s Gaza comments. It’s disheartening how easily it is to sway online discourse. Jokes on them, this only motivates me.
It’s also possible to run thousands of parallel chatbots to atroturf sentiment these days.
They will even scour the internet automatically to insert themselves into any slightly relevant conversation
you replied to me twice. i absolutely agree with your first sentence and i believe that the second sentence is applicable to other people—it’s possible you here just misunderstood my position due to my own inclarity
Like anything, it’s probably a mix. There were plenty of actual Americans on the pro-Gaza side, and there were probably some Russian trolls as well. Now, there are some actual Americans trying to vent about the election. But it would also be naive to think a fair number of them aren’t Russian trolls. It’s not like the utility of manipulating an adversary nation’s political discourse ends after an election.
Since there’s no practical benefit to relitigating this old fight, however, it makes sense to just dismiss anyone bringing it up as a Russian bot. There’s nothing to be gained by reopening this old wound among the left, but there is plenty to lose.
Genuine question… see my third to most recent post. It’s rhetorically identical to content I posted before, during and after the election. Based on what you see there, do you think I am a paid or otherwise illegitimate troll?
I mean, people say the same thing about pro-Palestine posters. Logically, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
i don’t know what that means but thanks everyone for the downvotes i guess
We can now say that anyone who could and didn’t vote for Harris in magastan is a genocide enabler.
But but but, how were we supposed to know? We were too busy not paying attention to anything important!!
I’ve been saying since the election that anyone who voted for Trump or abstained in protest is complicit in Trump’s regime of terror. Trump and his staff spent months on the campaign trail telling the public exactly what they would do when they took power, showing everyone exactly who they are, and now they’re doing all of it. No one has the luxury of claiming ignorance.
Probably not helpful to be this divisive with your anti trump allies. Whether in your eyes the abstention voters made a mistake or not, we’re going to need all the solidarity we can get to oppose/survive this administration
We can’t change the past, so the only choice we have is to work together to start fixing this situation. I understand why they did it, but they refused to think about how their actions would affect the larger outcome. We shouldn’t let abstention voters forget the role they played in getting us into this mess while we encourage them to make better (or at least less bad choices) in the future.
These people pretend to be allies until the next election season where when they don’t get exactly what they want, rabidly push everyone to not vote or vote fascist.
“These people” are strawmen you have been fooled into hating
Nope, they are people that didn’t vote against this stupidity we all saw coming. One candidate was going to paint the house red but could be talked to, the other one owns a red-paint business and ran on burning the house down, and “these people” didn’t vote because they wanted the the house painted green. Fools. It isn’t cope or strawmen, it is observation and you are coming up with any way to save face or feel better about your dire mistake.
No amount of believing this makes it true.
The protest voters didn’t meaningfully impact the election.
Young people voted the exact same as they do every election.
Even if every single gaza protester actually stayed home like you’re pretending, it wouldn’t be enough for the dems to win.
But you can make whatever excuses you want to hate your neighbors
Ignore the actual issue, cool.
My anti-trump allies voted against trump, the rest of you are complicit in enabling his plutocracy.
That’s the dark secret that no one really wants to talk about. We’re all genocide enablers. Every single person decided to enable genocide. You didn’t vote? Genocide enabler. You voted third party? Genocide enabler. You voted for Harris? Genocide enabler. You voted for Donald Trump? Whew boy, genocide enabler and then some. No matter how you cut it the American populace has and is enabling genocide. Every single fucking one of us.
I think that’s why there’s so much rancor on this topic. People don’t want to admit that to themselves. I enabled genocide. You enable genocide. Everyone in this thread enabled genocide. Till we all admit it acknowledge that we’re not going to move forward.
Now that’s a level of introspection I never thought I’d see in a thread like this.
If I had some sort of agency to precent genocide, that would be great.
Now that you got you dopamine, feel better?
Great, now it’s time to stop pushing propaganda that makes poor people infight.
I keep seeing this stupid narrative. Nobody is buying it.
You have a problem
Yeah, thanks for that.
Oh, so telling people the truth is now propaganda?
I’m sorry but even if my enemy is trump and his billionaires and not their voters, I don’t have to like those who helped him get there. They put him there, and it’s good if they get some consequences.
If the amount of protesters isn’t even enough to get 1mil more votes you’re just riling yourself up for no reason. And that’s pretending that any of them would have actually voted to start with, considering young people don’t vote.
You would be better off focusing your anger at the demographics that actually voted for Biden but refused to vote for Harris.
Spoiler: it’s older white women/men and hispanic men.
That’s not how logic works.
Like most people… I live in a state where my “vote” literally doesn’t matter at all.
It’s hilarious how “adults” assume that voting actually matter and that there’s a meaningful difference between the two flavors of the state.
About 3 million voters who voted in 2020 decided their vote “didn’t matter” in 2024. Kamala lost the popular by 2 million.
Always always vote, even if you think it’s pointless.
Presidents aren’t elected by popular vote
No, they are not. But swinging the popular vote reduces their appearance of the public mandate. And Trump also only won by relatively small margins in a lot of the swing states for the electoral college (30k in Wisconsin, 50k in Nevada, 70k in Michigan, etc), where such additional votes matter even more.
Every single vote on the board counts, whether or not you think it does. Not voting is intentionally silencing your voice for no reason.
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a “mandate.” Trump claims that he not only won the popular vote but also the electoral college so that means we’re all totally cool with whatever he wants to do whatsoever.
They have less of an argument if more people voted against him, but our stupid system still gave him power.
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a “mandate.”
This is such a liberal take. They would have acted exactly the same whether they had the ‘spirit of the nation’ behind them or not. Stop picking fights of symbolic victories.
Republicans have not cared about the decorum that the democrats have been trying to uphold since at the very least the second Obama term likely longer.
Democrats are refusing to employ the same tactics that the republicans use against them when they are in power.
If everyone who thought like you got out and voted, the results would come out very different.
The adage for as long as I can remember has been, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
I desperately wish that liberals realize that reality is the arbiter, and no amount of wishing more folks would fall in line will work.
That adage is pretty much the opposite of true. Republicans make demands of their politicians, and have no reservations about loudly denouncing them as “RINOs” if they don’t follow through. The biggest third party candidate in history was Ross Perot in '96, because Republican Bob Dole was seen as too moderate and mainstream. Part of the reason that the party establishment didn’t stop Trump from getting the nomination was because they knew there was a credible threat that he’d run third party, while the Democratic establishment resisted Sanders, because they knew he’d fall in line anyway.
The reason the adage exists is, ironically, because democrats are more prone to shaming voters who step out of line. From what I’ve seen, in right-wing circles, complaining about RINOs and shitting on the Republican establishment will get much less pushback compared to the opposite. Those who try to lecture and vote-shame are more likely to lose credibility themselves than the person they’re criticizing.
Of course, because the party has received the message and fallen in line, there’s less internal dissent, which is used to push the message that “Republican [voters] fall in line,” used to pressure Democratic voters to fall in line.
As a lurker who ends up rubbing shoulders with right wing culture spaces, can confirm. The right has heresy tests for their politicians, the left tests for their voters. However the left expects competency in government (because they actually believe in it) and will sacrifice ideals or policies, while the right can afford the luxury of rejecting good governance because they’re expressly transactional when it comes to politics.
Rightwing voters are willing to cut off their nose in spite and become single issue voters - and it works for them. Pro-life or you’re dead to them. Pro-gun or you’re dead to them. Non-Christian? Dead. They get the political rhetoric and efforts they demand, which has left them severely ripe for opportunist political grifters who say whatever gets them access power. Like the MAGAs who build nothing, but hand out bones to voting blocs. Abortion overturned. No new gun laws. Ten Commandments in school and state houses. “Hurting the right people”. Migrants deported. Culture wars.
Or in the more extreme examples, they’ll just outright co-opt the structures of power and governance to fit the voters whims. It’s why we have the political maximalist lobbying NRA of today, instead of the humbler sportsman’s advocacy group of yesteryear. Or Trump.
Exactly. The reason that democrats think republicans “fall in line” is because they see all these shitty politicians on the right, but they don’t realize that they’re looking at completely different things from republicans. You can be a total fucking dirtbag, hypocrite, completely incompetent, but as long as you bend the knee to the causes they care about, they don’t give a shit. Their standards are all about ideological purity, not character or competence. By contrast, democrats get outraged about any attempt at “purity testing,” and would rather have someone “competent,” which generally means, “willing to compromise to get things done.” Meanwhile republican politicians are always worried that if they work with democrats at all, they’ll be outflanked from the right. As a result, the country moves further and further to the right.
That’s where crazy extremists like me think we should actually pay attention when the other side’s tactics work and learn from them. But I probably shouldn’t admit that or I’ll be hit with “horseshoe theory” 🙄
You know I think maybe this resolves me that more people should just, run for political office, or maybe, resolves me that the dirtbag left is a concept which could probably be measured with some sort of success. You’re probably right, the left needs to learn that people would probably vote for any stupid piece of shit with no sense of decorum, as long as that guy gave them healthcare. No sense of decorum actually might be an advantage, even, because then there’s nothing left to rhetorically attack you with. That’s sort of the whole, like, john fetterman-phenomena. Too bad he turned into an actual piece of shit instead of just being a guy that dresses in a hoodie.
It’s an ironic saying because the support for Trump is based entirely on emotion. The Democrats are the ones making the decision based on pragmatism.
So the correction would be that republicans fall in love and fall in line while democrats do neither?
I was up and down many threads immediately before the election straining with every fiber of my being to explain to people the variety of ways in which their democracy is actually a sham and isn’t effective or reflective of popular will or sentiment.
The most I got in return was that, nah, none of that applies, because I just don’t really feel like it. It’s infuriating.
Every 4 years the machine churns, every 4 years people forget everything that happened the last time, forget every detail of the system, and just decide to kind of, sloganeer constantly rather than discuss critically, because that brings them some sense of control over the way things are going. It can be prefigured into their personal narrative of events, and how much they, personally, put on the line, how much they tried to change people’s minds. A participation trophy for their rubber stamp, for their ticking of a certain box, while the real rulers are off in washington making the real decisions. Ultimately it’s kind of fruitless, I think, or should only be viewed along the same lines as being personal slop-entertainment, or “self-improvement”. Anyone who’s not honest with at least that much can’t really be trusted to speak on these things, I think.
It’s hilarious how people still think that something good will happen as a result of inaction. But no, all your refusal to participate said was that you are fine with the outcome either way. That you trust others to decide this for you. Refusing to choose doesn’t negate the results. Just as doing nothing won’t create something. If it helps, I can explain it in simpler terms:
• You can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question.
• You won’t ever get anywhere if you don’t make plans to ever be somewhere
• You can’t rightfully expect any change for the better if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum it takes to make it happen.Even simpler:
• No vote ≠ no election.
And additionally, do you not understand that saying “but I live in a red state! My vote doesn’t matter!” Only proves to everyone that things like gerrymandering are effective ways to manipulate votes? Because, congratulations… you’ve inadvertently discovered exactly why they do it!
Blue votes in red stats are FUCKING VITAL.
You know, it’s sadly funny in a very bleak way- how you all excused your poor decisions as “making a statement!” and “sending a message!” when the messages you should have been sending is that you will do WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES to stop a rapist felon that laid out exactly what he intended to do to us- from taking away the rights of your brothers, sisters, and others. Even if it meant voting blue in a red state.
But you didn’t. So sit down, accept your responsibility, and if you’re fucking lucky, you’ll be given the chance to do better next time.
“We offered nothing and lost to a liar who said they would get something if he came back into office. Why did we lose?”
“We said everything was going great when the public was facing hardships and being targeted by systemic and economic inequality, and the dude lied and said he’d solve it. Why did we lose?”
“The last guy was unpopular and didn’t push back on Trump to get him jail. And then we said we’d do nothing different as Americans are facing homeless and their bodily autonomy being ripped away from them. How did we lose?”
“We courted Republicans who openly hate our voter base, alienated them by saying we don’t need you, and Republicans are too brainwashed to vote for anyone but Republicans. Why did we lose?”
Democrats then: “We’ll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they’re forming PACs like ‘Arabs for Trump.’ We don’t need their votes.”
Democrats now: “We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn’t vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It’s actually your fault that we didn’t bother appealing to you.”
Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen
Democracy is being dismantled as we speak. Agency by agency, loyalist by loyalist, executive order by executive order. And instead of building community, helping each other and organizing with those around you, I see people, who supposedly care about democracy, about human rights, about those they accuse; and what are they doing? They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing. Thereby further dividing the populace and making the takeover easier for the fascists in power. Be careful: You are telling on yourselves and your values. And we can see you.
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?
I yelled, but voted Kamala, and encouraged others to do the same. I always wanted to try and push the democrats to not be Republican lite and actually taking a meaningful, impactful stand on fucking anything besides being very passionate about not inhabiting Trump’s body. I wanted to see the democrats say “you know what? Genocide is wrong, whether it’s our allies doing it or not, and this is genocide” instead of “well, we’re going to keep handing them bombs, but we promise to wag our fingers at them while we do it”. I don’t want to hear your goddamn excuses, there’s always some fucking excuse why the democrats just had to spill all their spaghetti. I just wanted to do what I could to push them to show some intestinal fortitude and do the right thing, and I honestly believed (and still do believe) that that would have motivated more voters to turn out than purely relying on “less bad than him”.
No, I don’t regret trying to make the world I want to see; one without genocide. I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
Fucking.
A.
Thank you for sharing, genuinely. The way other conversations here have gone, many probably thought you were a Russian bot or something for yelling that you cared about human rights atrocities funded by your taxes. :(
I wish OP would add this to their post. EVERY IRL leftist I know voted Kamala even though they absolutely did not want to. My comment history is littered with we saying exactly this. I truly can’t imagine the kind of person posting/saying the OP quote. Like, she lost. That’s the way it’s phrased for a reason. It was her and the people making decisions for her that are responsible. SHE lost. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all obviously worse off, but why aren’t they upset at the dem establishment?! If the protest voters were “so important” (they mathematically were not) then don’t you think the dems are morally responsible not just for the genocide, but then for losing just to perpetuate it? They’re all like “where are the complaints now?!” Like they are too stupid to understand how pressure works on public officials and that resistance is a limited resource that needs to be rationed. Unfortunately, most actual leftist are organizing resistance efforts and don’t have time to complain about dems any more because that time has passed. I’m very wary of people saying things like OP because it’s such a clinically bad take it feels like trolling/propaganda. Good luck with everything.
What do you think shitting all over the main Democrat candidate every where you can does to voter turnout? Seriously, you can’t be this righteously stupid.
Congrats. What we have now is your fault.
The people who point out that the emperor is naked aren’t responsible for the emperor being naked.
If your choice is between a naked emperor and a fascist dictator and you go around telling everyone to support the fascist dictator because the emperor is naked, you’re responsible if the dictator wins.
Better naked than a fascist.
I never told anyone to support a fascist, I asked the emperor to put on some clothes in order to be able to beat the fascist. The emperor stayed naked and lost.
No what you did was tell everyone the emperor should be deeply ashamed for being a disgusting nudist and people should be disgusted by his nudity or they would be immoral themselves, when, for the most part, most people didn’t care about our were unaffected by his nudity. Then people started to feel ashamed and decided not to support the emperor against the fascist dictator.
Listen, pal, if I had this much power over the electorate, we’d have universal healthcare. I appreciate how highly you seem to think of me, though. I think it’s much, much more likely that the democrats fucked this up completely on their own than some random people on Lemmy and Mastodon derailing their entire campaign. Though, if all it took to cause the democrats to lose was for a few people on Lemmy and Mastodon to point out that their policy plank sucked, it sounds like they ran a really terrible campaign.
It’s cute to pretend it was only happening on Lemmy and Mastodon when in reality your accusations were being amplified in every social media platform including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, etc. as part of a concerted effort to take down Harris, likely by the rich billionaires who own the algorithms. But all they did was give you a bullhorn. The excoriation was all your own. And you played right into their hands.
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.
