Don’t forget trans people. On MSNBC Joe Scarborough was already priming his audience for going after them next election.
Don’t forget trans people. On MSNBC Joe Scarborough was already priming his audience for going after them next election.
Here’s an example of a deeply red state passing very left wing policies by ballot measure. Left wing ideas enjoy broad popular support, the democrats would do well adopting some of them. I strongly suggest you look at some reputable polling sources to test your views regarding the American electorate.
Ah nice, you’re getting a head start on the “blame the voter” strategy for the next election. Good job!
I literally see voters saying the Democrats were too left leaning
Could you elaborate on this? I’m confused as to what those voters mean. Polling suggests that actual left wing ideas (universal health cares, higher minimum wage, etc etc) enjoy broad popular support. For example, Missouri (a deeply red state) passed a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave by ballot measure. Are these voters unaware of what “left wing” means, or are they unaware of public opinion?
I’ve seen a couple of things in this direction as well. Joe Scarborough was complaining that the democrats are too woke, and that that’s why they lost the election. He was clearly advocating for throwing trans people under the bus next cycle. I’ve also heard a liberal buddy of mine say that democrats are moving with the American public, i.e., their right wing policies are a reflection of what the American public wants.
Here on lemmy.world I see it more indirectly. The predominant sentiment is to blame the voters (“you didn’t show up”, “oh you just had to care about the genocide”, “look what you’ve done”). This operates on the false assumption that if the party changes their position to be more left wing (pro-peace, pro-healthcare, whatever) to woo the lost voters, they’d lose even more votes because the American public is so right wing.
Where are you seeing it?
I feel like you have a misconception about how democracy works. When there’s position that enjoys broad popular support (such as universal health care, or a cessation of the genocide in Gaza), it isn’t on the democrats to take that position so the electorate will vote for them, it’s on the electorate to either change their mind on the issue, or vote for the democrats regardless.
It’s important to internalize this lesson. Next cycle you’ll likely get to practice it with trans rights, if the talking heads on MSNBC who are blaming wokeness for the democrats losing the election are any indication. The idea that politicians and their policies are responsible for losing/winning elections is silly. You’re here for them, not the other way around.
Quality journalism
You must realize that you have kind of an inconsistent view of the efficacy of the oval office. When the republicans are in power, or are about to be, this is something to be feared, and they’ll turn the country into a banana republic, and they’ll curtail all civil rights. But when a democratic is in power, the presidency becomes this meaningless ceremonial role that can’t really do anything because of those darned republicans, and so you can’t really blame them for not making any meaningful change. This is clearly internally inconsistent. One of these two opinions is false. Either the presidency can be used to effect meaningful change, or it cannot. You can’t believe both.
I think the republicans show that the former is true. Whether you like it or not (I certainly don’t), whenever the republicans are in power they’re able to enact massive impactful changes (the changes which eventually led to the overturning of Roe v Wade are a good example). The reasons as to why the democrats do not enact such changes is up for debate, but the idea that they don’t because they can’t is demonstrably false.
The same way regardless of whether the democrats or the republicans are in power.
not making abortion illegal nation wide
Didn’t we just have a four year democratic regime? What happened? Did they just forget? On Jan 6th, will Biden go “oh shoot! We were supposed to do something about abortion rights! Ah well, next presidency.”
Yeah, punch left some more. Seems to work really well for you guys.
I was kind of surprised to find out Stalin killed more slavic people than Hitler, since Hitler killed at least 20 million soviets. I looked it up: Apparently Stalin deliberately killed 6 million, which goes up to 9 if you take policies with foreseeable deaths into account. That’s less than 20. Yeah, Stalin was a bad guy, but please don’t do holocaust erasure.
Slow genocide is better
And four years later they’ll vote for a democrat whose positions are eerily similar to those of the republicans today, because it’s the least bad option. Race to the bottom. Four years ago, republican anti-immigrant nonsense was ridiculed, and we laughed at the border wall shit. Now Harris is all for stronger borders, and Biden actually resumed building the wall. Four years ago we ridiculed Trump for “drill baby drill”, today Harris is pro fracking, as she explained in her recent town hall with undecided voters. The vote blue no matter who crowd is flushing their democracy down the toilet.
You should read up on some history. I will briefly recapitulate:
Israel started a war in 1967. Israel would argue it was in self defense, but their argument is basically the same as that of Russia for invading Ukraine. They (Russia and Israel) felt “threatened”, but they shot first. This war is known as the six day war.
One outcome of this war was that 400k Syrians and Palestinians were displaced (something the western media has referred to as a form of ethnic cleansing in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine), and the Golan heights, Sinai peninsula (this might be another conflict), and the Gaza strip were occupied by Israel. Two of these are occupied to this day, a violation of international law (you’re not supposed to steal land by war). Here, I mean occupied in the sense that both Israeli troops, as well as Israeli settlers were present in the Gaza strip.
In 2005, in an effort to improve their standing in the international community, Israel decided to disengage from Gaza in a very specific way. There would no longer be any troops or settlers present inside the Gaza strip. However, Israel would maintain complete control of the airspace, borders, and its shoreline. That is, anything or anyone going in or out of Gaza needs to be approved by Israel. That sounds bad, but to really appreciate the impact this has, it helps to know some figures. Gaza is twice the size of Washington DC, or about the size of Rotterdam, and it has about 2 million citizens. That’s three times as much as Rotterdam, so it’s very densely populated. That means it cannot feed itself, and relies on imports. Imagine a city in your country being completely cut off from the outside world beyond its borders. How long would it survive? At any rate, it is hopefully clear that Israel maintained its occupation of Gaza in 2005, despite not having boots on the ground. It is this version of the Gaza occupation that even David Cameron (who is not a progressive) called a prison camp. Do you know another word for a prison camp where you keep people of one ethnicity? Starts with a “c”.
in 2006, two years after the death of Arafat, elections were held in Gaza and the West Bank for the legislative council of the Palestinian Authority. These elections were monitored by the Carter foundation, which found them to be fair. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which had a much less collaborationist attitude than the ruling Fatah. This upset Israel and the US. Hillary Clinton is quoted saying “we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
This describes the status quo up until October 7th. Some choice facts about the 2006-2023 period:
in 2008, Israel calculated how many calories Gaza needs to survive and used this to limit the amount of food allowed into Gaza. This mass starvation policy ended after two years through international pressure. In the meantime, Hamas dug tunnels to smuggle more food in so that Palestinians could eat.
Construction materials are not allowed into Gaza. This means that necessary repairs to crucial civilian infrastructure such as desalination plants cannot be done.
Israel conducts regular bombing campaigns in Gaza, which they call “mowing the lawn”. This has killed thousands of Palestinians.
At the march of return, a recent peaceful rally by Palestinians to be allowed back in their homeland, Israeli snipers deliberately shot people in the knees maiming dozens. In total 183 Palestinians were murdered, and thousands injured. Hospitals were overwhelmed.
There’s much, much more. So no, Gaza was not a joyful place to live before October 7th, and yes, it is because of religious terrorists, just not the ones you’re referring to.
Capitalism combined with markets with inelastic demand is a lot of fun. But communism bad because tankies or whatever.
What 1000 year conflict? The nakba was less than a century ago. Plus “please stop giving 2000 pound bombs to Israel to commit a genocide with” is a very far cry from “please end the Israeli apartheid state”.
If you vote democrat no matter what they do (and voting in spite of the current regime committing a genocide communicates that you will do exactly that), they have no incentive to take your interests at heart, and will move in the direction of the interests of the highest bidder. And this is an observable effect: fairly consistently throughout the years (and this goes back to at least Clinton), the policies and positions of the dems are exactly those of the republicans four years ago, aside from some meaningless posturing and vibes. Look at where we are with the border wall for example, or the children in cages at the border (more now than under Trump), or abortion (FOUR years of a dem president, and nothing has been done, despite promises).
You vote blue no matter who people are flushing your democracy down the drain. For the love of god, make your vote count and vote for something for a change. Vote Jill Stein or Cornell West. Or if you like murdering tens of thousands of innocent children (as we’ve done under the Biden regime), vote Kamala “most lethal fighting force in the world” Harris. If you’re lucky, you might be paying for the murder of Iranian children next.
Ok sorry “electorate”. Debatelord semantics aside, the point remains the same.