The democrats haven’t held a legitimate primary since 2008!
In 2008 it was a genuine competition between Obama, Hillary, and a handful of other lesser known politicians. Obama won the general in a landslide.
In 2012 Obama ran unopposed. Obama won the general.
In 2016 the democrats rigged the primary against sanders for Hillary, and to absolutely no one’s surprise who was paying attention, Hillary lost the general. Why? she didn’t genuinely win the primary. Shocking!
In 2020, refusing to learn mistakes from 2016, the democrats once again screwed over bernie and didn’t run a legitimate primary - rigged it so that all the candidates except no-path-to-win Warren exited the race to split the progressive vote away from bernie. Joe biden won by the skin of his teeth, and he would of lost if it weren’t for the country reacting to trumps handling of covid.
In 2024, once again refusing to learn the democrats didn’t even bother with a primary, ran an old demented geezer as a presidential candidate, realized that wasn’t going to work, and then anointed unelected Kamala Harris who didn’t even need to compete in a primary.
And they’re shocked they lost?! These people make way too much money to be this stupid.
Dems are the greatest ally the GOP could ask for. Lost to Trump at his weakest, literally doing a Nazi rally. Being spineless doesn’t get you wins. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar won re-election by comfortable margins and the rest of the party are fighting for their lives in these states. Some Red States still voted to protect abortion rights and just choose not to vote for Harris.
Even if Jill Stein voters had picked Harris she still would have lost. There is no-one to blame but Harris and embracing people like Dick Cheney anrd The Blue No Matter who crowd themselves. You let Republicans unapologetically be themselves but your’re whole brand of politics makes any group who works with you expendable and centers a chance for that 1-2 GOP voters joining. I hope it was worth it.
It’s past time everyone realized the people running the DNC just don’t really care if a republican wins.
The only danger to their careers or quality of life is if a progressive wave takes over the party, because they won’t keep pro-corporate people in leadership positions.
And they legally control the primary, so they never have to give up power.
There are a lot of “leftists” here on Lemmy that have been quite vocal about not caring about, or even preferring if Trump wins, but for way less consistent reasons.
I don’t think that this is just a problem with Liberals. People keep using the office of president as a battleground for single issues, and end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater every time.
People keep using the office of president as a battleground for single issues,
Yeah, like when Obama ran on healthcare and flipped all those red states…
What “single issue” has any of the subsequent Dem candidates ran on besides “my name isn’t trump”?
We can’t just keep running these “moderate” candidates and keep acting surprised when Dem voters reject them. Biden barely pulled it off, and both Hillary and Kamala failed miserably.
Neoliberalism is not a valid strategy
Now, it’s possible you meant single issue voters, but I just didn’t think anyone would make that claim and try to blame 5-10 different groups with separate “single issues”.
But who knows, a neoloberal just lost the presidential election, were about to see crazy level of mental gymnastics about how the party needs to move even further right.
Foreign policy is the one single issue that is actually relevant to the presidency. Despite what recent history shows, constitutionally only the president can declare war, with the support of congress. Of course in practice we’ve been at war for all but a few years of our near 250 year (failing) empire.
Harris and embracing people like Dick Cheney
I knew it was over at that point. Whoever suggested that was a good idea for Harris that late in the campaign definitely has a MAGA hat in their closet.
I knew it was bad at the debate, where Trump even called her out for adopting his polices like the border wall and stuff. But the Dick Cheney thing was crazy because not only was he rejected by Liberals in the past. But he is still one of the most hated War Criminals of all time. He isn’t going to sway over GOP people when you’re active in genocide. It just makes you look like the type of people he likes.
Seriously? People making the choice to have Trump because she had Cheney supporting her, that is some funny math…people need to stop demanding a perfect candidate and start thinkinh about who do you want to be your opponent for the next four years.
There are people who still believe Trump is anti-war for some reason or don’t play attention to the stuff he does once in office. It isn’t asking for perfection to not be cool with one of the most unpopular people in politics and the worst War Criminal when your tagline is “Joy.” Morals and Standards go a long way.
I doubt anybody based their support on whether dick fucking Cheney was voting for Harris or not.
The fact that the democrats courted this war criminal instead of courting their base just goes to show how little they care about losing an election.
Tbh, if she went all progressive, we would have been in here dating she needed to reach across the aisle. It’s hard to be both and I’m not sure it’s just the dnc to blame here, misogyny, ignorance and racism is hardly their fault,she the dnc has a role here, but…
Biden went full progressive on his platform and won.
I disagree. If weve learned anything from the past two elections, it should be that there is no “middle aisle” to appeal to anymore. It makes no sense to go “mild” when the people really sitting home on Nov. 5th are the “wild” ones who feel like you aren’t progressive enough.
Case-in-point being Trump’s own campaign which did exactly that and is now looking like it won the popular vote by a higher margin than Biden won in 2020, too.
The progressive left is a very small demographic, appealing to us would not have won this
The 14th amendment should have been the end of Trump, period. But Democrats don’t want to look partisan and now look where we are.
I seen to remember a bunch of 14th amendment lawsuits that got shut down by SCOTUS a few days before primaries started.
Yeah, that’s why Obama should have packed SCOTUS, fuck the optics and just do what’s right. We saw this coming and still Democrats assumed terrible people won’t be terrible given the chance
I hate Obama but nobody not even my cynical self saw things going this blatantly corrupt.
If he packed the court back then it could of sparked a civil war.
Agreed, but because he didn’t, now we have this outcome. It would have been worth risking a civil war to ensure America stays a democracy. The military was always on the left side, anyway
And when inevitably the other side wins an election, what are they going to do but continue to pack the court? It’s not a good strategy.
True. But if Obama picked people, at least we would have had enough to offset the loons Trump put on
And then we end up with 100 Supreme Court justices. It’s a childish solution.
Not to mention: I will not be shocked if open civil war occurs at some point in the next few years. Trump’s bound to try to do something beyond the pale to a blue state at some point (CA, MA, NY, etc) - something that is flagrantly illegal, and basically an authoritarian power grab. The governor in question would then mobilize their state guard. Then you have civil war.
I’m a former NYer from LI and I moved to vermont nearly a decade ago. I was recently back home for a couple months to help my mother out with a health issue. It was divided and scary when I left in 2015…. It’s even worse now.
I’m a visibly queer woman who is often confused for a man (short hair, masc style, but face and body are still femme) and I was bullied my entire life for being queer in supposedly ‘liberal’ NY, to the point that in 2013 during the trans bathroom bill madness in I think NC I and another friend (also a masc queer woman) were assaulted in the woman’s bathroom at a restaurant on LI for being perceived as trans. We both own vaginas and were minding our business using the bathroom like any other woman…
I think somewhere like LI NY is ripe for a troubles-style civil war. You have very boisterous angry people, extremely insane cost of living, absolute utter hatred of minorities while living right along side them. FYI if you didn’t know yaphank NY was the headquarters of the kkk and the American Nazi party in the 30s.
Fuck no, the republicans shouldn’t even be close. The fact that they’re tolerating Nazis and other similar views is why they felt comfortable voting for Trump. I will NEVER forgive them.
How was the primary rigged for Hillary in 2016?
The caucus (I believe it was Nevada but I’m too lazy and busy to look it up) coin tosses where most of them went in favor of Hillary (statistically impossible) is just one of many examples.
You can start with Bernie winning every county in West Virginia, and Hillary still got 11 delegates
Super delegates pre-pledging to make it seem like the race was over before it began.
Also, fuck super delegates in general.
My view: yes, the Dems could have some better, but they still put up a legitimately good candidate. The GOP put up a pile of orange dog shit… And the dog shit won. How is it the Dems fault that more than half the population enjoys dog shit?
For the Dems to win, they need to run a fucking perfect campaign and the GOP doesn’t. Why? Because media fragmentation and propaganda. The bulk of the population doesn’t want to be informed. How is that the Dems fault? How did the Democratic party reach those voters that don’t give a shit about truth?
This isn’t a failure of the Democratic party, this is a failure of our society.
The candidate wasn’t bad, at least not as bad as 2016. The process was bad. The Democratic primaries have been suspicious for a long time - so they aren’t trustworthy.
Don’t forget all the Democratic shakiness, just because of the Republican shakiness. Democrats needed to gain trust.
“Good candidate” is your opinion. She did not compete in a primary, she was given the nomination, and shockingly /s she lost. Turns out she was not a good candidate!
God y’all are delulu
I don’t know why you are getting down voted. She lost , so she was a bad candidate.
She might have been a good candidate, but she was never chosen in the primaries, so why would the voters choose her.
Because the blue MAGA crowd are completely fucking delusional and can’t cope with the fact that they lost because they’re incompetent and corrupt.
I completely expect a repeat of this behavior in 2028. And a repeat of blame the left and third party voters… despite the fact that trump won with enough votes that all the third party votes combined going solely to swing states wouldn’t of changed the outcome.
They want somebody other than themselves to blame.
I think Harris and Walz were good candidates but their pitch was simply unappealing. The average american has been hurting bad the last 4 years. Harris’ pitch was to maintain the degrading status-quo while trump promised to do SOMETHING. Whether or not that something is successful doesn’t matter, people are sick of slowly getting crushed by costs of living.
And so they chose to vote for the candidate who will only make COL worse. Pathetic.
People struggle with differentiating causation and correlation. The past four years of inflation has wrecked peoples’ pocketbooks and Harris spent a lot of her campaign refusing to acknowledge the unpopularity of the current administration she’s serving in. Meanwhile, most people don’t remember struggling as hard as they do now under Trump (myself included). I didn’t vote for him BTW, but I’m not going to act like I don’t understand how his pitch appealed to lots of people.
He didn’t even pitch the economy
Once again smug liberals blaming voters for voting wrong instead of blaming their party for running shitty untested candidates.
Can’t both be true?
And for the record, I’m not smug, I’m furious.
No, at the end of the day it’s the political parties responsibility to run electable candidates. Not even having a primary makes it so they ran someone untested. And lost.
Harris is objectively better than Trump by any measure. If the voters were educated on their respective platforms instead of voting out of hate they’d have voted Harris.
Better than Trump by any measure
Except the only measure that matters, which happened last night. Can’t even say she was more popular either.
You’re delusional. The voters didn’t buy it and at the end of the day you need to accept defeat and run better candidates and the only way to do that is with fair competitive primaries, something the DNC has neglected since 2008!
The left needs to stop making the perfect be the enemy of the good, or we will never get anywhere.
Good fucking luck with that. Too many people view their spotless moral record as being more important than outcomes or improving lives (/not actively making things worse).
Misanthropy is the only real outcome to this sort of behavior.
“Spotless moral record”
BRO WE ARE FUNDING A FUCKING GENOCIDE WHILE WE HAVE RECORD HOMELESSNESS, DEATHS OF DESPAIR, WORSENING CLIMATE CHANGE, LACK OF HEALTHCARE, ILLITERACY, WOMEN DYING IN CHILDBIRTH AT RATES NOT SEEN IN THE FIRST WORLD.
But go off smug
liberalfascist.And instead of doing something even remotely helpful, they let the genocide harder guy win.
But go off, accelerationist, go ahead and tell me how this makes things better. And keep using the word fascist, maybe someday you’ll learn the meaning.
You’re so woke you’re letting visibly queer people like myself live under threat of a fascist regime because you refused to hold your party accountable and “push to the left”.
They spit in our faces and minimize a fucking GENOCIDE and then expect us to vote for them? Fuck them and fuck you too.
What the fuck are you smoking friend, my entire friend group is visibly queer and the only option we had available was Kamala. I would lash out for your ignorance, but you have no way of knowing and are extremely raw.
They spit in our faces and minimize a fucking GENOCIDE and then expect us to vote for them?
And instead you spit right back and welcomed it on yourself and those like you and I love. This isn’t to vote shame, it’s just acknowledging objective reality.
I’m so sorry for you and those around me who are going to suffer for the choices made yesterday, but you really need to stop and think about the choices available to you in this limited and frankly fucked up world. I stand by my statement, no matter how many people refuse to accept that bad situations have awful choices with worse outcomes for wanting to die in a particular hill.
Fuck them and fuck you too.
I hope you’re able to find safety and peace, and that you’re willing to let yourself see past your morality to the bare facts of reality. Electoralism fucking sucks, but you can now see what happens when morality outweighs pragmatism.
Goodbye, I don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with such bitter and misplaced hatred, especially when trying to keep the sanity of those around me melting down. Stay safe.
Edit: ‘go to brunch’ lol, fuckers don’t know shit about what I’ve done and are just salty I have a different opinion, so clearly I’m just a brunch ally.
I’d tell you to get fucked, but I wish the best for you, even if you’re lashing out in ugly ways. Find peace friends, I’ll still be in the front lines even if you spit on me.
You could have started off by holding your politicians accountable instead of heading off to brunch. All the issues that dems turned a blind eye to the last 4 years will now become the most important issues to address.
Enjoy brunch! “All my friends are queer”
Lmfao, I’m visibly queer and have been physically assaulted since I was a child in the 90s for it. The democrats have not nor ever been our friends. They manipulate us for votes. They refuse to see how THEIR ACTIONS made them lose an election they should of won in a landslide.
Keep minimizing a genocide, fascist.
Everyone that screams accelerationist seems to be ok with the incrementalism that turned Democrats into full fledged right wing fascists.
Exactly! They’re courting dick fucking Cheney rather than listen at all to their base, and have the fucking nerve to chastise us for voting wrong?! fuck these shit ass liberals!
They had some insane idea that they were pushing their politicians left, when in reality they were getting pulled to the right.
“How could the Germans allowed the Holocaust to happen?!”
Look in the mirror, fool.
You can try to change tens of millions of potential voters minds so they vote for worse candidates than they want…
Or we can convince the double digit number of wealthy and connected people running the dnc that what they keep shoving down our throats isn’t what voters want.
Which do you think is easier?
And as a bonus:
Which one results in a better America?
Is what we’re doing right now getting anywhere?
It felt like we were taking a step out of the swamp and were about to make some more progress as a country, now we are taking ten years back
I don’t think anyone is asking for perfection just basic human decency, but I guess that’s like asking for a thousand talking unicorns in politics.
Uh… Harris wasn’t good. Harris was fucking shit. Perfect will always be the enemy of fucking shit.
they still put up a legitimately good candidate.
Its hard to imagine any greater evil than the mass murder, systematic rape, and targetting of innocents of all kinds that the Israels have done using our direct military support, and this candidates unflagging support.
Let’s not pretend that anyone supporting genocide is a ‘good’ candidate.
Maybe the Dems candidate and platform aren’t as good as you think they are if over half of the country would rather have dog shit than your candidate?
Everybody’s fault but the candidate huh?
I’ll see you in 4 years for your encore performance
Fuck you, I literally said the Dems could have done better.
Candidate and the DNC for encouraging this anti democratic gaslighting bullshit.
It’s been on my mind too, especially 2016 and 2020. My first vote was for Obama in the primary in 2007 and it got me interested in politics. What we have now just… sucks. I wanted Warren in 2020, but states that don’t even vote blue decided Biden was the pick.
Had there been a primary in 2024, though, it’d have likely gone to Harris anyway and we’d probably have had the same results. I don’t think we’ll have a good primary until the electorial college is abolished and the red states who vote on primaries actually have say that matters, or we change how primaries work so that it’s reflective of states that actually vote blue (and while we’re at it, have it on the same fucking day so it’s not first come first serve).
We don’t know how a 2024 primary would of went, because the democrats refused to run one. Anyone who doesn’t think this played a major contribution in their loss has their head in the sand.
That is the point of my post.
As for 2020, all the candidates except Warren sanders and biden dropped out right before Super Tuesday. Warren had no path to nomination, sanders did. It was deliberate sabotage against the progressive wing of the party. Had it not been for the horrendous covid response trump would of won that year. The fact that it was even close was an embarrassment.
Oh I’m 100% with you and there is never a way to confirm how things would have gone. We were doomed since 2020, I knew Biden would have a hard time with a second term. I just hoped Trump would have died by now.
As long as he drops dead of natural causes. If he gets assassinated he becomes a martyr.
Indeed. Slightly better timeline had him die of heart disease in 2022. Won’t to us as much good now, though. (Although you gotta wonder if JD sans-Trump would take us out of NATO)
Nobody following trumps footsteps has his charisma, which gives me a little comfort.
There was a 2024 democractic primary. I voted for biden. Barring that they use the super electors so yeah its basically rigged. They actually rigged it to make it hard for extreme canidates to win which is just another reason why the dems are not the left party but the centerist party. Its just there is no left party that wins the way the right wins. That being given though the super electors have been around for awhile so the all the primaries including 2008 are equally legitimate or illigitimate and have been so by and large since 1984. They really should get rid of the superdelegates as it was a knee jerk reaction to reagan “democrats”.
Lol, biden against who? RFK Jr; the fake candidate that was a trumper the whole time? Who the democrats tried to block? Or who else, some no name nobody running a vanity campaign? There wasn’t a legitimate primary like there was in 2008 full of qualified competitive candidates. And so they lost.
Getting on the candidate ballot is something the candidates do themselves with signatures. Its not on the party. The democratic leadership did not pick the candidates that ran in 2008.
Most disingenuous comment ever. Like the dnc didn’t actively discourage everyone from running against biden and they tried to block RFK Jr on the ballots (dudes a nut job but that’s irrelevant)
Well one this is completely sincere on my point and two a lot of that was the possible candidates themselves. Its rare to attempt to run against a sitting president. Who ran against clinton his second term or obama his or any other second term seated president?
Bill clinton had high approval ratings. Obama had high approval ratings.
Biden had abysmal approval ratings.
approval ratings have nothing to do with gathering signatures or people voting. For myself I will repeat something you will often see in my comments which is that the biden administration is the best one I have experienced considering the situation he was in. Im still flabbergasted by what he managed to accomplish with very little support outside of his administration.
I don’t think it’s exactly a matter of appealing to progressives, but an inherent difficulty in trying to appeal to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of interests. You end up having to make vague promises in order not to offend anyone, which comes across as being boring or disingenuous, like you are only saying stuff in order to get elected and not because you actually belive in it. Conservatives can have much simpler and more straightforward messaging because their base is much more homogeneous.
Progressives carry the campaign. They are the enthousiam. They recruit others. They are the mouth to mouth advertisement. They drive people to the polls.
Democrats do not need them though. They can win without.
Democrats do not need them though. They can win without.
thats sarcasm right?
Yes I am ridiculing the DNC for once again losing because they put Republican candidate on their stage.
Right! Look how hard they’re winning!
I disagree. Championing progressive policies in most instances actually appeals universally to a majority of the electorate.
I’m not suggesting they’d be able to follow through because I think a significant number of Democrat representatives can’t stomach actually progressive policies… but I think they’d win more elections.
The billionaires, who already owned the whole thing, did not want it. We got what we got. This downfall started long before 2008.
You act like they’d have “lost” if Kamala won…
They win either way, just different amounts.
Meanwhile the average American always loses, just different amounts.
It doesn’t have to be like this, we don’t need to run shitty conservative Dems that billionaires like, because then we won’t need to spend a billion on ads that don’t even change anyone’s minds.
We ran a Dem candidate that wants a border wall, doesn’t want universal healthcare, and is pro-genocide…
Because that’s what the billionaires wanted. And because we listed to donors over voters, we lost an election
Got a serious question re genocide angle, how is trump well known for being anti-genocide?
He’s not. He’s arguably worse. I proudly voted third party (socialist).
Cue the liberal tears. You lose the electoral college and the popular vote by a margin far greater than third party voters. Cry about it.
He’s obviously not…
But if the entire existence of American politics hasn’t been enough to show you that “lesser of two evils” is a losing strategy, I’m not sure how I’m gonna manage it.
Taking the Dem party to the right doesn’t work, we just keep doing it because the DNC only cares about donations raised. They cater the party to billionaires and not voters.
And trump really cares about the voters by passing laws that help them and not the billionairs who financed his campaign?
I am from UK, don’t really like labour but seriously another conservative government would leave us far, far worse off than plain do nothing shit. It’s not rocket science to figure out who will want to at the least do nothing instead you know sell off your already rubbish worker rights, broken healthcare and now reproductive rights…
Anyway this is a depressing day
But if the entire existence of American politics hasn’t been enough to show you that “lesser of two evils” is a losing strategy, I’m not sure how I’m gonna manage it.
It doesn’t work, it’s the definition of insanity to keep trying it knowing it doesn’t work while refusing to run a young charismatic candidate with a progressive campaign when we know that works.
I am confused, which candidate was young and charismatic there?
I’ve noticed…
The last young charismatic candidate with a progressive platform was 2008 Obama.
But like I said, if you still don’t understand why “lesser of two evils” isn’t working, there’s nothing I can say here that will magically make it click for you.
Running a candidate that genuinely wins a primary! That’s the whole point of my post! If democrats want to win then engage in democracy!
Lesser of evils is a losing strategy because soon enough you’re asking people to choose the lesser evil between Hilter and Mussolini.
C’mon. Like any politician, she had to try and be electable if she were to accomplish anything. How can it be that this is not obvious?
And she failed miserably at being electable. The democrats are totally gonna learn the lesson that ratcheting to the right wins them elections, not.
she had to try and be electable if she were to accomplish anything. How can it be that this is not obvious?
And my point is that “electable” for a Dem candidate isn’t what she was doing.
That would be matching her platform to what Dem voters wanted. Instead she based policy on “all voters” which includes the 40-50% who will never vote D under any circumstance. And in that process she lost votes from voters who will never vote R under any circumstances.
If she was trying to be electable, it just shows how important it is we clear house at the DNC and run a fair primary in 2028.
Because the same people have been running the show since 2016, and they’re 2-1 against fucking trump.
They clearly aren’t up to the task
Run a fair primary in 2028? Lol they won’t! Watch them coronate Chelsea Clinton or one of the Obama girls lmfao.
You think there’ll be a Democratic Party in 2028 that’s not simply controlled opposition?
No lmfao
Another pretty fucking important thing to point out is that total voter turnout dropped by like 18 fucking million. The centrist bullshit just made a lot of people further to the left feel like it wasn’t even worth it to show up.
I almost didn’t vote but my state makes it so damn easy it would be stupid not to. I voted third party for the general and then a split ticket for everything else with as much third party as I could. I live in VT, Harris, sanders, and Scott were all shoe ins with massive % so the only races that were remotely competitive were down ticket. My local politician for state office has run unopposed the entire time I’ve been here. He’s a “democrat Republican” which brings me back to revolutionary war period america lol.
No matter who wins the election we all lose and the capitalists win, they own both parties. It’s a billionaire pissing contest.
Also I agree about the downfall being far before 2008, but my point is about primaries and earning the popular will of the voters, something the democrat party could care less about. They would rather the country fall to fascism than allow any kind of progressive let alone leftist leadership come to power.
2024 lack of primary - this one I blame on Biden. Either he insisted to have the right to run because “this is a tradition, that incumbents run for second term” and/or the party held that view as well.
Every time Dems got owned by Repubs was due to this reliance on tradition
Agree, at the same time, biden didn’t act alone, nearly the entire democrat party establishment and operatives worked to make that happen and block out any real challengers who don’t have brain worms…
That’s why I ended my post with these people get paid way too much to be this stupid, I’m referring to the swamp monsters of the democrat party.
Biden had claimed he would be a transition president, a bridge to the next generation-- an allusion to being a one-term president.
This is from June, just before his debate:
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4718993-did-biden-break-his-one-term-pledge/
The tone of that article, with the clarity of hindsight, should be obvious to anyone.
I remember that, one of many false promises. But still, the whole DNC apparatus worked alongside him. They had so many opportunities to find other candidates and instead held onto this losing administration because it’s more important that they keep their political operative career than do what’s best for the country.
they did it to everyone
Sadly 😭 that’s why I can’t take the liberal pearl clutching. They hurt us all - especially those they claim to care about most, minorities of all stripes - with their political malpractice.
On top of that, dems have done a load of jack shit in power, even with a majority for half of the last term. Most of the policies Biden promised never came to fruition. Just sitting back and slowly letting the people shrivel. Advertising themselves as “maintaining the status-quo” isn’t appealing for the average voter. As a Harris voter, I say that dem voters have an apathy problem.
Lazy. Replace Gaza with “refuse to court base” and it would be a hell of a lot more accurate.
Your mistake is thinking the Democratic Party is trying to get members elected. Their primary goal is to keep the top brass in positions of power and then to keep their donors making money.
That second one is true of every political party, they just have different ways of going about it.
You’re completely correct. It explains their otherwise inexplicable behavior towards roe v Wade, where they ran on it as a wedge issue for decades always promising yet failing to make it law, and then shocked pickachu face when it’s overturned. And the nerve of them to continue to use it as a fundraising issue? It’s straight up offensive to my intellect.
Also it’s not a mistake in thinking, I’ve thought your comment for a while. If they cared about saving democracy they would do everything in their power to do so, like making concessions to the left, not courting dick fucking Cheney, stopping the arms sales to Israel. They don’t give a shit about winning, they care about money and power and keeping their owners happy, who own both parties.
I can’t stop thinking about how in 2016, my conservative grandmother watched the primary debates and told me she actually thought Bernie made a lot of good points.
And then she went on to vote for Donald Trump in November.
This, I think, is the disconnect the DNC keeps failing to recognize.
We just keep nominating milquetoast centrists whose message is little more than “maintain the status quo”, when nobody is happy with the status quo.
But we have to run centrist candidates, they say, or else we’ll lose all the voters in the center!
If that’s how it works, then why is the GOP winning by doing the exact opposite?
In a world where rent keeps going up but wages stay the same, people are scared and frustrated, and they don’t feel like their frustrations are heard.
Along comes a smooth-talking con man who tells them, “I know you’re angry at the world, and I’m going to give you a scapegoat to blame it on. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s trans people’s fault. It’s the woke left’s fault. It’s whatever target I tell you to hate next’s fault. And if you elect me, I will stick it to these people in order to Make America Great Again!”
Meanwhile, the best we can do is “Vote for me because everything that other guy said is horrifying.” That’s it. That’s the only real sales pitch we have for Harris. But no matter how terrible the other guy is, it reflects horribly on us that we can’t even talk about our own candidate’s merits at all.
We need to run a candidate who can say, “I too know you’re angry at the world. And I’m here to offer real solutions, not snake oil, and more importantly, not the status quo either.”
The difference between the right and left here is that the right actually likes their guy. And if not even we like our candidates, why should voters?
Alas, we learned nothing in 2016 and I suspect the DNC will continue to learn nothing now.
The dnc is absolutely not gonna learn a god damn thing except to once again give a tongue lashing to the left while making out with corporate America and the military industrial complex.
Every Republican family member except one that I’ve asked about Bernie has said more or less the following:
I like him, I like that he’s not Dem/Repub, he’s got the country’s best interest at heart, etc.
Then it’s usually followed by how he’d never get a chance, and then it revolves back to why Dems suck and repubs rule, or at best, “they’re both the same.”
You are 100% right: people want change, they want progress, and regardless of how shitty he is, Trump got things done that his base wanted.
Clinton, then Biden, and now Harris, promise marginal improvements to the status quo while dismissing large swaths of their electorate that don’t fall in line.
If they ran progressive candidates with progressive policies, they’d pull voters from all over. But they wont, hence, fascism.
I know a ton of republicans and people sympathetic to republicans. All of them thought bernie was a decent guy and they would of preferred him over Hillary.
Then after the primary he increasingly took up democrat talking points and would occasionally finger wag at them while not materially doing anything other than get angry in a speech. His embrace of democrats on gun control was a mistake, if he just maintained his view that he had most of his political career he’d court a lot of crossover voters. But now he’s far too old and the damage is done.
I voted for him multiple times, in primaries and eventually as my senator, but his milquetoast stance on Gaza made me for the first time vote against him for an independent. He’s really disappointed me over the past almost decade - I went from raising money and canvassing for him to finding him to be a has been and sell out. I still think he’s the best elected official on the national scale that we’ve got but I’m so disappointed in him.
Interesting. Every Republican family member that I have talked to has said Sanders is a Marxist.
I mostly agree. I do think that a lot of folks on the left liked our candidate, though, and that a lot in the right disliked Trump but sucked it up and voted for him because they thought they “had” to. Harris’ likeability rating is way higher than Trump’s in the polls.
I don’t think any of this would have been an issue if Bernie was the Dem candidate in 2016.
I think the problem is that plenty of people might like Harris, but not so much that turnout for her matched Biden. The people who like Trump love him, and they turned out in the same numbers as 2020 basically. He didn’t need to meaningfully grow his base if people weren’t motivated to show up for his opponent.
It’s definitely a demonstration that having the most palatable candidate doesn’t matter. It might if voting were compulsory, but it isn’t.
That’s a good point about like vs love. Trump supporters are basically cultists. People who liked Bernie loved Bernie (not cultists).
Indeed. I think it’s why cults of personality are so dangerous. You don’t need to convince that many people if you can get a large enough, dedicated number to consistently do what the leader says and push others around.
I’m not sure that love is the word for Bernie, but I was certainly much more enthusiastic about him. Some people did get weird about it which made me uncomfortable, though. The policy should always come before the politician.
