The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own “base” than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
You can’t berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
Even when Democrats are in power, they still don’t do anything hardly at all. I have voted Democrat for a long time now, but what we really need to do is get rid of First Past the Post voting in America, as it would really light a fire under them to be effective or be replaced.
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
I think if you voted for Democrats you get to complain, but if you were eligible to vote and didn’t have to jump through a ton of hoops to do so you don’t get to complain. This could have been avoided.
edit: to be clear, I don’t think Democratic leadership really cares that we’ve got a dictator. But voting for them was harm reduction and too many people couldn’t be bothered, whatever the reason.
you are absolutely welcome to complain, however i would advise you to complain about actual real issues, rather than “black hole issues” like “The DNC didn’t personally target me and now i feel left out” because let’s be honest, nobody fucking cares. We have problems to be solving, not shit to be moping over.
Right right, it’s a neat graphic, but it kind of ignores people who remember multiple presidential elections.
If we vote Democrat and then the Democrats don’t do jack s*** then what surprise is it that people stay home next time? Obama was weak. Biden was weak. They could have pushed policies that would benefit the average American citizen, and they mostly didn’t. The party threw us away, not the other way around.
And I still think people should vote, but you don’t get to blame them for the Democrats being s*****.
How do you vote to get rid of the dumb voting system in USA?
Realistically, it’s the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of “We offer you nothing!”, did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
The democratic message was less “we offer you nothing” than “nothing will change”.
Nothing will change has good sides and bad sides. The bad side is that there are no new radical fixes, just small, incremental changes.
The good side of nothing will change is… well look at the absolute chaos of the Trump second presidency. Installing absolutely unqualified candidates everywhere, the military’s first DUI hire for secretary of defence. The absolute destruction of USAID. Musk’s chaos putting BigBalls in charge of trillions of dollars of government spending.
(And, as an aside, it’s not even true that with the democrats nothing was going to change. Just look at the progress they had been making on antitrust. But, it’s true that they were shit at messaging and taking credit for their accomplishments.)
“We offer nothing” and “nothing will change” are fundamentally the same thing when things are objectively bad.
Not when things could get much, much worse.
If you are eating raw veggies and corn flakes nothing will change means you eat boring food. Offering nothing means you die a painful death. See the difference?
Biden was the “Nothing will essentially change” candidate. We finally pushed him out, but Harris only had 2 weeks to come up with “Something”. That something? A small tax credit for small businesses that was DOA in the house. It was probably why they didn’t promise anything else - if a TAX CUT isn’t passing the GOP controlled parts of congress, what the heck could Harris promise that would?
“That something” also included the largest medicare expansion in history and $25k first time homebuyer assistance.
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
Keep telling yourself the voters are morons until we lose in 2026 and 2028. If Democratic candidates don’t convince people to come out and vote we are lost.
If we lose in 2026 and 2028 I think that would just further prove that voters are morons.
The only people actually losing here are the American people.
Hey I’m Canadian, looking at this from the outside. You guys inside the shit show can’t quite see how the rest of us see you and your situation
Hey I’m Canadian too. Don’t speak for “the rest of us.” It’s the Democratic parties’ own gd fault that they lost. If you can’t convince the average voter to vote for you when you’re running against an obviously volatile, incompetent, narcissistic, geriatric moron with fascistic tendencies backed up by the world’s richest and least charismatic deadbeat dad then you done fucked up.
People love it when outsiders comment on their country’s politics
lol the irony and utter hypocrisy of an American saying this 😂
P.s. im native, it’s MY continent
Removed by mod
I was born in Central America and have lived on every extreme of my continent, is that an issue for you? I’ll stay out of American affairs when Americans stay out of everyone else’s and then act alert righteous while lecturing others, you’re all so full of shit.
But that’s the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn’t do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.
Also, I don’t think the Democrats are suffering. They’re all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.
Their point was that the Democrats didn’t fail, because they didn’t try in the first place
We all voted for Biden even though we KNEW he would be worthless but that’s who was forced on us…and then for four years he ABSOLUTELY REFUSED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE to do his Number One Job of defending the US against domestic terrorism and insurrection.
ABSOLUTE REFUSAL.
And then his successor campaigns as a GWB acolyte and gives vague, rambling non-answers to very simple questions while telling the constituency to go fuck themselves.
You figure it out
I voted in Taiwan. I had to take a 1 hour train ride to the American embassy to vote.
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I’m leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can’t say “oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN’t 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!” Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
You’re 100% right, but just a heads up, you absolutely will hear dems say that. Campaigning for a third party started long ago and you just joined in.
Dems will have no idea how long you’ve been supporting third-party candidates, and will only recall the discussions they hear while engaged - during election season.
This is a little bit dishonest. It’s not about the length of time you support a party but how much general support they have. You absolutely should support third party and grow the voter base on local and state and even push for larger support. But the spoiler effect is very real. In major elections where voting third party will elect the individuals most likely to harm you and your lifestyle in the most severe ways, and it is extremely obvious that third party has no real horse in the game, you hurt more than yourself. I agree Dems either need to figure their shit out and cut out the cancer or they need to get the fuck out of the way, but until third party candidates stand a real chance at national change for good, i will only be voting for them in elections they either stand a chance in or where showing support for them will help grow the voter base while limiting harm. Mid terms, vote 3pt. Primaries, vote 3pt. General election? Vote to minimize harm while maintaining a potential win.
Damn right the spoiler effect is very real. It was obvious to everyone that it needs to be fixed at a national level in 2000, and obvious that it needs to be fixed in the Democratic primaries in 2020.
So why would we believe any excuse for not opposing it with clone independent voting systems, like third-party candidates do. I’m surprised those don’t strike you as dishonest.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to about “independent voting systems”. I’m not talking about another system of voting in this case.
Is this one of those both parties same things? Because one party is literally pushing dictatorship. I don’t subscribe to that nonsense in our current system. Kamala Harris, for all her faults, would not be deporting brown people, taking away benefits for the poor, lowing the taxes on the rich, and literally handing money to corporations by the fistful. Both parties suck. But one is clearly worse.
No, it’s not. One side is fascist, the other side blatantly sold us out to fascists since 2000.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren’t a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
Edit: judging from the votes on this comment, we’re gonna lose again because half of you refuse to learn anything from history that (metaphorically) happened yesterday.
I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.
However… there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn’t win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won’t be listing the republicans on my ballot)
So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that’s on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.
or put forward more progressive Democrats,
Beat this drum.
SHOW UP TO THE FUCKING PRIMARIES.
I remember it being fucking dead in my polling place back in 2020 for the primaries compared to the general.
Yeah, primaries are depressing.
Also, at least in my state (a red, semi-regressive state) you can register for and vote in the primaries completely by mail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Joe Biden won that primary with a mere 20 million votes. Bernie had 10, out of a potential voter pool of 87 million.
What’s really telling is that Democratic Party supporters seem to think that the Green Party is the only third party to exist, and that splitting the vote only affects them, when the right-wing parties and independent candidates get many, many more votes.
Weird how the Greens who get less votes than the Libertarians in every election somehow throw the vote to Republicans, when the Libertarians:
- Are in all 50 states, the greens often are in just over half
- More voters are registered Libertarian than any other third party since the 1980s
- More people voted for Libertarian than Green in 2000, 2016, and 2024
- Yet somehow Green voters are blamed in all of these despite if every Green voter was given to Democrats they wouldn’t have won, but Libertarian votes would have
- And you never see Democrats getting mad at the serious third party that people actually vote for in swing states, but they have taken ideas from the Green party like the Green New Deal
Well the Google results i saw say about 64% of eligible voters voted, which is apparently high for the US.
Based on 2020 numbers it does look like a lot of 2020 Biden voters stayed home and most 2020 Trump voters came out again. Add in some economy frustration and surprise we get this shit show for 4 years…
I’m so tired of this. Obviously more people need to be more politically active, but there’s a lot of issues occurring that we just don’t talk about enough here.
Being politically active while being a responsible and well-informed voter takes time. The first without the other two is just how you make more Republican voters. When you consider how much a lot of people are working and the other struggles they’re facing it really isn’t surprising that a lot of people are not that informed or active. Let’s also not pretend that one party doesn’t go out of its way to make it more difficult for people to vote either.
Other the other side of the issue there’s a myriad of issues that have made our current democrats less motivated to be an opposition party. Also, let me just point out that a party should never sit back and watch simply because they are not currently in full control of congress at the given moment. The Republicans have led by example on this repeatedly. Even when they aren’t in control they continue to be aggressive, to be disruptive, to keep a media presence. Democrats can do this too. They need to.
This isn’t to say that Democrats are completely to blame. There’s a lot of shitty people in this country and there are people out there that can do a bit more than what they’re doing to support the cause. This is just to say that Democrats share some responsibility and some of the burden here.
Also I just want to put this out there. I know people are scared, people are angry, people are upset, but the blame game isn’t doing anyone any good. It is important to understand what went wrong, but spending all our time pointing fingers is simply wasting energy.
The voting system doesn’t have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren’t the democrats doing anything? Because they don’t have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? “Vote for us… or else” is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it’s all about preventing republican control, it wouldn’t matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don’t want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don’t support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world’s easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that “most important election ever” but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it’s a long shot. But it’s better then having no shot at all.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Yeah now is the time to promote voting reform and try to make a serious third party.
A serious third party needs to start with congressional seats. Not the presidency.
A serious third party probably needs to start at the state or even municipal level, realistically.
So when people promote voting reform and making a third party we won’t be called splitting the vote and enabling Trump, right?
I think most third parties get blamed for that because they parachute into the presidential race a couple months before the election without anyone in lower offices.
Thank you for writing this.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish©
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can’t get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala… they were voting AGAINST Trump
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I’ve been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it’s a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They’ve given unanimous consent to Trump’s agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they’re actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Why the lies?
Democrats used every second of their allotted talking time to block Gaetz’s confirmation as much as they could while holding a minority. You genuinely need to look up the meaning of the word “unanimous”.
Republicans obstructed democrats for so long by preventing a majority. The American people enabled that by voting them in.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn’t even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, “unanimous consent.” It’s a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It’s one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump’s agenda if they had the willpower.
I’ll walk that back - I think at some point I mixed up the hearings on RFK and Gaetz, so I gave the wrong name there. I apologize for that.
But even then, for RFK I read articles specifically highlighting the Democrat initiative to hold the floor; and the final vote came out along party lines (excepting some R senators that rebelled). So it sounds like the unanimous consent topic you’re referring to is on regular Senate work, not the confirmation. You specifically said they’ve “fast tracked his appointments” and I’m trying to understand that claim. To me, I’m more convinced that Democrats have political experience telling them that Indivisible’s plan is too easy to backfire, too easy for media to twist against them, and get them forcibly removed from office; especially since their efforts at filibustering have shown they’re not beyond putting in effort.
Given there’s clearly a differing view on what we’re talking about, I’ll apologize for calling you a liar, but it still doesn’t seem like a claim that makes sense to me.
