Because you now did it to yourself.
Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
The democrats are so impossibly spineless that they wait for polls and focus groups for their talking points instead of standing up for their principles (if they really exist).
Dems spent the entire campaign trying to compromise with and convince right wingers acting in bad faith instead of just working towards progressive policies. They once and again let the GOP set the tone for every conversation.
The Dem’s attitude towards the genocide in Gaza is just a piece of evidence that shows their way of thinking: the dog race and politicking is more important that doing the right thing.
So stop blaming the voters and take a deep look into your own values and principles because the nation being obliterated right now in the middle east and the people who stand for them even at great cost to themselves are definitely not to blame.
Why blame the voters?
Cause they voted. Or didn’t. Ultimately the choice is with them and a large majority of people decided that they’ll vote for rapist, racist, authoritarian fuckwit or sit the fuck home because it doesn’t matter who is running the government.
You can talk strategies and blame Democratic party till cows come home but at the end of the day, the people have to choose the least bad option.
And if they weren’t willing to choose the least bad option, I think that says more about the least bad option than it does about the worst option.
This post is a really good example of how the disinformation campaign actually worked on people and created this believe. Fascinating. And terrifying.
Or maybe, like they normally do, the Democrats failed to rally their base to vote, or didn’t give them enough incentive to get out and vote.
Biden had 4 years to make meaningful progress for the American people, and whether or not he did is irrelevant because Americans don’t feel better off than 4 years ago. Democrats spent the last year screaming about the economy doing amazing, while ignoring all of the polls showing Americans don’t feel that way.
Democrats spent the last year sending weapons shipment after weapons shipment to Israel to bomb Palestinian children, despite polls showing the majority of Americans wanted contingencies on the shipments. And the Democrats instead lectured their constituents about how what they’re seeing and hearing isn’t actually what it is, and it’ll be worse with the other guy!
Democrats spent the last 4 years doing nothing but try to return to the same status quo that isn’t working for the average American anymore. Biden’s hubris took the decision out of the people’s hands, and we were given a candidate we didn’t choose and told to shut up and like it because “fAsCiSm.”
Well, congratulations Democrat Party, we fell to fascism because that’s obviously a better alternative than actually putting forward progressive policies. And whether you like to hear it or not, the Republican voter supporting this fascist movement is doing so because they want change in this country too.
Only difference being, the Republicans are actually “progressing” their party along like their constituents want. Maybe the Democrats should try listening to their constituents for once and, idk, see if that maybe works in their favor for once?
No, the base let themselves very much get rallied.
They had a candidate that said “I’m not going to stop the genocide in Gaza” and one that went “I am fully pro-genocide in Gaza, and I want to burn it all down”. And they all rallied behind the second one. This does tell me, as someone not from the US, one thing: A lot of voters in the US really dislike people from Gaza and want them to die. Fuck you people. Yes, I blame you voters. Fuck you.
This is the point I’m trying to make too. I don’t even think Americans care about Gaza enough to make such a large difference in votes as we’ve seen last night. I guess the scapegoating must start as soon as possible to avoid enacting any meaningful change in the status quo.
I see the Palestinian issue as a great proxy for inspecting the Democrat mindset even though it’s not itself an election winner. And as they say, they failed the vibe check horribly. It’s not a “single issue” if the mindset applies to every decision they make.
What exactly is wrong with what they said? At the end of the day, democrats support the genocide too. You can’t say “republicans will do it harder hurr durr” and expect people to vote for the one that still is for genocide, but is a little bit shy about it. The end result is the same - the Palestinian state will never exist and the people will be killed. There is no difference if it happens over a year or over three. So that issue is brushed aside, or is the cause of not voting at all.
Then you have the absolutely idiotic move to the right. Saying “the border wall is a good idea” as a democrat? Come the F on.
Yes, now you mentioned two issues.
Want me to add a few more, and you give your takes on those?
Let’s start with a few easy ones:
- Bodily autonomy of women.
- Gerrymandering
- Climate change
- Land grabbing
- Corporate tax evasion
You make the exact same mistake, too. You let people direct you towards a singular, specific, feels-driven point instead of trying to give an informed vote. Any large-scale politics is always going to be a hybrid vote. You won’t have any even city-wide, nevermind state-wide candidate of any party (over here, I know it’s only two for you folks :P ) where you agree with all of their stances.
But if you let someone train you to ignore the vast majority of stances in favor of just 1-2, I hopefully don’t need to explain to you how you have effectively turned yourself into a voting-drone. You can be trivially led by anger and feeling, not by rational thought and informed vote. And especially on large-scale politics, the problem is not with immediate feels, in particular if people start putting those in power that want ot actively dismantle their own checks and balances. Because then even if they later decide differently, they cannot remove them any more. It’s now too late for that.
It says a lot that everybody commenting is so hyperfocused on Gaza. This is exactly what the right wing wanted. And I blame voters for so readily - and greedily - walking into this “trap” (for lack of a better word, not my primary language).
What belief, may I ask?
Look, you can check my older comments to understand where I’m coming from. I’m open to listening and perhaps we both can learn something from all of this.
The belief that everyone decrying Harris’ stance on Gaza was knowingly or unknowingly participating in enabling a worse stance on Gaza than the still-not-great one we would have gotten with her.
Look back now with hindsight and tell me what would be better for Palestinians in Gaza. What we’re getting with trump in charge? Or what we might have gotten if every single person who said negative things about Harris’ stance had instead focused solely on how Trump’s stance was objectively worse per his own words.
By not putting the focus on the absolutely 100% guaranteed WORSE stance of the two, people enabled talking points that led, in part, to where we are now.
THAT is why so many of us screaming about harm reduction and the lesser of two evils is SO pissed off about single-issue Gaza voters not putting in for Harris.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. It leads to this.
Elections are about holding your nose and making the best of a bunch of imperfect choices.
Trying to make it anything else from the top down is folly. You have to start from the bottom up. Until that happens, we will never see our way out of a two party system.
Learn something from this…?
To what end? For what point? There isn’t an “undo” button on fascism.
Because you fall into the same “but what about?!”-thing modern far right excels at.
You myopically focus on a single issue, trying desperately to use it as a crowbar to dislodge an otherwise sensible point, ignoring that everything is inherently a compromise, in particular in a 2-party system. Hence any voter who is not as easily blinded - and it’s not like Harris wasn’t very open during speeches about how much the right deals in fearmongering and disinformation, going as far as openly mocking people for made-up bullshit stats they’re yelling - would be able to inform themselves and realize that:
- Even if they’d like their candidate of choice to act differently about a specific issue in a specific country on the other side of the globe, there are a million other also-important issues that are strictly going to work out better under this candidate.
- The candidate that now won has in fact very openly declared that he wants said genocide to accelerate and wants the IDF to “finish the job”.
So, even if we were to just focus on this particular issue, the voters very much vote pro-genocide when they vote for Trump. I love how he’s technically correct though when he says he wants to end the war in Gaza, people are just too stupid to realize how he means it.
But more importantly, and the central point I’m making, you’re under the belief that reaction to a single issue should matter. Any voter who lets this argument slide has inherently lost themselves to the populist and fascist movements as they excel at exploiting this, and in fact stoke this belief whenever they can. Politics on a large scale cannot be judged based on single issues. Because if you try to, you exactly fall into this trap. You automatically end up being barraged by appeals to emotion, constantly, and you’ll let those decide things for you.
Hence, blaming the voters. For not actually engaging with the democratic process, just with hate- and fearmongering and then wondering why that that ended up controlling them when they sought it out themselves.
Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
Because I never saw Trump getting the exact same criticism. Not even when he told Netanyahu, “finish the job.”
Somehow Harris was always worse on Gaza to certain people.
The difference between them is you are never getting the votes that don’t give a shit about Palestine back from Trump. His voters don’t care. Democratic voters do. When both candidates have the exact same position (and “genocide harder or lighter” isn’t a difference in position, it’s still genocide) then the issue only causes people to not vote, or look at other policies. And then you add in alienating more democrats by going further right and copying their policies. The people who like them will still vote for the republican. The people liking democratic policies will cringe and step aside.
Because like it or not stopping aid for Israel would have pushed all Israel supporters to Trump. Sadly apparently most Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
Palestine supporters are stupid enough to not see that is 1000x worse for them
I don’t think this is a constructive way of looking at the situation. After all, being quiet about Netanyahu’s abuses wasn’t a winning strategy either. Besides, being scared of Israeli lobbying automatically makes you a bad leader.
Regular people don’t live reading obscure threads on Lemmy so I’m 100% sure that the effects of the comments posted by tankies here are negligible.
My point is that you can’t lose against the worst human being twice and keep blaming the electorate. If they want to lead, the dems have to stand for something instead of complaining about turnout or in general blaming anyone else but themselves. It was THEIR job to get out the vote.
Trump is a monumental POS but the dems prefer to cater to the people who voted for him instead of the people who want legitimate pro-working-class policies.
You can blame dems for a lot but to decide not to vote for them because of Gaza is the dumbest possible take
My point is that you can’t lose against the worst human being twice and keep blaming the electorate.
If the electorate votes for the worst human being twice they definitely deserve a freaking hulking heap of blame.
The simple answer is you blame people for the things they do. Kind of fucking basic.
Yeah harris should have ran a better campaign with less genocide and more pro labor policies.
What actions have you taken to save lives in Gaza?
If you didn’t vote for Harris, the answer is absolutely fucking nothing of consequence.
This had nothing to do with Gaza. This election shows Gaza doesn’t matter one iota. Ukraine didn’t matter one bit. Not even your own human rights mattered. This was inflation, housing, and (further on the right) xenophobia. Clinton was right, “it’s the economy stupid” (even though Dems are better for the economy).
In general I agree, because their campaign definitely could’ve been better and it should’ve been better. But on the other hand this election wasn’t genocide or no genocide, without a significant shift in either political party that would happen regardless. If you really wanted to twist it into “genocide or no genocide” then that vote was “completely support genocide” or “begrudgingly support genocide”.
But really this election was between “full steam straight into fascism” and “chance to not go into fascism”. It’s obvious that if you don’t vote for the latter you either want fascism or don’t care that you’re getting fascism. That is on the voters. They could’ve voted to pass the fascism buck to the next election, but they didn’t. Now America is getting fascism.
Honest question: Why blame the voters? Why not blame Harris for refusing to do the obviously correct, ethical even moral thing regarding Gaza?
Because it’s only one issue out of many that need to be addressed (I didn’t say fixed because IMHO the IDF are doing pretty good work eradicating Hamas, all things considered).
You guys need to take care of your housing, healthcare, gerrymandering, public transport, student loans, separation of religion and government and a truckload of other things that I don’t think Trump has any interest in improving. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Trump won’t be any “better” in regards to the situation in Gaza and the rest of the middle east.
So the voters that didn’t vote Harris purely because of the Gaza issue are to blame for their short sightedness.
Okay so blame the arabs in Wisconsin. Got it. Now do Pennsylvania. Why did they go trump. Tell me more mr oracle.
What the fuck are you talking about? I answered a pretty specific question which had nothing go do with Arabs in Wisconsin…
You are right. We can’t keep blaming other citizens like ourselves.
There is one group of people that led us to this point: Democrats themselves. And by Democrats, I mean those in power, delegates, podcast hosts, and the ones supposedly “leading” the party. Not the electorate.
They are the ones that wished Biden would be able to make it to a second term, when the first presidential debate clearly showed otherwise. They are the ones that pushed un-Democratic policies in hopes of winning over a base they’ve never captured: Republicans. They are the ones that dropped the ball on one of the greatest feats of Kamala’s campaign that could have sent her over the finish line: Tim Walz and a progressive agenda.
Yes, thank you for putting it better than me.
Especially Re: podcast hosts, I follow a couple of “progressive” podcasts and they showed their true colors very clearly when one day they were strongly shilling for Biden and admonishing any differing opinion. Then magically they changed tunes when the situation was inescapable. They came off as strongly disingenuous and spineless.
We can’t keep blaming other citizens like ourselves.
Fucking what? Donald Trump won the popular vote. We blame those people.
And why did Donald Trump win the popular vote? Because he gave concessions to his base and catered to their needs and wants? Because a politician actually fought for the interests of their constituents?
What about Democrats? Did they do any of that? Hell no. I blame Democrats.
DNC relies on Zionist/Israel first funding, even as most of it went to Trump. Every other oligarch/lobby group allies with Zionism because failure to do so would hurt their interests, if it upset the Zionists who overspend relative to usual Israel aid amounts given each year. Zionism is integral to oil geopolitics by dividing the middle east, and providing war spending opportunities. Do you think tech, farmers or manufacturing can oppose that trifecta of power?
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