i can’t even guess as to why they went quiet. not one guess at all. we will never know.
edit: well they’re not quiet now once they get called out
You did. You said we need to elect whoever the Democrats give us to get progressive policies but whoever they give us will likely not support them. It’s putting the cart before the horse.
And she didn’t really. Look into her policies and they lacked any actual support for the larger population percentage. She was a centrist. It’s not pretend because you want to pretend she’s not.
Her house buying support was only for for first generation homebuyers, mostly immigrants who had lived in corporate owned apartments to track rent payments for 2 years and no one else. Business loans were for specific races in specific cities with specific history again. Trans support for prisoners but not health care for regular citizens. So on. She picked hyper specifics and that’s not helping people. That’s helping specific groups in ways they think keeps status quo but gets more votes.
When everyone feels like they are hurting telling them to hold on while you apply hyper specific help doesn’t feel very progressive or helpful.
It’s not picking apart by the way. It’s not like she didn’t say these things out loud and mean it. And other people who pay less attention aren’t going to be excited to hear about plans that don’t help them.
The issue is that you don’t know that people vote on emotion and think people can be told what’s best for them while they feel differently. It’s not that Bernie or any progressive would fix everything immediately but Trump won because he admitted there is a problem and agreed with people feeling hurt by the system.
He’s not gonna fix it, but he didn’t make people feel dumb and ignored. It’s not about you or me but the millions that it was true for. So acting smug about how centrist she wasn’t doesn’t help us either and won’t change her loss.
It gets you and the rest of us nowhere and is a great way to lose again by doing nothing but battling with hypothetical pedantry against reality.
Again join reality and maybe you might get somewhere but currently there is no way forward when this hellbent imagining it how you want. Everyone else will move on without the DNC if they have to. Change will and must happen. Sticking your nose up at it because you’d prefer it didn’t will keep you being ineffective at moving with it.
Here’s reality: The republican party put forward a candidate that literally quoted Mein Kampf and was also found liable for sexual abuse in court by a jury. The entire republican media apparatus and electoral base not only stood behind him but rabidly endorsed him lockstep from beginning to end. The DNC put forward a candidate that wasn’t very left (I’ll be first to agree with you that her platform tried to cater to the center). I’ll also grant that she wasn’t as charming or funny as Trump and she came across as center technocrat. I’ll grant you all of that.
My issue is we’ll never make progress because democrats (and when I say democrats I mean beyond the electoral base to include the entire media environment) will shred and nitpick any candidate regardless of where their policies stand. It’s not the policies, because even your post is a testament that you don’t understand how policies translate into legislation. Bernie could have come out with universal healthcare, and I promise you the democratic media apparatus would still find something to nitpick. There just isn’t solidarity on this side as the democratic platform has a very strong plurality of voices that hardly ever agree. None of this is diversity of opinion is happening on the side that is pulling us into a christian neo-fascist state. And believe me: those guys show up to vote every time.
Let’s assume that her polices were too center for your preferences. So what? Now that republicans control all branches and the judicial they’ll dismantle everything we built up so far. So congratulations I guess? We have to redo 100 years of work because Kamala just wasnt left enough for us.
I’m running out of spoons to keep this conversation going.
But who is us? huh? Like you. Understand millions less people voted and the Republicans picked up votes in every demographic basically right?
So you are battling an invisible made up enemy.
The Republican party absolutely has dissenters. There are constantly people pushing back against trump and people even thought he was going to lose for some of his rhetoric and said so. You think they are all the same cause it’s easier to think of them as a hegemony with no ability to interact with. Your concept of the voter bases is based on perception that isn’t reality.
The trick is the GOP and their media presence is willing to get behind what works. They didn’t want Trump when he first descended down that escalator but when he proved effective most of them were willing to work with it and do it too.
The DNC will not get behind what works because the bureaucracy and complexity is the point. A system made of convoluted rules and loopholes to exploit by then but keep things running was the point and held together by an idea of agreed upon norms in all those that hold power and a blind hope and desire that no one should be able to rise up that wouldn’t respect the norms.
The nitpicking is only a problem because the plans are in the weeds on micro percentages of help while willfully ignoring larger populace demands and requests. Because to change those might upset someone else wealthy who wants things that way.
I understand that legislation is slow but in the act of trying to change things and getting pushback is actually a driving force for getting Republicans out to vote to undo those roadblocks because they think it will be better for them.
If the DNC was showing they were trying and failing to do good things because of not having the votes but fought hard still anyways the message might be behind them to get the support they want but aiming for micro wins with specific groups is not that.
You are stuck on this idea that some specific group of leftists just didn’t agree with her centrism and thus didn’t show up but that’s not reality. She lost demographics from not speaking truth to the hurt that people were feeling and aiming for percentages of the population that the majority are not part of while expecting votes for simply not being a guy who makes people feel heard that they insulted over and over again.
It is not because Kamala wasn’t left enough for us or me but because she didn’t speak to the people who needed more than just not fascism.
She didn’t appeal to them.
I understand what you’re saying and I don’t disagree. She didn’t speak to the working class as effectively. I’m familiar with this analysis and I find it to be true. Trump was able to hit a nerve with the economic woes that most Americans are feeling. I get it. But between 2020 and 24 Trump lost almost no voters despite how despicable and lacking in policy he was. He’s charismatic and was able to touch on the fear and anxiety brewing in the working class. I get it. You’re not telling me anything I haven’t heard or disagree with. Kamala’s campaign was weak sauce. I agree.
My point of contention that while there are some voices of disagreement among republicans, those individuals get excised immediately from the party. Trump loses nothing in terms of electability. His base has enough support that it will alway showup to vote. Every time.
The left is a big tent party and almost none of the left media apparatus got united with the messaging in supporting the DNC candidate —regardless of where she stood center left or left of center. Until we resolve not having this unified front, we can have the most charming left progressive candidate but it won’t matter.
You can talk about complexity and loopholes as means of exploiting complacency, but remember: we are standing on a century of progress and hard work. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it’s very privileged of us to make statements like those and discount all the years of activism and hard work that brought us to where we are. Are things good now? Far from it. But that’s because we still have a long way to go. People who keep bringing up the ratchet meme to show us how the rich are exploiting us have just blanched out a hundred years of history and progress and thrown it in the bin. You’re also about to find out how that hundred years gets reversed faster than you’ve ever seen.
To add on. We on the left don’t demand progressives because of the guaranteed help that they will do, because we can’t guarantee it. But because it means trying for progress. Trying to change. We have to try to keep moving forward cause things will always change. The DNC is the party of stagnation and same as it always was. It can only be held for so long before the change becomes necessary no matter the cost and we may not be able to control it to progress forwards anymore but have it changed to try something in the past that didn’t work.
We can only appeal to people who are already happy with life as is when supporting stagnation. Progress will be made it’s in our best interest to support and push it with real gusto and not empty promises and small percentages.
That’s not for the sake of some leftist who is saying it but for the world that we inhabit and the people we must get on our side to keep this world going for us all. They have to believe in tomorrow and you can’t do that with better than nothing.
