Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib defeated her Republican opponent in Michigan’s 12th congressional district election on Tuesday, securing a fourth term as the only Palestinian-American woman in the US Congress.
The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.
Tlaib secured 77 percent of the vote, defeating the Republican Party’s James Hooper who received just 19 percent of the vote.
Her victory comes amid the backdrop of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians so far and has been diplomatically and militarily supported by the Biden-Harris administration for more than a year.
Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the war, calling for the US to withhold weapons from Israel. Her opposition to the war on Gaza and support for pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses have drawn harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Do not support genocide. It is that easy!
It’s not that easy. Democrats have to go a lot more left than just “not genocide.” They have to actually give a shit about the conditions of the working class if they want the working class to support them.
That is true but Tlaib won by an overwhelming majority of 77% against 19%. Indicating most voters did not blindly pick D or R.
I need you to understand something: Gaza is not the only reason somebody might have voted for Tlaib.
This makes me glad. I obviously wasn’t hoping for much from this election to begin with, but I’ve been finding a lot of silver-linings since the news started coming in. Shout out to Nebraska and Florida for their cannabis legalization ballot measures.
Florida’s cannabis legalization ballot measure failed…
And thanks in part to Michigan voters, we have a president who will fuck over Gaza even more. Great success.
Anybody who failed to vote Harris shares the blame, it’s fairly obvious lol
The voters are absolutely responsible for putting Trump into power. Anyone who facilitated that is fully responsible for whatever happens over the next four years.
Short of putting boots on the ground or dropping a nuke there is no way to “fuck over Gaza even more.”
The one thing I’ve learned from experience w/ Donald Trump is that he finds a way to make things worse.
I mean, I do? Trump massively outperformed Harris in swing states, so clearly Harris’s campaign wasn’t able to meet swing state voters where they are. Literally, these were the only people who matter in the US election under the current rules (sadly). Of course Harris swung right, and of course it didn’t work well enough, but not doing it would have been worse…
I hate politics as much as the next person, but god damn. Recognize the game is what it is, play it as necessary, and then move the needle where you can. Sheesh.
Maybe the ossue was Democrats trying to appeal to Republican voters, who would rather vote for Republicans and get everything they want instead of only some of what they want.
In many elections, that would make sense. But in this election, there was a sizeable group of Nikki Haley Republicans up for grabs, who clearly didn’t want to vote Trump if they could get an alternative. Is there a group of leftists who may have turned out in larger numbers if Harris had swung left? Yeah, maybe. But is that group anywhere near as large as the Haley Republicans, and are they present in swing states? No and no.
Trump was declared a winner before Michigan had a called winner for president.
Yes? I’m not saying Michigan handed him the election, I’m saying protest votes and no-votes played a big role. We’re fucked due in part to people who say “ooh that will show the DNC”
Fucking learn from this, DNC.
No, sadly, we probably need to stick to old white men. Just not as old as Biden was.
I really think if the only thing that changed was Kamala’s race and gender we’d have woken up to different news today.
To be perfectly clear, I’m not convinced we’re going to have free and fair elections anymore after this
They will not. They will do what they always do:
- rely on people being pissed off enough after four years of Rep rule to vote for the Dems no matter what
- rely on a few select ‘free’ topics (abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights etc) to show how different they are, when they are mostly exactly the same when it comes to topics that matter to most voters daily (ie topics that affect them personally, like their own economic situation)
I recon the only thing that could actually make them shift to the left is strong opposition from the left, basically a left Ross Perot, if you want. One that collects all the votes of the people who were too disillusioned this time around to actually vote, and then basically says “Shift to the left enough, be a real alternative, and you can have these”. Without someone or a party like that, no, they will not change. They will continue to further the interests of billionaires, just like the Reps.
So, I’m just pondering here, but it seems to me that it’s a bad Idea to run an unpopular presidential candidate because when voters choose to stay home, they also take their down-ballot votes with them.
Who could’ve guessed that appealing to far-right republicans — who are going to vote republican anyway — wouldn’t be a winning strategy?
Yeah, Democrats are always doing Republican-lite, then they’re surprised that doesn’t peel off voters on the right that will just always vote for the real thing anyway.
It is actually worse. It confirms the right wing standpoints and thus leads to a general societal swing to a more right-leaning worldview. This is basically what framing is. You can see this very well here in Germany, were basically the whole political spectrum nowadays presents views that would have been considered far right just 10 years ago.
But if you point this out on Lemmy, you’re a MAGA Trumper with six Trump dildos shoved up your ass and a fetish for fascism.
Got called a Russian bot multiple times for calling out the blue Maga people. Criticising the Democratic strategy is apparently the same as wanting Trump to win.
They also make the mistake of thinking that in order to appeal to conservative voters they have to be conservative. I have more often gotten through to conservatives with socialist economics and anarchist political philosophy than I ever could when I was a liberal trying to sway them on cultural issues and basic welfare.
And after getting through to them they started to come around on the cultural issues too.
Yep, Trump got so many union members to vote for him even though he’ll probably get Musk to run the NLRB. Maybe they should’ve shouted that message from the rooftops instead? Instead they didn’t even let the Teamsters boss speak at the convention (he was allowed to speak at the RNC).
This means not endorsing Harris was the correct political move for Tlaib.
Tlaib correctly understood that she needed to appeal to her voters to win. Donors have a lot of money but it turns out they do not get you elected. Getting votes does.
