I read a Reddit (through RDX mind you) post the other day that included the Who we serve page from the democrats’ website. The user noted that men were not on that list and pointed it out as on of the reasons Kamala Harris had lost. Meaning the Democratic Party should pander to the white young men demographic as well. A link to the post (through RDX)
I keep seeing this sentiment over and over again on social media. And I can’t help but make the analogy to the “All lives matter.” as opposed to “Black Lives matter.” Am I wrong to think this? I am not from the United States. Please don’t bite my head off as this is no stupid questions.
I’m just gonna be blunt and accept the downvotes here:
All this “the Democrats failed because [blank]” arguments are just blame shifting. We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time. We all know what kind of threat Trump represents to the future of this country.
The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to take that threat seriously.
We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time
It’s worse than that though. He and those around him literally told everyone for years what they were going to do to subvert the process. At the start of the election he said he already has all the votes he needs, before voting even ended anywhere he said this. He outright announced he’d already subverted it and nobody who can called it out.
This isn’t blame shifting, it’s pure gaslighting.
The entire point of a political campaign is to motivate voters to vote for the candidate…
If not enough people voted, then it’s the fault of the campaign/candidate.
Like imagine if you sold cars, you could blame not selling on potential customers not wanting to buy a car, but your manager isn’t going to listen when the other guy can still sell cars despite being a giant piece of shit.
You’ll be called a bad salesperson.
And if you don’t improve in almost a decade, it would be crazy to keep paying you to not sell cars.
The problem is we had a car salesperson selling us a genuinely nice comfortable, reliable, family car vs a car salesperson selling us a “sports car” from some unknown decade with a number of questionable but loudly expressed selling points we don’t understand “IT’S GOT A TURBO BOOSTMAX 9000! THAT OTHER CAR DOESN’T HAVE THAT! IT MIGHT EVEN INTENTIONALLY KILL YOU WITH ITS SO CALLED SAFETY FEATURES” belittling us for even considering taking the family car.
… we bought the “sports car.”
There is a point where the salesperson is not the one responsible and the buyer is just genuinely stupid.
We all know what kind of threat Trump represents.
No we all most certainly don’t. I can’t tell you the number of conversations I have had with people on both sides of the political spectrum haven’t heard of project 2025 or many of his policy proposals. The ones who have heard about them mostly don’t seem to believe then.
The most common response to “watch out we’re marching towards fascism” is always some variant of “This is America. It can’t happen here”
Not really sure what more could be done to inform people of the dangers of Project 2025. Maybe repeating it ad nauseam caused people to tune it out or something?
There’s always going to be a large majority of the population who is not informed about anything and just vote on vibes. Biden & Harris took a lot of the post-Covid economic heat that many countries are dealing with now, and isn’t unique to the US or specific policies. That’s causing bad vibes and rejection of incumbent leadership everywhere.
Not really sure what more could be done to inform people of the dangers of Project 2025
Most people werent aware of it.
And of those who had heard the name, some number of people assumed it was nothing more than yet another impotent rage document from some fringe group that was so outrageous as to be beyond the possibility of actually doing.
Repeated ad nauseum? Only in the furthest left areas of the Internet did I hear it mentioned more than in passing. It was a very brief series of news posts. It came up in the debate, and he managed to brush it off as not being his. And everyone just let him get away with that answer.
Do you have any idea how many mailers I got about “stopping the liberal agenda”? If there had been as many, or any at all about P25, maybe people would’ve been appropriately concerned
The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to not take that threat seriously.
But WHY?? This is the one thing I just can’t wrap my head around. How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough?? Understand that I am trying to make sense of this election from an outsiders perspective. But it feels like I’m trying to uncover a magic trick.
How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough??
In a nutshell:
By that same logic…
People could ask why Kamala insisted on doubling down on support of a genocide knowing it was seriously hurting her chances to stop trump.
If voters always have to compromise and politicians can do what they want with no consequences…
That’s how Republicans got stuck with trump.
Not having standards is not an effective way to fight fascism, especially when the alternative you’re holding your nose for won’t actually try to get rid of fascists because the only other option being fascist is the only reason they can win (sometimes).
Bullshit.
I voted for Harris, but I understand why people gave up.
I have cancer, under Harris, I would have still had a struggle to afford my medications AND work at the same time. As it was, I was condemned to a life of poverty to afford my medications, choosing to not have a job so I could get the ACA to cover my $18k a month medications. Debating on whether I should be condemned to the poverty of disability or continue trying to find a way to work.
I will die under Trump, but for a lot of people, the prospect of just waiting and waiting for help that will never come? They got tired and were willing to watch it all burn because what’s the fucking point if no one is coming to save you either way?
In a way, at least my death here will be swift instead of stressful-to-the-end-of-my-life-in-poverty. I can see why some people chose that. I’m 43 and I’m exhausted, I’m sure there’s more who are even more exhausted than me, because cancer didn’t hit me until I was 42 (I guess cancer is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything), and many many many people were suffering under similar issues far younger. So they just chose to abandon the Dems because the Dems abandoned them.
The Dems were busy trying to get WAR CRIMINAL Dick Cheney on their side like that matters to people who are struggling. They spent the election crowing about how good the economy was when it was realistically only good for the already obscenely wealthy. They told railroad unions to go fuck themselves, they don’t get to strike (and then followed up with trains chemical bombing whole cities in derailments). They were willing to hand the Republicans literally everything they wanted in a border bill because FUCK them DREAMers, I guess.
They abandoned us and continue to abandon us, and I understand why people who have been abandoned don’t show up to vote.
Honestly so few people actually gave a fuck about Palestine its a joke to bring up. It’s not like anyone even knows who the fuck Rachel Corrie is, and if they cared about Palestine, they would be chanting her fucking name to this god damned day. American citizen murdered with a bulldozer so Israel could steal Palestinian land, over 20 years later and still no one gives a shit. Americans were never going to give a fuck about Gaza, they’re all too god damned selfish.
But WHY??
Because Dem voters have always needed something to vote for, voting against works for Republicans.
But there’s significant brain differences between the two groups, what’s effective for one isn’t for the other
The problem is the “moderates” running the DNC think like Republicans, and part of that is a reduction in empathy that prevents them from understanding others think differently. They legitimately have no idea what went wrong right now, their brains can’t comprehend another person’s point of view.
So we’ve got two political parties ran by conservatives, it’s just only one actually understands how their voters think. So they keep winning even with trump.
I kinda thought they would learn from Obama’s success in promoting hope and change, but no, they are right back to trying to peel off Republican voters instead of motivating the unengaged voters like he did.
This is a very popular thought in the “leftist” and/or “progressive” space. However, what’s your explanation for West Virginia?
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve argued with that said “get rid of Manchin, run a real progressive.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20240930203241/https://www.elliottforwv.com/issues/
Democrats are going to lose their Senate majority in no part because people decided it was better to harass Manchin into not running. Elliott is definitely much more progressive than Manchin ever was.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/west-virginia-senate-results
Elliott lost by a LANDSLIDE. How do you rationalize that? Shouldn’t it have at least been close? Was he just not “progressive enough”?
How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough??
Because a bunch of whiny little bitches decided to become single issue voters.
“WAAAAAH, PALESTINE!!!”
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the guy that will allow Palestine to turn to dust becomes president.
“WAAAAAH, STOP GIVING MONEY TO UKRAINE!!!”
Fails to understand that we’re doing that to keep our adversary from expanding their borders and threatening Europe/NATO.
“WAAAAAH, DEMOCRATS DIDN’T ENSHRINE ROE INTO LAW!!!”
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the party that literally repealed Roe controls all aspects of our government.
The real answer to your question is that Americans are STUUUUUUUUPID. Clinically stupid. Uneducated. Uninstersted in informing themselves responsibly. STUUUUUUUUUPID.
Which is why we’ll suffer and are likely to be locked in to a long period of serious decline. Sucks to be us.
Yes, thank you. Every generation “discovers” the Palestinian issue and then some act like its a new problem. And then some dumb-asses in America choose that as their hill to die on. To the point where they helped Trump get elected this time.
The Palestinians have been locked in a death embrace with Israel for 80 years and no amount of whining by privileged American protesters is going to change that. Do they really think that more river-to-the-sea terrorism is going to make the Israelis just give up and die? No, a two-state solution where all the Palestinians move to the West Bank and all the Israeli settlers move back to Israel is the only viable solution. Every generation eventually figures that out, too. Also, Gaza is finished this time. It was always a dumb idea to have two separate Palestinian enclaves.
It is down to the practical matter of separating the two sides and imposing a peace since apparently they can’t do it for themselves. If that sounds harsh, it is almost certainly better for the Palestinians than letting the Israelis settle it the Roman way. And that is on the table now, since I’m sure we can all agree that Trump doesn’t give a single shit on his golden toilet about the Palestinians.
I think all three of those groups are in for a pretty bad wake up call regarding what their protest vote bought them…
Yup.
You can blame the Democrat party all you want. Wasn’t their fault. It was American voter’s fault.
We are an unbelievably stupid electorate. And the suffering we’re about to experience is no one’s fault but our own. I’d like to say we’ll learn from it. But we won’t. Buckle up. We’re about to embark on a long decline.
No, the young white American’s have decided they want to be Nazis and there’s nothing the Democrats could have done
No they are ignored youth (like most youth) and the fascists are actively recruiting them while the Dems aren’t. There are plenty of young white Americans that could use some outreach, but it doesn’t happen.
I’m not saying other sects of youth don’t deserve outreach and attention too. They all do. The Dems talk about the other sects of youth just not them, so the young whites feel left out.
You can try and dismiss them (like Dems do) and hope that they find the right path, or you can talk to them. They are growing up in a rapidly changing world and probably have less of a grasp on it then the older generations. People think kids know stuff because they grew up with computers. That’s not how stuff works. People are people. Some know and some don’t. Don’t dismiss all of them.
The USA was founded by racists, religious fanatics and the USA has never truly distanced itself from that. Fascism has always been the American way and now Americans are done pretending otherwise
Not wrong but not nuanced enough. Many Americans also believe in the ideas embodied in the Constitution and bill of rights. Many voted for the candidate who more strongly embodied those values. Just because the vote system is winner take all doesn’t mean that there aren’t Americans who are upset with this outcome.
Americans are dumb.
Democrats could have done a better job, no doubt about that. But it isn’t their fault Americans are dumb and too lazy to inform themselves responsibly. The data is all there. It’s freely available. Americans chose to vote based on feelings and allow themselves to be captured by propaganda instead of looking at the facts and they made a horribly uninformed decision.
No change in the Democrat’s strategy changes that Americans are just plain dumb.
No, it means that people really want there to have been a point to the All Lives Matter movement
I think it’s less that young white men actively supported Trump because the Dems didn’t pander to them, and more that young, upper-middle class, suburban white men were altogether uninspired to vote because in either scenario, they wagered they’d be okay.
The lesson seems to be a very clear and unfortunate rebuke of women as presidential candidates, but very specifically black women, as Harris seems to have gotten even less support in this demographic than Clinton did. It’s shameful, but I believe that if Newsom had been the nominee and ran a near identical campaign, Israel and all, that he’d likely be president elect today.
