Are you proposing that the voice of individuals is being represented well against the voice of wealthy donors/business owners? That doesnt seem realistic, right?
I read a lot of the "fucking" article (your words). It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis. The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress. Seems false on the face of it to any observer of congress's actions, and the events of the last election. Hence my question. Did YOU read the article.
I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.
What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.
Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our "way of life"?
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the "shitty health care" you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
Well a major influence on that is because people keep voting for Republicans even when Democrats have progressive policies on their platforms. Republicans winning the House in 2010 kneecapped every single thing the Democrats had been striving for. 2010 had the lowest turn out for a midterm in decades. Often because of people on the left blaming Obama for not fixing everything right away, or because there is a depressingly large population of the country that don't even know midterms exist.
Republicans fuck everything over, and people keep voting for them. Democrats don't fix everything right away, and people refuse to vote for them. Such is the stupidity of the American public.
Democrats are also completely unprepared when they do have power. Where’s their project 2027? Why do they dilly dally and prevaricate when they know they have zero time to do anything?
And why do they constantly insist on playing nice? Republicans have been assholes my entire life and Democrats refuse to acknowledge this.
A political party that can only get power for four months out of forty years is broken and should be berated out of existence.
Are they unprepared though? Because every time they get full power they get shit done. Not as much as would be ideal but they still do stuff. And they also would have passed multiple more things in 21-22 if they had been given more seats in the Senate, having a 50-50 Senate made it only possible to get some things done not everything, they could have played dirty and gotten more done. For instance they weren't able to pass their Voting reform bill that had passed the House and would drastically have changed and improved how we vote. But it's still BS to say they don't get anything done. That's literally far right propaganda that has become so pervasive it convinces people on both sides that the Democrats are useless and never do anything.
That said, about Project 2025. It was put together by the Heritage Foundation. A think tank that does its work and puts it out for free. They're backed by right wing billionaires. So the Republican party didn't make it, despite it being their platform. Also wouldn't it be Project 2029 for theirs since 2027 is a midterm and the whole point for that is to obstruct and do oversight on trump and his administration by having any power again. That said again. They don't have the massive far right billionaires driving the equivalent of a Project 2025 and democratic voters also frequently argue against Billionaires driving something like that. Project 2025 is successful because all the work was done by Heritage.
Also also, I 100% agree that it's insane they keep playing nice. They have to play dirty and that means breaking some rules which they seem unwilling to do.
But they are put into power by the Voters and then punished by the Voters despite doing significant legislation and improving the country when they get full power. So them not being able to take power for as much time as republicans has to do with the voters and the Republicans cheating with gerrymandering and voter suppression. And general Republican propaganda destroying the system.
But even this last Election Harris wanted to increase the minimum wage, wanted to put caps on rent increases, wanted to give first time home buyers 25,000 down payment assistance, wanted to legalize weed, wanted to introduce an Unrealized gains tax on people who have stock portfolios bigger than 100 million, increasing the corporate tax rate, talking about actually trying to punish companies who engage in shrinkflation. She had progressive policies on her platform, but instead of Democrats going out and voting and the progressive legislation driving people to the polls, everyone summarized her as only ever being not-Tump and them being the same and some saying she even had no policies. Democrats have things they campaign on, but the Voters say no. Mainly because the left doesn't vote, or split their vote, and the right ALWAYS votes.
Personally, I'm not saying the Democrats can't or shouldn't be better, I think the party needs to be drastically reformed and we need to primary and kick out the older generation and we need more progressives who can talk more like real people. But I'm also trying to be fair about how things actually happen when they are in power.
So stop blaming Democrats who have been actively trying to improve things, and blame the Republicans who have been, and actively are RIGHT NOW, destroying things.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it's not great healthcare, it's still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra "pro-life", which means abortion rights weren't gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let's not let facts get in the way of our outrage or anything.
Get rid of filibuster. Pack the supreme court. Do whatever you have to do to do what is in the benefit of the public. It ain't that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Before suggesting someone wield that kind of power, consider how you'd feel about it if the opposition parties did that too.
At this point, I think the USA is better off just reforming its constitution. And possibly splitting the union into 5-10 separate smaller countries. The country is clearly not an effective union anymore, and to be honest, hasn't been for a very long time. This isn't the first time there's been a north-south divide and it certainly won't be the last, so why prolong the suffering? Just break it up and be done with it. Everyone will probably be much happier that way.
Political parties are supposed to appeal to voters, not the other way around.
Will post this again since people still don’t get it:
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
This is true, but naive. There was a choice to be made, you can argue there should be more or better choices, but there weren't. There were two options or the option not to choose. When there's a fork on the road you pick a way, complaining that neither path looks good doesn't get you anywhere.
If there's the Party For Kicking Puppies and the Kill All Minorities Party, neither are good. But I sure as shit would would vote for the former to prevent the later. I don't want puppies kicked, but I want minorities to live even more. Voting for neither then complaining about minorites being killed because "there was no good option" is just deflecting blame in a situation you could impact. Maybe vote in the puppy kickers and try to better it from there, because the other option doesn't leave a lot of room.
Yes, we should have better options. But people should also vote for the best option, because not voting is condoning the worst outcome because you felt no need to do anything to prevent it.
This ignores a very important thing: The Republicans get their votes by lying their asses off to their base. I have no doubt the DNC has the money to pay enough people to figure out the perfect lie to tell every single person here to get their vote, but no one here wants that. Short of lies, they'd have to go with their original strategy: big tent compromise. And that's means hard left compromising with centrists, and we all know that won't happen.
So what's left? Abandon the middle? You'll just shift the non-voting demographic around.
Maybe if the far left could organize its own political movement, but that would require "the left" to operate as a unified group, which just by looking at all the infighting here, is obviously never going to happen.
So we have a left that won't compromise, a middle that isn't big enough to win an election, and a hard right party going full send on misinformation, voter suppression, etc.
And the largest group of eligible voters...doesn't.
Yeah, the answer here isn't "the DNC changing their shit", it's figuring out how to get people to give a shit about voting again.
No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.
The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It's not the left that's refusing to compromise.
And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party
There's no room for our system to allow a third party in. They'll just be crushed by the two other parties. It's a rigged system. Money wins. No other party will have the money to win state votes and keep them.
It's not rigged, it's just the inevitable stable state of the system. The US will have to move to a different voting system for third parties to matter.
So your plan is to defeat democrats in democrat states going up against all the campaign funds that the democrats will provide to beat this third party; and then you think once they're congress you think democrats are going to vote with them to get lefty stuff to pass that will make this new leftist party look good?
False assumption to think that third party can just unseat Democrats. Also, the Dems had more money than God during the last election and couldn't beat Trump. Also, Dems consistently neuter their own "leftist" bills (such as the green new deal) before they're even out of committee so I don't think they're going to actually improve anything materially for me.
You don't need to use the whole magic beans sneering talk with me, dude, we probably have the same interests at heart.
As the republicans make it harder and harder to vote?
Stop blaming voters and start blaming the systems of oppression that make it impossible for us to make our voices heard. How many people were purged from voter rolls in Georgia alone this election?
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Nonvoters who complain that Democrats aren't doing enough to protect them are exactly the kind of entitled twats who attack what meagre defenses we have against fascism, and then whine (blaming those same defenses they themselves worked to undermine) when fascism attacks them.
AND
Dems who do nothing in this period are inex-fucking-scusable, if predictably adhering to their norms-based civility politics schtick which plays so well with suburban white folk; and Dems in general are only interested in reform insofar as public opinion forces them to support it, and not an inch further.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you'd think we'd at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn't want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should've had none.
"Things are bad, but they will get better." Looking at the past, things were immeasurably worse. That they're still incredibly dogshit now is not a condemnation of our trajectory for all eternity (though I do suspect after this last election, there will need to be a tumultuous 'correction', civil rights or civil war style, to return to even the meagre rate of improvement we had before). 2025 is not 1925, and certainly not 1825 or 1025. Technological advancement aside, we have made incredible gains in the history of human civilization, and there's no reason that it should stop now, despite the seeming power of the elites. Relatively speaking, we are immensely educated and powerful compared to past generations of the working class. Our tools of communication are far further removed from elite control - though that should be interpreted with a touch of 'damnation by faint praise'. We may feel helpless and hopeless, but they are only feelings - feelings always pass, rightly or wrongly; and reality always asserts itself when the two collide.
"Holy fuck, what do you mean that by the time I'm in my 90s things might be slightly better? Assuming there isn't a half-century detour that makes things worse first, Reconstruction style??? And it's all reliant on the dipshits I meet in day-to-day life??? I'm either shooting myself or shooting up, fuck this"
I lost that first attitude when Trump won the first time.
And even when I’m around people who ostensibly share my political views I still feel like an outsider for a bevy of other reasons. “Did you see that funny commercial?”
“No I don’t see any commercials. Ever. “
“Oh man the halftime show!”
“Didn’t see that either.”
If my biology didn’t make a persuasive argument I’d swear I wasn’t human.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is. Most people don't have a strong political philosophy - they're just trying to maintain what they have, and maybe find a way to have a bit more.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is.
Don't really think comfort has much to do with it. Revolutionary behavior tends to spill out from relatively privileged demographics, and suffering demographics can suffer seemingly infinitely without hitting some point of discomfort where revolution occurs.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic "leaders" asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn't do.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they're literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn't control every branch of government, but doesn't have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can't stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of "we aren't the Republicans" can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
That’s the key “stops a lot of things”. The way that Congress is structured makes it pretty easy to stop things since there are many choke points. Notice that republicans aren’t really trying to “do things” in Congress?
The current issues and actions are being driven by the executive branch where they’re ignoring the law and constitution . Being in the minority in Congress means that Dems can’t trigger investigations or much of anything to formally push back unless they’re joined by some republicans.
I’ll agree that they could make more noise and should block things up more than they’re doing presently, but these actions wouldn’t really stop or significantly slow any of this.
I’m sick of the green lanterism that gets trotted out to suggest that they’re not stopping things because they don’t want to. Voters didn’t give them power in the last election, so we’re working from a position of weakness.
There are still veto points and lawsuits to be made. Along with the more vocal opposition that you admit that they should engage in. It is neither that they could perfectly stop everything, but that they could actually start trying. The Democrats decided that they should sit back because if Trump fucks things up enough, they will have an easy time in 2026/2028, without changing their usual platform of "We are not the Republicans, we will give you nothing else".
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
No one expects "protection", we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do, or get the eff out of the way and let someone with a spine and some morals get it done. The only one out there doing the job is sanders and the progressives. All the other dems only came together to vote for tougher laws on illegal video streaming sites, and now they are pushing to gut peoples protection to say what they want online.
They were sent to Washington to participate in the legislature. I could go for several more details here, but the core of it comes down to - they were sent to Washington to protect the rights and interests of their constituents through the passage and restriction of laws.
Second highest voter turn out for a presidential election in US history.
Clearly its the voters fault.....
Also why in the broken nation is the assumption that if more people showed up they would have voted like you? I never got this concept. Please spend more effort being an opposition/resistance and less being poor losers.
A rigged primary, where the voters weren't really given a choice. Voters were very vocal that they didn't want him to run again, and the leadership openly ignored them. Next time, maybe the leadership should listen to the base that they claim they represent.
I still think there’s a good chance he could have won it the second time because there are enough sexist and racist democrats who stayed home who could have made a difference.
If he was winning primaries with 90% then clearly voters weren't vocal about that at all. The vocals ones we saw in media didn't properly represent the voters.
But when statistics showed Kamala Harris had a better chance at victory, he did drop out and gave his ticket, that he won fairly in a Primary Election, to her, his vice president.
Voters were saying it very loudly, the Democratic leadership just ignored them. Polls were very clear that nobody wanted either of them to run, and they both had a low approval ratings. The ticket wasn't his to give, it was up to the voters. The Democrats chose to skip the voters, so the voters abandoned them.
I don't see why anyone would expect voters to stick with a party that treats it's base so disrespectfully.
I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to "pick a side" even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.
If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!
If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!
If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!
This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don't have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don't care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.
That's the issue. All these non Americans keep saying "Do something" and they can't even think of anything to do either.
Our government has stopped listening to us. I vote, ai write my politicians, I canvassed for candidates. None of it works anymore. None of it. We hold no sway outside of force. With force were so woefully outclassed it's not even a realistic idea.
It is pathetic that among high voter suppression (due to Republican motions) the Democrats blame the people for not voting, instead of blaming voter suppression, or any of the other decades worth of inaction by Democrats to foresee and prepare for this. They have a two party system, it's not like the Republicans were a complete surprise
Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).
Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column....
it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.
Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:
Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!
I cut off the VEP because I mistook the voting age population for the voting eligible population and now that you pointed that out (thank you by the way) I’m looking into why there’s such a difference between those two numbers.
It was not included before it was invented, it was also not needed as the level of voter disenfranchisement was not yet an issue. It is now the standard metric (since you guys have so many people that are barred from voting).
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.
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.
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
I'm not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don't really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won't typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don't really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
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
This is bullshit and this group is likely just out there to cash in on the election. What they claim to be suspicious patterns is just basic statistics.
If machines have a higher number of votes it is just to be expected that the spread of the results get smaller and towards the end result. The larger the sample size, the smaller the spread.
And the early voting machines had up to 250 votes per machine, whereas the election day machines only had around 125. At least in the graphics this group used in their own report. If you scale the graphic of the early machines only until 125 votes per machine they look similar.
Also on election day there were about 3000 machines as opposed to 1000. And here another basic truth comes up. If you repeat a sampling more often, the distribution of results becomes more even.
These guys are just describing basic statistic effects and claiming them to be suspicious, probably to collect donations and run with the money. Also their website is dubious about who they are exactly and what their credentials are.
There is legitimate criticisms and leads to investigate, but these guys are not one of them.
This was my gut feeling as well, not to mention it's a much less clear picture then what I posted.
I do want to add that I find it suspicious given Republicans frequently accuse the other side of doing what they either are actively doing, or plan to do, their continual pushing on voting being insecure and particularly mail in voting and early voting being particularly mabipulatable in their own words does make it seem more likely to me there could have been more shenanigans, not to mention that it was specifically mentioned that there were several breaches to two of the election systems in the years leading up to 2024... Very sus.
i am not saying that there is no credible reasons to investigate if the election was done properly. however the "electiontruth" people do not provide any credible information for that. Also the video you linked does not seem to be about making a calm and proper argument, but rather to rile people up.
Again it is not impossible, that there have been irregularities, but it is something that needs to be analyzed and discussed properly. This is irrespective from needing to resist the Trump government, as it is a bunch of cirminals.
Beyond the statistical realities that Saleh mention, the general point about drop-off is also weird.
It implies that the GOP cheated, but declined to cheat in down ballot. This seems odd, if they had the will and capability to just change the votes, why would they skip the down ballot elections? Further another similar site pointed out the drop-off was uneven, that it was suspiciously higher in Montana than Michigan. To imply the GOP cheated more in Montana? When your theory indicates a bigger effort to cheat in a safe state than a swing state, then there's something going on.
The drop-off effect is easily explained by the reality that people weren't voting for a Republican or a Democrat, they were voting for or against Trump. That mindset is wholly separate from Republican v. Democrat. It's almost an Apples v. Oranges to try to compare a race with Trump to it to any other race (which is why the GOP is desperate to run him again, because even they don't understand how he engages the base and he is a useful idiot).
I'm glad to see it investigated and I wish that the voting populace didn't do what they did (and accept that without the suppression, the results might have gone the other way). However I don't think fraud has been proven in any significant degree.
Perhaps the democrats should emphasize vote in person on election day if at all possible, and mail-in is a last resort, rather than saying "voting is easy, just mail it in". It's obvious that they are having great success in discarding legitimate mail-in ballots the way they see fit.
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.
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.
The results at my last city vote was depressing. We had 20% turn out. Twenty! And we have mail-in by default here
Thankfully the people who did vote voted for the positive changes we need but it's not hard to imagine how easily 20% of the population can be easily swayed
Others still do it because of religious dedication to the accelerationist belief that making the human experience worse will magically cause the working class to gain class consciousness and revolt. You know. Like has never occurred in recorded history...
Most of the members of Congress are extremely wealthy, Republican and Democrat alike. They're not doing anything about this coup consolidating capitalist class power because they stand to personally gain from it. They don't have to pretend to not have the votes to stop yet another grab at working class wallets because they can point at Elon and say "we have no power here."
There are certain people who never want to hear it, but very few national politicians give a shit about us, certainly not enough to make a difference. They're in it for personal gain, everything else is performative.
Which is fucking terrifying and why I've (and others) been screaming that nobody is coming to save us, we have to save each other. Put down the identity stuff for now and rekindle the militant labor movements we used to have in this country. Withholding our labor is the only way out of this - they need us a lot more than we need them.
They should like... Be politicians though. We get they can't pass legislation, but be fucking politicians.
Republicans out of the majority make you sniff their shit daily and are all over the news cycle. Democrats seem to think it's ok to just say they're concerned and send me fundraising emails.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Democrats do anything but take accountability for their mistakes any% Speedrun challenge (impossible).
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren't owed votes. They have to earn votes.
The Democrats failed to earn enough votes against Trump TWICE.
I don't even wanna hear some shit about it being a rigged election or anything. The right was screaming about 2020 being rigged for 4 years and y'all kept telling them it was ridiculous and they just need to suck it up because they lost.
The Democrats will lose again in 2028 if they do not make serious changes up and down their party.
As out-of-touch as George H.W. Bush looked marveling at the checkout scanner at a supermarket, that's nothing compared to the people who think American voters by and of large sat down and thoughtfully compared the policy positions of all the candidates, gamed out the implications, and voted accordingly.
How can you say this after the news about the people who didn't know Biden dropped out until election day? That had never heard of Project 2025? That didn't know what tariffs are?
I don't think so.
That was our future on the line.
Though they may have run a more effective social media campaign spinning their fake, populist bullshit stimulating Trump cultists out in Trump country, none of that should have mattered.
Regardless of a weak opposing campaign & inflation, we fucked up by not recognizing an existential threat & voting against it anyway.
That's just downright stupid of us.
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren’t owed votes. They have to earn votes.
Thanks, I love hearing that my existence has to be earned.
I'm talking about the stupid meme and Democrats once again pointing fingers everywhere else instead of looking in a fuckin mirror.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people. They have failed to do so now multiple times.
At some point you can't keep pointing the finger elsewhere and you have to accept that you didn't convince enough people that you were the better option.
They need to take some responsibility instead of playing professional victims all the damn time. I'm sick of it.
I'm talking about the stupid meme and Democrats once again pointing fingers everywhere else instead of looking in a fuckin mirror.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people.
Fuck that shit.
With the stakes that high and threat to society that clear, even a bag of shit should have won against Trump.
A bag of shit in the oval office wouldn't do this, and that—not a flashy campaign—is all anyone would need to know to make a clear decision.
We fucked up.
Fuck people.
We got the government & leadership we deserve.
Blaming the democrats doesn't absolve the people of responsibility.
Contrary to what some may think, eligible voters can think & understand their choices.
We'd seen his gimmick before & how he operates.
Those who voted for him & those who didn't vote against him did so regardless of the consequences while having every reason to know what that would mean.
They're as responsible as anyone.
You are right, a bag of shit should have won against Trump. But somehow the Democratic leadership was still able to mess that up. Next time, they should bring their A team to the table instead of the D team.
You miss the whole fascist shebang that got setup this past month or so? We're looking at starving the poor and Healing-Through-'Labor' camps for the mentally ill. Our LGBT brothers and sisters are in even more danger.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people. They have failed to do so now multiple times.
Yeah, if our thinking is just that this is team sports, or a popularity contest, that's valid.
It's not.
Talking about how it's the Dem party's fault for not 'earning' votes ignores that elections are matters in which the people decide their own governance. "The Dems aren't flashy enough, I'm going to let minorities get murdered" is a choice made by every eligible voter who protest-voted or didn't vote - and, of course, every fascist bootlicker who voted GOP. And those are the only votes which were available to be 'earned'.
The Dems lost. The Dems are also immensely incompetent, and most of the party's leaders at this point should probably be sent to the career-equivalent of a guillotine. But the core reason the Dems lost is because the American electorate consists of a supermajority of fascists, and fascist supporters.
You can try to excuse the electorate by accusing the Dems of pointing the finger at 'everyone else', but 'everyone else' literally is culpable in this fucking disaster as well.
They need to take some responsibility instead of playing professional victims all the damn time. I’m sick of it.
The Dems lost. The Dems are also immensely incompetent, and most of the party's leaders at this point should probably be sent to the career-equivalent of a guillotine. But the core reason the Dems lost is because the American electorate consists of a supermajority of fascists, and fascist supporters.
You were so close to getting the point and then you went and fucked it up right at the end.
I hate to break it to you but the "supermajority" of Americans are not fascists. They are simply sick of the Democrats bullshit.
I hate to break it to you but the “supermajority” of Americans are not fascists. They are simply sick of the Democrats bullshit.
"We're sick of gutless politicians proposing moderate policy in-line with what their base continually elects in the primaries, so we're going to give fascists the go-ahead to kill minorities."
Very responsible citizenship. Very moral behavior. Not fascist at all. Thanks bunches.
Hey I didn't vote for the Cheeto either. I'm just not sitting here bitching about why the Dems lost by blaming everything else except the Democratic party themselves.
I hope by that you mean that you voted for the only other viable option, because otherwise, that's a vote for fascism in our system.
I’m just not sitting here bitching about why the Dems lost by blaming everything else except the Democratic party themselves.
Man, all up and down Lemmy the Dems have been blamed, both before and after the election results. The election happened. It's over. The results are in. That means we have to square with the fact that, whatever the strengths or weaknesses, or the sins or stupidity, of the Dem Party, the result of the election was that a supermajority of the US population gave the green light to murder as many minorities as possible, and save as few as possible.
The Dems didn't fumble a football. The Dems didn't miss a layup shot. This wasn't a game we 'gave' to the Democrats, our aristocratic overlords, to play on our behalf. It was an election, in which we, the electorate, cast our votes. The electorate, en masse - over 2/3s - said "The Dems haven't earned my vote, so marginalized demographics can go get fucked."
That's what I said from the start, and you objected to.
The electorate doesn't care about fascism - if the blue-colored circus isn't entertaining enough, if the blue circus doesn't 'earn' my existence, the electorate says I die. If the blue circus isn't entertaining enough, the electorate says they don't mind seeing fascism murder a few minorities. Maybe it'll convince the blue circus to be more entertaining next time.
I agree with this, but it seems to be more of a far-right nazi issue. In Germany, it was again the young, white men that turned nazi that almost won the nazis the election. Let that sink in. The nazis almost won an election in Germany. Here, we have the same issues, but with gerrymandering, voter suppression and swing state election officials cheating occasionally. It's our young white men that have a ton of energy, want to see change, and have lost their way when looking for someone to help them do that, that are our biggest threat.
21% of Young people voted for the AfD. They got 20,8% in total. Thats not a significant increase. The cohort of 35-49 year-olds turned out stronger for the AfD.
The largest voting disparity is in the working class. 37% of workers voted for a party that would crush them.
Is the Democrat master plan to have a one party system? Everyone always and only vote Democrat, because if the other party of a two party system ever gets in to power we are screwed! It doesn't sound like a good plan.
You guys had a good idea with Ross Perot in 1992. Look into that (especially how he got 0 electoral college votes) and maybe you'll have a better idea of what you should be doing, instead of blaming each other.
Better off to die fighting for humanity, not "the other white..." rich politicians. The america before Trump wasn't one I wanted to live for either.
This war was going on before Obama and Bush. It's more fundamental than left and right politics. It's a mass social existential crisis in a nation that was taught to consume as a way to escape the reality of life as a human being. There is no saviour to run to. We've wasted so much time putting blind faith into mainstream pop politicians that live for "the game" and not humanity.
Bernie endorsed Kamala because he's an adult that understands accelerationism is something only idiots that have never read a history book think will bring progress.
Make sides irrelevant by passing state level electoral reform and opening our elections to 3rd parties. More democracy is the solution, not forcing people to vote for your preference. Do you people ever take the time to consider you don't want people to vote for who they want to vote for? How can you sleep at night dreaming of taking other's right to vote away? Awful...
I am a huge advocate to changing our election systems. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's done more write-ups and advocacy for campaign finance and election reform.
That said, this is putting the cart before the horse. Such Constitutional reform first requires consensus among the working class. We must first unite the left and right under a common enemy of the rich. Only then can we pressure states to seek a convention for amendments to the constitution.
Tell me more about how results that aligned with every major poll were totally unexpected. Every polling organization in the country conspired against Bernie.
I voted for Bernie. I marched for Bernie, back when I had two good legs. I donated and campaigned for Bernie. I would've loved it if Bernie won.
But he didn't. Because the people who showed up to vote clung to the idea that a 'moderate' was a better shot in the general election.
Well I guess it's always possible dems pressured media to minimize or distort Bernie message. Which drives down his polling. I remember vividly in 2020 how many elderly dems voted for biden in primary because they knew he could beat Trump even though Bernie seemed like the better choice.
Voting is the least we can do BUT... do not expect systematic change (that helps the working class) to come from the top down. Both parties agree on legal bribery, insider trading, "good billionaires", the voting system, and the two party system. Meaningful change is going to require more effort: i.e., grass roots organizing from the bottom up. Start in your own community and the change will grow organically.
As an old leftist i find that the young American left is hyper focused on punishing politicians based on things that should be, not based on how things are.
Yes it would be nice if the world was like you want it, but it isn’t. Voting the lesser of two evils is just how most of us around the world do it.
But an example is the whole car free/anti car thing,
Yes that would work if cities had adequate transit and service, but they don’t, and they won’t in my lifetime. It would be nice but it’s not going to happen, ever. So I may as well just vote for the candidates who fund transit instead of trying to find a candidate who is yelling about being anti car
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn't even care enough about country to do that.
Nope, just because you stopped seeing them in your walled garden doesn't mean they aren't there. They're just treating you the same as Trump supporters because they know what side liberals were in in Nazi Germany.
I gotta start saving this exact same comment every time I see it. Still pushing for electoral reform and a dissolution of the two party system on a daily basis. This is the right time to do so right? Now you can't cry "Oh it's to close to the election!"
Well, have you pushed to replace First past the post voting in your state so people can be free to vote how they want? Will you be complaining about 3rd party mid term voters after a year and a half of doing nothing to change the mathematically flawed voting system in your state?
I didn't have to roll out the red carpet for Donald "Israel needs to win and win fast" Trump to push for voting reform.
Every terrible thing we told you would happen is currently happening, so I hope you're happy for queer Americans and about the fate of Palestine. You got exactly what we told you we would get. I hope you're comfy on your soapbox, because it's not comfy for trans people right now. Thanks a lot.
Well looking at my gene donor and FIL. It's not misinformation. They know full well what they are getting and are willing to sacrifice everything to get rid of some trans folks in sports and some illegals working the fields.
Even if you think it's perfectly fine morally, wouldn't that look awful in the public eye and paint a bad picture of those opposed to him? I think it could only harm any sort of real and effective movement. It's not representative of everyone anti-Trump, but they'd be easily painted that way.
Are y'all gonna start saying that all nazis don't deserve to be vilified because some were too stupid to figure out they were being lied to?
Because that's literally what you're doing now. This is what they wanted. Idgaf how it makes anti trumpers look because it makes them look like fucking heroes. Rather than the sheep German citizens who did nothing while nazis laid waste to marginalized communities because they were too propagandized to see the truth in front of their noses.
Americans are voting every few seconds, don't you see where they are staring
They are voting up the memes. We have Meme Kings of Trump and Musk to meme about every few seconds on every single media platform. I see people pressing UpVote on Reddit, Bluesky.
People sold out to Apple iPhone, who in February 2025 is promoting products on Elon Musk's X (Apple is paying money to Elon Musk), a long time ago for the ability to mock a 78 year old man on the Toilet tweeting.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
I’ve been voting. Doesn’t seem to work.
It only works in aggregate. Like how a drop of water won't quench anyone's thirst, but a 20 gallon barrel generally will.
This is why I hate group projects
One person puts in all the work
Five people don't
Everyone fails
:) :) :) :) :)
(please kill me)
One thing I learned early in my academic career was that if I wanted a good grade on a group project it was easier to just do everything myself.
The sooner I can fuck off to the middle of nowhere and not deal with any of you anymore the better.
College in a nutshell. Fuck you steve, thanks for phoning in your part of the final.
I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you're doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.
Trickle down, but for voting too!
Oh, and I guess that's what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.
Thats piss in that barrel, not water. We are not a society thats content to just leave everyone else alone if they arent affecting you.
It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
Ancient
pugjesus,
Are you proposing that the voice of individuals is being represented well against the voice of wealthy donors/business owners? That doesnt seem realistic, right?
Did you not fucking read the article
I read a lot of the "fucking" article (your words). It attempts to disprove a number of studies at once with flimsy analysis. The conclusion of their line of reasoning is that the will of the people is being represented just fine in congress. Seems false on the face of it to any observer of congress's actions, and the events of the last election. Hence my question. Did YOU read the article.
... it only rebuts one study, and it does so by citing three others.
So you didn't read the article. Or even skim it.
Lord.
Have you tried the second amendment?
that's that what they call every week, when a mass shooting happens, right?
Boardrooms not classrooms
I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.
What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.
Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our "way of life"?
It's mitigation.
Show me the part where it mitigated giving the entire government to nazis
Took longer
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
“This is super important but will ultimately fail and you’ll have to shoot the Nazis anyway.”
mit·i·ga·tion noun
the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something.
"the emphasis is on the identification and mitigation of pollution"
Are there not Nazis in charge of our government? How was that at all mitigated and not just delayed?
making it difficult to vote is a feature not a bug.
The question isn't why are they not doing anything but why didn't they do anything when they had the chance.
Obama had the house and senate his first term and all we got was shitty healthcare and drone bombing wedding receptions. We need a new opposition party.
Oh and the Dodd-Frank act regulating Wallstreet. And saving the economy from the massive financial crash with the Recovery Act. And an act that extended how long after being fired someone can file for unemployment. And new tax legislation that had tax increases to help pay for the investment in the economy with the recovery act. And around 50 other pieces of legislation.
Plus the "shitty health care" you mentioned mandated insurance companies have to cover people with pre-existing conditions giving insurance to tens of millions of people. And extended Medicaid to tens of millions of people providing relatively cheap medical care by comparison to before. Free? No. But many went from having bills of multiple hundreds a month to just 50. Again, perfect? No. But a massive fucking improvement.
All that in the 2 years he had both houses. Not his entire first term. Much of it was incredibly influential even if not perfect. To say we got nothing out of it is misrepresenting both what we got and what we had before.
Edit: and increasing the minimum wage.
And they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for a whopping 2 months.
Which is when we got the ACA.
I.E. the literal bare minimum. They even managed to argue themselves out of the public option while still getting zero votes from Republicans.
On a bill originally derived from a conservative think tank.
And that included Manchin and Lieberman. Ugh.
And despite that we’re still in the shit
Well a major influence on that is because people keep voting for Republicans even when Democrats have progressive policies on their platforms. Republicans winning the House in 2010 kneecapped every single thing the Democrats had been striving for. 2010 had the lowest turn out for a midterm in decades. Often because of people on the left blaming Obama for not fixing everything right away, or because there is a depressingly large population of the country that don't even know midterms exist.
Republicans fuck everything over, and people keep voting for them. Democrats don't fix everything right away, and people refuse to vote for them. Such is the stupidity of the American public.
Democrats are also completely unprepared when they do have power. Where’s their project 2027? Why do they dilly dally and prevaricate when they know they have zero time to do anything?
And why do they constantly insist on playing nice? Republicans have been assholes my entire life and Democrats refuse to acknowledge this.
A political party that can only get power for four months out of forty years is broken and should be berated out of existence.
Are they unprepared though? Because every time they get full power they get shit done. Not as much as would be ideal but they still do stuff. And they also would have passed multiple more things in 21-22 if they had been given more seats in the Senate, having a 50-50 Senate made it only possible to get some things done not everything, they could have played dirty and gotten more done. For instance they weren't able to pass their Voting reform bill that had passed the House and would drastically have changed and improved how we vote. But it's still BS to say they don't get anything done. That's literally far right propaganda that has become so pervasive it convinces people on both sides that the Democrats are useless and never do anything.
That said, about Project 2025. It was put together by the Heritage Foundation. A think tank that does its work and puts it out for free. They're backed by right wing billionaires. So the Republican party didn't make it, despite it being their platform. Also wouldn't it be Project 2029 for theirs since 2027 is a midterm and the whole point for that is to obstruct and do oversight on trump and his administration by having any power again. That said again. They don't have the massive far right billionaires driving the equivalent of a Project 2025 and democratic voters also frequently argue against Billionaires driving something like that. Project 2025 is successful because all the work was done by Heritage.
Also also, I 100% agree that it's insane they keep playing nice. They have to play dirty and that means breaking some rules which they seem unwilling to do.
But they are put into power by the Voters and then punished by the Voters despite doing significant legislation and improving the country when they get full power. So them not being able to take power for as much time as republicans has to do with the voters and the Republicans cheating with gerrymandering and voter suppression. And general Republican propaganda destroying the system.
But even this last Election Harris wanted to increase the minimum wage, wanted to put caps on rent increases, wanted to give first time home buyers 25,000 down payment assistance, wanted to legalize weed, wanted to introduce an Unrealized gains tax on people who have stock portfolios bigger than 100 million, increasing the corporate tax rate, talking about actually trying to punish companies who engage in shrinkflation. She had progressive policies on her platform, but instead of Democrats going out and voting and the progressive legislation driving people to the polls, everyone summarized her as only ever being not-Tump and them being the same and some saying she even had no policies. Democrats have things they campaign on, but the Voters say no. Mainly because the left doesn't vote, or split their vote, and the right ALWAYS votes.
Personally, I'm not saying the Democrats can't or shouldn't be better, I think the party needs to be drastically reformed and we need to primary and kick out the older generation and we need more progressives who can talk more like real people. But I'm also trying to be fair about how things actually happen when they are in power.
Damn. Preach.
So stop blaming Democrats who have been actively trying to improve things, and blame the Republicans who have been, and actively are RIGHT NOW, destroying things.
I’ll blame the folks who have power to stop it and are doing exactly fuck all.
That includes the fucking voters, you know.
Try to backpedal with your self sabotage now, motherfuckers.
The DNC lit a billion dollars on fire to lose to a racist rapist again. The “adults in the room” couldn’t beat a semi-literate buffoon. AGAIN.
Voters should have voted, yeah, but in more civilized cultures the folks at the DNC would have fallen on their swords.
He had a filibuster-proof majority for a handful of weeks, and we got better healthcare than what was already on the table. While it's not great healthcare, it's still better than before.
That included some staunchly conservative Democrats, by the by. Many of whom were ultra "pro-life", which means abortion rights weren't gonna happen.
Additionally, people who mention drone strikes fail to a) recognize the tech was relatively new, but not so new that it was actually affordable to the DOD, and b) each president after has had more drone strikes.
But let's not let facts get in the way of our outrage or anything.
lah dee dah, every president since has used drones. what, all two of them?
Obama had a filibuster proof majority for a grand total of 73 days and they did Obamacare. Dems haven't had that since.
Get rid of filibuster. Pack the supreme court. Do whatever you have to do to do what is in the benefit of the public. It ain't that hard, it is very popular but the democratic party is just not interested in working for the people.
It sure as shit was not popular in 2009. It's not even popular now.
Most people don't know jack fucking shit.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Before suggesting someone wield that kind of power, consider how you'd feel about it if the opposition parties did that too.
At this point, I think the USA is better off just reforming its constitution. And possibly splitting the union into 5-10 separate smaller countries. The country is clearly not an effective union anymore, and to be honest, hasn't been for a very long time. This isn't the first time there's been a north-south divide and it certainly won't be the last, so why prolong the suffering? Just break it up and be done with it. Everyone will probably be much happier that way.
the fascist party has already done that. I'm not against taking off the gloves if the other guy is coming at me with a fucking knife.
It’s less of a north/south divide and more of a rural/urban divide.
Political parties are supposed to appeal to voters, not the other way around. Will post this again since people still don’t get it:
Directing the attention towards the voters instead of the democratic party is a deliberate tactic to create division among the working class. The democratic party has way more power than your neighbour who didn’t vote. Getting angry at your neighbour will only alienate them further. It’s a waste of energy.
Thank you for succinctly expressing exactly how I feel about this.
This is true, but naive. There was a choice to be made, you can argue there should be more or better choices, but there weren't. There were two options or the option not to choose. When there's a fork on the road you pick a way, complaining that neither path looks good doesn't get you anywhere.
If there's the Party For Kicking Puppies and the Kill All Minorities Party, neither are good. But I sure as shit would would vote for the former to prevent the later. I don't want puppies kicked, but I want minorities to live even more. Voting for neither then complaining about minorites being killed because "there was no good option" is just deflecting blame in a situation you could impact. Maybe vote in the puppy kickers and try to better it from there, because the other option doesn't leave a lot of room.
Yes, we should have better options. But people should also vote for the best option, because not voting is condoning the worst outcome because you felt no need to do anything to prevent it.
This ignores a very important thing: The Republicans get their votes by lying their asses off to their base. I have no doubt the DNC has the money to pay enough people to figure out the perfect lie to tell every single person here to get their vote, but no one here wants that. Short of lies, they'd have to go with their original strategy: big tent compromise. And that's means hard left compromising with centrists, and we all know that won't happen.
So what's left? Abandon the middle? You'll just shift the non-voting demographic around.
Maybe if the far left could organize its own political movement, but that would require "the left" to operate as a unified group, which just by looking at all the infighting here, is obviously never going to happen.
So we have a left that won't compromise, a middle that isn't big enough to win an election, and a hard right party going full send on misinformation, voter suppression, etc.
And the largest group of eligible voters...doesn't.
Yeah, the answer here isn't "the DNC changing their shit", it's figuring out how to get people to give a shit about voting again.
No this is all bs. Democrats abandoned it’s left-leaning voterbase by appealing to their donors and changing their campaign message from focusing on combatting wealth inequality and attacking the weird antitrans rhetoric to working together with republicans (???) and amplifying racist xenophobic rethoric more by constantly talking about how bad immigrants are. And of course not to forget their absolute refusal to end the genocide they were funding and sending Bill fucking Clinton to Michigan to berate Palestinians for caring about their families and friends being killed because they deserve it after Oct 7.
The Democrats literally campaigned with lifelong Republican leaders and doubled down on supplying a Genocide. It's not the left that's refusing to compromise.
And this is all apologia for the Democrats trying to blame voters for the failure of the Democratic Party
There's no room for our system to allow a third party in. They'll just be crushed by the two other parties. It's a rigged system. Money wins. No other party will have the money to win state votes and keep them.
It's not rigged, it's just the inevitable stable state of the system. The US will have to move to a different voting system for third parties to matter.
Ok. We'll just get congress to vote for approving the new system......yep
If you get enough actual leftist 3rd party House and congresspeople in, Dems have to make alliances with them.
So your plan is to defeat democrats in democrat states going up against all the campaign funds that the democrats will provide to beat this third party; and then you think once they're congress you think democrats are going to vote with them to get lefty stuff to pass that will make this new leftist party look good?
Hey, man. I've got some magic beans to sell you.
False assumption to think that third party can just unseat Democrats. Also, the Dems had more money than God during the last election and couldn't beat Trump. Also, Dems consistently neuter their own "leftist" bills (such as the green new deal) before they're even out of committee so I don't think they're going to actually improve anything materially for me.
You don't need to use the whole magic beans sneering talk with me, dude, we probably have the same interests at heart.
I don't thing you understood what I wrote.
I hope people mass dying, losing every benefit of a society, and the chaos will get people to vote.
Stupid fucks.
As the republicans make it harder and harder to vote?
Stop blaming voters and start blaming the systems of oppression that make it impossible for us to make our voices heard. How many people were purged from voter rolls in Georgia alone this election?
Problem is everyone who knew they were going to pull this shit said they would do it.
We all said: check your registration every month, then daily a few weeks out of the election. Keep on top of that shit.
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.
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion
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.
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.
Court Concedes DNC Had the Right to Rig Primaries Against Sanders
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:
One of those things where both
AND
are true.
Everyone is constantly making excuses for the Democrats, but if a political party had zero power except for four months out of forty fucking years you'd think we'd at least try to replace them.
I wrote up a big long thing and deleted it, because fuck that.
The country doesn't want the change we want. Not even the Dem base, not when the ads start blaring and snarl words start getting tossed around. Even significantly left-leaning states like Cali and Washington regularly reject ballot initiatives for progressive measures.
That the Dems, milquetoast and moderate as they are, and as broad a coalition as they make, had power for 4 months out of 40 years is an aberration caused only by the massive fuck-ups of the Bush administration.
Correctly speaking, the Dems probably should've had none.
Yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusion: This country is fucked and there’s no way I’ll fit in anywhere.
I have two modes, really.
"Things are bad, but they will get better." Looking at the past, things were immeasurably worse. That they're still incredibly dogshit now is not a condemnation of our trajectory for all eternity (though I do suspect after this last election, there will need to be a tumultuous 'correction', civil rights or civil war style, to return to even the meagre rate of improvement we had before). 2025 is not 1925, and certainly not 1825 or 1025. Technological advancement aside, we have made incredible gains in the history of human civilization, and there's no reason that it should stop now, despite the seeming power of the elites. Relatively speaking, we are immensely educated and powerful compared to past generations of the working class. Our tools of communication are far further removed from elite control - though that should be interpreted with a touch of 'damnation by faint praise'. We may feel helpless and hopeless, but they are only feelings - feelings always pass, rightly or wrongly; and reality always asserts itself when the two collide.
"Holy fuck, what do you mean that by the time I'm in my 90s things might be slightly better? Assuming there isn't a half-century detour that makes things worse first, Reconstruction style??? And it's all reliant on the dipshits I meet in day-to-day life??? I'm either shooting myself or shooting up, fuck this"
I lost that first attitude when Trump won the first time.
And even when I’m around people who ostensibly share my political views I still feel like an outsider for a bevy of other reasons. “Did you see that funny commercial?”
“No I don’t see any commercials. Ever. “
“Oh man the halftime show!”
“Didn’t see that either.”
If my biology didn’t make a persuasive argument I’d swear I wasn’t human.
Of course not. Most of them are comfortable enough as-is. Most people don't have a strong political philosophy - they're just trying to maintain what they have, and maybe find a way to have a bit more.
Don't really think comfort has much to do with it. Revolutionary behavior tends to spill out from relatively privileged demographics, and suffering demographics can suffer seemingly infinitely without hitting some point of discomfort where revolution occurs.
Now is exactly the right time to criticize the dems, make them step up their game. Would be better 4 years ago, but here we are.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic "leaders" asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn't do.
Totally agree "but here we are", but a better time would be 1992
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikaanse_presidentsverkiezingen_1992
If you've got a time machine, feel free.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they're literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn't control every branch of government, but doesn't have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can't stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of "we aren't the Republicans" can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
That’s the key “stops a lot of things”. The way that Congress is structured makes it pretty easy to stop things since there are many choke points. Notice that republicans aren’t really trying to “do things” in Congress?
The current issues and actions are being driven by the executive branch where they’re ignoring the law and constitution . Being in the minority in Congress means that Dems can’t trigger investigations or much of anything to formally push back unless they’re joined by some republicans.
I’ll agree that they could make more noise and should block things up more than they’re doing presently, but these actions wouldn’t really stop or significantly slow any of this.
I’m sick of the green lanterism that gets trotted out to suggest that they’re not stopping things because they don’t want to. Voters didn’t give them power in the last election, so we’re working from a position of weakness.
There are still veto points and lawsuits to be made. Along with the more vocal opposition that you admit that they should engage in. It is neither that they could perfectly stop everything, but that they could actually start trying. The Democrats decided that they should sit back because if Trump fucks things up enough, they will have an easy time in 2026/2028, without changing their usual platform of "We are not the Republicans, we will give you nothing else".
Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
Where did this "protection" idea come from?
No one expects "protection", we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do, or get the eff out of the way and let someone with a spine and some morals get it done. The only one out there doing the job is sanders and the progressives. All the other dems only came together to vote for tougher laws on illegal video streaming sites, and now they are pushing to gut peoples protection to say what they want online.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/21/while-democracy-burns-democrats-prioritize-demolishing-section-230/
and back in jan: https://politics.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/028201/democrat-teams-up-with-movie-industry-to-propose-website-blocking-law
They are doing nothing but what their donors want, as usual. They learned nothing and continue to do nothing.
What were they sent to Washington to do, again?
Dont make me pull out school house rock videos of how our supposed "democracy" works.
They were sent to Washington to participate in the legislature. I could go for several more details here, but the core of it comes down to - they were sent to Washington to protect the rights and interests of their constituents through the passage and restriction of laws.
ie 'protection'.
I expect them to do at least as well as the GOP from the minority position. If they can't do that, what right do they have to expect our votes?
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.
Second highest voter turn out for a presidential election in US history.
Clearly its the voters fault.....
Also why in the broken nation is the assumption that if more people showed up they would have voted like you? I never got this concept. Please spend more effort being an opposition/resistance and less being poor losers.
Millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn't show up to vote for Harris in 2024.
Trump's numbers barely changed at all between the two.
And I can't say that I blame them. Biden's presidency... or his campaign... or Harris' campaign...
It was a shit-show all the way through. Maybe next time the Democrats should try catering to their voter base.
"I know fascism is bad, but I understand allowing it - I mean, look how uninspired the other option was!"
Yeah, this is exactly why we're in this position.
14 Million primary voters picked Biden in 2024.
He won the primary, as has every incumbent for many many decades.
We failed them, not the other way around.
What primary? The democrats did everything they could to shut down primaries. From refusing to run other candidates to outright cancelling votes.
I literally just told you the 2024 primaries. Are you an AI?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
There were 7 states holding their primary before Super Tuesday where Biden won 15 states all at once. Some states he won with a margin over 90%.
Oh yeah and what a race. The competition sure was... breathing. Probably.
Same as any other incumbent race.
Oh yeah it was a real primary with real candidates. I mean the second place guy "Uncommitted" nearly had it in the bag....
Lack of candidates is hardly a fault. What did you expect, Jill Stein?
A rigged primary, where the voters weren't really given a choice. Voters were very vocal that they didn't want him to run again, and the leadership openly ignored them. Next time, maybe the leadership should listen to the base that they claim they represent.
I still think there’s a good chance he could have won it the second time because there are enough sexist and racist democrats who stayed home who could have made a difference.
If he was winning primaries with 90% then clearly voters weren't vocal about that at all. The vocals ones we saw in media didn't properly represent the voters.
But when statistics showed Kamala Harris had a better chance at victory, he did drop out and gave his ticket, that he won fairly in a Primary Election, to her, his vice president.
Voters were saying it very loudly, the Democratic leadership just ignored them. Polls were very clear that nobody wanted either of them to run, and they both had a low approval ratings. The ticket wasn't his to give, it was up to the voters. The Democrats chose to skip the voters, so the voters abandoned them.
I don't see why anyone would expect voters to stick with a party that treats it's base so disrespectfully.
Polls? I've got the ultimate form of poll for you. A primary election, which he won.
Yes, and that does not imply what the democrats think it does.
It doesn't imply anything, it's a fact that Voters chose fascism and now they're facing the consequences.
Yes, we all are. I am just sick of this pretending they did not.
Dems will do anything to not accept responsibility for fumbling 12 years in office since 2000.
I hate the us government as much as the next invasion target, but this stupid tribalism has gotten out of hand. Was this the inevitable result of a two party system (a joke pretending to be a democracy)? Maybe, but the very idea that I am expected to "pick a side" even as a outsider and that once I do half of the us will write me off is laughable.
America, you did this. Stop trying to make it someone else's fault.
If we are to assume that there was voting suppression, do something about it!
If we are to assume that there was voting fraud, do something about it!
If we are to assume that the majority of americans did not want the current administration, then do something about it!
This should be a no brainier if you have the majority of americans against this then you should have the will and ability to do something about it.
But you clearly don't have the majority of your nations people behind you in this, most likely don't care enough (a side effect of that two party system) or and this might shock you, that the majority of americans are really just that awful and want to watch the free world burn.
Do what???
That's the issue. All these non Americans keep saying "Do something" and they can't even think of anything to do either.
Our government has stopped listening to us. I vote, ai write my politicians, I canvassed for candidates. None of it works anymore. None of it. We hold no sway outside of force. With force were so woefully outclassed it's not even a realistic idea.
Hmmmmmmm, what could the non-americans imply that we can not write out without risking a ban?
It is pathetic that among high voter suppression (due to Republican motions) the Democrats blame the people for not voting, instead of blaming voter suppression, or any of the other decades worth of inaction by Democrats to foresee and prepare for this. They have a two party system, it's not like the Republicans were a complete surprise
Its just wild looking into this from outside. If the election was rigged, then it would have fallen on the party that was in power at the time to manage right? Well what side of the two party system was in then? After so many years watching the US ratchet more and more into crazy town I just can not understand how people can not put blame on one half of what is no longer a democracy (maybe a Diarchy?).
Then there is the assumption that if more people showed up to vote the results would change. This seems to make the assumption that the democrats are the default choice (even if the lesser evil, making the concept of choice a joke) and that the people who are clearly angry, burnt out and did not think they mattered would not want to see the world burn.
Well, then they can see the world burn. Surely there's no reason to complain - this is what they wanted.
I don't think they are the ones complaining, yet.
Second highest by sheer number, eighth by percent of voting eligible population.
From your source:
Why did you cut out the VEP? The very next column....
it stands for Voting Eligible Population by the way.
Edit, for those not willing to click a link here is the picture not cut off:
Notice how there are 3 measurements of voter turn out? Two of which show this to have been the second highest turn out? Now does this show a larger then there should be level of disenfranchisement? Yes, so fix that!
I cut off the VEP because I mistook the voting age population for the voting eligible population and now that you pointed that out (thank you by the way) I’m looking into why there’s such a difference between those two numbers.
Its people that have lost the right/ability to vote. Most likely due to the terrible american for profit prison system.
It’s also a metric that isn’t included with the numbers before 1984 which makes it difficult to use as a comparison.
It was not included before it was invented, it was also not needed as the level of voter disenfranchisement was not yet an issue. It is now the standard metric (since you guys have so many people that are barred from voting).
In the chart I originally posted see how six of the eight don’t have VEP?
Explains why when you use it, it goes from eighth to second.
Voter turnout being high is great for non-republicans.
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.
::: spoiler Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
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(c)
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
Democrats
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
How could non-voters do this.
I'm not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don't really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won't typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don't really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
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
I'm just gonna leave this here: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
There is evidence to support widespread vote suppression is occurring by "vigilantes" knocking people off the voter registry amongst other tactics
A third of the eligible voters didn't vote. If they had, this tiny marginal bullshit wouldn't matter.
Separate reply, this isn't tiny marginal bullshit, we're talking millions of votes
I don't disagree, but not like my preferred candidate was on the ballot, I still voted tho...
Assuming that the third would be biased toward one candidate rather than being probably just as evenly divided as those that did vote.
We know the restrictive voting laws were biased. We do not know that the "didn't bother to vote" has the same bias.
Don't stop at suppression when it was full manipulation.
https://electiontruthalliance.org/clark-county%2C-nv
This is bullshit and this group is likely just out there to cash in on the election. What they claim to be suspicious patterns is just basic statistics.
If machines have a higher number of votes it is just to be expected that the spread of the results get smaller and towards the end result. The larger the sample size, the smaller the spread.
And the early voting machines had up to 250 votes per machine, whereas the election day machines only had around 125. At least in the graphics this group used in their own report. If you scale the graphic of the early machines only until 125 votes per machine they look similar.
Also on election day there were about 3000 machines as opposed to 1000. And here another basic truth comes up. If you repeat a sampling more often, the distribution of results becomes more even.
These guys are just describing basic statistic effects and claiming them to be suspicious, probably to collect donations and run with the money. Also their website is dubious about who they are exactly and what their credentials are.
There is legitimate criticisms and leads to investigate, but these guys are not one of them.
This was my gut feeling as well, not to mention it's a much less clear picture then what I posted.
I do want to add that I find it suspicious given Republicans frequently accuse the other side of doing what they either are actively doing, or plan to do, their continual pushing on voting being insecure and particularly mail in voting and early voting being particularly mabipulatable in their own words does make it seem more likely to me there could have been more shenanigans, not to mention that it was specifically mentioned that there were several breaches to two of the election systems in the years leading up to 2024... Very sus.
I mean, they fucking admit it but whatever.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AaKFx5rxdmA
i am not saying that there is no credible reasons to investigate if the election was done properly. however the "electiontruth" people do not provide any credible information for that. Also the video you linked does not seem to be about making a calm and proper argument, but rather to rile people up.
Again it is not impossible, that there have been irregularities, but it is something that needs to be analyzed and discussed properly. This is irrespective from needing to resist the Trump government, as it is a bunch of cirminals.
Beyond the statistical realities that Saleh mention, the general point about drop-off is also weird.
It implies that the GOP cheated, but declined to cheat in down ballot. This seems odd, if they had the will and capability to just change the votes, why would they skip the down ballot elections? Further another similar site pointed out the drop-off was uneven, that it was suspiciously higher in Montana than Michigan. To imply the GOP cheated more in Montana? When your theory indicates a bigger effort to cheat in a safe state than a swing state, then there's something going on.
The drop-off effect is easily explained by the reality that people weren't voting for a Republican or a Democrat, they were voting for or against Trump. That mindset is wholly separate from Republican v. Democrat. It's almost an Apples v. Oranges to try to compare a race with Trump to it to any other race (which is why the GOP is desperate to run him again, because even they don't understand how he engages the base and he is a useful idiot).
I'm glad to see it investigated and I wish that the voting populace didn't do what they did (and accept that without the suppression, the results might have gone the other way). However I don't think fraud has been proven in any significant degree.
Perhaps the democrats should emphasize vote in person on election day if at all possible, and mail-in is a last resort, rather than saying "voting is easy, just mail it in". It's obvious that they are having great success in discarding legitimate mail-in ballots the way they see fit.
Good potential* evidence to add to the pile, thank you for bringing it up!
Edit: *
Welp, that settles it.
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.
The results at my last city vote was depressing. We had 20% turn out. Twenty! And we have mail-in by default here
Thankfully the people who did vote voted for the positive changes we need but it's not hard to imagine how easily 20% of the population can be easily swayed
While some people don’t vote out of apathy, others are a target of indirect disenfranchisement that prevents the working poor from voting.
Others still do it because of religious dedication to the accelerationist belief that making the human experience worse will magically cause the working class to gain class consciousness and revolt. You know. Like has never occurred in recorded history...
How do you vote to get rid of the dumb voting system in USA?
Most of the members of Congress are extremely wealthy, Republican and Democrat alike. They're not doing anything about this coup consolidating capitalist class power because they stand to personally gain from it. They don't have to pretend to not have the votes to stop yet another grab at working class wallets because they can point at Elon and say "we have no power here."
There are certain people who never want to hear it, but very few national politicians give a shit about us, certainly not enough to make a difference. They're in it for personal gain, everything else is performative.
Some of them also don't want to risk being violently purged by fascists so are bowing down early.
The handful that are actually speaking out are risking being very dead.
Which is fucking terrifying and why I've (and others) been screaming that nobody is coming to save us, we have to save each other. Put down the identity stuff for now and rekindle the militant labor movements we used to have in this country. Withholding our labor is the only way out of this - they need us a lot more than we need them.
What a fucking take lmao
"the blacks and the gays getting systemically purged from society doesn't matter compared to the real stuff, things that personally impact me"
They should like... Be politicians though. We get they can't pass legislation, but be fucking politicians.
Republicans out of the majority make you sniff their shit daily and are all over the news cycle. Democrats seem to think it's ok to just say they're concerned and send me fundraising emails.
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...
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.
I voted in Taiwan. I had to take a 1 hour train ride to the American embassy to vote.
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 feel like too many people don't know how passing laws work.
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.
This is assuming we didn't vote and things weren't "lost".
We deserved a hand recount at least. The fact that they didn't try is telling.
Democrats do anything but take accountability for their mistakes any% Speedrun challenge (impossible).
Jokes aside at what point do you stop pointing the finger at everyone else and recognize that you just fucked up? Political parties aren't owed votes. They have to earn votes.
The Democrats failed to earn enough votes against Trump TWICE.
I don't even wanna hear some shit about it being a rigged election or anything. The right was screaming about 2020 being rigged for 4 years and y'all kept telling them it was ridiculous and they just need to suck it up because they lost.
The Democrats will lose again in 2028 if they do not make serious changes up and down their party.
Indeed. The democrats should recognise their mistakes, and so should the voters. Either one could have stopped this, but they both chose stubbornness.
As out-of-touch as George H.W. Bush looked marveling at the checkout scanner at a supermarket, that's nothing compared to the people who think American voters by and of large sat down and thoughtfully compared the policy positions of all the candidates, gamed out the implications, and voted accordingly.
How can you say this after the news about the people who didn't know Biden dropped out until election day? That had never heard of Project 2025? That didn't know what tariffs are?
Choosing to be ignorant is a form of stubbornness
I don't think so. That was our future on the line. Though they may have run a more effective social media campaign spinning their fake, populist bullshit stimulating Trump cultists out in Trump country, none of that should have mattered. Regardless of a weak opposing campaign & inflation, we fucked up by not recognizing an existential threat & voting against it anyway. That's just downright stupid of us.
Thanks, I love hearing that my existence has to be earned.
Your existence? The fuck are you talking about?
I'm talking about the stupid meme and Democrats once again pointing fingers everywhere else instead of looking in a fuckin mirror.
If you (the Democrats) want to win a political race you have earn the votes from the people. They have failed to do so now multiple times.
At some point you can't keep pointing the finger elsewhere and you have to accept that you didn't convince enough people that you were the better option.
They need to take some responsibility instead of playing professional victims all the damn time. I'm sick of it.
Hard agree
Fuck that shit. With the stakes that high and threat to society that clear, even a bag of shit should have won against Trump. A bag of shit in the oval office wouldn't do this, and that—not a flashy campaign—is all anyone would need to know to make a clear decision.
We fucked up. Fuck people. We got the government & leadership we deserve.
No, we didn't lol. The Democrats did lol.
Blaming the democrats doesn't absolve the people of responsibility. Contrary to what some may think, eligible voters can think & understand their choices. We'd seen his gimmick before & how he operates. Those who voted for him & those who didn't vote against him did so regardless of the consequences while having every reason to know what that would mean. They're as responsible as anyone.
No, I am not. But you can keep saying so if it makes you feel better to blame me instead of your leaders.
So, you're not responsible for your choices? Are you a child or incapable to predict the consequences of your decisions?
You are right, a bag of shit should have won against Trump. But somehow the Democratic leadership was still able to mess that up. Next time, they should bring their A team to the table instead of the D team.
You miss the whole fascist shebang that got setup this past month or so? We're looking at starving the poor and Healing-Through-'Labor' camps for the mentally ill. Our LGBT brothers and sisters are in even more danger.
Yeah, if our thinking is just that this is team sports, or a popularity contest, that's valid.
It's not.
Talking about how it's the Dem party's fault for not 'earning' votes ignores that elections are matters in which the people decide their own governance. "The Dems aren't flashy enough, I'm going to let minorities get murdered" is a choice made by every eligible voter who protest-voted or didn't vote - and, of course, every fascist bootlicker who voted GOP. And those are the only votes which were available to be 'earned'.
The Dems lost. The Dems are also immensely incompetent, and most of the party's leaders at this point should probably be sent to the career-equivalent of a guillotine. But the core reason the Dems lost is because the American electorate consists of a supermajority of fascists, and fascist supporters.
You can try to excuse the electorate by accusing the Dems of pointing the finger at 'everyone else', but 'everyone else' literally is culpable in this fucking disaster as well.
Deeply ironic.
You were so close to getting the point and then you went and fucked it up right at the end.
I hate to break it to you but the "supermajority" of Americans are not fascists. They are simply sick of the Democrats bullshit.
"We're sick of gutless politicians proposing moderate policy in-line with what their base continually elects in the primaries, so we're going to give fascists the go-ahead to kill minorities."
Very responsible citizenship. Very moral behavior. Not fascist at all. Thanks bunches.
Hey I didn't vote for the Cheeto either. I'm just not sitting here bitching about why the Dems lost by blaming everything else except the Democratic party themselves.
I hope by that you mean that you voted for the only other viable option, because otherwise, that's a vote for fascism in our system.
Man, all up and down Lemmy the Dems have been blamed, both before and after the election results. The election happened. It's over. The results are in. That means we have to square with the fact that, whatever the strengths or weaknesses, or the sins or stupidity, of the Dem Party, the result of the election was that a supermajority of the US population gave the green light to murder as many minorities as possible, and save as few as possible.
The Dems didn't fumble a football. The Dems didn't miss a layup shot. This wasn't a game we 'gave' to the Democrats, our aristocratic overlords, to play on our behalf. It was an election, in which we, the electorate, cast our votes. The electorate, en masse - over 2/3s - said "The Dems haven't earned my vote, so marginalized demographics can go get fucked."
That's what I said from the start, and you objected to.
The electorate doesn't care about fascism - if the blue-colored circus isn't entertaining enough, if the blue circus doesn't 'earn' my existence, the electorate says I die. If the blue circus isn't entertaining enough, the electorate says they don't mind seeing fascism murder a few minorities. Maybe it'll convince the blue circus to be more entertaining next time.
My existence has to be earned.
Well if listening to "the base" voting for moderate politics loses elections maybe they should stop doing that lol
"Stop having primaries" is an interesting take.
I don't always agree with your views on trans people, Pug, but sometimes you make a great point. Keep on fighting the good fight.
I agree with this, but it seems to be more of a far-right nazi issue. In Germany, it was again the young, white men that turned nazi that almost won the nazis the election. Let that sink in. The nazis almost won an election in Germany. Here, we have the same issues, but with gerrymandering, voter suppression and swing state election officials cheating occasionally. It's our young white men that have a ton of energy, want to see change, and have lost their way when looking for someone to help them do that, that are our biggest threat.
Edit: I forgot to add the link to the Germany voters: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186
21% of Young people voted for the AfD. They got 20,8% in total. Thats not a significant increase. The cohort of 35-49 year-olds turned out stronger for the AfD.
The largest voting disparity is in the working class. 37% of workers voted for a party that would crush them.
i voted for fetterman and he's more useless at resisting tyranny than a wet blanket
Angry ML shouting incoming
You would be angry as well if you had no representation in government. It must be nice for you to have two conservative parties to choose from.
Why don’t you vote some representatives in then?
My sentiments exactly
Libs still imagining that voting matters. Not where I live. Not where most people live.
How would voting cause them to lose their job and become homeless?
It's a legitimate question.
Is the Democrat master plan to have a one party system? Everyone always and only vote Democrat, because if the other party of a two party system ever gets in to power we are screwed! It doesn't sound like a good plan.
You guys had a good idea with Ross Perot in 1992. Look into that (especially how he got 0 electoral college votes) and maybe you'll have a better idea of what you should be doing, instead of blaming each other.
Better off to die fighting for humanity, not "the other white..." rich politicians. The america before Trump wasn't one I wanted to live for either.
This war was going on before Obama and Bush. It's more fundamental than left and right politics. It's a mass social existential crisis in a nation that was taught to consume as a way to escape the reality of life as a human being. There is no saviour to run to. We've wasted so much time putting blind faith into mainstream pop politicians that live for "the game" and not humanity.
...except maybe Bernie.
Bernie endorsed Kamala because he's an adult that understands accelerationism is something only idiots that have never read a history book think will bring progress.
You're getting accelerationism whether you think it's dangerous or not, you better gear up and train.
Well now we are. Train for the thunder dome as that is the new law.
Again read a history book. After whatever collapse you're hoping for happens, things will be built back to be similar to how it was before.
What a stupid response.
Me telling you that American fascism is coming for your throat is not "hoping for collapse"
I don't think you know what the word "accelerationist" means.
Oh no please politics understander tell me what that means please
Uncommitted performative boTh sIDEs grandstanding couch sitters who drank a bit too much right-wing wedge-driving vodka:
Make sides irrelevant by passing state level electoral reform and opening our elections to 3rd parties. More democracy is the solution, not forcing people to vote for your preference. Do you people ever take the time to consider you don't want people to vote for who they want to vote for? How can you sleep at night dreaming of taking other's right to vote away? Awful...
I am a huge advocate to changing our election systems. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find someone who's done more write-ups and advocacy for campaign finance and election reform.
That said, this is putting the cart before the horse. Such Constitutional reform first requires consensus among the working class. We must first unite the left and right under a common enemy of the rich. Only then can we pressure states to seek a convention for amendments to the constitution.
Bernie couldn’t even win a primary.
they didn't let him win the primary. they had their chosen candidate, and they weren't going to let an actual progressive win.
It always has to be a conspiracy. Fuck's sake.
Oh you're right, the democratic convention is totally trustworthy and would never do such a thing! /s
Tell me more about how results that aligned with every major poll were totally unexpected. Every polling organization in the country conspired against Bernie.
I voted for Bernie. I marched for Bernie, back when I had two good legs. I donated and campaigned for Bernie. I would've loved it if Bernie won.
But he didn't. Because the people who showed up to vote clung to the idea that a 'moderate' was a better shot in the general election.
Still not convinced that wasn't rigged.
Was every primary poll rigged too?
Well I guess it's always possible dems pressured media to minimize or distort Bernie message. Which drives down his polling. I remember vividly in 2020 how many elderly dems voted for biden in primary because they knew he could beat Trump even though Bernie seemed like the better choice.
Voting is the least we can do BUT... do not expect systematic change (that helps the working class) to come from the top down. Both parties agree on legal bribery, insider trading, "good billionaires", the voting system, and the two party system. Meaningful change is going to require more effort: i.e., grass roots organizing from the bottom up. Start in your own community and the change will grow organically.
As an old leftist i find that the young American left is hyper focused on punishing politicians based on things that should be, not based on how things are.
Yes it would be nice if the world was like you want it, but it isn’t. Voting the lesser of two evils is just how most of us around the world do it.
But an example is the whole car free/anti car thing, Yes that would work if cities had adequate transit and service, but they don’t, and they won’t in my lifetime. It would be nice but it’s not going to happen, ever. So I may as well just vote for the candidates who fund transit instead of trying to find a candidate who is yelling about being anti car
The crowd that didn't vote for Kamala have mysteriously disappeared from their soapbox and went into hiding...
I seeing us everywhere. I'm not sure what your talking about
Hi I voted for Stein
Well least you voted. If only 30 mill more decided to vote even third party it would have shook things up. They didn't even care enough about country to do that.
Repeatedly banning people with different viewpoints will do that. You chose to become an echo chamber.
Sorry I'm out of the loop.
Who got banned for different viewpoints?
Look at the modlog for . world, Ctrl f "troll" for the last 6 months.
I'm lazy can you help out and give me one or two examples?
Nope, you guys appointed Hitler again to stop the commies and leftists. Stop being a lazy liberal.
That was a lot of words to say you can't.
You're a weird flyingsquid alt.
Horseshit. They got what they wanted and then shut up about it.
Nope, just because you stopped seeing them in your walled garden doesn't mean they aren't there. They're just treating you the same as Trump supporters because they know what side liberals were in in Nazi Germany.
But hey, at least they elected you to represent them in these comment sections! Hope the pay is good. Don't look like fun to me.
I gotta start saving this exact same comment every time I see it. Still pushing for electoral reform and a dissolution of the two party system on a daily basis. This is the right time to do so right? Now you can't cry "Oh it's to close to the election!"
Well, have you pushed to replace First past the post voting in your state so people can be free to vote how they want? Will you be complaining about 3rd party mid term voters after a year and a half of doing nothing to change the mathematically flawed voting system in your state?
I didn't have to roll out the red carpet for Donald "Israel needs to win and win fast" Trump to push for voting reform.
Every terrible thing we told you would happen is currently happening, so I hope you're happy for queer Americans and about the fate of Palestine. You got exactly what we told you we would get. I hope you're comfy on your soapbox, because it's not comfy for trans people right now. Thanks a lot.
Da.
Obviously you're transphobic genocide lovers who demand corporate ownership of the meats of production.
(/s obvs)
Good thing you added that /s or else I'd have to get my billionaire sponsors to test out their space lasers on you.
Aren't the only ones saying this the Dems?
Holy shit, one thousand upvotes!
Thanks guys, I’d like to talk for a moment about something that’s important to me and that’s how to check if you’re registered to vote.
so true.
You're suggesting people should burn down the houses of trump voters...? That's how we beat Trump?
Yes.
They knew what they voted for. They knew what the plan was. They willingly elected a dictator.
How is that not grounds for retribution??
They've shown they're willing to be violent. They've shown they don't care if people die as long as they get what they want.
Why shouldn't they feel that very same fear?
Trump voters are not a monolith. Plenty of them were fed misinformation
Well looking at my gene donor and FIL. It's not misinformation. They know full well what they are getting and are willing to sacrifice everything to get rid of some trans folks in sports and some illegals working the fields.
That's not an excuse.
It's not an excuse but it's a good enough reason to not burn their houses down
So we're just supposed to let these people do whatever they want because "they don't know any better"?
Yeah cause that's worked in the past.
I'm sorry but I must have missed the memo that the only two options are "let them do whatever" and "burn their houses down"
Kinda feel like you're just trolling, though, so I'm out
Watch out everyone we got a internet badass over here!
Even if you think it's perfectly fine morally, wouldn't that look awful in the public eye and paint a bad picture of those opposed to him? I think it could only harm any sort of real and effective movement. It's not representative of everyone anti-Trump, but they'd be easily painted that way.
Are y'all gonna start saying that all nazis don't deserve to be vilified because some were too stupid to figure out they were being lied to?
Because that's literally what you're doing now. This is what they wanted. Idgaf how it makes anti trumpers look because it makes them look like fucking heroes. Rather than the sheep German citizens who did nothing while nazis laid waste to marginalized communities because they were too propagandized to see the truth in front of their noses.
Honestly at this point can't we just call it? The US is done. Let's all go our separate ways and dissolve the union.
Right? Like
"Well, if you're not doing anything for me I'm withholding my vote!"
It doesn't register to anyone that Democrats can't do anything about Trump if they don't have the offices
How much are you getting paid by the billionaires in the dnc to simp this hard for them?
Just enough to cover my Lemmy monthly subscription.
Americans are voting every few seconds, don't you see where they are staring
They are voting up the memes. We have Meme Kings of Trump and Musk to meme about every few seconds on every single media platform. I see people pressing UpVote on Reddit, Bluesky.
People sold out to Apple iPhone, who in February 2025 is promoting products on Elon Musk's X (Apple is paying money to Elon Musk), a long time ago for the ability to mock a 78 year old man on the Toilet tweeting.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992