Tim Walz says ‘we wouldn’t be in this mess’ if it wasn’t for him and Harris
Summary
Former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized Trump for economic chaos while taking personal responsibility for the situation during an MSNBC interview.
"We wouldn't be in this mess if we'd have won the election — and we didn't," Walz told Chris Hayes. He called Trump the "worst possible business executive" and praised the Wall Street Journal's editorial criticizing Trump's tariff war.
Walz emphasized Democrats must offer something better, not just criticize Trump. Recently, he acknowledged a leadership void in the Democratic Party and admitted spending too much time combatting Trump's false claims about immigrants.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-walz-i-own-this-we-wouldnt-be-in-this-mess-msnbc-chris-hayes_n_67d2b59ae4b0b325f56dd0d4Open linkView original on lemmy.world644
Comments336
Good to see someone from the campaign acknowledge "getting votes" was the campaign's entire job, and losing the election is the fault of the campaign.
I hope Walz runs in a competitive primary and gets the nomination.
But if they try to just hand a baton off, we're gonna see the same result.
Primaries are only competitive if the people show up to them.
Primaries are only competitive if we actually have them
I feel like if Biden had stuck with something like, "I'm going to be one term and let some younger folks lead, we need some folks who are going to see the consequences of their actions running the show, not 70 and 80 year olds." and had an actual primary, Harris wouldn't have been the nominee and said nominee would have won. There's a few other things that could have helped, but the short campaign was definitely a huge stumbling block.
Yes indeed, but also primaries can help to attract voters. I think the Sanders campaigns, though he didn’t win, made young people more likely to vote Democrat.
I’ve seen people argue Biden and Jamie Harrison had a following out, and that Biden never really planned to run again, he just wanted to spoil the primary and push a very unpopular Harris onto the ticket.
We did, in fact, have primaries. There were like 9 choices for the Democratic nominee in my state. Better challengers could have run but didn't. Yes I know the DNC using funding to "encourage" or "discourage" but that doesn't change the fact that challengers could have, and did, run in the primaries.
Nobody voted for Harris in the 2024 Democratic primary and she was still the nominee, picked by the head nerds at the DNC
That is partially true. We the voters did not vote for Harris, but the Biden delegates who the primary voters sent to the convention did.
Yeah, and Biden was old. Even before his obvious deterioration, there was always a chance he wouldn't make it through the term and Kamala would have to step up. If you voted for Biden in the primaries and were NOT ready for a potential future of a Harris presidency, I don't know what you were thinking.
Like I said: The head nerds at the DNC picked her.
yes, but those head nerds were elected by the primary voters.
Count the number of states where "others" were not on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Ballot_access
Your proof that we didn't have primaries is to link a source that shows that not only did 48 states have a primary (I wasn't aware that Florida and Delaware did not, so TIL, and thank you for that), but also that all of them had at least one challenger on the ballot? Show me who qualified to be on the primary ballot in their state, showed up to register for it, and was denied.
I'm not who posted it, but that list is either wrong or varies by county. My state is listed with a couple other candidates in various colors including green, but my actual primary ballot was Biden or nobody. (Or Trump or nobody). I just recycled it.
That sucks. Was there anybody who met the requirements and tried to register but was rejected?
Primaries are kind of a moot point for the incumbent if they want to run again.
Trump in 2020 had 2,549 delegates. The next closest was Bill Weld with 1.
Biden in 2024 had 3,905 delegates. The next closest was uncommitted with 37.
Obama in 2012 had 3,514 delegates. The next closest there was also uncommitted, with 72.
Bush in 2004 had a clean delegate sweep of 2,509.
Yep. But it's generally (just learned that Florida and Delaware Democratic parties cancelled theirs in 2024) not because the state parties just reject any other names to be put on the primary ballot. But there's still a lot of people saying there was no primary or that the DNC wouldn't let any challengers run. Just generally misplaced anger that they didn't have better Presidential candidates to vote for when the reality is that better people just chose not to run. Has there ever been a primary challenger beat the incumbent president for the nomination and then win the election?
There'd have to be a primary challenger who beat the incumbent first, and I don't think that one has happened. I know Ted Kennedy got relatively close (Well, closer then the others I've mentioned, still blown out 1900 to 1200 delegates) to knocking out Carter on the Dem side, other then that, Reagan and Ford in 1976 was decided 1,121 to 1078 for Ford.
NO! NO! NO!
NOOOOOOO!
Do not nominate Tim Walz you stupid assholes. He was the blue republican addon to make the progressive Harris campaign appeal to centrists and republicans. He wanted to "expand israel's borders". He was elected in a district that ran straight red like the blood of the innocence for a long time before he won it, and then he lost that district during the election.
The what Harris campaign?
We have free public school lunches for all our kids here in Minnesota because of Governor Walz. How the fuck is that "blue republican"?
He might be further left than any republican but hes as far right as a Democrat can be. As I have said before I will vote for him, but I gurantee you millions of leftists won't.
Are you from the mirror universe?
Good. Maybe we can finally convince some people around here.
Unlikely.
Its like pod save cracked open all their heads, took a crap, and sealed them all back up.
Nope, because the majority of the people that are in these comments in this post and in several others that are acknowledging that the Democrats fucked up will start punching left again in about three years. And they will repeat their failures from 2016 2020 2024.
Nope. This is on Biden. It's his fault Harris/Walz were put into an impossible situation.
That senile old fuck was supposed to be a one-term president. If they'd spent 4 years planning for 2024 instead of sitting around with their thumbs up their asses maybe they could have run a winning campaign.
But no, Joe was too proud or stupid or both to stick to that plan. This election was lost the instant he doddered his way on to the debate stage on 6/27/24.
It's on Biden and Garland for not throwing Trump in prison the second his term ended.
Exactly, and it's the third time we've been betrayed like this.
Not going after the Bush administration.
Not going after the subprime mortgage architects.
Not going after Trump.
Three times, they've had the easiest of layups for public approval of all time and they've consistently fucked it up.
I'd like to add:
Not going after the Confederate states
to this list
Seeing liberal's repeatedly stumble in stopping anyone to the right, but having the fangs come out the moment they need to protect themselves from the left really shows that it's not failure, it's refusal.
That's a false dichotomy. There are more political ideologies left of center than status quo liberalism and tankism. Most leftists are very much critical of Russia, because it's an imperialist capitalist dictatorship.
Are you comparing the political actions of the only ostensibly anti-fascist party in the US to the leftist infighting of posters online? Try organizing with leftists outside and you might be able to see the difference.
Amen. 4 years to build a case? January 6th, spend 6-12 months and file charges. What the fuck were they doing for 4 years?
Running out the clock.
To hell with his January 6th temper tantrum, he should be in the fucking Hague for his handling of Covid.
Or at least the second the supreme court said whatever the president does is legal as long as it's an "official act".
The Oligarchy will never convict one of their own. For four years, I said it was the dog and pony show. And in the end, nothing will happen to Trump. Here we are.
Warning bells started going off in my head the moment that the Democrats announced that Harris was going to be the candidate after Biden dropped out, not because I thought she was an unqualified candidate but because there was no time taken to search for other candidates. Maybe it was too close to the election to take the time to go through the rigamarole of all that but I think even a cursory effort to do so would have gone a long way towards making it feel like people's opinions actually mattered. Biden dropping out was huge (at least to me) because it felt like an acknowledgement of the voters who had consistently felt like they were held hostage for their votes because the alternative was a fascist.
It doesn't help either that they went on to repeatedly shoot themselves in the feet while chasing moderate Republican votes, getting other prominent Democrats to chastise certain classes of voters and breeding the same voter apathy that hurt them in 2016, and their refusal to acknowledge that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide that we shouldn't help Israel perpetrate.
Yeah, the moment I knew we were in trouble was when they publicized that video of Obama lecturing down to some black men about not supporting Harris enough. Whoever thought staging that was a good idea needs to retire from politics forever and go find a field to stand in.
that video was so based lmao. Not every day that you get to see obama yelling at people.
Idk about based. Imo, it was hella staged, and I found it real cringe.
On your last point, I don't think Dems could've done anything different. They're clearly in Israel pockets and they can't disobey their corporate overlords and run on a more progressive agenda. Only other option was to try hard to get the "centrists". Incredibly disappointing as they would rather lose and go hard fascist rather than let their donors lose any money (how's that stock market looking?).
It's also the campaign money, only goes to Harris, and not anyone else. They are legally required to return all that fundraising to the donors if they use a different candidate
it was way too close for that, by the time you had found one, you would be weeks, if not one or two months prior to the election, with no VP, and only a candidate, you would've had to have started the primary at the time it normally does to pull that off, they took a gamble, and that gamble was that biden would ride it out, and im not really sure why they took that gamble, but they did, and they lost.
Garland never had any intention to prosecute trump
Because they and R are same team. I bet it's like lawyers who viciously go after each other in court, them have golf and martinis on weekends.
Harris made choices. She could have chosen not to adopt every single one of Bidens policies. What was biden going to do, fire her? If you look back at her presidential run she really struggled to articulate any policies back then too.
If the reports are true, yes that seems to be the case. I'm not really sure what would have happened, but she was absolutely threatened into defending Biden's legacy.
The president cannot fire the vice president.
The best a president can do is lock the VP out of meetings. Bidens approval ratings were so low, being locked out of meetings would have cost her nothing. So exactly what reports are you quoting here, lets see them. I think you made that up.
Hell, if that happened and we assumed that anti-establishment sentiment is what got trump elected, maybe she could've capitalized on that to win the election as a "new" type of politician, one willing to go against the Democrat establishment whom literally everybody hates and dig up the potential dem voters who haven't had hope for change since Obama. Of course, this is Kamala Harris we're talking about, probably one of the last politicians that I'd expect to pull a move like that.
Biden shares a lot of the responsibility, but Harris and Walz were running on fundamentally faulty assumptions.
Biden made an appropriate decision to back out. He should have done it much sooner. But I'm not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden's fault. I don't really feel that's fair.
Harris' main draw was that she didn't want to do anything, which pissed off progressives. She was pro-establishment and pro-status quo. She didn't need Biden's help to not get votes... I have no love for Biden, but the truth is the truth.
Inasmuch as they ran as a continuation of his policy, I'd say there's some blame to be had.
So you're saying that two adults chose to run an unpopular and non-working Biden "plan" which was proven to not work, and that's also Bidens fault because two completely unrelated people decided to also use that plan?
Does your brain not work?
They used his blueprint. He bears some responsibility.
If biden hadn't been such a mildewy dishrag of a president, his VP might have won. Now insult me more since it's all centrists do when people expect better of them.
And again this is about you hating Biden. Which is fine, hate him. But how long are you going to blame everything on him like a petulant child?
Next week when you stub your toe you're going to blame him?
His Vice President chose to run for office. She chose the platform that she chose to run with. It wasn't Joe Biden's platform it wasn't even loosely tangential to Joe Biden's platform. But it's his fault in your eyes because you feel that she stole his platform...
Go back and reread my anecdote about the police. You made it even more relevant.
This is on anyone who was within arms reach of Trump in the last decade and didn't take matters into their own hands.
Yeah a bunch of people want to make excuses for 90 million people who just... Didn't think it was important who won.
Campaign was flawed but if people showed up to vote against fascism we wouldn't be here. And there's zero excuse for all 90 million of them to not show up.
Edit- well, Im reading your post in a different light but, yes that too.
If you didn't notice, Democrats were aligning with fascism.
Funny, I noticed they were the only ones running campaigns with a legitimate change of winning against the fascists.
Talking about winning against fascism and actually doing something or not the same thing, they talk a big game and then end up capitulating to Republicans.
Winning elections is the only way to keep power from the hands of fascists that doesn't involve extralegal actions.
Which fascist is gonna keep fascism out of power, the blue one or the red one?
Turns out holding back the things that work (like calling fascists "weird") while not breaking with some of Biden's unpopular policies was a terrible idea... who would've thought? At least Walz is honest enough to admit it. I doubt the DNC will let the social democrats like Walz or Bernie take the lead though... establishment dems would rather stand by and praise Reagan while Trump dismantles the constitution.
And we just got the furtherest left chain we've had in over 30 years...
The chair has complete control and no accountability to anyone else.
And the new chair agrees with you. You don't even have to take his word, look at what he did as head of Minnesota's state party
the new DNC chair just gave us elissa slotkin as trumps speech rebutter. She's a zionist and menber of the problem solvers coalition (bipartisanship for bipartisanship sake) and new democrat caucus (pro business focus). She's measured as the most centrist dem there is.
The new chair is accountable to the same corrupt influences as the last one. We might as well have not appointed a new chair. Ken has to go.
She also co-sponsored legislation to ban corporate pacs...
How are her (absolute dog shit) opinions about Israel affect the position she has?
Because you can trace the money, no matter what random, clearly going to die, just for show bill gets introduced.
You can pretty much tell which one , Ds are getting the same megadonor moneys from the GOP, and yes the Dems are hoping coast on by along with the GOP, to eek some federal elections.
Bernie's chances of running are pretty much up and over. He's like 83. The time to have gotten him in was definitely 2016, but the DNC wanted Clinton and that got them to lose. 2020, he lost again because everyone tone deaf wanted Biden because they believed "well, he was around Obama during his two terms, he should be in because he'll just continue what Obama built!". They only got lucky to have won 2020 with Biden, just lucky.
I cannot see Bernie Sanders ever running again.
An article I read about this talked about how DNC-funded advertising discredited Bernie not by attacking his actual policies, but via a message of "his promises are good, and you may like them, but how many voters out there won't vote for a scary socialist?". I think that's ultimately what did him in; it's impossible to make a reasonable person hate the stuff Bernie was promising (unless they think it's gonna placate the proletariat and make them lose the will to seize the means of production or some shit), but it is possible to convince them that some unspecified "many people" wouldn't vote for him and therefore he'd lose the election.
They also banked on the sexist “Bernie Bros” and tried to paint the movement as majority male when it wasn’t. Plenty of women who liked Bernie. And a lot of that enthusiasm would have captured some youth that could have attracted young men wanting change and wanting to put their weight behind something.
Change was coming regardless. The DNC had an option for a brief moment to permit or encourage change for the better of all. Instead, they let our economic problems fester, accelerated the income disparity, and chose to back…whatever the fuck this shit show is now.
When parties get so arrogant that they think the people they represent are the enemy—they need to go. Unrestricted and fully backed? I think Bernie could have won against Trump in 2016.
I don't think Bernie will run again in 2028, but he is still relevant right now because nobody else is taking the lead. I hope people like Walz will step up and try to turn the DNC around. It'll be an uphill battle even with the DNC, not to speak of the actual election.
I think Bernie should run, alongside AOC, Walz, Al Green, and others. The primary can sort out who is truly best as president. That is the whole bloody idea of a primary, one the DNC never honestly permitted after Obama's tenure.
The reason why the conservatives found an effective candidate in Trump, is that he was allowed to legitimately compete in their primaries. It is a stress test, and the DNC refused to allow their own primary to work as intended.
AOC has not interest though, she said it would best if she stayed in the house
The best he can do is rile people up and it works.
No, weird was a successful offensive attack on Republicans that was both popular and was great at making them get flustered and double down on their weirdness (which is itself an incredibly charitable way to describe their fascist policies)
https://www.vox.com/politics/365833/trump-harris-walz-weird-2024-election-voters-biden-poll-attack-messaging
Other messaging that was very popular
https://blueprint2024.com/polling/harris-poll-positive-message-8-8/
https://blueprint-research.com/polling/distance-biden-ads-message-test-10-15/
::: spoiler Progressive policies that a majority of Americans support
Democrats' Working-Class Failures, Analysis Finds, Are 'Why Trump Beat Harris'
2024 Post-Election Report: A retrospective and longitudinal data analysis on why Trump beat Harris
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz's Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
:::
This is the Clinton-era way of thinking. A losing campaign must have done everything wrong, and a winning campaign must have done everything right.
Where's the proof that it alienated voters? The vox article has evidence voters received it positively
You don't find Republican policies that dehumanize immigrants, attack women's rights, and demonize LGBT rights weird? To put it as nicely as possible, fascist policies are weird
You were never going to vote for Dems anyways, you keep saying alienation but you have not provided any proof. The fact that your being flustered means it's actually working against Republicans, yes we know you are one.
No, the initial comment was fine, as was the authentic reaction to it.
What made it weird and ineffective, was Kamala and other zero charisma neoliberals beating it into the ground while screaming "you like this".
It's like when Dee was trying to make Instagram videos and Charlie kept fucking with her:
When Walz said it off the cuff, it was a good thing. When Harris tried to make it an entire campaign, it was stupid and "weird" on its own.
Oh? got any proof of that? Was your proof on fox news maybe? I saw plenty of articles praising it.
Oh see you said it alienated voters, plural.
What a ridiculous take.
That's fair actually. When I first heard it without context, I also felt kind of alienated by it.
I think you can be weird in good and bad ways, context matters in this case. I think it's fair to call out fascists for being "weird" in the sense that they are evil, crooked and - crucially - not relatable for the vast majority of voters. The "weird" thing is about the fascists not being "like us" - and thus very instinctively not trustworthy.
At the same time it's also possible to be "weird" in an individualistic, relatable and validating way. Most people have insecurities or fears on some level and accepting this "weirdness" can be validating and actually show likeness. I think it's very clear that Tim Walz didn't mean it like this.
He didn't call them weird out of the blue, but rather to sum up his other points about their unrelatable, evil behaviors. The message was something like: "The fascists are not real, believable people. They don't seem driven by everyday worries like us. They don't seem to have the same kind of feelings like us."
And I think that is actually exactly the message that wins elections in this political climate. Debating the issues is getting you nowhere if your opponent has no actual beliefs to debate against. Calling them out for being fake people with no actual beliefs is a better strategy.
OK. First of all, words can have multiple meanings. Like the word "screw" or "bark" or "current". We dont need to deprecate these multiple meanings in favor of just one. In conversation you pick the applicable meaning, and if you cant thats more a 'you' problem. I have enough problems of my own without taking yours on too. My use of the word doesnt affect you at all.
Secondly, I will stick with the normal usage that most people use. Language is an agreement between people around meaning, and the vast majority of the population doesnt agree that it has this new meaning. Sorry. Maybe in a few years "wierd" will have a more predominant meaning that you prefer, but today it does not, and again, even if it did, the word need not mean only one thing.
But it seems like your memories dont match your ability to show it now. Human memories are notoriously unreliable.
If you simply dont like that the word means what it means because you wish another meaning was more dominant, then I have a hard time feeling like you've much of a right to be aggreived at anyone about that. But by all means, be alienated if you want to. Just dont expect anyone else to make your alienation into a thing. Cheers.
Alienated which voters?
I disagree Mr. Walz. Had Biden not sat on his hands after being given the power of god by the supreme court - we wouldn't be in this mess today.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if we’d have won the election — and we didn’t,”
(Implies that if they(H&W) would have won we wouldn't be in this mess)
has quite the different sentiment than
"Tim Walz says ‘we wouldn’t be in this mess’ if it wasn’t for him and Harris" (Implies its their fault we are in this mess)
These headlines -_-
Not that I prefer straight bias but we got conservative media calling these people cutting all of everyone's safety nets "heroes" and this is supposed to be liberal media straight misquoting for clicks?
We are in the worst timeline.
I do blame them, though. They could have ridden the coattails of Biden's withdrawal all the way to victory, but instead Hartis capitulated and palled around on stages with Republicans instead of Walz.
The failure of the Democrat campaign has a lot of causes, but none more so than the failure of leadership.
Ultimately nobody wants to touch the issue of spiraling national and global wealth inequality, but it's destroying our economic systems and the only fix would seem to be redistributing that wealth.
Democrats need to force their doners to make concessions to the American people in order to get voters, which goes against the interests of their doners, and they won't get elected without the money to spend on advertising that wins elections.
Both the Republicans and the Neolibs lead to an oligarchhy.
From the article:
That's an admission of culpability.
Not you walz but the Democratic party. Send out 19 billion to Israel while our kids were hungry in school.
Thank God Trump won, because now we get... checks notes... Mar-a-Gaza!?
There's no leadership void in the Democratic Party, it's been Bernard Sanders for quite a while. Them denying this is to their (and everyone elses) detriment. Just run Bernie/AOC and let's get this over with.
Nancy Pelosi is the leadership of the Democrats. And AOC was not allowed to become top house dem. They chose Gerry
AtrickConnely instead.AOC and Bernie will never be allowed to do anything besides sheepdogging progressives into the Democratic party. And at this point it appears they are fully on board with that.
Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries may control the official party apparatus, but when it comes to communicating and connecting with constituents and energizing the base, AOC and Bernie are clearly the only ones acting as opposition leaders.
Sheepdogging is why Bernie's out on the road right now.
At some point they have to fall in line and follow orders. Or fade into obscurity. It's a truly shitty system. One long overdue for a big reset..
Props to him for taking ownership of it. It means a lot even if it isn't fully his fault.
DNCs fault for blocking Bernie
i cant imagine its likely he would've even won in the first place, literally just schizophrenia politics.
Sure as opposed to the totally stable and sane politics of today🙄. The establishment neoliberals aren’t popular . It’s just a fact
but people keep voting for them???
Why does every dumbass on this site keep saying "BUT THEY AREN'T POPULAR" only to see them get literally 40-50% of the votes. If they truly weren't popular, they would get like 30% of the vote.
But i guess your entire counter argument is probably "WELL BUT HOW DID TRUMP WIN THEN?" anti-incumbency. Plain and simple.
This headline is trash. He's saying we wouldn't be in this mess if they'd won. The headline makes it sound like he's taking much more blame than his actual quote implies.
Meanwhile Democrats are lining up Rham Emanuel and Gavin Newsom to run. Lol
Dear fucking God not Newsom. That dude is a bigger turd than Hillary.
And Gavin Newsom started a podcast and is cozying up to crazy right wingers.
It's gonna be newsom, and they've already chosen for us.
I hope I'm wrong.
No one lines up anyone. Stop spreading agitprop.
I imagine it'll be a pretty large primary cohort this season. If you want to run, feel free to run, too. There is no cabal.
Peak lib delusion. This disconnect from reality is a big part of why y'all lose.
It is prohibitively expensive to run for president. It's only for the super rich now because for some reason we conflate money with skill even though they are unrelated.
It's because of the Citizens United ruling.
This has been demonstrably untrue for the past two Democratic primaries, and the people in charge of the DNC largely haven't changed, but keep huffing that copium.
Nope, I'm good. See, because I voted, even voted for Sanders. But I also kept track of the primary process and didn't just huff the farts of personality cultists on the Internet.
Bernie 2016 had a shot early on but it faded as the elections moved into swing states. Bernie 2020 lost his chance when the Bernie bros started being assholes to Warren. That sad display took them both down.
It's so obvious the democratic party lied about Biden to get through the nomination phase and used the fact that the money already donated for the campaign was specifically to Biden or Harris and would not have easily been given over to any other new candidate. You do have to wonder, especially after how Trump was greeted by them, just what actually happened here. The fact is that the truth about Bidens condition should have been known, he should have decided not to run, and the Democratic party should've had a real primary for real candidates and new ideas. Tim Walz was as bad of a VP pick as Tim Kaine. The white guy as VP to shore up the right wing vote is a total myth. Biden was kind of the first one, then Tim Kaine, then Tim Walz. It just doesn't work. Neither will Newsoms podcast attempt at finding common ground which he hopes will translate into moderate votes. Democrats really have no clue just how bad things are about to get...
I wouldn't be surprised if Newsom pulls a Tulsi Gabbard and switches sides. He had Charlie Kirk (of TPUSA) on his podcast where he "completely aligned" with him on trans rights (i.e. eradicating us), then had Steve Bannon on. That's a bit much even for the Liz Cheney flank of the DNC.
I suspect Newsom doesn't see any future for his party, and is bailing out instead.
In my experience, the higher up you go in both parties, you tend to sort of arrive at the same places with the same people... and most importantly, the same donors and the same money machine. That's the great thing about the U.S. dollar really, corruption and selling Govt from Citizens United to today sort of drives the bipartisan nature of it because it all greases the wheels of the two party political machine.
I've listened to several episodes of his podcast... I'll probably continue listening but in the first episode Newsom basically kept saying he only got into college because his scores were low and he played baseball. Then he kept backing down to Charlie Kirk, Bannon, etc, while constantly saying he doesn't know what to do and kept asking them for ideas. In the first episode, there was a moment where he said Jesus Fucking Christ or something to Charlie Kirk, which called him out on it. It's like, the very voters he's trying to go after will hear that and stop at the first episode. He will gain no allies on the right as he abandons the party he is supposed to believe in, along with the core values he is supposed to defend. He thinks having a podcast with right wing guests where he gets sort of transactional on the issues. Like, do you think giving up the trans in sports debate is going to win you anything when their entire side would like to see gay marriage go away entirely? While you claim to still even support that? Do these people even think any of this through?
If Newsoms approach is the best the Democrats have to offer, then it might be game over for a very long time...
Newsom is an amazing combination of a spineless coward and a heartless monster that if he's the Democratic Candidate, it might be the first year I don't vote. I will NEVER willingly put a transphobe in the White House.
That's EXACTLY what I'm expecting, when he stood up to Trump I thought he'd be alright, but the dude has basically been courting the Far Right and going all in on being as transphobic as possible.
He'll run the sadly profitable "I was on the Left peacefully drinking Kombucha and eating Avocado Toast like the next pink pussyhat wearing hippie, but then they went too far when they tried to tell me the Holocaust actually happened! They've gone completely nuts!" grift.
I’ve been wondering if there’s a gas leak at Newsom’s house. The hell happened to him?
It was known, and lots of us were shouting from the rooftops about it, But Democrats and liberals did everything they could to shut us up, accuse us of being Russian bots, accuse us of helping to get Trump elected, when it was liberals that got Trump elected by ignoring the people that saw every single sign
It didn't help that the New York Times and other media outlets were all in on talking shit about Biden, and that undermined their credibility on the age issue. It was only after Biden's disastrous showing at his debate with Trump that the average voter had any credible evidence of his decline.
There was evidence. There are tons of videos of Biden speaking in the 80s and 90s. Compare any of those videos to hin speaking in 2021, 2022, or 2023 and you could very easily tell that his mind had become a pale shadow of what it once was.
All we needed to do was take off their rose colored glasses. The evidence was plainly in view for everyone to see.
And every time you point this shit out, people will stick their fingers in their ears and say:
the law literally says they don't have to lmao, go take that up with the DNC or something.
Yeah, everyone keeps bringing this up like it's some kind of dunk, but the DNC can basically run things as they please. Don't like it? Start another party. The party's procedure goes back a few decades by now. People act like when Biden dropped out they did this crazy double secret turbo maneuver but the fact is the DNC can put forth whomever they want.
literally, it's how this works, go bitch at the DNC or get legislators to do something about it lmao.
the argument for this one is that the super pac was biden/harris, not any other random person, so it's questionable whether they would've been able to use super pac funding at all especially at such short notice, given the technicalities of super pac funding. The majority of DNC funding, sure, but super pacs are most of the money in elections these days.
Gavin's going to run more Diet Republican than any Democrat ever before and that's going to make even my "Blue, no matter who!" ass not vote for him. I'm already thinking about staying home in '28 because Trump can't win a third time and Gavin's a transphobe.
It wasn’t really Tim’s fault. I will never understand why Kamala decided it was more important to try to court Republicans than get Democrats excited. Democrats, and I know this will be a big surprise to Democratic leadership, don’t want to vote for conservatives.
She's a genocidal cop (aka prosecutor). She has literally spent her whole life opposing leftism. Ofc she campaigns to/with republicans.
Kamal Harris voting record as a sitting senator
Kamala Harris's Senate record places her among the most liberal senators, consistently supporting policies that align with left-wing ideals across economic, environmental, healthcare, and social justice issues[1][2][5].
Citations: [1] Kamala Harris is extremely liberal — and the numbers prove it https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4816859-kamala-harris-is-extremely-liberal-and-the-numbers-prove-it/ [2] Analysis of Kamala Harris's Economic Record | City Journal https://www.city-journal.org/article/analysis-of-kamala-harris-economic-record [3] Kamala Harris: Where does she stand on key issues? - BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53770654 [4] Sen. Kamala Harris - AFL-CIO https://aflcio.org/scorecard/legislators/kamala-harris [5] Kamala Harris' liberal record is hiding in plain sight https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/sep/5/kamala-harriss-liberal-record-is-hiding-in-plain-s/ [6] Where Kamala Harris stands on 10 key policy issues, from ... - BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx924r4d5yno [7] Political positions of Kamala Harris - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Kamala_Harris [8] Fact check: Is Kamala Harris the most liberal member of the Senate? https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/kamala-harris-most-liberal-senator-fact-check/index.html [9] Voteview | Sen. HARRIS, Kamala Devi (Democrat, CA) https://voteview.com/person/41701/kamala-devi-harris [10] Senator Kamala D. Harris (1964 - Congress.gov https://www.congress.gov/member/kamala-harris/H001075
And yet she talked about her glock while kids were seeing more school shootings than ever, went hard againt immigrants, silenced Palestinian voices, supported the genocide, and said she couldnt think of a single thing she'd do differently than Joe Biden. She ran a campaign practicaly designed to lose.
The voters deserve a lot of blame here.
You can lead a horse to water....
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect, and no single candidate is going to align 100% with your stance. Demanding that they do, or else you'll vote for literally the worst possible option, or sit out, or vote a "protest" vote, all so that someone, somewhere will "learn" something is just fucking childish and stupid. And this will be continue to be true no matter how many times the Tone Police show up to admonish people about blaming voters. Sorry, not sorry: I blame the voters.
I agree, I'm also happy that people like Walz seem to want to give people a better option, making a protest vote even less appealing.
It means you never have to listen or change in any way, so of course you do.
LOL, I am a voter. Are you under the impression that I have any direct influence over the Democratic Party? 🤣
According to your comment, voters are to blame, not the infallible holy party. So good work electing trump. It's all your fault.
says the guy, responding to the guy who literally voted for that fucking party.
Defeated Democratic candidate: accepts responsibility in the lightest possible way
Liberal fanboy: Noooo, it's not your fault, it's the children who were wrong!
I didn't say Walz, Kamala, Biden or the Democratic Party in general have no blame.
Nobody demanded that Harris align 100% with their stance; they demanded that she not be an absolute pile of shit of a candidate. That distinction matters.
she was actually pretty ok? The one thing that was bad about her was the israel stance, which is like maybe 5% of the voter base that ACTUALLY cares about that enough.
So first a lot more than 5% of the Democrat voter base cares about Gaza. I won't get into the weeds, but there.
No? She would've won at least two or three swing states if that was the case. Her economic policy (or lack thereof, more accurately) was horrible. She dedicated the final two months of her campaign almost exclusively to "Trump bad" rhetoric while not promising to do anything for her constituents. I mean this woman was asked what she'd do different from Biden economically and she said "nothing comes to mind". Status quo politics just won't cut it in this day and age.
i'm talking about the voter base that actually cares enough to influence their vote over it. I'm sure if you polled the public it;s like 90% or higher who care about it at all, like 40% support israel, 60% against israel, and like 5% of those is "fuck israel i hope it burns to the ground and that palestine re conglomerates into israel" type of people.
"her economic policy was bad" bro, did you see ANYTHING that trump said? Literally an irrelevant argument. Especially now.
I remember her talking about a lot of things she and walz were going to do, that was like a pretty big deal. Was their entire plan, not all of it was great, but it existed, unlike trump.
yeah and? Biden had pretty good economic policy? Aside from the whole covid thing, but you have no choice there, unless you want a global recession, more like a depression. Again, trumps economic policy has been an utter disaster in comparison.
https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
Don't move the goalposts. Here's what you said:
We're talking about Harris on her own merit, not about Trump.
Like? Give me something specific she clearly said she would do for the working class and a link of her saying it in September or October.
He did well on the economic recovery front, but he or example didn't go after price gouging. His economic policies were a step in the right direction, not an end state to campaign on.
Again, that is literally not what we're talking about.
centrists think "second worst" means "good".
in the context between shooting yourself in the head with a 12 gauge slug, and stubbing your toe really badly. I think most people would agree with me when i say that stubbing your toe is the best option. Comparatively, a good option.
Of course if you compare it to things like, randomly finding a billion check on the ground, nothing compares to that, but that's an unreal comparison, you literally cannot base a reference point on them.
Sample Online sample of 604 voters fielded from December 20 to January 07, 2025. Margin of Error ±4.5%
thats uh, a really small sample size. Especially for a sample that's supposed to consist of multiple swing states. Not to mention that organization is clearly either deeply embedded into the arabic culture, or arabic itself (didn't look that hard) obviously that's not an issue, we have things like AIPAC here in the US, it's just, probably very biased. Which is why they exist in the first place. That's kind of the whole point.
What's the other available option? Voting for jill fucking stein? Who cares what i said, the facts are plainly evident, you have one really bad choice, and one decent choice.
and if we're talking about her own merit specifically, i'd say she's still a pretty competitive candidate, the voting numbers seem to agree with me on that one.
she ran for a bunch of shit, notably the child tax credit, the housing crisis, the food crisis, corporate taxes, capital gains tax, there are a number of other things, those are the ones i can remember off the top of my head.
the price gouging one im not sure on, there was only really significant price gouging of medical equipment and consumables in the early pandemic months, which was quickly shut down, as it was deemed illegal, beyond that you're talking about things like food, which struggle with inflation, and are also affected by things other than the economy, notably the avian flu for eggs. Consume electronics have gotten more expensive in some capacities, the GPU market specifically, but that's obviously due to AI. That's about it, everything else is probably going to be related to inflation.
Who else are we comparing it to? Fucking god? IS the heavenly father himself going to come down and run our government for us? What's the frame of reference we're holding here?
Short answer: Learn statistics. Slightly longer answer: 604 people is more than enough for a normal distribution to appear, so if the sample size was "really small" it'd be reflected in the margin of error.
Biased towards... Palestinians' rights? The fuck are you talking about?
Uh... If you don't care to have a conversation then you should say so from the start. If you do care to have a conversation, then what you said quite obviously fucking matters. Also you ignored everything I said to claim Harris is a "decent" choice.
What voting numbers? The ones where she lost all seven swing states? Also I quite distinctly remember a whole lot of "hold your nose and vote for her", which isn't what you say about a "pretty competitive" candidate.
Quotes for those things from September or October?
Again, the fuck are you talking about? Grocery price gouging during recessions is a widespread and documented phenomenon, and if you don't understand that then you really are in no position to discuss the November election, because you don't understand the people's grievances that Harris failed to address.
"Good" doesn't need a frame of reference; it's an absolute judgement. "Better" is a relative judgement that does require a frame if reference. Most people can judge whether something is good without being offered a specific frame of reference, and to most people a candidate that doesn't even acknowledge a problem exists (again, "nothing comes to mind") is not good.
Harris could have aligned with 99% of what I wanted, but that 1% was OK with genocide, and that should have been a red line for anyone.
So, the alternative was little d, because that's so much better?
The alternative in every instance is always no Democrats. We already have a right wing party, we don't need two.
There were two viable options only.
When your two options are both right wing reactionaries, there are not two options.
Tim Walz explained it the other day at SXSW.
Politicians are like teachers. If it's Tim Walz's job to teach kids about geography, and then test them to check if he taught well, if the outcomes of that test show that half the class passes and half fails, then the blame for that is on the teacher. The teacher could have taught differently, teaching in different styles to adequately reach out to students where they're at in life and according to their specific learning styles. He might teach the same topic 5-6 different ways to capture as many people as possible.
The Harris-Walz campaign didn't do that. They had terrible messaging as soon as the DNC hit. When Harris brought Walz on, there was actual progressive momentum. But then Harris bent the knee to establishment Democrats, and they lost the election.
I will not believe that it's the voters' fault for the election outcome. If Democrats were sober enough to realize Trump's threat and wanted to really fire people up, they would have may the necessary changes to do so.
The best I can do is fall for blatant Russian propaganda and then get mad when someone calls me out on it.
It sure is convenient how all criticism comers from russians so you can ignore it.
You'll have to try better than that comrade.
Kind of like anyone that finds faults with other leftists is a "centrist", right?
Don't you have voters to blame for your party's decades of complete incompetence?
TRUE I LOVE TAKING UP ONE SIDED POSITIONS LIKE FUCK ISRAEL I HOPE EVERYONE IN THAT COUNTRY DIES A HORRIBLE AND PAINFUL DEATH
this is satire, hi hello, im doing political satirebased and true, thank you.
The "Weeeeird" stuff would have knocked Trump right out of the park.
The correct answer to that is "It bothers Trump and Trump makes Americans uncomfortable."
I don't blame Harris or Walz. I don't even blame Biden, the senile old fool that he so clearly is.
I blame the Americans for fucking up the most outrageously obvious binary choice in history.
Has there ever been an election so obvious? Even during Trump vs Clinton one could almost be forgiven for giving Trump the benefit of the doubt as a "political outsider", but by 2024 we knew exactly who this fucking guy was... The fact that people today are acting surprised and outraged about all the stuff that's been happening during Trump's first 1.5 months is only further proof that Americans are perhaps the dumbest amnesiacs to infest the Earth.
Literally all we had to do was vote against Trump's particular brand of fascism.
But Americans are the type of people who fail a single question true or false quiz because they forgot to write their name at the top of the page, and we deserve to suffer the consequences of our collective stupidity over and over until it is bred out of us, or until our society falls. The American people allowed this to happen--and not just Trump, but everything bad that has happened over the course of American history.
I blame Reagan
The good think about the 2024 US election was that the choice was obvious to everyone who paid the littlest attention; the bad thing was that Americans chose the wrong candidate anyway.
I'll go ahead and blame Biden for you
My favourite part is how he made gains in (virtually?) all segments. It seems the economy was their number one concern too. Imagine thinking the current president was going to make the economy/their financial situation better...
Like at some point you just need to call out the stupid.
That shit made me chuckle because of how true it is. Also, the way that you worded that is so perfect. Beautifully put.
Nah, it's the Democratic parties fault. They could have prevented this. It's their job to do so!
Instead of frittering away the last few months of his presidential term, Biden should have just resigned and allowed Harris to take over his role. She could have pivoted way to the left without having to undermine Biden's agenda and that would have really sent a clearer message to the democratic base.
But she wouldn't have.
honestly that may have helped strategically, i don't think biden was "out the door" by that point, but it very well may have been a good look and given some needed press time to harris.
If voting patterns of America ever showed something consistently, it is the fact that shifting to the left in any sense never works. You can sometimes entice the public with enough vigor so they don't focus on your politics, but outside of very rare cases, shifting to the right consistently brings some votes, and shifting to the left consistently brings loses.
And no amount of social media posts was able to change it weirdly enough.
It might have something to do with consistent anti-voting narrative of a lot of the vocal leftists, coupled with their bafflement that they consistently don't get a desired outcome.
Counterpoint: Obama.
Sounds like a great excuse to only move right.
do you have ANY other solutions to the problem? Maybe idk, actually voting?
I did vote. For harris.
Your party responds to all sensory input by moving right and punching left. You assume anyone who has a problem with that must be a nonvoter.
good job, you actually did something! Why are you here then? Go yell at your representatives or something, nobody cares.
bold assumption.
statistically, it's very likely to be true, the primary demographic among the progressive left is younger people, the youth, the primary voting block is older people, the elderly. Statistically, this is bound to overlap in such a way that most people out here yapping online about stupid political shit like this, are not voting.
And the "I assume you are younger than me and therefore wrong" boomer dismissal is here again.
how old do you think i am?
i think its primarily age demographics, and the fact that the voter base is stupid, i.e. votes for the wrong people.
Fucking finally. A Democrat we we can respect, because they don't rely on their role inthe damage.
You know what? Yes we are in this mess - BECAUSE of you. You didn't call on Trump for him admitting that he allowed the election to be rigged in his favor. You didn't hold up the election for it to be truly verified. You just allowed Harris to verify it because you wanted to try and make yourselves look good that you didn't cause an insurrection for brownie points. You didn't work hard enough to change the course of your campaign with Harris because you decided to centralize it on a narcissistic whore like Trump.
Aside from 71+ million uneducated fucking morons that call themselves American, you have a part of fault in this. The "at least we're not Trump" play didn't work in 2016, what made you think it'd fucking work in 2024? You didn't build off of any of the momentum from Biden and you didn't dare try to say or do things differently than what Biden did.
While it is not entirely your fault, it is partially your fault too. You better fucking have something better by 2026 or this country mind as well be called the United States of Amerinazis if it isn't already classified that.
Walz was the VP pick, he had no choice but to toe the line with the top-ot-the-ticket (Harris and the DNC), who sidelined Walz and prevented him from promoting many of the progressive policies that Walz passionately supports. As VP you can't just come out in opposition to the runming Presidents platform, that was one of the major problems of the campaign.
Yeah, I really don't like the Democrats and don't agree with Waltz 100% at all, but it's clear he is at least a genuine person caught up in a shit organisation.
I'm not American. but it always seems to me like the Democrats immediately tie themselves in knots trying to meet the Republicans halfway, when everyone knows they have no intention of budging an inch.
It's like if two people share a meal, one person goes "Should we split this bill 50/50" and the other one just says "No fuck you, you pay 100%." Then the first person, instead of telling them to fuck off, says "Okay I'll pay 75%, how's that?" and the other one just refuses until they eventually pay about 5%, then complain about it for the next year and tell they first person that they still owe them for the 5% they paid.
Then the first person invites them for dinner again.
As an American, you are 100% correct. That's exactly what's been done for decades now.
The flaw in your analogy is neither one is paying.
They're arguing about how much we should pay, even though we only ordered a plain salad and water, and they both had surf and turf and champagne.
The Democrat starts off by saying it should be 1/3 each, but the Republican argues until the Democrat gives in.
The Democrat tells us we have to pay the bill, but they'll cover the tip if we let them pick the restaurant next time, and we agree.
Then they don't leave any tip.
It's been clear for a while both some of the Dems, especially the Dinos are getting money from the same donors as the GOP
i want walz and aoc in 2028
we don't blame you tim we love you ❤️
I blame the DNC and Harris far more than him, he was a relatively minor politician recruited by them pretty late in the game. Everyone was worried he'd be too boring, but despite the background character designation, he still came across better than Harris.
Clearly he’s a Russian plant. Everyone knows we should only blame voters and never the politicians who lost.
Well, I mean the worst Walz did personally was maybe his performance against JD, but that's pretty small compared to a lot of other errors that can be attributed to the collective campaign decisions and DNC as a whole. And yes, Biden. And really, 2020 and 2016. Actually fuck it, compared to all the butterfly effect possibilities, Walz is such a small part of why we're in this mess, lol. I still want the 2000 supreme court to support the Florida recount that actually says Gore won.
Still, kudos for taking responsibility.
I wouldn't place any of it on Walz, this is all about Harris/Biden. He did well in his debate, he was obviously more progressive than Harris and was pretty much just reined in.
I think if the ticket had been reversed, they'd have won. The center wasn't ready for a black woman to start with, and when she was just parroting the same party line re: Gaza, and cozying up to fucking Cheney's, for crying out loud, it turned off the progressives that might have voted.
I already had some respect for Walz, and it has now grown by leaps and bounds. While much of the messaging from the democrats seems to contain some level of voter or constituent blaming, Walz is out there taking responsibility.
Well, how much money do you have?
I have 2, maybe if we can get a few more peeps together we can buy a politician or three
Imagine Trump, or any other billionaire, saying something like this. Can't do it? Me neither.
So it seems like it's going to come down between Gavin The Transphobe and Tim Walz for 2028, and honestly Tim Walz is who I learn more towards, dude feels like a second coming of Bernie.
Meanwhile Gavin started out in 2025 being the strong man who stared Trump down, but he not only folded, he sold out transpeople.
Anyone who carries water for the "Transpeople are crazy and giving them basic human rights is going too far" is a danger to us all
Dude should get a pep talk from the lib shills on Lemmy: Blame the voters!!! \s
But only the ones to your left. Still have to court the fascists.
No, we'd be "GAmBlIng wItH wOrLd waR THree!"
I hate seeing these Democrats question themselves and their honorable positions on important issues, just because they think they lost. We all know in our souls that HitlerPig, Skum, and the Russkies STOLE the election, but the Dems quickly rallied around the concept that they got beaten fair & square, because they didnt want to be seen as the same as the 2020 Republicans. So they threw us to the wolves, and have totally abdicated their oath to "protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic."
The Dems have to stop acting humiliated and embarassed, and get ANGRY at having our nation stolen and dismantled. HitlerPig was able to get his followers angry enough to attack the Capital, but Dems couldnt even be bothered get their followers to even question it.
The Republicans now have the Dems questioning their entire future direction. Should they move to be more progressive, and embrace Medicare 4 All, UBI, higher taxes on billionaires and corporations, harsh punishment for traitors, etc. Or should they claim the middle and try to draw reasonable Republicans to their side. Theyve tried the latter many times, and even if they win the election, being Republican Lite only makes it easier for people to shift a bit more right and vite MAGA.
Its true that people want a different sort of America, but only about a 3rd really want the MAGA direction. Most other citizens would prefer a direction that gives them more security in housing, jobs, food, and healthcare. Even Republicans would like it if the Conservative Propaganda Machine wasn't constantly telling them that implementing those programs would trum us into Venezuela. If the Dems really supported a true progressive platform, and sold it properly, the6 could win - in a FAIR election.
But we will NEVER have another fair election until the Democrats acknowledge that the Republicans have fully rigged the voting system, and do something to punish those who did it. If we dont, the 2026 election will see most Democrat congressional reps in Red states flip Republican, even in Blue districts, and in 2028, HitlerPig will win with 98% of the vote.
nice bait bro
Looking at the disinformation on social media I don't think they could do much.
I saw people being convinced that Harris had positions that were compete opposite of her actual stances.
I even saw people have complete opposing view. For example about situation in Gaza, I saw:
When narrative is already controlled by social media that already is biased toward specific candidate, it is impossible to win.
I don't think Harris, Walz or even Biden could do anything when everything was attack against them.
We either need to make sure that non far right is also represented in social media.
Alternatively Democrats would have to use a celebrity, for example somebody like Jon Stewart of whose popularity could cut through the disinformation.
Progressives like Bernie and AOC, they are after what we actually need, but they are not immune from this disinformation, only people who actually pay attention to politics know them the rest of population can be easily persuaded that they are just "commies that want to kill America"
Losing on both sides of an issue is the whole reason triangulation isn't a political cheat card.
That way part of the "not vote". There were some that did vote for him.
It's purely vibe based. Everyone is just pick a choosing whatever specs of information drift their direction.
I disagree with you about what everyone picks and chooses. The reason why people complain about Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter is because they have to choose what to see, they are used that the website would choose things for them.
Social media for dangerous, because they build profile about you and they know what topics will trigger you. So people who are pro Israel will get one content, people pro Palestine get different, but both of them will tell them to vote for Trump.
This is so much more dangerous than TV, which of course could manipulate people to make them react in certain way, but at least it couldn't target individuals like social media can.
Twitter has a chronological timeline
This is not it. A lot of people want social media to tell them who to follow. That removes control and keys social media tell you what to think.
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
Just existing as an alternate to chaos should have been enough.
The guy who tried that and failed is telling you it wasn't enough.
Genocide is not an order worth supporting.
I'm curious, given the choices that were put in-front of the voters at the election, and considering the whole ballot, what would you suggest would have been the best course of action for a voter to take to minimize harm or even seek a positive outcome?
If your point is that it should never have come to that, then I would agree with you, but it did, so what would you have suggested voters do?
Cool so now we have the same genocide but everything else is worse too? Awesome. Love it.
And the current situation is?
(The answer is no.)
finally! I hate when peope are always blaming trump or maga or republicans for this shit when its been the democrats every time. reagans deregulation and tax cuts, bush juniors war on terror, trumps total idiocy. ALL DEMOCRATS! We need to stop fighting the republicans and work with them against our common enemy.
Republicans ARE our common enemy, at this point... Democrats have been an "enemy of my enemy" scenario for decades now, but they are LITERALLY the lesser of two evils. Howsabout we get rid of this BS two-party system that's allowed the Overton window to go so far right? Maybe start there, not "work with cuntservatives.
Unconvincingly.
True... but that rolls off the tongue better than, "The not-quite-friendly business partner of my country's toxic monsters is my friend."
news to me. Everything I see is lets fight the current administration by bitching about the democrats not quite doing enough in the past. Its only by rectifying the past that we can solve the future. do not be concerned about the present.
I partly agree with "It's only by rectifying the past that we can solve the future"... but you cannot do that while being unconcerned with the present.
Tim "Expand Israel's Borders" Walz opinion doesn't mean anything to me, tbh.
Honestly believe Harris had a way better chance of winning without him, with a more progressive VP.
You do know there will never be a perfect candidate, right?
Asking for one that isn't a genocidal maniac shouldn't be the impossible bar that you consider perfect.
I don't know about you people, but I'm not a genocidal person, I don't think genocide is a good thing, and I don't believe a cult of fascists have a divine right to kill the brown people.
I don't think it's that big of an ask to have at least one candidate that believes the same as me in this very common notion.
If you're an American, whether you like it or not, you participate in genocide. Every aspect of living in this country causes harm to someone else. Our tax dollars kill, mutilate and destroy yet we all are compelled to pay them.
yknow, i'm starting to realize that i think i respect the people of russia, and china, specifically those in the military, and government more than pro palestine people support/respect israelis, and im not sure how i feel about that one.
The Israeli public, at least 60-68% of it consistently supports genocide, even as they are direct witnesses and for the most part due to mandatory IDF enlistment, participate in it.
Most people in Russia hate their government and military, beyond some basic notion that they should be the toughest because they're Russian. Most people in China, especially the military, have nothing to do with any alleged genocide.
But the Israeli public is different. That is why they get less respect.
The Nazis were popular in Germany for a time, the Israeli government is no different at the moment. Both populations should not be respected even a little, given they have largely chosen and supported attrocities.
Is this stat literally "do you support genocide: Yes, No" or are we talking, it's not listed as genocide, but we're calling it genocide because that's the term we've decided to use? There's a large semantic difference here, and you're making it sound like they literally support genocide.
and yet, those governments persist, even though the war in Ukraine bolsters the support of Putin in an election, where 80% of the population votes for him semi regularly, surely that population doesn't support the genocide of the Ukrainian people? Or maybe it does, and we're just ignoring it because it's politically convenient. I could say the same about the Chinese government, but Chinese society is a little bit more complicated, and it's not quite as directly influenced since most of the human rights abuses are, well, not war.
are they though? I would like to compare this specifically to the war against Ukraine, because it's a particularly apt example.
Last i heard, the current Israeli government ISN'T popular, that's why the far right is pushing the government further against Palestine, pushing BB into a bit of a rock and a hard place situation, because if he doesn't he's not likely to stay in the government for very long, and either get replaced by someone further on the right, or more popular among the public (due to an election)
In fact, if we're judging the level of atrocity by human casualties alone, the Ukraine war is FAR worse. We're talking in the range of 200k Russian citizens killed, some incarcerated, some enlisted, some contract. Plus the numerous Ukrainian civilians murdered for no reason. And the relatively comparable Ukrainian military numbers as well. In total we're talking about like 300-500k people in some capacity being severely affected for the rest of their life. Most of them Russian conscripts, most of whom are ethnic minorities (because that's why the war is popular in Russia)
"surely, it couldn't be me who is wrong, because i'm correct, and i've never been wrong, surely it must be EVERYONE living in israel currently AND everyone who supports them, as defined by my schizo statistics that im pulling out of my ass and misconstruing heavily to make a point. How could i possibly be wrong?" - not a single person on lemmy, because nobody has self awareness for some reason.
The UN says its genocide. The icc says it's close enough to genocide for the Israeli government to be arrested, every non Israeli historian with a specialty in genocide says its genocide.
And yes, the questions have been "do you support the governments actions against Gaza and the Palestinian people", and yes those actions are known to be genocide by the people that carried them out, i.e. the general public in Israel thanks to mandatory IDF service.
There used to be 2 million people in Gaza. There's now at most 1.2 million by most outside estimates. Deaths stopped being counted when all the hospitals, and that's not an exaggeration, were bombed in Gaza. So no one has been counting the dead.
You don't get to say Ukraine has it worse, because they don't. Objectively. No part of their experience is pleasant, but it's simply incomparably better.
IDK about the UN personally, because people have only ever sent me articles about the UN discussion how it "could be genocide" rather than how it is, or they simply point to UN law and go "look it meets the broad definition they supplied, that hasn't been legally scrutinized yet" If they do have an official statement on it, then i guess i just haven't seen it until now, because I'm not aware of one. The ICC specifically, I'm aware has arrest warrants for various war crimes, genocide is not listed among any of them, and AFAIK has not been attached since then, could be wrong on that one though, IK a lot of people point to the ICJ, but the ICJ literally refutes that claim themselves, they have stated that it could be "subject to conditions that would create a genocide" which is a rough paraphrasing, but as far as i know that's the most official statement they've made.
Sort of irrelevant, but another question I've been curious about is how many countries actually care enough to call it genocide, and i think that's up to two now? South Africa, obviously, and i think turkey? I'd have to check, both consider it a genocide. I don't know about any other countries, it's kind of an arcane thing to search for anyway. I know a lot of members of parliament have stated their concern, but those are representatives, and they can say basically anything.
ah interesting, so the question wasn't literally "is this genocide" and to be fair, i was being a little harsh on that one, but i think it's fair given the extent of the accusation being levied. Realistically, this is because both countries seem to hate each other, and haven't stopped hating each other for about 70 years now. Last i checked the middle east generally isn't very kind about these sorts of spats, they usually tend to do what they're doing right now. At least, in recent history, among recent conflicts.
this is definitely a huge problem, frankly not sure why this is even a thing that's happening (people not being allowed to leave, that's a pretty substantial problem) it's extremely difficult to justify that kind of action, and i don't want to say it's expected, but given the length of the conflict, and the history behind it, I'm hesitant to say it's also unexpected. Palestine hasn't exactly been the most cordial negotiator throughout this, and neither has Israel. It's sort of like the two worst people in the world, having a stand off. It's just not going to end well.
a lot of it is definitely better, but a lot of it is also very similar. It's just interesting to me that so many people seem to care so deeply about the Palestine issue, but barely anybody seems to even think about Ukraine at all these days. There are or were, maybe all of them were bots lmao, that seemed to be so heavily indebted into the side of Palestine that I'm not sure how they managed to be a functional person outside of that belief. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that a one state solution is simply, not going to work. Two state isn't perfect, but it's certainly better. Arguably the best possible result.
I'm glad you can support genocide and say it's the only way to prevent genocide.
I don't believe that's the case and I never will.
We are fundamentally different species, divided on that thought; whether crossing an uncrossable line is okay to theoretically save yourself.
I will never be sorry for not supporting genocide, as you will never be sorry for supporting it. Neither of us will change each others minds, we can only hope that only one of our species survived this admin and the rise of the far right.
So, you are opposed to Russia's attempt to do a genocide in Ukraine, and second time, right?
I would vote for him in the generals and I will sing his praise when that time comes, but hopefully he never ever steps a goddam foot neat the generals.
I think this is a half assed acceptance of responsibility. Firstly i don't believe our democracy even functions anymore. Our entire political system has been compromised by money, bribes, campaign contributions from billionaires. Both the dems and republicans are both fascist parties. The Democratic party any where else in the world by the standards of the rest of the developed world is a center right wing party we have no true left opposition party in the usa. The democrats are clearly a controlled opposition party who's primary goal is to appease their wall street military and prison industry profiteer donors and prevent any policy shift to the left in order to thwart economic democracy and continue the class dictatorship that is modern neo liberal western “democracy” which is inherently undemocratic.
There are 14 defining traits of fascism and 13 of them are present in both partied albeit to differing degrees. But the one trait that both parties work to maintain s plausible deniability as to its existence is fraudulent elections. But to think that even though money has corrupted every other aspect of our political system that for some reason maybe the ideals of American exceptionalism and the integrity of democracy itself, that one aspect of fascism is a bridge tok far to cross and those with extreme wealth and greed who lack all humanity and show no self Restraint on any given day would at least control themselves there for the good of mankind? If you truly believe that i have a bridge to sell you.
In germany the highest constitutional court decided in the last 10-15 years or so(i don't remember when exactly) that electronic voting is unconstitutional because it is impossible to differentiate between fraudulent results and legitimate ones for anyone who isn't a cuber security or IT expert and its important that laymen(or lay people) can understand the results of an election and see the proof for themselves. And even if we put all this aside in 2016 we saw the Iowa caucus (a democratic process void of electronic obfuscation)deliberately manipulated for clinton despite sanders supporters outnumbering clinton supporters 2 to 1 and i remember seeing a video back then(i wish i had saved it) of election workers doing a test on a vote counting/tabulation machine to verify results and the machine completely skewed the inputed data which distressed all the workers participating to the point where 3 people were in tears.
This isnt a “trump was right” statement because those who are nominated by the party are most likely complicit and know who will be chosen and even if they do not know till the media puts out the results and manufactures the consent of the people they still very likely know the reality. And Trump definitely knew in 2016 and had no problem the election was rigged then because it benefited him which means he doesn’t care that the election is rigged so long as he benefits and gains power from it.
But regardless of what i believe it is the reality that every thing about our society is rigged by the ultra wealthy. And it is naive to believe that they would allow the workers the ability to choose who governs them when they regularly make it clear what they think of us. That we are a disposable commodity who’s existence is only a means for their own end. As a labor pool to exploit and wring dry for profit so they don't have to do any of the things they see as beneath them while they live in opulent luxury and spend more on weekend vacations than you or i could earn in a dozen consecutive lifetimes.
Now in the crazy off chance that our democracy actually does function (which is just impossible given the way the world is currently run by the .001%) then the democrats lost because they refuse to move to the left and they intentionally lost because their donors are the dame donors funding the republicans and democrats are under orders to sabotage any leftist populist candidates to maintain the class dictatorship that their billionaire owners have established and aim to maintain at all costs.
Now let the butthurt neo liberal downvotes ensue.
Everyone is blaming politicians as if it wasn't the fucking voters that decided to elect a pseudo-fascist into power.
The Democrats wanted to stop the pseudo-fascist. You elected them. It's not their fault, you elected, now own it. Stand to your choice and don't try others for your terrible choice.
Everyone blaming voters seems to forget that outcomes are the goal here. You can say what voters 'ought' do until you're blue in the face. But the reality is that if we want the outcome of defeating fascism, we have been shown on multiple occasions that simply not being a rapist traitor isn't enough. When the answer to cries from the voter base is, 'these are your options so shut up', they don't leave their couch.
So do you want to scold or do you want outcomes? Because scolding has repeatedly not worked to stop fascism.
All the democrats had to do was field a white male opponent against Trump who can be charming and give good speeches. Instead they put up a biracial woman, who the fuck amongst the democrats thought that America was ready for a biracial woman president, like did they do zero pooling to figure out what the people wanted, aren't politicians supposed to know the pulse of the nation, it's literally their job to serve the citizens of the country. They should have made Bernie or even Walz the presidential candidate and Kamal could have been the VP
The "she lost because she's a woman of color" talking point is just an excuse to shut out AOC in 2028.
You think voters can't be sexist or racist?
I think they can be both. They're called republicans and appealing to them is why harris lost.
I don't think they're as prevalent as democrats are making them out to be. And I think that they're overstating the problem as an excuse to shut out AOC.
I think spurning the Arab American vote in swing states, to secure the Israeli vote in a solid blue state had a lot to do with it...
she was literally the previous VP, about the best pick you're going to get, especially from a functional party, as much as people will tell you the biden admin didn't do shit, it's one of the more productive admins, in a long time.
You played it too safe and used your son as a prop
coming from someone who worked with Trump to fund the jackboots manhandling the oil pipeline protesters
Walz is a fucking tool just looking for upvotes
Gotta love those downvotes \s. Libs love capitalism/oil more than life/planet.