2016 : Hilary Clinton - People felt that she was chosen because it was her turn
2020 : Kamala Harris - A candidate who never ever even did well in the primaries.
I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.
How do you tell the difference between someone who would suffer a Jeremy Corbyn style catastrophic defeat, and a Keir Starmer who is the PM of the party by the same name but is basically completely different in every other way?
Correct, bernie and corbyn were both well meaning with genuine ideas and were lambasted by the press, opposition and even their own parties to never stand a chance of election. Tulsi had similar issues.
Tulsi Gabbard??? She is completely different, she is an opportunistic cult follower without ideals or ideas of her own. Doesn't really matter much now though.
Agree with the Corbyn analogy, but let's not overstate Starmer's electoral appeal. He got less votes than Corbyn. What got him elected is that tory voters didn't show up to vote because of tory policies.
The way the party worked against Bernie Sanders is a prime example of how it treats the average American: We make the decisions, not you, and if you don't fall in line we will crush you.
Conformity, if you'll pardon me, is not a trait all those Americans who voted for Trump have, nor want. They are individuals and would like to be treated as one.
He is a successful politician. The party is giant and complex. To me, the biggest factor was his support of wealth taxes, which puts him firmly in a different camp than Biden, Warren and Bloomberg, and caused him to be opposed by everybody with power in the DNC. That is the only "line" they really mean to fall into, and it doesn't even affect the average American.
Thanks for this comment! That does seem to explain a lot of why Dems keep losing. Americans are, first and foremost, for individual freedom and the DNC has a tendency to want to bypass that
>Conformity, if you'll pardon me, is not a trait all those Americans who voted for Trump have, nor want.
I'm sure that's what all 72 million of them think. Including the ones (the majority?) who don't like Trump, but who thought a vote for Harris was anathema.
Bernie definitely would have defeated Trump. He had unique crossover appeal. Trump was extremely unpopular in 2016 and it took a historically disliked candidate to lose to him.
Only Bernie had a personality cult to rival Trump's. I don't think a single person loved Hillary - they were just okay with her. Many, many people fanatically loved Bernie.
Loved? I still love the guy, afaik nobody else in the senate has such an authentic passion for civil rights and activism. He's real. It was a massive disservice that HC ran.
Honestly I think Trump would have labeled him "3-home Bernie"[0] or something and sunk him, similar to how he sunk Warren (w/ the Pocahontas meme). Don't get me wrong, Bernie is my favorite, but no one is immune to Trump's attacks, and there is just no way to attack him back (in a way that his supports care about).
The problem with the left is they're now completely out of touch with the bottom 75%, which is what the massive Hispanic vote swing should be throwing alarms for.
The left is filled with richer, coastal elites (top 25%); and impoverished minorities in blue cities that vote overwhelmingly left traditionally. On what planet does that recipe work out over time?
The left became a gross contradiction. It should be for the masses, it should be primarily focused on the working class. All those elitist Hollywood endorsements are just a big obnoxious joke, they repel the average person and amplify the point that the left is out of touch.
The Democratic Party keeps moving left on cultural issues and right on economic issues, when the world (not just the US) is starting to move in the opposite direction.
These things aren’t actually either/or, but when you pontificate on gender-affirming care in a country where half the population can’t afford just regular healthcare because of high deductibles… the feeling people get is exactly what you expressed.
In what world is the Democratic party moving to the right on economic issues?
1. Tax breaks for first time home buyers
2. Tax breaks for families with a new born
3. Pondering an unrealized capital gains tax
> pontificate on gender-affirming care
This is such a hackneyed point and it surprises me that this is something anyone considers. We should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Trans issues should not be difficult to 'pontificate' on. There is gender affirming health care for trans individuals, Democrats broadly support those individuals having access to that care. Democrats are also the party that is aggressive on healthcare and supporting government programs for reducing healthcare costs.
In all seriousness, do trans issues actually impact your day to day in any way? Trans people seem to live rent free in people's minds and I only ever hear about it in a political scenario. It seems like the most manufactured issue aside from immigration in recent memory.
Im pretty left, I just also recognize demand-side provisions (tax breaks) dont work when the enemy is asset inflation (housing costs). In reality, that extra capital would just flow into the hands of people already holding the assets, and the now financially stretched buyer has to hope housing price growth continues (making the situation even more dire for future buyers), or the bet they've made doesn't make sense.
The reality with housing is: someone has to take the loss, but we keep choosing to double it and give it to the next generation.
I think a lot of people are probably not exactly thrilled about the 'extra' provisions for "first generation home buyers" (meaning the parents didn't own one).
In the current political climate, with the current border policy, that sounds an awful lot like a two-tier entitlements system where the more significant help will go to 'illegal immigrants', 'asylum seekers' etc.
Also $25,000 really doesn't mean much when the entire housing market is set to double or even triple when you look at the last 5 years and project into the future. If your mortgage is still going to be $2,500 for a run-down house that would have cost $40,000 25-30 years ago but it's more like $400,000 and rising now... it's not exactly the 'lift' I think most people want.
Honestly as someone who has been scrimping and saving to try to buy a home for the last 6 years, I would be somewhat annoyed if suddenly every broke first generation person is thrust to first in line for the limited housing supply we have, driving prices up further. The fact that it is specifically structured to exclude people with roots here is kind of a slap in the face -- there is no reason it shouldn't just be tied to income, so suddenly it is needlessly political.
My point isn't really to argue the merits of either approach though - just wanted to give you some insight into why as a 'first time' but not 'first generation' potential home buyer I find her plan to be a short-sighted attempt at grabbing votes. Not that it matters now - clearly there is a mandate to swing the opposite direction we have been going.
I'll also add this though:
Under the last Trump presidency, I made literally 50% less than I do now (thankfully got a solid 50% bump right before covid happened) and I had MUCH more disposable income. It's crazy that I am longing for the days and economy where I made $60k and could go out AND save money regularly. Now I have to plan any extra expenses, I have moved back in with family to be able to save, and even without the $1,800 rent payment I am still behind where I was in the last Trump economy.
>Honestly as someone who has been scrimping and saving to try to buy a home for the last 6 years, I would be somewhat annoyed if suddenly every broke first generation person is thrust to first in line for the limited housing supply we have, driving prices up further. The fact that it is specifically structured to exclude people with roots here is kind of a slap in the face -- there is no reason it shouldn't just be tied to income, so suddenly it is needlessly political
Yeah, this was my reaction to it as well. The only real way to bring down housing prices is to drastically increase the housing supply and find a way to prevent companies like Blackrock from snapping them up and leaving them empty to keep rental prices high. The "enemy within" is actually PE firms...
"The only real way to bring down housing prices is to drastically increase the housing supply and find a way to prevent companies like Blackrock from snapping them up and leaving them empty to keep rental prices high"
This is exactly the change that needs to happen - the fact that entire subdivisions of housing are being built specifically so these multi-national conglomerates can use them as an investment vehicle, AND all the existing homes are being snatched up by them is criminal in my eyes.
The most impactful thing anyone could do to improve the housing situation in this country is to prevent these operations from using single family homes as investment vehicles. I don't know the 'exact right' way to achieve this - but I'm certain the exact legislative language could be hammered out to make things better for EVERYBODY except the bottom feeders.
The economy is approaching great depression levels of 'bad' - and plenty of things have inflated 100% or more, 20% is more like the general 'average'. And plenty of those things are critical items, like laundry detergent, gas, and insurance.
I'll put it this way:
When I was making $60k 5 years ago, a night out for two in my preferred 'fun time out' would be:
$35 concert ticket x 2, $20 ride x 2(to and from show to avoid dangerous driving), $6 drink x 6/2 -- so a complete fun time out was roughly $140
Now the same concert venue and ticket is $85 x 2, the ride is $40 x2, the drinks (if you don't abstain due to the previous costs) are $14 x 6 and suddenly $140 turned into $354 (more than double). And honestly depending on the day or event that could be more.
This is just one example of how 'going out and enjoying life outside your cubicle' has easily doubled in cost.
You can zoom in on any portion of the economy and find similar. Laundry detergent isn't only up 20%. Gas isn't only up 20%. Insurance isn't up 20%. Groceries have easily doubled, regardless of which basket item you decide to focus in on to obscure that.
Great question though - How have they managed to crash the 'living wage' economy so badly that I either have to live like a broke college student with six figures, when I used to be able to go out weekly.
Averaging out the inflation across the economy doesn't really work for those of us 'making it' -- but if you already made it and the increase in price for laundry detergent, gas, food, or whatever else doesn't actually impact you I'm sure it's difficult to see how bad things have got.
I think you'd have to ask Biden or Yellen or someone in the outgoing administration exactly how they pulled it off though.
I'm just wondering where in the country you live with those prices. When I used to go out _10_ years ago there's no way I would ever find a $6 drink. Right now a cocktail costs me $13-$15. 10 years ago, a cocktail used to cost me $13-$15. Gas is back to pre-covid prices.
I don't know. I've seen prices go up, but I honestly think people are exaggerating. I buy groceries and food too. I don't spend anywhere close to double what I did even 10 years ago.
Drink = Canned Beer @ one of the countries best music venues outside a major metro area.
I'm not going to be posting more details regarding my location on a public forum however.
"I don't spend anywhere close to double what I did even 10 years ago."
I bet you also have had to tighten your belt buckle to achieve that - if not, you are an anomaly.
Really though my anecdote about my personal inflation woes is not the point, and I just included it as an after thought to provide some context. The core message I am trying to convey is before that, and I don't see much value in comparing individual items in different geographic regions.
If you are genuinely as unaffected as you say, good for you - the only people I know who are in that position are retired already and insulated from changes more than most.
it sounds like price gouging to me. The venue is more than doubling its price and charging you $14 for a can of beer. How is this Biden's fault, of all things?
Anyway, I'm relatively cheap so I always pay attention to prices. Eggs, milk, bread, chicken, etc have all gotten slightly more expensive. Nothing even close to double. I don't understand what people are buying.
I am also perplexed by this. As someone who obsessively tracks and categorizes all my spending, I have not observed a significant upward trend in my grocery spending. And I have data in a spreadsheet which confirms this. I'm honestly not sure what I'm doing so differently than the general population which perceives prices as skyrocketing.
While most goods are slightly more expensive, egg prices have been a notable outlier, which I believe was more an effect of culling due to bird flu rather than inflationary. If anything, the most notable cost increases I've observed are in restaurants and takeout places, not grocery stores.
It's entirely possible these costs are highly region-specific, so it's interesting to hear different takes on it.
"it sounds like price gouging to me. The venue is more than doubling its price and charging you $14 for a can of beer. How is this Biden's fault, of all things?
Anyway, I'm relatively cheap so I always pay attention to prices. Eggs, milk, bread, chicken, etc have all gotten slightly more expensive. Nothing even close to double. I don't understand what people are buying."
This is exactly why I tried to redirect you to the core point of my message, instead of the 'addendum'. It was obvious you were looking for some 'leverage' to declare your perceived experience as the 'correct' one.
Now you have pivoted to 'inflation isn't really real, that venue is screwing you' because of zeroing in on one item. I can assure you, prices are similar throughout the city I am referencing. It wouldn't matter one bit which venue I chose.
Perhaps you are OK with staying home and watching every penny and never doing anything enjoyable in life that costs a few bucks.
For the rest of the country, they are feeling it in their everyday lives - whether that is food costs, hobby costs, or whatever matters to them -personally-.
Under Trump we were doing demonstrably better. It took an immediate nose dive under Biden, and his entire administrations policies have made things worse - and most importantly, there is no sign they had a real plan to fix that, and it showed at the polls.
It's fine if you want to get hyper-fixated on the one statement you feel compelled to 'debunk' my lived experiences and observations, but that wont change the fact that entire metro areas are becoming either unlivable or pointless to live in unless you are making $200,000+ (in that you can afford the rent but not to enjoy the local attractions).
I'm glad you aren't feeling the squeeze, genuinely.
According to PBS / NPR roughly 60% of the country believe we are in a recession.
You can count me amongst them, because of my lived experiences. I'm not going to continue to quibble about what -I- am doing wrong budget wise accourding to your tiny little insight into my life which this comment provided.. and I think you'll find if you approach most anyone who has legitimate concerns in this manner you will have changed exactly 0 minds.
By all means though, if you are comfortable then I'm sure 60+% of the country who feels like they are living through something worse than '08 must bet making up things to complain about and hoarding their money secretly to plan an epic prank on... someone
But we're not in a recession. There was a pandemic and people spent a shitload of money and never let up, and this caused prices to go up. Coupled with money printing, most of which was done during Trump's presidency, and some lag, this causes inflation. Biden brought the inflation back down without causing a recession. Now, inflation went down, so prices remain the same. Prices don't go back down. That would be deflation. You need to vote for the person who has plans to stop price gouging and raise minimum wages and create more safety nets so that your real money goes up again.
You realize Biden took office in Jan 2021? The money printing started way before during Trump's time in office due to the pandemic, so you can't really blame the previous administration for inflation (which happened everywhere around the world due to COVID-related stimulus).
Yea, inflation sucks. But it's not like Trump can fix the fact way too much money was printed during COVID crisis. The crisis should have resulted in a major economic depression, but instead we got a big party through stimulus. Now we're suffering from a hangover, and Trump can't change that.
Trump can absolutely reign things in, I don't think anyone thinks he can snap his fingers and 'fix' something broken this badly.
But yeah, he 100% can take a different direction than the administration that printed more USD than had previously existed in the entirety of the countries history.
'Trump can't wave a magic wand and un-do what the current admin did, so it doesn't make sense to change directions best to stick with the current administration that doesn't think there is anything they could or should have done different' is not the rationale for my position.
Just look at how the stock market responded today - clearly I'm not the only person who thinks 'this will position our economy much better than it is today'.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, as this is spot on.
The Democratic part has completely lost touch with the working class. Harris struggled to articulate any sort of economic policy other than "we're going to ban price gouging, give money to people to start businesses, and help people make down payments on houses" with no details. Meanwhile, they latched onto some of the most fringe culture war issues like making sure that trans men can compete in women's sports.
I voted for her because another Trump presidency is literally an existential threat to the country, but I saw this coming from a mile away.
I believe the Dem plan contributed to the massive apathy or large cohorts voting for the GOP candidate. People that have houses, school age kids and aren't planning on starting businesses see nothing valuable with those plans.
The Democrats are ignorant that their open arms (accepting everyone, working for everyone) policies and rhetoric will sway minorities when culturally there are strong christian and catholic populations amongst demographic minorities that have firm beliefs that are conservative.
Dems have not pontificated on gender-affirming care. It is an insignificant issue that affects a minuscule amount of the electorate. There would be minimal discussion on it if it wasn't for the incessant harping from the right to rile up their base.
It is so simple and effective to weaponize social issues. This is easy to see when you read right-wing discussion: they believe that the left is absolutely obsessed with gender-affirming care, because that is the reality they are fed.
I have a conservative relative who talks about 'wokeness' and gender-affirming care almost non-stop, because he believes that it's being 'shoved down his throat', when in reality, it is right-wing media that is doing the shoving.
Both things can be true. Conservative media outlets know that these issues evoke visceral reactions from the base and therefore they can sell more ads.
But I’ve also encountered teachers who confided that they teach gender fluidity to their 1st grade class without parental consent. Teaching trans ideology to children has become a humanitarian cause for many on the left and there’s a strong desire among parents for public school systems to take an aggressive stance against the handful of bad actors doing this.
I agree. It actually looks quite similar to the situation here in EU, with traditional leftist parties losing popularity to right-wing populists. Leftist parties should focus first and foremost on protecting worker's rights, anything else should come second. Supporting open migration policy in particular is problematic, as it drives down wages to the very workers who might want to vote leftist parties. People who are struggling financially also don't particularly enjoy hearing how they are privileged because of their gender/skin color or whatever.
The left should simply recognize that distribution of wealth and means of production is the number one factor affecting equality. It's their job to lobby for things like progressive taxation and social safety nets.
People in general are feeling less secure. The rise of the 'precariat' class is a good example of this.
This gives rise to legitimate concerns about immigration. But the left and centrist parties fail to address these concerns - instead blaming people for having them.
I don't subscribe to the idea that everyone voting for right wing parties is a racist xenophobic. Unfortunately the only parties that address the concerns people have are often led by racist xenophobics.
I am definitely left wing, but I blame the left for the rise of the right. They abrogated their responsible to represent people by failing to address their most pressing concerns.
>But the left and centrist parties fail to address these concerns - instead blaming people for having them.
Well what do you want them to do? You suddenly go anti-immigration in a country known as a melting pot, a country where many were once immigrants, and you lose even more votes.
Also, I'll even say we're being tricked by an issue that is actually bipartisan: in a bad economy outsourcing grows to get around strong labor laws. The big companies want immigrants, so this supposed dream of mass deportation is one of a fools'. If you don't want people taking your jobs, make stronger job protections, not blame the people worse off than you.
But sadly, deflecting blame to feel powerful seems to be a universal concept. Crabs in a bucket.
> Leftist parties should focus first and foremost on protecting worker's rights
They should focus first and foremost on improving the economic condition of the average American. The low income, as well as the middle class slipping into poverty. Worker's rights is a major part of that, but only one part of it. Watching the prices of basic necessities like housing, food, and healthcare while billionaires and corporations are making record profits is bound to piss off the people.
That said, Trump certainly isn't going to make any of that better. In fact, it'll all get much worse, but on the slim chance democrats actually try to win voters back vs just counting on America to come crawling back to save the US from the four year shit show we've just started and if our new dictator allows us to have fair elections in the future, I think you've got the right idea for where they can start.
What does the massive Hispanic vote swing want? To deport their own people and magically fix the economy?
That seems to go against the point why they voted left. And no one's going to fix this inevitable recession (which I argue was here for a long while) overnight.
Look at senate and governor candidates that over performed and underperformed vs Kamala in their state. People have studied it for years and the basic finding is the classic one. Moving to the center wins you votes. You'll find that moderate/centrist dems over perform and leftist dems underperform.
They've studied this. And the cause is is the following. Yes you get your base to turn out more. But extremism motivates their base even more than your own, and switched vote from an independent is twice as impactful as an extra vote. A simple example is you get one more of your base to turn out. You lose an independent, and you get 2 of their base to turn out. And end up down 3 votes.
Part of the problem is that our primaries are weird. Primary voters tend to be more extreme (left and right) and when moderates show up to vote in the election, they're upset there's no moderate choice. I was talking to some colleagues from Australia and not voting is a fine. Makes primaries much more representative of the actual election when you get everyone to vote.
I've had the thought that the US primary system prevents any meaningful application of Ranked Choice, or other alternative methods. Currently there's no other proximate-choice candidates that make it to the general election; i.e., the case where Kamala and Bernie and Trump are on the General Election ballot can't happen in most places right now, which narrows the choice field significantly.
Note: There is small minority that show that this is effect shrinking with time. My personal belief for why this is happening is basically voters are judging individual politicians more by the moderation/extremeness of the party's positions and less by the politicians personal beliefs.
I think people mistake his radical-styled rhetoric for radical policies
Trump is one of the most moderate Republicans on most social issues (abortion, lgb, criminal justice etc.)
He is the most moderate on entitlements (constantly promises to not cut medicare, medicaid and social security) contrary to every Republican campaign in the past (remember Paul Ryan?)
He is a "moderate" on foreign policy (not a Cheney/Bush war hawk, not a 60's style pacifist)
I could go on but I think the important point is; every point he wants to make, he makes in the loudest most wild way possible and people who aren't disposed to vote for him anyway see that as "radical". The correct word IMO is "crazy" or "wild".
Voters who are in the center or can swing either way see him as promising fairly conventional things but in a crazy tone. Maybe tone doesn't matter as much to them
I agree that there's a huge difference between the rhetoric and policies. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around people viewing him as both a "straight talker" and someone who's "just jokin'". There's also huge variability about his personal policy whims he may lose interest in, and those in power around him with strong and motivated agendas.
He is a "moderate" on foreign policy (not a Cheney/Bush war hawk)
Which is hogwash, because at the time Trump went along with the Iraq war just like everybody else, of course:
In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.
"Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."
That really doesn't make your point.
"I guess so" is the absolute opposite of what a hawk would say. "I guess so" is what the comment you're replying to is still implying he'd say.
I have no idea if they edited this in later or you removed it but just pointing this out:
> not a 60's style pacifist
A linear model (liberal vs conservative) is not great. Consider a planar model with two dimensions: social and economic policy. Trump combined conservative social policy with populist economic policy. Harris promoted liberal social policy. However, in her last town hall, framed herself as a "pragmatic capitalist" (her emphasis). This is a continuation of Democratic rightward shift, the Neoliberal compromise, that was crystallized by Clinton with NAFTA in the 90s. In this election, like 2000, the US public had to choose: a liberal social policy -or- a populist economic policy. What was not on the ballot: liberal social policy with populist economic policy.
The DNC has some serious soul-searching to do. If they didn't figure out that people wanted Bernie over Hilary, I doubt they will learn that the US voter didn't like getting lied to about Biden's mental fitness and then just inserting someone we never voted on.
I think they knew full well that people wanted Bernie over Hilary, and they just didn't care. They believed that they could shove Hilary down our throats and actively colluded with her campaign to undermine Sanders. When people objected they fought to defend the position that they aren't required to hold a fair primary election. I doubt they'll learn anything from this and that they'll never give up the ability to make backroom deals then force their chosen candidate regardless of how democrats feel about them.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. The general "air" about the democratic party seems to be that they know what's best for you, so shut up and vote blue so that we can "save democracy" (by the people who inserted a candidate that no one voted for).
Regardless of policy, which I won't get into here, we have to acknowledge that treating adults like children isn't a rock-solid battle strategy.
Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the primary. That's not some big bad Democrat party thing. That's literally how Democratic primary voters voted in 2016. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it is completely opposite reality.
No one was shafted. He lost. He lost as bad as Hillary Clinton did to Obama in 2008. Literally the same margin of defeat. You just got manipulated into thinking it was something sinister. You can probably thank a foreign power for that.
We have leaked emails proving that the DNC colluded directly with her campaign, Sanders had to file lawsuits against them to get access to information he was entitled to, and in a lawsuit following the leaks the DNC's own lawyers argued as their defense that they had zero legal obligation to run a fair primary. (see https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Wi...) Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned following the scandal and as payment for her services she was gifted a cushy position working for Hillary Clinton's campaign.
This isn't some conspiracy by "a foreign power" it's well documented history
I get what you are saying, but let's be realistic here: even with an unfair vote you could still get people out to vote and get the majority. If we could have done that then MAYBE we'd have a point here.
But reality: Bernie was really popular with the 18-36 demographic. But they don't turnout to vote in the general election, let alone a primary. So here we are. Old people get their way because they show up.
And I'm not saying Bernie didn't energize voters: just that it's a really high bar to energize that to a point of participation.
I've seen it argued before that it couldn't have turned out differently (https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/04/politics/bernie-sanders-2016-...) and maybe that's true. The sad fact is that we'll never really know what could have happened if the DNC had played fair. I agree that young voters don't generally turn out to vote. They also don't generally turn up to campaign rallies but for him they actually did. They showed up in numbers so large that they filled entire arenas past capacity. He often drew crowds much larger than Clinton did and she had the name and the money for paid attendees to boost her numbers.
What I can say is that in that election the country was looking for something different from the government. They knew that the status quo wasn't working for them and that was the only thing Clinton was offering. I know that in the end that feeling was enough to drive at least some people who normally voted democrat to vote for trump (or third party). The fact that the DNC ignored the will of registered democrats and decided for themselves that Clinton was their Chosen One before the primary election was held also caused some democrats to vote for trump or to stay home entirely. I can't claim that the DNC was the cause of trump getting elected the first time, but they sure didn't help.
In early 2020, Sanders flipped Biden, leading more than Trump lead his rivals for much of the primary, and likely would have gone on to win the nomination, with the momentum he was carrying into the bulk of state contests. Biden's centrist rivals colluded with him and the DNC, suddenly dropping out before Super Tuesday. Buttigieg, one of the dropouts, was awarded with a cabinet appointment that he was completely unqualified for, as exemplified by his gross mishandling of first a rail strike, and then a large accident (caused by conditions the strikers were organizing to rectify) which dumped toxic chemicals into a small town.
That was the one I paid close attention to. If 2016 was anything like it (and I'm sure it was, considering this year's convention tactics were used all the way back in the 1940s to force Truman on us), I have no doubt that this is the DNC's modus operandi. The true steal of the last 3 elections were establishment Democrats' theft of the liberal and leftist vote. And in 2 out of 3 of those cases, they paid in the general.
One person recognizing they can't win and getting out to support their preferred remaining candidate is a big conspiracy? This kind of conspiracy peddling is why fascism won on Tuesday.
I already mentioned one instance of his failure as Secretary (a major accident that occurred shortly after helping to quash a strike that sought to address the issues that eventually lead to the accident). We are also only just this year seeing significant action taken against Boeing. Baltimore also lost a major bridge and access to a regionally-important port under his leadership. He's not good at his job. He should never have gotten it.
>You're saying we chose the corruption free candidate instead of the big bad Democrats?
I did not. You clearly did not read my posts and are only willing to engage in bad faith.
It seems you've confused postponing a strike with quashing a strike. Don't worry, all strikes in every industry will be quashed by Trump and Musk over the next 4 years.
Also, do you seriously consider a single neglectful shipping company ramming into the bridge to be the fault of the transportation secretary?
Everything I am saying is straightforward and in good faith.
>Don't worry, all strikes in every industry will be quashed by Trump and Musk over the next 4 years.
That's how strikes work under the rule of law and the faith that all parties will operate fairly within it, which we can agree is going away under Trump to some extent.
>Also, do you seriously consider a single neglectful shipping company ramming into the bridge to be the fault of the transportation secretary?
Yes. As with the train incident, it speaks to a culture of ineffectiveness under his direction. (Admittedly rando) guy at this link makes a good point:
>I can't think of a single mode of transportation that has gotten better under Buttigieg, can you?
In his examples, he mentions air travel headaches, which combine with my Boeing criticism from earlier. I also hadn't considered personal vehicles: to add to his talk about EVs, there are also the many controversies involving self-driving cars and the companies his department have allowed to operate recklessly, per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0.
In all, Buttigieg's tenure has been marked by a lack of sufficient oversight of industry; his lax supervision has lead to a disturbing number of incidents across all modes of transit. He's supposed to be keeping them honest, and they ran roughshod over him for the majority of his time in office. He was not ready for the position and it was a mistake to give it to him. He only got it through a corrupt transaction that lead to Biden's improbable nomination over Sanders in 2020, which has ultimately lead to the electoral trouncing we saw last week.
For what it's worth, we don't need "luck"; we need people like you to stop carrying water for pompous losers who put their pocketbook before people (and to maybe stop being them, too).
This true. They will keep playing this stupid game. Thinking they are on the right side of history, which might be true, or it might not be true; but in the end, the right side of history is decided by the winners. And their current strategy is to alienate as many voters as possible by powering through on issues nobody cares about and acting as if there are no real issues left to fix.
I think they are referring to the anti-liberal authoritarian left wing that has gained a foothold not only in the DNC but into the mainstream culture in certain ways. But "left-wing fascism" is a thing, or at least and idea, that has been around for awhile. Some call it "red fascism" and is in reference to left wing ideologies that are far from the center. It sort of invokes "horseshoe theory" that says left and right get pretty similar the further they get from the center.
I hate to say it as a progressive woman, but the DNC has a non-minority problem.
They need a good white/Hispanic Christian heterosexual male and they just don't seem to have one at this point. Gavin Newsom is the face of everything that is ( allegedly ) wrong with California. Mark Kelly is not a great speaker. They tried with Walz, but even I had a trouble imagining him going face-to-face with Putin.
If there was a democratic Mark Rubio he would have mopped the floor with Trump. I wouldn't necessarily say that the country is not ready for a black female president, but I think a lot of people think that Democrats only care about minorities and I think Harris just enforced that belief.
Josh Shapiro probably would have been a good candidate and quite likely would have been selected if there had been any competitive process to choose the best candidate rather than anointing Kamala. He may be jewish by birth but seems popular and competent.
I think one of the problems with the Democrats and modern left is they have moved away from
>I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.
And towards a DEI set up where Kamala is hired because she ticks the colored and woman boxes rather than because of competence.
As one of my friends says, Democrats were running around yelling
1."Women have the right to abortion." and
2."Everyone has the right to alter their own gender!"
and, while I support the above [well, not exactly: I prefer that one should, when possible, pay for their own voluntary medical procedures].
But, in any case, the above rights have no particular appeal at all to people who are neither pregnant nor gender-uncertain, which is by far the majority of the voting population.
In contrast, Republicans focused on the economy and the border, two things affecting everyone.
> the above rights have no particular appeal at all to people who are neither pregnant
This doesn't sound right to me. You don't have to be pregnant to be interested in keeping abortion legally accessible. You don't even have to be a woman. Keeping a fetus in your body for 9 months when you don't want it is a horror movie scenario for me, and I'm guessing most other women feel the same way. And there are surely many men who want that option available for their partners, as well.
I think they really overestimated how many people were single issue pro-choice voters. Looking back it was the biggest part of their platform but it probably didn't move the needle much. I could tell you much more about Trump's economic plans than Harris's.
I also really wish they could just stop talking about trans rights. I support them too but its a tiny part of the population and anyone who supports them is voting blue anyway. A lot of people don't get it, don't like it, and are going to vote against them given the chance.
I'll also reluctantly agree with the right and say I don't see the need for trans women to compete in sports against cis women. Playing sports is not a constitutional right and I think sometimes its ok to say "I'm sorry but no."
> Playing sports is not a constitutional right and I think sometimes its ok to say "I'm sorry but no."
The problem is that the left has really painted themselves into a corner with the whole “trans women are women” thing. To say that they ARE women but CAN’T compete in women’s sports would be to admit that trans women are not, in fact, the same as biological women.
Are voters really that shortsighted that abortion rights are only relevant to anyone currently pregnant? I would think at least every woman under 50 would be interested in that.
This is a reasonable take. Question, how is everybody affected by the border? What are signs in our lives that we're being affected by a mis-managed border?
Well the Republicans also spent a good amount of time yelling that the Democrats were yelling about those things, which is perhaps part of the reason your friend thinks the Dems only care about those issues.
I think Shapiro would have good _except_ for what's currently going on in Palestine. Palestine was always divisive among the left and now more than ever.
Josh Shapiro has also stated in writing that he volunteered with the IDF, which under traditional norms is completely disqualifying for the Presidency or Vice Presidency as it's service to a foreign military.
I agree that this perception about modern leftism in the West is a very big issue. Through no personal fault of Harris, I think that a lot of non-white men and white women voted for Trump because they feel like progressives don't care about (or even hate) men, whatever their color, and don't care about (or even hate) white people, whatever their gender.
I agree. Crazy as it sounds but in the electorate’s mind they blame the Democrats and DEI for their economic struggles. I blame the ineptness of the Democratic Party that in the voter’s mind Trump represents the working class.
When Biden ran, he pointed to his working class roots at every opportunity. I believe what cost the election was that KH simply was not believed by the people working minimum wage and couldn’t afford rent.
I had the same thought. When Democrats run a likable, popular candidate they win. Bill Clinton, Obama being the two most recent examples. Trump won largely because his brash, crude, swaggering demeanor appeals to a lot of people and Harris was a candidate that was defaulted in because Biden was just out of gas; nobody really wanted her. Not saying that the Democrats should look for someone like Trump but first and foremost they need someone that a lot of people find likable.
Obama and Clinton both were not at the top of the party apparatus at the time of their first runs. Compare to Gore, Harris, and the other Clinton in 2016. I think the DNC clearly needs to step back and let the party make its own choice.
Do you... Do you think the dnc is not the party? How do you think primary elections work? Harris is a fair exception to that, as there was ni primary, otherwise this is just confusing.
I think Trump won more on him being not in the current administration, and that people want the current admin out.
Overall the past couple elections have been about kicking people out more than putting people in, and Americans are unhappy with the state of their society.
Trump has at least shown an ability to just ignore the law to get whatever he wants done, and no candidate on the current Democratic party is going to have that
I'm not sure any party in office this last term could have won this election, given there was going to be significant inflation as a rebound from COVID.
I think the DNC was caught between two kinds of politics: machine and identity. The party is very interested with controlling everything, but they couldn't take the nomination from the first black Vice President. Michelle would not run, and so it would presume that to keep dark horses and other members challenging The VP, something had to have been offered or promised. Also the optics of someone like Newsome, white, affluent, and male, challenging the first black woman etc. etc. It doesn't look good for democrats and could have been very messy.
Kamala, for better or for worse, was their only choice.
Kamala was, shockingly and as a surprise to all, an incredibly capable candidate in 2024. She didn't underperform yesterday relative to other Democrats.
This year, it wasn't about the candidate. It seems clear there wasn't any Democratic candidate who could have won.
In the interest of HN guidelines, I won't respond with sarcasm.
This is a bad opinion. Kamala was a terrible candidate by all metrics. Definitely, the worst Democratic candidate I have seen in my living memory.
It should've been a dead giveaway that now a single Indian or Black person has a good thing to say about her. Her only victory was in California (single party & famously misaligned with national voting trends) and her only televised primary performance was a disaster. Democrats didn't run open primaries because they knew she'd lose.
She didn't have concrete policy proposals, talks like an under-performing consultant and had zero charisma.
Nah, Harris wasn't an ideal choice, just like Hillary Clinton wasn't. Ideally for next elections democrats would need someone likable with plenty of charisma and moderate stance on social issues. Being male would be a plus too, unfortunately.
I think Tim Walz would have done better than Harris.
He does that if he doesn't know about the issue. He does that if he doesn't care about the issue.
Harris couldn't sell. Watch her talk about abortion. On some level that's one of the few things she manages to convey a sense of genuineness about. For everything else it's like she's saying "What do you want me to be for? I'm for that" it's fine if you're thinking that but when people figure out that's who you are it's more toxic then them thinking you're a liar or a clown.
I genuinely do not understand how anybody could listen to Trump saying something about a topic he clearly does not know about (of which there are a couple -- let's face it) and describe it as "selling".
I'm not at all attacking you here by the way. But I'm legit speechless at that interpretation of his senile rambling.
It is rambling but he's enthusiastic and he doesn't talk down to his supporters. When he's telling people that illegal immigrants are eating people's pets he speaks to his audience the way a friend would tell you that they caught the co-worker no one likes not flushing the toilet. There's shock, surprise, a bit of humor but not like he's a teacher lecturing.
Harris on the other hand. There wouldn't be a joke. She'd take some time to explain why flushing the toilet was something everyone should do. Then she'd finish up by letting you know that she too always flushes.
By the time Primary season kicks off in early 2028, it will have been twenty years since the last time the Democratic Party membership selected a new candidate without direct interference from party bigwigs.
The 2020 primary went without large interference. Lo and behold, the democratic candidate won that election. The lesson is clear: to win elections hold actual primaries instead of appointing candidates.
They’ve been incapable of holding actual primaries since at least 2016. They curate, subvert, stifle, and influence who rises up from the primary election. They don’t care at all about democracy or the republic. Any Democrat who is a populist that actually cares about the American people, ex Bernie Sanders, will be shut down in favor of one that can push globalist agendas at the expense of the local population in exchange for looting the national treasury. When Bernie stepped out of line and genuinely wanted to help people, the DNC establishment whipped him back into step and reminded him who’s boss. I’m genuinely surprised this election appeared to ever be close.
America was saved and a better chapter begins. Do you disagree? A plurality of Americans agree with that sentiment as evidenced by the popular vote and the winning of all 7 swing states.
That definitely feels like the forgotten primary. My best guess is that its because that primary was book ended by primaries that were heavily influenced and controlled by the DNC.
Many believe that the party gave Biden and unfair advantage using their superdelegates. The Republican Party does not have such super delegates, and in fact in 2016 Trump won solely due to his ability to organize and rally a well-working campaign even as party elites were seething at his ascendency and insulting him in public.
Super delegates are undemocratic, and always have been. How does the party of 'democracy' get away with this? The GOP has never used them and always just let its voters vote. When the voters chose Trump despite the leaderships hatred of them, they all stepped aside. Are they perfect... of course not? But compared to the democrats, they've always stood by their voters.
Yep, the DNC has lacked the self-awareness in these past few years to gaze within and cull the cruft that 100% of their voter base hate. Superdelegates need to go. They're this generation's Korematsu (as in they are still active while people would rightfully think they're gone). I feel confident that superdelegates will come back to bite the DNC decades down the line.
In fairness, they actually did change the rules around them after 2016 but stopped short of removing them.
the way I remember it, it was a competitive primary with Bernie and Warren competing for the lead when suddenly Biden mysterious knocked them all out, as if the party had suddenly overruled the process. Maybe that was an illusion but a lot of people interpreted it this way.
Because everyone besides Bernie dropped out right before Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden, hoping to get appointments in a future Biden Admin. Many, like Buttigeg were well rewarded for this.
The Democrats even tried to drop the primary here in New York by striking Bernie and everyone from the ballot because they had decided Biden was going to get the nomination.
Biden won pretty handedly because moderates didn't like that Bernie calls himself a socialist. If you're chronically online it might seem like Bernie was leading the pack but I've had many conversations with the older voting population that echo the sentiment that he was never their guy.
This conspiracy from Bernie bros is so deeply stupid.
The democratic coalition depends on black voters, and they decisively chose Joe Biden in South Carolina, sending a clear signal about who would have the strength to beat Trump (and in the end they were right).
At least those folks went after the government instead of smashing the windows of every business in my city. But that event, despite being in the “worst global pandemic of 100 years” somehow got a free pass. It was labeled as “the summer of love”.
This country was founded by government distrust and rebellion. It was not founded on bashing your neighbors windows.
Those people who stormed the capitol put the fear of god into a bunch of politicians. Good for them.
…the people who set fire to neighborhood buildings… not so sure about that one.
Based on voting patterns, I think to many americans today, the main claim of the J6ers (that there were some fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election) is looking more likely, not less. If anything were to come out, the J6ers would become freedom fighters, just as they are apparently in the hearts of many Americans. Like it or not, perception is how you win an election.
On the other hand, the democrats have tried politically-inspired prosecutions, selecting a nominee while ignoring the party writ large.
Anyway, the simple truth is that Americans worried about democracy went to trump by large margins. Consider that
In 2016, prospective candidates were told by the party to sit this one out. It was Hillary's turn and if you run in the primary, you will not have a future in the DNC. This is why we only got Bernie (who isnt even a democrat) and a hand full of no name DNC candidates to vote for. She was chosen, and no big names ran against her.
Where is the evidence for this? Obama was also not a big name candidate in 2008. It's harder to be a bigger name than someone who was both a first lady and a senator.
Bernie supporters filed a lawsuit against the DNC for disenfranchising them. The DNC argued they operate as a private corporation and are free to pick whomever they want "over cigars in a back room".
> “There’s no right to not have your candidate disadvantaged or have another candidate advantaged. There’s no contractual obligation here . . . it’s not a situation where a promise has been made that is an enforceable promise,” Spiva said.
> The DNC is advancing the argument that any claims to be neutral and fair to all candidates were nothing but “political promises” and are unenforceable by law.
It is also not evidence for any interference above 2008. Workers for the DNC had their own preferences for party candidate. This was the case in 2008 as well, but without the emails, it's hard to construct a conspiracy theory. There was no evidence of "sabotage" in the emails.
> The DNC is advancing the argument that any claims to be neutral and fair to all candidates were nothing but “political promises” and are unenforceable by law.
This is a legal argument for throwing out a case (which was thrown out). It is not an admission of being unfair.
On Thursday, Brazile released a excerpt from her new book on Politico’s website. The excerpt explained how the Hillary Victory Fund, Hillary for America, and the Democratic National Committee signed a Joint Fund-Raising Agreement, which gave a significant advantage to Clinton’s campaign.
“Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote. “Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
“The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” Brazile notes. “This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.”
Yes, the Democrats have a history of fighting against competitive primaries. 2016 wasn't the first time, but it was the first time some of mechanisms they use to suppress other candidates were exposed in their own words.
You keep saying that without providing any evidence. Once more, where is the evidence that the DNC ever told anybody that they wouldn't have a future in the DNC if they ran in a primary?
But she was very divisive on the R side. Democrats need someone who is popular enough with their core base to win primaries, but also likable enough to the other side to get some crossover votes.
Did we get verification the emails were unaltered? To make an analogy the initial email release was smoke, it demands investigation, smoke often means fire after all, but not always.
Had a single email been altered, you can be sure that the DNC would have been shouting it from the rooftops. Being able to label the emails as 'altered' would have made for fantastic water-muddying, which is a classic defensive tactic in such a situation. Any political operative would be expected to do the same. The fact that you are (as I am) unaware of any such claim, in an episode which was at the top of the news cycle for months, would seem to be a pretty clear indicator that the emails were legit.
> Had a single email been altered, you can be sure that the DNC would have been shouting it from the rooftops.
Easy to imagine they would not in some cases. Often people do not comment on on going investigations. Or in international espionage I know it is common to hide what you know and what you do not know to keep your competitors/enemies in the dark to give your self an advantage. So the USA spy organizations may not want the DNC to show its hand.
I can not make the assumption that you are putting forth at least.
The DNC could have simply published one of their original emails for people to compare, without interfering in any investigation or revealing any spy techniques.
> The DNC could have simply published one of their original emails for people to compare, without interfering in any investigation or revealing any spy techniques.
Ok the DNC goes to their hard drive and opens up the email. It does not match what was in the leak. Is the email on the DNC's hard drive altered or not? After all if the email was accessed/leaked could it have been altered as well? With a simple security setup, yes it can.
Operational security is often about not tipping your hand to your adversary about what you know and what you do not know. Showing the original email in your scenario also tips your hand for what you think you know.
There was nothing incriminating in the emails. Some staffers preferred one candidate. This was spun into a fixing conspiracy theory. If you think this wasn't true in 2008 or that some RNC staffers don't prefer one candidate, you might be interested in a bridge I have for sale.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid admitted: “Bernie really had a movement out there, and it wasn’t right to treat him that way. I knew — everybody knew — that this was not a fair deal. So I’m sorry she had to resign, but it was the right thing to do. She just should’ve done it sooner.”
Which is it? Did she schedule the debates on the weekend so nobody would watch, or did she ask unfair questions that painted Sanders in a bad light for many voters? It can't be both. The reality is that none of her actions caused Clinton to get more than 3 million more votes than Sanders.
Yes it can be both. Schedule the debates on the weekend so "nobody" would watch (thus people who didn't know about him wouldn't learn about him), and ask unfair questions that painted Sanders in a bad light (targeting people who already knew about him and did watch because they wanted to learn more).
She did more too, like convincing much of the media not to talk him. It was quite obvious when so many shows covered the polls, including people polling in single digits, but didn't mention Sanders.
> The reality is that none of her actions caused Clinton to get more than 3 million more votes than Sanders.
There's no way to know how many votes he would have gotten in a fair contest.
> She did more too, like convincing much of the media not to talk him.
Where is the evidence for this?
> Yes it can be both. Schedule the debates on the weekend so "nobody" would watch (thus people who didn't know about him wouldn't learn about him), and ask unfair questions that painted Sanders in a bad light (targeting people who already knew about him and did watch because they wanted to learn more).
Inflation is a complicated topic that doesn't get adequately captured in the sound bites.
I kept hearing clips of voters saying they want prices to go back down, but my understanding of the economics is that this would be terrible. Instead, IMO, what we need is for wages to increase while minimizing the inflationary effect of wage increases. That's not a catchy slogan, however.
Parallel to this, I don't think the post COVID inflation is really due to politicians.
Over 50% of the increased prices are from producers not just recouping their additional expenses, but also increasing profit margins.
Typically you would expect this to be an opportunity for competition, but generally speaking companies are suspiciously raising prices together. They've taken advantage of the COVID shortage and inflation narratives to squeeze consumers.
Corporate consolidation is one of the biggest and least talked about boogeymen of our current era, one which is set to get even worse under Trump's second term. The Biden admin barely, kind of, got anti-trust authorities somewhat working again, and that will be demolished on day 1 of Trump.
Bigger corpos means bigger donations to bigger candidates. The entire system runs on money and nobody's got money to put in like these supercorps. We live in Gerontocracy that is actively building a Corporatocracy to replace it after the Boomers die off entirely and no money will ever go to the working class again.
> If your change is no more durable than a single election, you didn't accomplish shit.
That is the way that the country works! The system is working as intended if a single government appointment can't unilaterally destroy monopolies in a single term.
What do you think inflation is? Demand shoots up, suppliers raise prices or run out, and it takes time for new capacity to be rewarded and created. There's no collusion here.
Inflation isn't just a fiscal (even though Biden failed on the fiscal side as well) or monetary phenomena, it's psychological - i.e. expectations about future prices.
Because the Biden administration was characteristically incompetent (Remember Treasury Secretary doing interviews saying that inflation was just a short-term blip and not persistent?) inflation started to get out of control. Once that happened, 30+ years of low inflation expectations went out the window. Market psychology changed, and because people now expected prices to rise, they weren't as resistant to individual price changes. This gave producers (along with legit covid supply side issues) breathing room to increase prices.
Of course deflation would be terrible for the economy. Expecting the average voter to understand the intricate complexities of how economies work vs I don't have enough money to buy things, so I want prices to drop, is sadly a losing proposition.
Any real political problem is multifaceted, deeply interconnected with the way the country works and its place in the world. But peoples experiences of them are not, inflation manifests as someone being able to afford rent one year, and not the next.
A good politician, can speak to the experience, but fix the problem. A good salesman can sell you a solution, even if it doesn't fix the problem. And the democratic party, seems mostly interested in talking about the problem and ignoring the experience.
A working economy means professional activity to make goods and services. Deflation actively kills that by incentivizing people to defer or cancel their purchases in favor of savings. So economic activity collapses.
There is no such thing as a durable deflationary market if it’s not justified by productivity gains and volume - and there is definitely no such thing as a durable deflationary economy.
The US was "a durable deflationary economy" for pretty much the whole 19th century, and first decade of 20th century. Things started to change once FED was created and given power over money supply.
Not sure what you're refering to, the 1873 panic wasn't exactly the finest hour for US economy. I guess that's not what you want to get back to.
As for the rest of the 19th century, the data we have is mostly consumer price indexes, but I can't recollect another durable deflationary period in the century.
Depends how much deflation there is with wages compared to everything else, there's a scenario that they have an opportunity to start saving
The majority of the expenses for the disadvantaged young are housing, gas, and food. With housing being 4x more expensive than 4 or 5 years it basically puts all the disadvantaged from even buying a house and then puts them at the mercy of the renters market
Actually, banks can "create" money from nowhere. It's called fractional-reserve banking. When you deposit money into a bank, the bank is required to keep only a fraction of that deposit as reserves. The rest can be used for lending.
The exact fraction is determined by the central bank's reserve requirements. And since 2020 it has been set to... zero percent.
So essentially US banks can infinitely create money.
What?? This isn’t correct at all. A deflationary economic environment is bad no matter the fiscal policy or monetary policy we have in place. You propose it would be better if we pushed for savings. Well if we all know that prices in a few weeks/months/years will be less than today, then spending drops. Friedman pushed velocity of money, even he would agree that a lower velocity would crush an economy.
I never got this line of thinking. I'm already disincentivized from spending because simple investments are likely to outpace inflation. That's a good reason to save as much as I can, but I still buy things, and it's not like I can put off buying food for a year so that prices drop. What's so different about this incentive to save and it being a part of the economy?
Yes, because most people spend most of their money. I'm saying deflation seems unlikely to change that, since a strong incentive to save money already exists, in the form of retirement fund.
There are a number of issues with this comment. One of them is that debt and saving are just sides of the same coin.
More importantly, everybody can see that debt for investment allows more growth. Just think about how many more people can afford to own their own home thanks to taking on debt. This allows them to pay a mortgage instead of rent, which allows them to build up wealth.
Equivalent effects exist in industry.
Debt is an extremely useful tool. We made the right choice here as a society.
Prices wont come back down; but few if any swing voters understand that. They just see high prices under biden and remember lower ones under Trump. Him losing would have taken a very strong candidate given the predicament.
Well, with a less than 6th grade literacy rate for 54% of Americans, it isn’t exactly surprising that many people have a hard time understanding any nuance. I once heard a woman explaining to her captive audience’s amazement how the colors of a “yingyang” were because “ying” means white and “yang” means black. Aside from being wholely incorrect (reversed), the concepts and meaning behind the yin yang of the balance between “light and dark” is completely lost on her. The extent of her knowledge will always be whatever someone she believed told her.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the reason for the colors. “Ying” has an i, for wh”i”te, “Yang” has an “a” for bl”a”ck. It wasn’t even a light/dark thing, it was because she believes the translated name shares a common letter with the color, so that is the reason for those colors. That is the reason why I’m not surprised by the results.
Yes prices need to specifically go down. CA decided to DOUBLE DOWN on raising gas prices during the pandemic, and apparently they're slated to vote on another change that could raise prices by $0.45 a gallon. The world has had CHOICES to go in a specific direction, and this administration and all LEFT administrations are pushing for prices to rise, and replace all the failing families with people from China, Venezuela and whoever wants to cross the border.
This post is a wonderful microcosm of why everyone is so divided and tribal now.
Here we have someone sharing a real world example of out of control inflation, which is true across all groceries no one grounded in reality would deny that.
Rather than acknowledge these concerns in anyway, you took time out of your day to imply because they used 1 unhealthy example this runaway inflation is actually a good thing because they will be forced to eat 'healthier'. Completely ignoring how expensive those 'healthy' items are as well (and that they continue to rise).
Then you use your anecdotal experience to further your dismission with 'well, ackkkstually ime prices don't go down so your concerns are invalid.'
This exact attitude is why there is nation-wide a mandate to eliminate the left from all pillars of power. And this is coming from someone who campaigned for Bernie.
Why would someone disagree with punishing crime? Are we living in reverse world where crime is the norm? How do we expect a functioning society if everything is expected to fail?
Probably the biggest one is that I do not believe that punishment is an effective deterrent most of the time. People will keep committing crimes even if the punishment is harsh.
Another is that our prisons need to be less about punishment and more about rehabilitation. A punishment-heavy criminal justice system creates more recidivism, people leave prison worse off than when they started, they might enter as petty offenders and leave as "jaded, hardened criminals".
Another is that many crimes are driven by the perpetrator having issues with poverty, drugs, etc., which should be addressed differently.
Another is that prisons are already overcrowded, underfunded, courts are not efficient, etc., so adding more felony convictions makes those problems worse and is expensive.
Another is that reformed felons have trouble finding employment when they get out. In some states they lose their right to vote.
Another is that some people are falsely accused and falsely convicted, or, I've heard this is most common, charged in excess of their actual involvement in the crime.
Another is that sometimes accused criminals have families. When you traumatize the offender's kids, you may create more criminality in the kids.
These are a few, expressed briefly and quickly. Others can probably explain it better, or with more time put into reserach.
1. Kamala isn't a great candidate shown by her poor primary results in 2020.
2. She has all the baggage of running pretty far to the left in 2020. (Like saying she was for performing gender affirming surgery on trans illegal immigrants, agree or disagree with the stance this is a deeply unpopular position)
3. She was tied to the current administration which meant she couldn't distance herself from the inflation issue or attack Trump on age and fitness as much as another candidates not tied to the administration.
One of the more insightful things I heard in the last few days was this generation of politicians got a lesson in how toxic inflation is politically. And inflation wasn't even that bad, but it felt bad.
> The real problem was Biden not dropping out early enough so that they could have a fair selection process.
This is why it's important for the media to hold politicians' feet to the fire - even if they agree with them. I think there was just a murmur[1] of Biden's problems before the catastrophic debate. Imagine if the media had been hammering the administration on this point 6 months prior.
The media and the party had many opportunities to deal with Biden's age. They didn't. And yes, they did shut out Dean Philips, on the basis of exactly this kind of "he's an unknown, therefore unelectable." Well, they went with a known, and now they're paying for it.
Underlying that problem were the Administration thinking they could fool us all into believing that Biden's faculties were unaffected. This was a two-edged sword because it also demonstrated that maybe it doesn't matter so much who is president, at least as domestic affairs go, because the administrative state runs so much on autopilot.
I believe his faculties got substantially worse in 2024. He was a lot more present in speeches in 2021 for example. Mental decline isn't black and white, and you tend to see people as your mental model of how they used to be, so you can look at brief moments of clarity and declare him "well", so many did that. But it doesn't work that way.
"you tend to see people as your mental model of how they used to be"
Pot? Meet Kettle.
I worked in an advanced Alzheimer's ward for about 4 years when I was younger. There is a look that happens in the eyes which is a sure-sign they are effectively gone - it's like a light has been turned off.
(even if they have moments of lucidity, there is a clear switch that is talked about in exactly these terms if you work in these places and are close to them every day.)
Biden clearly had 'the look' back in 2021, and was making enough gaffes for people who maybe aren't as familiar with the signs of mental decline could clearly see it.
Just because you didn't, doesn't mean everyone else was wrong and saw what they wanted to see.
If you are going to argue 'well, that's just like your perspective man' you have to at least see how that same argument can be turned towards you.
You are absolutely right that it is not black and white - I fully believe that back in 2021 he had enough moments of lucidity (which generally are somewhat reliable, which appear to be tied to the circadian rhythm hence 'sundowners') -- so if all you watched were his scheduled speeches I could see how you may have been left with that impression.
There were plenty of other opportunities to watch his decline in real time however.
The gap between his last state of the union (March 2024) and the debate (June 2024) seemed pretty big, and I'm not the only one to say that. But again, it isn't black and white. Maybe the speech format suited him better.
I've followed politics for my whole life and watched tons of Biden speeches going back decades. I was seeing his old "spark" quite a bit well into 2024. The debate, he fell off a cliff, and his follow-up interviews were even worse. 3 months before he competently delivered a barn-burning SOTU address. IIRC a few months before that, he delivered a good NATO speech. He'd slip up minor points but he also did that in 2002. Back then they used to call him a gaffe factory.
Plus with every iota of decrease in the government’s credibility, the relative credibility of candidate’s promises and proposed policies also matter less too in deciding between them…
> thinking they could fool us all into believing that Biden's faculties were unaffected
Yeah, this was a big part of a general trend of the Democrats treating voters like children to be coddled and lied to. Voters don't like being treated as less-than just because they're less educated, and uneducated doesn't mean stupid. They can see through it.
My county went >75% for Trump, and the reason is because Trump is the only presidential candidate in most of our lifetimes who treats working-class voters as his equal. He doesn't talk down to them, he talks like them, and they eat it up.
I think it is stupid to vote based on how a politician talks rather than the expected impact of their proposed policies, though of course I realize that that’s how elections have been decided in practice for as long as representative governments have existed.
The thing is, when you "talk down" to people, chances are pretty good those people's best interested aren't being represented by the one doing the down-talking.
However, if you "talk to" them, you are in a much better position to actually hear and respond to their concerns - with the added bonus of seeming actually human.
The way you frame it seems to imply that people are voting for him because he talks 'like them' while ignoring the 'to' them. I believe the hot leftist term for this is 'code-switching' which just means talking to your audience with language they understand and relate to -- and it's usually portrayed as a virtue, not a defect.
In reality, these people voted for Trump because as a result of him talking to them like equals rather than down to like subjugated servants left many feeling that he was in fact advocating for policies that support their best interests and would be impactful in their day to day lives.
Obviously personality matters more than it should - but in Trumps case the entire media apparatus was single-mindedly determined to make sure they dictate what his personality is, rather than his words or actions. So if anything this win shows that policy matters more than personality at this point anyway.
Now of course, if you see his policies as wrong and evil and dictatorial and the embodiment of fascism, none of that will matter and no lessons will be learned from this absolute rejection of the democrats platform.
You're not wrong about people resenting being talked down to. I've tried to make this point to Democratic (especially progressive) activists for years and years and it's like talking to a dog that just heard a new noise. The fraction of people in the country that actually care about religious culture wars is relatively small; it's one reason why seven states passed initiatives enshrining abortion rights in their state constitutions this go-round. Voters care deeply about concrete things that affect their lives and they're not receptive to someone haranguing them to care about something else entirely.
If you want to catch a fish, you bait the hook with something the fish wants to eat instead of something you want the fish to eat.
He had substantial gains in every single one of those communities, as far as I'm aware. Not 100% confident about Puerto Ricans but I've seen the numbers on the others.
In fact, Latino turnout is pushing half and half, an unprecedented showing for a Republican candidate in that community. That single fact should have you carefully questioning the truth of what you've said.
"A likes B", is not a proof that "B likes A" necessarily.
But If Trump loves Latinos we will probably see a lot of them promoted to important positions. I spot two hispanic surnames in his first cabinet, Acosta and Carranza, both for a short period of time.
Citation, please? I think you're making the error that the media loves to commit, which is to forcibly reinterpret everything as racism.
For example, in the recent Puerto Rican "garbage" kerfuffle, the comedian never said that Puerto Ricans as such were garbage - that was a fabrication of the media. What he said was that the island of Puerto Rico is an island of garbage, which is figuratively true as it has an acknowledged a problem with garbage disposal.
Similarly, Trump never said that Mexicans are rapists, etc.; that's another media fabrication. What he said was that those in America illegally are disproportionately criminals. That may or may not be true, but it's not a statement about Mexicans as a race, but about a particular subgroup set apart by their own behavior of illegal immigration, and notably NOT directed at their cousins in America legally, or still back in Mexico.
Trump says a lot of crap. But if you find it particularly egregious, chances are that it was fabricated by the media. Another very recent example is when the media told us that Trump said that Liz Cheney should be put in front of a firing squad. In reality, the topic of conversation was her attitude toward war, and his statement was that if there were guns pointed at her, she'd feel different about soldiering.
The comedian never said that Puerto Ricans as such were garbage - that was a fabrication of the media.
Of course he did. It's called innuendo, and everyone knew exactly what he was getting at. If you say an entire neighborhood, city or country is garbage, then you're saying that the people living there are garbage, too. There's no point pretending otherwise.
If you disagree, try walking to the other side of town, telling a few residents that "You know, nothing personal, but your whole neighborhood is big mountain of garbage", and feel free to share the results of your research with us.
Trump never said that Mexicans are rapists, etc.
What he did say was that women traveling through Central America en route to the United States were "raped at levels that nobody's ever seen before" (despite there being no evidence of this happening). Which again, amounts to exactly the same thing. Pretending otherwise is extremely naive.
"Puerto Rico is a garbage island" and Trump trowing paper toilet rolls to victims of natural disasters with a clear purpose of humiliating them.
The problem in this thread is that everybody is trying to find what Democrats did wrong, or say that Kamala was not well known. Well, every voter knew who was Trump, and they still voted him, so changing the candidate by "better" does not matter if people wants "worse". If a country can't use the best people that they had ("elite thinks that are better than us") the outcome is predictable.
And we aren't even daring to discuss the elephant in the room that is "Can't be really, (really) sure that they didn't just cheated?
After all wouldn't be the first time, so is legit to speculate about it. Lets imagine [hypothetically] that in an alternate timeline they just learned from past fails and cheated better this time. How that could be disclosed or done? Was mail vote altered?. How could we spot it in this case?. This is the real meat in this discussion.
How strong or weak is a candidate does not matter if a party just can jump over the game rules.
1)Got the platinum plan which provided half a trillion dollars to black communities
2) He also was very involved in the 'first step' act, helping address 'over-incarceration'.
3) He secured funding for HBCU via the FUTURE act, some of which were at risk of closure.
4) Prior to covid, black unemployment was at record lows (5.4%)
I keep hearing it repeated over and over again that black people hate him and he is racist, but I have yet to see a non-hyperbolic example. Whereas Biden is on video making incredibly racist remarks throughout his career like "I don't want my kids to grow up in a racial jungle" and speaking at a 'Grand Cyclops" KKK members funeral... not to mention he was largely RESPONSIBLE for the 1994 Crime Bill, which led to the over-incarceration of black people to begin with.
Surely you have something at least that damning, if you are going to casually label him as anti-black - right? I mean I know that supposedly the fact that the KKK guy later said 'oh no this was bad for my image' absolves him of THAT infringement for some reason, but it doesn't square the other stuff.
I'll keep the rest short, but the point I am trying to drive home to anyone reading this far:
Just because you were told 'trump is super duper racist and hates minorities' by the TV every day, doesn't mean it was reflected in his actions.
Muslims:
Less of substance here admittedly, but he did sign an executive order in 2019 to promote religious freedom WORLDWIDE, which included efforts to protect Muslims from persecution.
Asians:
As a large contingent of 'small business owners' the tax cuts for small businesses were a major boon.
Mexicans:
Honestly the fact that you listed this one is kind of weird - like what is he supposed to do for citizens of another country? Or did you mean Latin Americans but just reducing them to 'mexicans' would elicit the mental imagery you were hoping for?
All the Mexican Americans I know voted Trump, and if you look at the voting history in 2020 he got 32% of 'latino voters' and in 2024 that is looking like a jump to 45%. So roughly half seem to support him.
Puertoricans:
If you are going to exploit a minority group to make a mis-guided political point, at least type out the proper 'Puerto Ricans'... but I see clearly you just want to appeal to the 'coloring box of oppression' and throw some minorities out there and see what sticks.
Again, this group went from 30% supporting trump in 2020 to 40% in 2024 -- something tells me droning on and on about how the 'insult comic' harmed Puerto Rico (who does have a garbage crisis) didn't really have the effect you or the media or whoever formed your opinion were shooting for
Anyway, now that the facts are out I think it would be pretty hard to seriously claim Trump is a racist bigot without also conceding that 'your guy' is demonstrably more so -- but at the end of the day these identify politics games are getting tiresome, and no one is listening anymore.
It doesn't matter if he actually perceives them as his equal (I frankly think he doesn't perceive anyone as equal to him, he appears to be something of a sociopath), what matters is that he successfully treats people that way.
Democrats would be welcome to continue believing voters are children as long as they don't project it so blithely.
> Democrats would be welcome to continue believing voters are children as long as they don't project it so blithely.
I hear you and found it irritating as well. Republicans don't even treat their voters as children, it's far worse in my opinion, and yet they reap all the benefits. I think that if Democrats want to continue treating their voters as children they should go all the way and use the same dirty lies in the republican handbook, at least we could finally say they're all the same.
> who treats working-class voters as his equal. He doesn't talk down to them, he talks like them, and they eat it up.
No, he demonstrably doesn't treat them as his equals - however, you're absolutely right, he does talk to them like they are, and in this sense, it is one of his strengths.
Tangential, but I think a big problem for the world going forward is that modern technology has made the average voter unable to really understand things important to their lives.
People who don't know what RNA, lymphocytes or spike proteins are, are nonetheless trying to make decisions about taking a vaccine.
People who don't understand statistics, can't comprehend graphs and don't understand fundamental physics are nonetheless trying to make decisions about climate change.
See also corporate tax law, Middle East ethnic divisions, AI, pollution, etc.
Our innate intuition is often entirely wrong and disinformation can often make compelling arguments that sound correct to non-experts. I'm not sure what the solution is. We all have to put our trust in others about the many things where we're non-experts, but obviously many people are choosing the wrong people to believe.
>Yeah, this was a big part of a general trend of the Democrats treating voters like children to be coddled and lied to.
Meanwhile the rest of this comment section is talking about how democrats lost because they tried to talk about complex policy issues instead of just giving vague promises. Which is it?
>He doesn't talk down to them, he talks like them, and they eat it up.
"He says it like it is" right next to "But he didn't mean that", and he also literally talked about how devastated he was that the Jan 6 supporters were so shitty looking. He spends all sorts of time shit talking veterans who sacrificed for our country, even when the wars they fought were caused by dumb Republican policy.
It's fucking schrodinger's reality when it comes to Trump.
Trump also lies to voters. For instance every sophisticated analysis of his tariff plan have shown it will do the exact opposite of what he promises. The analysis is as bad as the analysis of Bernie and Warren's Medicare for all plans where magically everything was 50% cheaper.
Given Trump's current faculties, it might show that people are more willing to trust that he probably won't do much either. He'll be on a similar auto-pilot at this age
That's the thing about the left, they think the "machine" could just run things. You actually have to have someone that fires people. Think about it, Even Kim Cheatle had to resign! Biden did not ask for ANYONE to do a good job. No one was in control of that admin, it was a complete mess. If there is an atmosphere of governance/leadership that no matter how shitty a job you do, but you get to keep your job, then no one will care about anything at the top.
You may be right but short to remember the chaos in Trumps administration from 2016 to 2020. It really seemed like the country was about to burst. I hope it won't happen this time though...
> There was not enough focus on economy in a way that actually mattered
Between price controls, tariffs, and excepting tips from taxes, I had no confidence either candidate could pass Econ 101. The proposals can play well politically, but it leaves people who have a basic understanding of economics at a loss of who'd be better.
I think a democrat who could actually distance themselves from Biden, someone who had more leeway to criticize his policies without the obvious "if current policy is wrong, what's stopping you from changing it" question, would have faired better. Maybe not won, but done better. Certainly there was no way Biden would have won re-election and switching was a good choice, but too little too late.
Fun fact: Harris is the second-most liberal Democratic senator to serve in the Senate in the 21st century.
“During this period, there were 109 different Democrats who served in the Senate and cast a sufficient number of roll call votes for a reliable analysis of their ideological position. Of these 109 Democrats, Harris has the second-most liberal voting record. This makes her slightly less liberal than Warren, but more liberal than all of the remaining 107 Democrats, and significantly more liberal than all but a handful.”
The definition of "liberal" being used here by The Hill is "voting with the Democratic Party". Their definitional left end of the spectrum is "bills put up by the Democrats" and definitional right end of the spectrum is "bills put up by the Republicans". These are not actually meaningfully "liberal" and "conservative" as the terms are used elsewhere.
Harris is a party-line voter (pretty obviously, as an insider she's defining the party line in the first place). The Democratic Party isn't leftist and nor is Harris. It's routine in most democracies for elected representatives to be party-line voters.
Liberalism and Socialism are two very different things. Liberalism is squarely in the Capitalism camp. There are no workers owning the means of production under Liberalism.
The DNC's bread and butter are Liberals. Not Socialists. Not anyone even approaching Socialist. Bernie, AOC, etc are SocDems at best. There are no Socialists in office in the United States.
Goal #1 is just an instrumental goal to goal number #2. Socialists underperform moderates in general elections. Hell even Kamala, a terrible candidate who just got trounced by Trump outperformed Bernie (who has literally everything going for him) in his home state by a slim margin. Where as a moderate like Dan Osborn without the backing of the party outperformed Kamala by almost 14%.
Americans don't want to pay European style taxes even for European services. And our public sector is far less efficient than Europe's so we wouldn't even get European level of services for that taxation rate.
In 2016, the Democratic establishment forced Hilary down the voters' throats because, hey, it was her turn, despite her being a terrible candidate with huge negatives.
America, thanks to the Red Scare has no viable leftist momentum. But even in the USA, the Democrats almost chose an open socialist (ie Bernie Sanders) as the Democratic nominee in 2016 rather than Hilary Clinton. I remember saying at the time that the DNC are missing how upset ordinary people are at the status quo. The DNC establishment couldn't care less.
What did the DNC learn from 2016? Absolutely nothing. They blamed Bernie voters (even though Bernie voters overwhelmingly came out and voted for Hilary in spite of their reservations).
Trump only really lost in 2020 because of Covid. Yet Biden's campaign did have a sprnkling of progresive policies that people got behind, so much so that it looks like he got 10-15 million more votes than Kamala got. There's a lesson in that but it won't be learned.
I saw someone describe this election as a Republican primary between a moderate Republican (Kamala) and a far right Republican (Trump). It's accurate.
Kamala's immigration policy was the Trump 2020 policy. She is to the right of Ronald Reagan on immigration.
And that's before we even get to the Middle East policy, which is not only bad policy but it's bad politics. Why? Because it gains her zero votes but loses a bunch. Anyone who hard line suports Israel is voting for Trump (and did). This was foreseeable. People were screaming about it for a year. Ignored.
So what lesson will the Democrats take from 2024? That they need to run even further right.
It's one unlikable candidate after another. How does one fire Democratic party leadership? How is it all democratic to leave the choice of the only "left" candidate be down to... who? Some boomers?
"The public wants a straight white man, and they want something more conservative... I know, let's run Gavin Newsom on a pro-business platform!"
It's like the very categories they use to interpret the world have blinded them.
Jimmy McMillan ("The rent is too damn high!"), for example, was the opposite of several of those things, but, if he were still around, he'd mop the floor with Gavin Newsom in an election.
Ok, but she won the primaries and was denied the nomination. What's the use of complaining that in 2016 she only got it because "it was her turn"? As if being denied what she rightfully won eight years earlier was somehow fair.
I agree. Instead of navel gazing about internal Democratic Party machinations. I would argue it is the policy platform and messaging is what wins. In swing states, the issue that dominated by far was the economy.
Also they've misappropriated words like "leftist" and "socialist" so much that in my interaction with Trump supporters, at Trump events, I hear plenty of actual left and actual socialist policies presented as new ideas or attributed to Trump.
At a policy level, these people actually don't want neofascism, I've interacted with plenty. They really don't.
The Democrats tried to appeal to the hard right voter who found Trump icky. For that they were called socialist so and I know this is hard, people I spoke with associated the word socialism with the policies of Harris
>For that they were called socialist so and I know this is hard, people I spoke with associated the word socialism with the policies of Harris
What the hell are the democrats supposed to do to oppose a party that gets to redefine language however it wants with seemingly great effect?
America spent 100 years demonizing socialism. Not the policies, the word. And now republicans can just deploy it against whoever, because it doesn't have a meaning to US voters.
What possible strategy is there against that? My "democrat for life" (because republicans wanted to fucking murder the french catholics in the area, lookup the KKK in Maine) would vote against "socialism"!
The US is a uni-party state at the federal level. You either play with the republicans, or you will be labeled "socialist", no matter the objective reality, and you will lose.
Well since actual socialist policies like housing, health care, retirement benefits, childcare support, reducing homelessness, infrastructure funding, jobs programs and wage increases are incredibly popular when put in front of voters, the Democrats should just do actual socialism instead of trying to run away from it saying "nuh uh!"
That's if you count the entire coalition and don't take into account likely voters or primary voters.
I'm talking about reliable 90%+ will always vote D people and will show up on election day, the mainstays of the party, which is the biggest bloc of the Democratic Party coalition.
The largest bloc of the coalition are these mainstays, who tend to be older moderates. And almost half of these people are black. That's what I mean by "base". They lead the way of who the party chooses as a candidate.
The proper base is radical centrists and neoliberal ideologues.
A bunch of people sometimes show up but the base is people who think warhawks like Dick Cheney, William Kristol and Henry Kissinger are heroes and chronically wrong people like Francis Fukuyama are brilliant statesmen.
They're already saber rattling "Russia stole it" conspiracy theories about why they lost. Check Twitter.
They're dumbfucks who are deeply committed to the bankrupt political project that brought you Afghanistan and Iraq
That's the group that uses the imaginary "electability" metric to discount anybody which is popular but not aligned with their values in order to push forth their preferred candidate by imagining what they think the average voter is.
The earliest example of this I found was an op ed by Walter Lippmann in 1932 claiming Roosevelt was unelectable as he pushed alternatives like Al Smith. He was part of the failed "Stop Roosevelt" campaign trying to stage a convention coup to swap the candidates.
It's one of the very few times it failed so we have it as a counterexample of what happens.
Roosevelt was pretty electable after all.
These people don't have any interest in that however. It's a ruse. Lippmann, like Woodrow Wilson and Al Smith fit the political category of Liberalism (not how people flippantly use it).
This is the ideology of the people who have more or less controlled the party since.
In 1944 for instance, FDR's immensely popular hand picked successor and VP, Henry Wallace, was swapped out for the more "electable" Harry Truman, who almost lost.
Truman ended up firing Wallace after he wrote a letter predicting a nuclear arms detente between the USSR and the US (what we call the Cold war). The Liberals thought the cold war prediction was so absurd and impossible they let Wallace go - their Francis Fukuyama of the 40s moment (remember, they're ideologues and everything comes from that)
Then the immensely popular Estes Kefauver got swapped out during the 1952 DNC and dark horsed with Truman's pick of Adlai Stevenson and they got 1928 Al Smith like results.
Truman actually wanted to run in 1952 but he got his ass handed to him at the first primary by Kefauver and he dropped out. Then he made the now familiar electability argument at the convention.
When the strategy works it's almost always an unusual setup such as 1992 with Perot pulling away the populist (the neoliberals love showing national polls and ignoring state by state polls which show Clinton would have been defeated in the electoral college) or times like 2020, with Covid.
In more normal times like 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016, 2024 it's a failed strategy. But they don't care. They're committed to the ideology more than winning.
They were trying to push Hilary in 2008 and she sure of hell would have lost to McCain.
The advocacy from all of this is to form coalitions based on popular positions and offer the electorate what they want instead of claiming it's impossible like some scolding nanny and presenting an unpopular political project as the only sensible and logical conclusion.
It's always been a dumb move and when somebody actually does it they win. Even if they're a felon who stole things from the Whitehouse and who clearly is going to trash things, they still win.
The neolibs don't want to win, they want neoliberalism. Almost nobody else does, that's the problem.
The paleoconservatives, as a counterexample, learned how to successfully lie to the electorate. I could write an equally long response mapping their rise from groups like America First and the Black Legion to taking the Whitehouse in 1980. But really, go read Rick Perlstein's 2500 or so pages over 3 books on the topic. He explains it just fine.
Both Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden got more votes than Donald Trump. The Democrats have a better track record of picking the more popular candidate that the electorate wants in recent history.
In fact, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in all four of the most recent elections before this one (from 2008 - 2020, inclusive).
Except maybe for Obama, they were all lousy. Barely beating an incompetent criminal who sold presidential powers as private services and stole stuff from the Whitehouse, that's not impressive.
1. I didn't say it was impressive. Just refuting the claim that the Republican party puts forth candidates that the electorate wants while the Democratic party does not.
2. Nobody has beaten Trump since he's been a convicted criminal, lied about winning an election he didn't, or stole classified documents from the White House. So it doesn't make sense to discuss "barely beating an incompetent [...]" in the context of my comment that refers only to Democratic candidates who ran before those things happened.
The sentiment is Republicans are focused on winning while
Democrats are focused on a deeply unpopular corporate-imperialist political project and scolding people into voting for them.
They will occasionally virtue signal elsewhere but their policies only align with the project
Progressive policies on minimum wage, labor and other things won in Red States once again. Nebraska's minimum wage increase, for instance, went 75-25. 60% for Trump, 75% for minimum wage increase.
It's important to realize the Democrats have no interest in those. Absolutely zero.
Their project is bowing down to companies like Wells Fargo, Equifax, Lockheed Martin, and General Motors and that's it.
You've been sharing this exact narrative all over the thread, which makes me think that you aren't really replying to my comment so much as you're just finding any pretense to share this same opinion again.
> The sentiment is Republicans are focused on winning while Democrats are focused on a deeply unpopular corporate-imperialist political project and scolding people into voting for them.
In the U.S. we are, for all practical purposes, stuck with two choices. Some people will vote for one side, while some people with vote against the other side. But, here you're claiming that people are voting for Republicans because they like them and people are voting for Democrats because they are being "scolded" into it. That is just you superimposing your opinion/analysis on to things. The only objective measure is that, until this election, Democrats consistently got more votes than Republicans. Period. You can read whatever tarot cards and tea leaves you want to figure out why.
> They will occasionally virtue signal elsewhere but their policies only align with the project
>
> Progressive policies on minimum wage, labor and other things won in Red States once again. Nebraska's minimum wage increase, for instance, went 75-25. 60% for Trump, 75% for minimum wage increase.
>
> It's important to realize the Democrats have no interest in those. Absolutely zero.
Let's get this straight. Voters in states that are being run by Republicans feel the need to take things into their own hands by going around their elected officials to implement progressive policies, like higher minimum wages. Voters in states that are being run by Democrats have NOT felt the need to add minimum wage increases to their constitutions.
And your conclusion from these facts is that it's the Democrats that don't care about increasing the minimum wage? Are you kidding? I think there's a MUCH more obvious interpretation here, and it's NOT that the Republican party is somehow in a more popular position when it comes to progressive policies...
None of that is born out by the facts. Look at the last few election cycles over on ballotpedia. The hypothesis doesn't hold.
You're just looking at superficial symbols and not substantive policy.
My brother is part of a union, voted for minimum wage increase, posts about evil communist Harris and her DEI woke mob trying to destroy our country. He's cooked.
He thinks Trump is antiwar and will have a federal jobs program.
I've been involved in right wing politics for 20 years because I have been trying to understand these people. How functioning democracies can enthusiastically elect clearly corrupt criminals based on laughable bullshit.
They deal in a world of symbols but at the policy and practice level, the actual ballot measures and positions, it's clear where they actually stand.
They want things like lower housing cost, jobs programs, affordable healthcare, better public infrastructure, increased wages ... That's all socialism. They just think it'll come through some wacky indirect way that doesn't work as opposed to direct and intentional implementation.
I don't know where you live. you got to go interact with the people if you really want to figure them out. Once you look past the scapegoats and boogeymen, it's pretty clear.
The Democrats have abandoned that platform. Arguably the last competent person to do that on a national stage was shot in 1968. You gotta lie to people, have bullshit factories ("think tanks"), media empires.. sitting down and playing classroom doesn't work. The 2024 DSA LA voter guide was 75 pages. I mean holy hell, no wonder they lose.
Because they're a specific political project. Radical centrism is a common term but the "left/center/right" is a bad name. Things are much more complicated.
There was clearly a winning path with say, Bernie in 2016. The state by state Bernie/Trump matchup polling data consistently predicted a clear and decisive victory. Or, maybe Estes Kefauver 1952, or go back to the 40s and Gallup predicted Henry Wallace would have had a 1936 style landslide instead of the squeak they won with Truman.
As a hobby I've poured over archives of primaries, old newspapers, speeches, going back even to Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first VP and how he got replaced.
I continue to claim that any actual left project (as opposed to whatever the propaganda industry is deciding to imagine the left is) would be far more successful under a Republican flag because they aren't as committed to the neoimperialist project.
That's why the Democrats had all the warring Republicans on their side this time.
DNC argued that they are a private organization and can do what they want In "Wilding v. DNC Services Corp." case (2017) in response to screwing the dem nomination from Bernie hands in favour of Hillay
But I come from a long line of white trash, and I am intimately familiar with what they do and do not care about.
They DO NOT care about gay, trans, minority people. At all. Ever. Every single syllable spoken about them only serves to enrage them.
They DO NOT care about Palestinians, except to equate them with ISIS.
Americans want low taxes, low inflation, a 400-foot wall surrounded by minefields on the US-Mexican border, and democrats to shut the fuck up about racism and LGBTQ+.
Are poor white Americans really as terrible people as you say they are? I would usually find that hard to believe, though the results do strongly imply that you're right. What a depressing thought.
I've never felt much sympathy for this take, given the counterpart is being called a groomer, traitor, child murderer, election stealer, deep state benefactor etc.
> the counterpart is being called a groomer, traitor, child murderer, election stealer, deep state benefactor etc.
And when did this behavior start? After Democrats started calling Trump and Co. Nazis, fascists, etc. They just followed the precedence that was set by democrats.
I voted for Harris, and as much as I think a second Trump presidency will damage America, the hyperbole really is tiresome and probably contributed to our loss.
Right, if we simply ignore the plethora of racist things said at trump rallies. Oh, and all the explicitly anti-trans political ads.
People aren't saying this, the GOP is saying this and then people just repeat it back to them. You can't claim you're not anti-trans when the political ads of the candidates you support depict trans women as burly grown men who beat up little girls.
I mean, it's so hyperbolic it would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing.
Me pointing to specific talking points and actual material the GOP provides isn't some type of name calling. I didn't do anything - they produced this. If you're not even willing to believe the GOP when they tell you their platform, why are you voting for them?
Right, me telling the GOP voters what the GOP platform says is the problem. The problem isn't that GOP voters don't understand the platform, or, rather, choose to play stupid about it in a thinly-vieled attempt to hide any bigotry.
I will believe you when the GOP themselves does not say racist things and does not propose anti-trans legislation (coupled with incredibly transphobic propaganda). Until then, it is completely fair and accurate to highlight the bigotry of the GOP. If it bothers you, which I have a bit of doubt it does, but if it does - feel free to vote for platforms that more closely align with your ideology.
You should not be getting offended at me telling you your party's own platform.
I think this is the biggest reason she lost. There's a limit to how much hyperbole (and that's being generous) and lies you can tell about someone before the words lose their meaning and people stop believing everything else you say. Not just from democrats (involved in politics) but the media as well. They made up their mind about Trump (probably via corporate smear campaigns) and were so openly biased against him it was despicable. People (I believe) knew that at best the truth was somewhere in the middle, or knew his whole campaign was being jinxed by very powerful people. And I think this was enough to persuade the swing voters.
> There's a limit to how much hyperbole (and that's being generous) and lies you can tell about someone before the words lose their meaning
For any who didn't get this so far, this is why the 'crowd size' and the height/weight issues (among others) were hit so hard by the left. People don't care about that stuff. What people care about is someone not backing down from obvious lies when we're all looking at the same information. Because of course he's going to lie about the stuff only he gets to see.
indeed as independent i grew tired of the media and all poltical machines/their games in May 2020. Turned it all off and tuned it out as hard to believe and dechipher what the truth is from any side / media.
most people are actually quite reasonable and the identity politics play now has no effect. i am a gay man that voted democrat my entire life until recently, however i don't feel my ideals have changed, i have been left behind by elite snobby people seeking power through division who have corrupted the democratic party. the republicans have their own problems too by fanatic religious and racists types, but it by no means is representative of the average conservative.
> republicans have their own problems too by fanatic religious [...] but it by no means is representative of the average conservative.
65% of the Republicans who participated in a survey by the Pew Research Center said that laws should be influenced by the bible, and 78% said that the United States should be a Christian nation:
Agree. Take the 50-ish million people who cast their vote to Harris/Walz and are eligible (over 35, natural-born, resident for more than 14 years) to be president.
Either one of two things is true:
1. That was the most likely to win ticket possible and the DNC had zero-point-zero chance to win the election.
2. Among those 50 million people is another ticket and/or different platform & messaging that would have resulted in a win for the DNC.
If #1 is true, the problem isn't with the electorate (other than they disagree with the DNC). If #2 is true, the problem also isn't with the electorate.
The problem with democracy is that it's so easy for a demagogue to come to power by pitting the people against each other. The problem with OUR democracy is that this issue is supercharged by our inability to control the outsized influenced wielded by powerful/wealthy parties, foreign and domestic.
It's not a game. If my competitor is putting heroin in their product, is it not fair to point out that the consumers are making poor choices? What would you have me do, add meth to my product?
This is an interesting statement. To follow it, if the problem is the electorate, how do you think you fix that if the electorate is the one who gets to choose.
Do you think it would be better if we used some other system than democracy, so that the electorate don't get a say?
I think the country could use some better guard rails on how campaigns are run and some improvements to how the voting process works. The problem is that the American electorate is experience a constant barrage of targeted misinformation and has long since given up on trying to determine what's real.
They took it seriously enough to change candidates. But again: why is a "just okay" candidate from the Democratic Party not better than a "threat to the free world" candidate from the Republican Party? The double-standard is absurd.
I thought Hillary failing was a clear indictment that America is not ready for a woman to be president. I hate that it’s true, but too much of the American heartland is conservative and plenty of them vote against their own interest (see: abortion contention). To then go ahead with a woman of color, and then have celebrity endorsements that don’t do anything to increase voter turnout shows how out of touch with reality the DNC really is. What a shame, and it doesn’t help that Kamala never had mass appeal. Pete Buttegieg would have been a far better bet, personally speaking.
My understanding from talking to people in states like Indiana and Texas, a good chunk of them don't believe in a woman's ability to lead. If the DNC really wanted to progressive then a gay man is a safer bet than a woman of color just because of how many people in this country are racist / sexist. The safest bet would have been a straight white man that's charismatic and likeable but there's nobody. Gavin Newsom wouldn't have stood a chance either. The party is in dire straits when it comes to representing America.
Yeah, it's bizarre to watch the DNC on the one hand claim that Donald Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime threat to democracy and freedom and on the other hand fail to offer anything to "undecided" voters that might get them to vote Democrat.
My takeaway is that I don't think they actually believe Donald Trump is uniquely bad - it's just messaging.
I'm an independent, but who's going to demand better from the Republican party? Why are Democrats being held to such an incredibly high standard when the standard for the Republican party could not be more obscene?
The DNC doesn't truly provide the means for their party members to actually participate in selecting candidates to the same degree the Republicans do, and therefore they place some kind of party ideal over the democratic participation of their party members. Superdelegates, not holding a caucus primary this time, conspiring against Bernie, all that stuff. It produces manufactured candidates that don't have a real relationship to party members, not an extension of the zeitgeist. They shove square pegs into round holes and wonder why it doesn't fit.
Honestly, anyone who thinks Kamala is perfect at anything other than working the party machine for self-promotion is probably a little too invested to see things clearly.
To be fair and objective, he didn't attempt a coup...
Did he ever tell the rioters to storm the capital?
He literally told them to be peaceful:
"Stay peaceful!"
"I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
Trump is very good at covering his own language and culpability. What were Trump's actions while the mob was storming the Capitol? How long did he wait to even put forth those tweets? In his speech before they stormed the Capitol, he said[2]
"We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore"
but he also said
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
Does saying the latter negate the former in the minds of the mob that had been primed for nearly two months, without real evidence, to think the election had been stolen?
Does it matter that that there's evidence, presented in court, that Trump _knew_ he had lost the election and further knew that attempts to overturn the result were illegal? [3]
We all saw _with our own eyes_ what the mob did at the Capitol that day. There were people there with differing motivations and different understandings of what they were trying to accomplish by storming the Capitol. They've received differing levels of punishment as a result. But, I find it hard to not view the totality of the evidence presented to date and say that Trump wasn't trying to stay in power through unlawful means (i.e. "attempt a coup").
Misinformation. He was actually silent during the insurrection, and he was very strongly encouraged to issue public statements after the attack happened.
He has literally said, and not paraphrasing, to his crowds... "You need to get out and vote, and if everything goes well, maybe you won't need to vote again."
For those curious like I was, he actually said that last May [1] I think though that age is strongly against him, had he been 10 or 15 years younger he could have probably pulled it off.
The context of that was he was addressing a subset of voters (Christians) who didn’t particularly like him but he needs their votes in this elction, possibly due to the perception that Democrats would somehow cheat without a decisive victory.
Trump says a lot of things and does not choose his words wisely. Or maybe he does and these are all dog whistles. I guess we’ll find out.
Another Trump quote taken totally out of context. He was encouraging people who don't normally vote to get out and vote this time.
People who oppose Trump don't do themselves any favors by misrepresenting this stuff. The guy is a ghoul and says plenty of terrible things that don't need misrepresentation to make him look bad.
I suppose this is out of context, too? In reference to Clinton being elected:
> "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks," he said at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., to boos from the crowd. "Although you Second Amendment people ... maybe there is, I don't know."
It seems like it has the necessary context and is without any sort of "misrepresentation".
Your reply explains the "You need to get out and vote" part, but it doesn't explain the "and if everything goes well, maybe you won't need to vote again" part. What context do you believe makes the 2nd part alright?
If you heard this quote without knowing who said it, you would think it is most likely that the speaker meant “vote again for me”. When a politician says “go vote”, it’s normally implied “go vote for me”.
In context, I think it is obvious that is what Trump meant. People that have been told Trump is a dictator that wants to end democracy obviously won’t approach that quote with normal grace they afford others.
Lets say you are right and the correct interpretation is:
"and if everything goes well, maybe you won't need to vote for me again"
Trump would be term limited, so they would not be able to vote him in as president again anyway. That is why this interpretation does not make sense to me.
It would just be a useful reminder of that fact. Remember: you're trying to sell voting to someone who doesn't normally vote. It's easier to sell it as being a one-off thing versus sell them on voting in all future elections.
> It's easier to sell it as being a one-off thing versus sell them on voting in all future elections.
So a promise to permanently and irrevocably change the country? If it is truly one off that is what it would have to be, which is not possible via normal legal mechanisms in the USA.
If one heard this quote without knowing who said it, they would think it is most likely that the speaker meant "If I win, I will make sure further consent of the governed, unnecessary", which is why the quote got the attention it did, and why, to my knowledge, no other US presidential candidate in the entire history of our nation has ever dared utter it.
I can't imagine where they'd get that idea from. Certainly not from Trump saying he'd be a dictator on day one to close borders and a few other things. But not to worry, "after that, I won't be a dictator".
I hope DNC learn from this and let people choose a candidate next time.