• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Republicans have a vision. Democrats have a list of policy proposals. Average people can grok the vision but since they read at a 6th grade level they don’t grok the policy proposals.

    Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      But I was told it was just that our policy proposals weren’t left enough?

      Unironically, you’re right. Most voters don’t vote based on any kind of coherent ideology. They vote on feels.

      God help us all.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            (I wasn’t sure whether to edit my comment or reply to your first post, so I’m putting this here)

            As for people voting on feels: I think that’s always been the case for most people. Most people are of average intelligence, with an average education and average interest in politics. They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.

            And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.

            • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              Clinton 1 and Obama were our last successful Dem candidates. You need a charismatic candidate with a consistent message that speaks to everyone if you want to win the popularity contest. Gore, Clinton 2 and Harris failed on both of those counts. Biden won only because of pandemic and government abuse/mismanagement backlash, he would have lost to Trump in other circumstances.

            • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.

              And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.

              So why’d they vote for a rapist who is in pictures with goddamn Epstein? That’s the part I don’t understand. Are we seriously saying the average (American) is okay with a rapist being president because they like his vibes?

              • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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                9 days ago

                As far as I can tell, it’s not that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala instead voted for Donald. It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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                  9 days ago

                  It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.

                  I honestly think you’re giving them more credit than they deserve. My point is that a _rapist, fascist, cruel, racist, misogynist who has said aloud all the horrible things he will do was running for office and a lot of people just shrugged their shoulders and refused to vote. I can’t imagine that kind of apathy when a fascist is taking over. “Sure Hitler and the Nazi’s are bad, but what am I going to do, vote socialist?”

                  image

                  (Also this because people need to remember he was anti-capitalist as well.)

      • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I want a country where everyone pays less for healthcare. If it can be done for seniors, why not everyone else?

        I want a country where everyone’s private medical decisions remain between them and their doctor, without being cleared by your local, state, or federal representative or by a judge.

        I want a country where everyone who works, pays taxes, and does not commit violent crime or property theft can stay and keep working without having to look over their shoulder.

        I want a country where if you work full time, you can afford your rent/mortgage, put food on the table, start a family, and still be able to retire.

        There’s a vision. Apparently all of these things have become radically progressive leftist positions and are attacked as such by the media and conservatives alike.

        • Mak'@pawb.social
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          10 days ago

          See, the problem with all of these ideas is that they’re at odds with the billionaires’ vision that you slave away in servitude to them, while their imaginary worth line goes up to infinity.

          It’s really nothing more complex than that. And, as soon as the non-billionaire conservatives—your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you pass by every day—wake up and understand that they’re covered by that vision, too, the sooner things get better for all of us.

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            All of these social programs suddenly become much more popular when they are restricted to the majority population. There have been surveys demonstrating this. Another way to see it is to point to places with a lot of those policies, one of the first rebuttals you will receive is a yarn about the homogeneous population, or at least one far more so, in those places.

            So, it isn’t that they think they won’t be covered, it is because so many think it will cover people they don’t want it to.

        • zephorah@lemm.ee
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          10 days ago

          With capitalism, a middle class does not occur organically, it is created by the governing body through subsidies. If you do not subsidize a middle class there can be no middle class. This is fundamental. We really started to feel it in 2015 or so. I called it the squeeze. This tightening grip of not subsidies but further attempts to squeeze more and more blood from rocks.

          Why? Our government has been subsidizing the wrong class for a while now. Trump did kick that up a notch the first time. The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.

          As with a middle class, health care has to be subsidized. The governing body won’t allow richer people to pay the same taxes as the poorest of us so that will never happen.

          And now Elon Musk is promising “hardship” going forward, as opposed to whatever this is the last 4 yrs, on us, the poorest, rather than paying mor taxes himself. Like that would impact his alien ass at all (he’s weirdly shaped, looks like a slightly melted wax museum figure, and was born into so much money he has no idea how humans live, that’s what I mean by alien). So don’t count on it ever happening going forward.

          If you have preexisting conditions expect loss of coverage. And as a fallout from that expect the healthcare system to get slammed with much sicker people trying to find loopholes and other diagnoses so they can actually keep living and working.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.

            It works for the rich. Relatedly, shitty economies where the government pumps tons of cash into rich people’s pockets also work for the rich. They inflate their assets with their additional government handouts and use those inflated asset prices to get loans to buy more mega yachts.

    • SleepyBear@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      How the fuck do democrats win here then? After the Harris/Dump debate i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough. How do you get away with talking about policy but not “sounding like a nerd” to uneducated voters? See I think this is more about the average voter not being educated enough to understand the issues and the policies potential nominees have pertaining to them, or how their lives would be affected depending who/what they vote for.

      • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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        10 days ago

        Start offering policies that help average people. Run on medicare for all. Run on forcing pharmaceutical companies lowering drug prices. Run on building new factories to create solar panels, geothermal equipment, and wind turbines. Run on creating affordable housing and ending corporate landlords. Run on campaign finance reform with a promise of ending political ads that everyone hates.

        The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.

          The entire American political system we have is dependent on big money donors since citizens united. America has been an oligarchy since at least the early 2000s. You will not get a Democratic party with policies that vary wildly from what industrial heads and CEOs want simply by voting (or not) every 2-4 years. And even small deviations from what they want aren’t tolerated by many of the oligarchs (e.g. Elon Musk).

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        9 days ago

        The Democrats don’t win here.

        Just like the Tea Party transformed the GOP, we need a Guillotine Party to drag the Democratic party to the electorate.

    • Jesus@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Republicans also like to defund public schools and or encourage people to go to religious private schools. That way they’re either too dumb to vote for policies, or too indoctrinated to vote for the candidate that isn’t promising Christian nationalism.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      How about do basic stuff that people understand …

      … like tax the hell out of billionaires and use the money on people in the country.

      … stop financing overseas wars and use that free money on people in the country

      … then just keep repeating and blasting everyone that all the money the government is collecting from rich idiots and not spending on war is being spent on everyone … rinse, repeat 10,000 times.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Yep. And there’s precedent for this. (Even though with this Supreme Court precedent counts for jack shit…)

        Every time Bernie got asked a question he’d turn it around to mentioning the top 1% and how they’re fucking us over. And people liked him for it. I had MAGA hat folks tell me they liked him because of it back in 2016.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            Yeah but they wouldn’t say that about anyone else I can think of. And we’re not trying to get MAGA, we’re trying to get people to fucking vote at all.

          • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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            10 days ago

            Because the DNC sceapped those proposals for more neoliberal bullshit that every one hates. People are vocal about what they care about. If people tell me they want steak and i keep giving them tacos, they are going to leave the restaurant and get pizza from the sketchy local joint next door instead.

            • Montagge@lemmy.zip
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              10 days ago

              What proposals for what neoliberal bullshit.

              Also neoliberal policies from a neoliberal party?!? Surely you jest!

              • frosty99c@midwest.social
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                10 days ago

                If a neoliberal party can’t win 2 out of 3 elections against a fascist, maybe they should pivot away from neoliberalism.

                • Montagge@lemmy.zip
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                  10 days ago

                  To what exactly? Neoliberalism is left wing in this shit hole.

                  Don’t say progressive. If that was popular there would be more than two states that have a progressive party.

    • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      There was an era where the nerds placed up a facade to give the illusion of meritocracy and measured governance. Unfortunately that just drove a wedge between people and the “ruling class.” When it came out that bill was getting blowies in the oval office people’s brains broke and the facade was forever tarnished. Today, democrats still hide behind it and pretend like we don’t know they piss and shit like everyone else. The Republicans decided to erect a monument to trump their lord and savior, the only thing keeping them from being a foot note in the history books.

      We need to look to our founders. Flawed in every way possible they did have one idea that we should still cherish. They believed in an america they could make by their own hands. They did, it sucked, it was also amazing somehow. We should be like them but be just as kind to our future as we are to the present.

    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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      10 days ago

      Do they have a vision? The scary thing about Trump that it’s uncertain what he will do the next 4 years. Will he undo democracy or keep it? Will he continue to support Ukraine or not? Will he leave NATO or not? Will he impose those tariffs or not? Will he apply project 2025 or not? Will he impose a federal abortion ban or not?

      Kamala had a clear but boring vision: 4 more years of the current status quo. Nothing new will happen.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        It’s right there on the hat: Make America Great Again.

        And the neat part is it’s so vague that people can project whatever they want onto it.

        • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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          10 days ago

          Well that part I’m aware of, but that’s more of a slogan rather than a vision. It doesn’t tell what has gone wrong with America and how to fix it. Trump says a lot of things that sometimes contradict each other or may or may not be taken seriously, so it’s difficult to piece together a concrete vision.

          They have a concept of a vision so to say.

    • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.

      If you told me this was a quote from Ideocracy I would not have doubted you for a second.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      you are incorrect.

      Republicans are scared of brown people, and they cried about it.

      democrats closed the border, reformed border control, and have set up a rational immigration system to allow as many legal immigrants into the country as the system can provide for and integrate into the US economy.

      Republicans are scared of vaccines, and they cried about it.

      democrats got vulnerable populations vaccinated.

      Republicans are afraid of other countries exports, and they cried about it.

      democrats increased employment, supported domestic businesses and funded domestic production.

      Republicans quake in their boots, democrats take action.

    • SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Democrats have a list of milquetoast, bottom of the barrel obvious stuff that they hope could show bipartisanship, and even then they half-ass it. There is real fixing that needs to get done, but the side they isn’t actively making things worse has no will to actually do it.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Democrat: *pushes up glasses, adjusts pocket protector* “Um, we propose to implement a 2-10% excise tax on health insurance plans which will allow us to increase access to Medicare by 16% according to these models.”

        Voters: “I just want health care.”

  • the_brownie@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    Great. Glad to see that we’re learning nothing here. If I wasn’t pushed into despair by the election results, seeing progressives respond this way to the loss might push me over the edge.

    We are a bigoted country, no doubt. But, our working class is struggling. People are inherently good, inherently bad, brilliant, dumb, and all sorts of combinations of those. Material conditions, messaging, and framing all work together in bringing out these different sides of ourselves both at the societal and individual level.

    Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right. If we decide to roll over and die because we’re too chickenshit to fight, too cynical to have any imagination, and too self-pitying to even lift a finger, the most vulnerable of us (which includes me) will perish.

    We HAVE to be better than this.

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      These aren’t progressives. These are liberals. These are the same people who, when they were told 8 years ago that economic anxiety made voters turn to Trump, mocked them, saying, “Oh, I guess the economy made them racist!”

      Yeah, racism and misogyny played a huge role in this election, but people don’t vote for a guy who promises to burn everything down when they’re doing well. I’d have thought this time, given that the Democrats lost ground with both black and Latino voters, they might finally have to acknowledge that their failures are due to more than just bigotry. I’m starting to doubt that, though…

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I’m can only follow this logic so far though. The problem is they are better off, the economy is better, but how do you get people to see it, believe it?

        The obvious example is inflation, not that President really has much control over it. We’ve gone through a wave of inflation, triggered by causes during the previous president’s term. It generally trended down during Biden’s term and is now close to what we’d normally expect.

        • many people see the accumulated inflation of four years during Biden term and are frustrated by how much more expensive everything is

        • another perspective is inflation was triggered in Trump’s term, it took four years to get under control, now people voted to do it all over again rather than stay the course that got it under control. Staying the course is boring

        • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Analyzing the economy is a measure of how well the capitalist engine is running. Is the supply being met by demand (perpetually rising GDP)? Is everyone contributing to growth (low unemployment, growing market caps)? To focus on these points is capitalism, what the corporations want. This is necessarily paired with trickle-down economics to explain why you should give a shit about stocks you don’t own going up.

          You won’t ever see measures of the economy focusing on people. Are the workers able to pay rent and bills and contribute to savings? Are workers going hungry? Does the minimum wage provide an acceptable minimum standard of living? Are wages keeping up with inflation? Are workers accumulating their own wealth? To focus on these points is populism, what the people want.

          The economy is doing great! Corporations are posting record profits every quarter. But workers are getting fucked harder every year. People are mad because their life isn’t easy and they can’t afford a stable existence. When lots of people are unhappy, they want drastic action. 20k on a 500k house and a child care credit ain’t it. Deporting 20,000,000 people and “draining the swamp” is drastic. It’s objectively stupid, but at least it’s action and people are thirsty for anything because what we’re currently doing isn’t working.

          If anyone wants to win the next election, all they need is a populist platform. For Dems, that’s progressivism and an infatuation with unions. It’s us (the people) against them (the corporations). For Rs, it’s a straightforward culture war. It’s us (the true patriots) against them (the social outgroups).

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Some of the most important measures of the economy are focussed on people. There’s a huge industry to measuring inflation as literally the costs that people bear, and yes there are various measures of income, typical families, job trends. How can anyone miss the concern over the last decade or so about the growth of low paying service jobs over better paying more specialized jobs?

            “Draining the swamp” is surely one of the catchiest of many catchy slogans coined by Trump. We’re all frustrated about how much of our income disappears into government especially when we don’t understand where it goes. But the goal people think they’re voting for is entirely inconsistent with gutting agencies that help them, with the rampant cronyism, corruption, corporatism. Essentially every fact and four years of experience show the reality as entirely the opposite to the myth.

            But yeah, I see the need for populism. Clinton had it, Obama had it, but so many Democrats can’t get across the finish line without it, regardless of intentions or capability. I had a lot of hope for Harris and Walz as campaigns built their popular images, but then it fizzled

        • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          The problem is they are better off, the economy is better, but how do you get people to see it, believe it?

          The thing is they’re not. Yes, inflation is down, but that doesn’t mean that prices are going down. It means that the rate increase goes down. So if you were living paycheck to paycheck in 2019, you are doing objectively worse in 2024.

          This isn’t new either. Over the last 30 years, the middle class has collapsed, the cost of living has gone up, the bottom of the manufacturing industry has fallen out, and wages have remained stagnant. Sometimes when Democrats have power, things get marginally better, but it’s more accurate to say that things get worse more slowly. Donald Trump promises radical change, and the Democrats don’t. They can no longer survive on this impotent half-measures like subsidies for small business loans. They need something radical, like a New Deal, if they ever want to win again.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            when Democrats have power, things get marginally better, but it’s more accurate to say that things get worse more slowly. Donald Trump promises radical change, and the Democrats don’t.

            I understand simmering frustration, but yes: we had gradual change happening, but fell for the emotional outrage, the promise of radical change. And this is despite all evidence of how much is false or inconsistent, how much will be completely ignored, and above all else how much will make things worse for most of us. Potentially much worse

            • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              Yeah, to be absolutely clear, Trump’s change is a lie and he will be objectively worse for everyone on everything (unless you are very, very wealthy). I also think things would start to improve for the working class gradually if the voters had given Harris another four years. But the losses to the working class have been huge, and the recovery is always anemic, so things are usually a net loss for people.

              Look at the Obama administration; he decided to bail out banks instead of homeowners after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. People argue over whether or not that was the right move (and for the record, I think that was a really fucking bad move), but pretty much everyone agrees that the recovery that he created was pretty slow. The economy did recover though, and by the end of his term, it was actually very strong. Now, if you were someone who weathered the crisis alright, great, you’re 401K got better! But if you lost your home in the mortgage crisis, got laid off, lost your life savings…that slow recovery killed you, and when Democrats start telling you that the economy is good, you’re gonna wonder what the fuck they’re talking about.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right.

      And the joke is that Dems will still lose on these terms, because they are already branded the Woke party. Might as well try and out-racist the KKK as the GOP. It’s not a race Dems are in a position to win. All they can do is shed even more of their base to Jill Stein and Uncommitted.

      • sudo@programming.dev
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        8 days ago

        What’s hilarious is the Dems are branded as woke not because of their politicians but because of their average voters are. You can convince a conservative voter that a (D) politician is not woke but they still won’t vote for him because only woke people vote (D). Dems would have to purge some of their most fanatical supporters to win those conservative votes.

        Imagine suggesting the Democrats tell people with the “In this house we believe…” signs to take those signs down. For some reason people are taking this suggestion seriously instead of immediately dismissing it as either inane babbling or deliberate sabotage.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Dems would have to purge some of their most fanatical supporters to win those conservative votes.

          That appears to be exactly what they did, as of last week

    • Moneo@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      The response by so many people has been pathetic. Liberals are learning nothing.

    • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men

      Older white men were the demographic that stayed home because they didn’t want to vote for a woman who had identical policies to the man they previously voted for.

      Pretending like white men sat out exclusively because of “inflation” while no other demographic did is probably not the takeaway

      That being said we absolutely need to kill the Duopoly, hopefully a third progressive party can exist with the Dems sucking corporate cock

      • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
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        9 days ago

        I keep telling myself I won’t comment on political posts, and yet here I go again.

        If we stop looking at non-voters, and start actually looking at voters, you’ll see that Trump gained support among both women and non-white voters. Why is nobody asking about that? I would rather they have stayed home than given Trump the extra vote, but all you hear about now is low turn out in white men. She lost in almost every bloc because she didn’t inspire any of the dem base. High turnout skews dem and she was just not an inspiring candidate.

        Kamala had no time to campaign, was an unknown to voters despite being the VP, made no strides to distance herself from Biden, and failed to run a cohesive strategy. People just were not excited to vote for her. Do I think a popularity contest is the best way to elect the president, no, but that doesn’t change the system that we have.

        The race was extremely close, and the fact that Trump GAINED in POC and women blocs probably speaks more to the campaign that was run rather than America’s inherent sexism or racism. Just to be clear, America is sexist and racist, and people can be self hating or whatever, but she GAINED points in the white male category and lost in the black male category. Sure, white men should have shown up, but it’s very easy to cry “racism/sexism” if you ignore all the other people who didn’t show up or the people who DID show up and voted trump. She might’ve run as well as she could have, but it was a bad campaign.

        There was a 5% loss in young voters. I wonder how energized they would have been not just to vote but to donate and volunteer had she run a different campaign. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback, but Joe ruined the chances of a dem winning this year.

        If dems still want to blame racism/sexism, then I don’t want to see any dems support POC/women in primaries. Dems should only run white males and if I see a POC/woman being pushed again I will assume they want to sabotage that year. I expect “I’m not voting for a POC/woman candidate” to be a well regarded and widespread dem opinion for practicality sake. Either stop running them ever, or admit they can win with better campaign strategies. You can’t have it both ways.

        Going off these numbers: https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turnout-election-demographics-trump-harris/3762138/

        • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.worldOP
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          There was also a significant portion of black men who voted Trump because they were misogynists. It’s just a fact.

          But that’s still not discounting the fact that someone with Bernie’s message and goals would have won in a landslide.

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            I can’t speak to the misogyny, but to your second point, I try so hard to not mention him because your opinion gets disregarded in dem spaces as soon as you bring him up. He did everything right and dems would rather lose than actually be progressive.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men

        Jill Stein won 22% of the vote in the fiercely contested city of Dearborn, Michigan, according to a projection from NBC.

        Kamala Harris won 28%, while Donald Trump won 47%, according to unofficial results from the city clerk, reported by the network.

        Metro Detroit is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large proportion of them living in Dearborn. The city—which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin in 2020—has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

        • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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          Third party canidates did not receive enough votes to sway anything this election.

          If every third party voter voted dem nothing would be different

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            Third party canidates did not receive enough votes to sway anything this election.

            The biggest spike was in non-voters. Around 16M - overwhelmingly Dems - stayed home between 2020 and 2024.

            Dems were successful in scaring voters off the Green Party. Greens got 1.4M voters in 2016 and a mere 636k voters in 2024.

            But that was just a tiny slice of the overall atrophy of progressive support.

            Socialism or Barbarism… We’re making a choice

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men

        Sorry, can I have a source for this? How could they determine the gender of non-voters?

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            I disagree with your sides talking point that Biden and Harris were doing anything for Palestinians or were about to. And Harris could have stopped the weapons shipments in the last few days of the election and gotten the progressive votes she needed. She opted not to and chose defeat.

    • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.worldOP
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      Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right.

      Nobody is saying that.

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        I mean… it’s hard to interpret “the problem is her messaging is she didnt come across as a white man with grievances…” as anything but claiming sexism and racism. There’s hyperbole there, but blaming the loss on those factors assumes that people couldn’t have possibly abstained from voting, or voted against her without those factors. I don’t believe that’s the case.

        Too frequently we call people these things and basically lock them out of discussion. For example, if you called me a racist, I’d no longer trust anything else you said to me because I know myself and clearly you like telling people things you know nothing about. I think that exchange happened with a bunch of people, which is why there were so many people who just assumed many of the things said about Trump were just political lies made to discredit him. After they experienced the same hyperbole themselves.

        That said… theres alot of bigots out there too.

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    I understand the poster may be very emotional because of the election. Yet, This strikes me as incredibly reductive.

    I think she lost because, she represents the continuation of the current administration. People want to break from the status quo, even if that means harming society to do it.

    The dems need a left wing populist, asap.

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      I keep hearing this ‘status quo’ excuse but no one ever explains what the fuck that’s supposed to even mean.

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Unpopular, uncharismatic, neoliberal establishment candidates that are pushed down the throat of democratic party voters (Hillary, Biden, Kamala)

        • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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          The exact same DNC also pushed Obama down our throats who had the same policies as all those canidates, and that turned out great

          • MataVatnik@lemmy.world
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            Great? Wasn’t it that Obamas ambivalence towards lower offices and rise of identity politics that ushered an era of Republican obstructionists and things barely got passed, if at all?

            Bernie would’ve mopped the floor with Trump. But instead we got the wife of a pervert who has the charisma of a hangnail, and who on top of that, actively promoted Trump in Republican primaries because she thought he’d be an easy candidate to beat.

            Ignoring, gaslighting, belittling, and berating the electoral base is not how you gather support

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            Obama vowed to transform health care and he did. Biden Harris did not have any policy aspirations at all.

            This should teach the DNC that if you run on even a modest progressive policy that even the republicans want, you will win. And if you dont, you will lose. You dont even need to stop calling the progressives names, you just need to make peoples lives better and more Just.

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              Obama vowed to transform health care and he did. Biden Harris did not have any policy aspirations at all.

              This just isn’t true at all

              Process reality

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          I have no idea what people mean by neoliberalism, since it seems to be different every time, but there are an awful lot of article from actual experts, saying the opposite. As a simplification, neoliberalism is associated with reduced regulation of businesses at the expense of people, yet so many of Biden policies have been strengthening the role if actual people for the first time in decades. Do you have any idea how many decades it’s been since a president gave real support to unions?

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            I’ve had this argument with self described progressives several times. They do not understand what Neoliberalism is, even when linked 200 level ideologies study material about it. They want it to mean “Secretly the worst conservative”. It’s an outgrowth of the idea that both parties are the same. As such they must lump liberals in with actual Neoliberals.

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            Personally I see it as politicians that pay lip service to social causes while being corporate capitalist shills. Amazon, Google and other corporations are all bigger than ever, fleecing the employees and gouging the customers while holding a monopoly on essential services.

            Sorry im worked up, but being sincere for a second, was there an attempt by Biden to break up these megacorp? And to stop price gouging? And increase pay to prioritize workers instead of share holder value?

            I still believe that democrats are better for the workers than Republicans. And Trump will absolutely wreck the economy. But the democratic party has only done the bare fucking minimum

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              I also wish they acted more quickly, more assertively instead of always playing centrist, however real change can be slow and gradual. I do believe it’s the nature of the beast, not just cautiousness.

              • Real change requires stability over time, not instant gratification
              • flipping back and forth every four years can only make things worse, and has
              • real change requires foundational change, but also needs to be incorporated throughout.

              For example, bringing back unions may be one of the most important ways to restore a healthy worker class, but they don’t just appear. Biden gave more support for unions than any president I’ve seen. It’s especially notable that he was criticized for tempering efforts to bring back manufacturing, to build an electronics supply chain, a renewable energy supply chain, with union requirements. They would take time and need continued nurturing but could have started faster without the union commitment. In this vision, as that manufacturing rose over the years, unions would rise with it, and help rebuild a healthy working class. But you can see how this would take years. It will never be sudden improvement, exciting turnaround, but if we were able to build strong unions, it will not just grow better conditions for most of us, but reinforce that, strengthen that, keep it alive over the inevitable regressive backlash.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              Biden’s administration got an anti-mononopoly ruling against Google and had no plans to stop there.

        • Halosheep@lemm.ee
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          I’m aware of the phrase’s meaning. It’s not being used this way from what I can tell.

          Seems to me that conservative policy is the status quo. Almost by definition, ‘conserving’ the way things are, or what they believe it is. As a general trend, the us has leaned much more conservative. This is the status quo.

          Changing, progressive policy is literally antithetical to the status quo. A woman in office is not the current state. So why do people say that the dem candidate is the status quo if that makes no sense?

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            There’s definitely an element of misinformation here. Too many people are rebelling against a “status quo” that never existed

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Uh no. You don’t just give up and blow up the country. Even if he gets to full authoritarian you’d need the peaceful structures of organization to have any chance at doing more than dying at 3 in the morning. It’s not sexy to Americans but the answer is the same as always, organize, protest, slow stuff down in critical work areas, and go further only if it’s absolutely required. Until he actually does anything you don’t even have a moral high ground, you’re just going to get called a terrorist, and rightly so.

      • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        Literally all you post is political rage-bait. How is the weather in Russia these days comrade?

        This kind of shit is exactly what Russia wants. Divide the US, push violence, destabilize the country. We have paths forward that do not involve violence. Now is the time to push for ranked choice voting to allow 3rd party candidates a real chance. The DNC has been out of touch for years, and ranked choice voting will allow us to side step them and choose a candidate with a real chance.

        Start small and local. Connect with your local representatives. Have a conversation about ranked choice voting. Come up with a plan that we can achieve together to make this a reality.

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            It’s a good idea but it’s so frought with controversy. I’ve yet to see the momentum needed to force it through. Like, show me you can orginiaze a national, or even just statewide, strike and I’ll start believing.

            The fact that we have this tool that no one will even look at is so discouraging. Show these Trumpers what a failed economy looks like when the people on rhe raw side of the deal throw their hands up.

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          You don’t get it. The Russians are getting what they want because the DNC has done nothing to stop it. You can keep fighting uphill and I’ll continue to lend my vote but you get nothing else. Sorry.

          If you want my suggestion don’t put your political capital into the DNC. They dont know how to spend it. Form a new party and make them suffer. Tea partiers did it and reshaped the GOP. You won’t have the funding of right wing billionaires at first but if you get enough momentum they will be pouring in to try and shape things.

          It’s all for naught though, once you start getting cheated out of every victory you fight for you’ll start sharpening the knife too.

    • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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      A populist isn’t gonna save you from the toxicity of your society and the stupidity of your people. You guys deserve what you get

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    The problem is the Democrats are scared to push back hard, they try to move to the right to capture moderate voters, and then lose 10x as many voters to the left who don’t care enough to vote because the Democrats are trying to make concessions with absolute lunatics.

    The DNC seems like it just doesn’t have a spine. Doesn’t matter now, it’s all fucked and it’s too late.

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        She literally allowed him to walk the streets for 4 years after an insurrection, accepted endorsements from war criminals, and snubbed her nose to millions of people who were aghast at a genocide being committed on the other side of the world by a government that supported her opponent with every tool it had.

        This defeat was not guaranteed, it was earned.

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          She literally allowed him to walk the streets for 4 years after an insurrection

          What does this mean? What power do you think the Vice President has over the prosecution of Donald Trump?

          Fucking tired of seeing this shit. People literally have no idea how their own government functions.

      • cybermass@lemmy.ca
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        Honestly it’s fucking not. Call him a rapist pedophile, call him Jeffery Epsteins other woman, say some shit that will piss him off and once he’s mad he crumbles on stage and has a melt down.

        Like seriously, they try hard to be polite and I get she was a prosecutor but that doesn’t mean she has to talk like a lawyer when calling out a child raping, tax evading, democracy overthrowing felon.

      • Sop@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        Not if she promotes similar fascist ideas like deporting immigrants and funding genocide.

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    She didn’t? I believe that’s exactly what she came across as when she said she wouldn’t do anything different if she were to call the shots instead of Biden and also reminded everyone she signed off on most of his decisions. Sure, she lost votes because of sexism as well, but instead of fresh air she chose to bring stale coffin smell to the fart battle and lost to the stink Trump was all too happy to discharge. And that coffin did smell of a old white dude, let me tell you.

    That being said, for such a gigantic loss against someone as obnoxious as Trump, there had to be a lot of factors in play. Sexism and stagnation of the party being just a tip of the iceberg.

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    Yeah let’s blame white supremacy and ignore the fact that the democratic candidate lost FOURTEEN MILLION voters this election cycle.

    • SquatDingloid@lemmy.world
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      It was more like 11mil, and were almost exclusively white men who just didn’t vote this time after they chose to vote in 2020

      • kreskin@lemmy.world
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        11mil, and were almost exclusively white men

        Got any proof of that? From what i heard she lost 15% of the hispanic vote, women didnt turn out as well as expected, lost 7% of the 18-29 vote, and she even lost some on the black vote. She lost in every demographc but you are trying hard to pin it on one group. So lets see you back your data up.

        • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
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          Well white men are a majority in this country period so any aggregate population is probably going to be mostly white men and of course the only possible reason a white man might sit out is because he’s sexist and racist. I’m a liberal looking for anything to blame but my candidate’s feckless campaign and to me that’s just math. 🤷🏾

          So I guess it’s finally our turn to get out the pitchforks and start going after our fellow americans while somehow retaining the moral high ground over MAGA.

          /s

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            I mean yeah,

            If they voted for the man who had the exact same policy but not the woman then the only difference is the sex

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        Oh I’m sorry, only 11 million, my bad. That suddenly decided to become white supremacists out of nowhere when they had rejected trump the first time. It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?

  • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    The only messaging problem was taking the momentum of the debate and shitting on it with the right-wing heelturn the moment the Cheneys said “never Trump”.

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    Harris is missing 10 million votes that Biden got in 2020. It looks like many of those 10 million were suburban men who didn’t vote Trump, just sat on the couch. misogyny is a viable explanation for this because otherwise you’ll have to explain why Biden set the left on fire, or why Biden was so inspirational to men.

    She lost the scrote vote, simple as that.

    • niucllos@lemm.ee
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      Some of it is 100% misogyny, I think some of it is also that 4 years ago the country was literally on fire in a lot of places and Trump was obviously to blame for a lot of it, so it didn’t matter so much to apathetic voters if Biden’s messaging was weak. Kamala may have won then too, though misogyny would have made it closer. Now the country is much more stable but still not great, but Democrats are in charge and therefore obviously to blame, so people who largely haven’t been affected negatively by the Republicans (e.g. men, especially non-desperately-poor white men), are apathetic again

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    8 days ago

    Democrats continuing to insist they need to get more racist instead of appealing to their base.

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      Is that your takeaway, genius? Was that how Biden won over Trump FOUR SHORT YEARS AGO, by appealing to the democratic base?

      Funny, I don’t remember the base being pleased with Biden’s record AT ALL. But… he was a white male, wasn’t he, hm?

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        You seem to have a very foggy memory of Biden’s campaign because he did make numerous concessions to the Bernie wing. His failure to deliver on those promises didn’t mean he didn’t make them.

        On the other hand Harris openly flaunted her conservative endorsements and campaigned with Liz Cheney. Her strategy was explicitly to court moderate republicans who voted Trump anyways. Perhaps she would’ve peeled off more moderate republicans if she was a white man but that was my point. You want the democrats to appeal to more racists and you’re insisting that they do that by being more racist.

  • DukeHawthorne@lemmy.world
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    Harris’ messaging problem is the same problem Hilary Clinton had in 2016. Instead of appealing to the base, she went after Republicans and just assumed the left would be on board. The Democratic establishment does this every time, move closer to the center and right and tell the leftists shut up and go away.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      The average Democrat is a well off person living in the suburbs who doesn’t want higher taxes but doesn’t want to appear racist.

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        I wouldn’t call that the average general democrat voter but that for sure is the average democrat primary voter by like 90%.

  • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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    Keep pushing this message. Keep doubling down. I’m looking forward to the fact that most of you learn nothing, you insist the other side is just dumb, and you’ll scream so from your lungs as 2028 is an even bigger bloodbath for the Dems.

    California just voted to raise gas prices in CA by a full dollar in response to trump winning. Can’t make this shit up.

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        Well, have you been watching the AZ senate ballot counts? So weird, they’ve started counting hundreds of ballots that only had votes for the Senate race, and not filled in for the house or the president.

        The idea that votes can be printed and harvested is not a conspiracy theory. I think in 2020, 20k votes for Biden were printed and counted at 3 in the morning, and anyone who tried to point out how sus that was, was immediately branded a voter denier and a conspiracy theorist.

        And I’m a smart gal, not a smart guy. :)

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    The problem with Kamala Harris’s messaging was that she didn’t have millions of Xitter bots scaring people into voting for her.

    • peppers_ghost@lemmy.ml
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      She had like triple the money trump had in his campaign and still got her ass kicked. She might have just sucked shit as a candidate ya know

      • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz
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        I do know, but I don’t think “sucking shit” is a specific or useful analysis.

        I defer to JD Vance immediately threatening Europe if they make any move against Xitter… and Bernie Sanders speech covered much of the rest.

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      And she also had noone using millions of dollars to bribe voters to go vote, but only voters of a specific flavor. Somehow that was deemed legal, the usa has basically become a banana republic.

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    10 days ago

    Okay but this post would imply Trump is white.

    I’d need to crank up the color temperature on his photos quite a bit to achieve that.

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    The problem with Harris is the problem of all liberals: they don’t understand the problems liberalism is causing. Fascism offers terrible solutions to those problems, and thus it wins.