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I'm just gonna be blunt and accept the downvotes here:
All this "the Democrats failed because [blank]" arguments are just blame shifting. We all saw what Trump was about, what he did while in office, and especially what he did after he lost that office the first time. We all know what kind of threat Trump represents to the future of this country.
The fact that (up to) 15 million Democratic voters stayed home and/or voted 3rd party is a failure on our part to take that threat seriously.
Yup.
You can blame the Democrat party all you want. Wasn't their fault. It was American voter's fault.
We are an unbelievably stupid electorate. And the suffering we're about to experience is no one's fault but our own. I'd like to say we'll learn from it. But we won't. Buckle up. We're about to embark on a long decline.
No we all most certainly don't. I can't tell you the number of conversations I have had with people on both sides of the political spectrum haven't heard of project 2025 or many of his policy proposals. The ones who have heard about them mostly don't seem to believe then.
The most common response to "watch out we're marching towards fascism" is always some variant of "This is America. It can't happen here"
Not really sure what more could be done to inform people of the dangers of Project 2025. Maybe repeating it ad nauseam caused people to tune it out or something?
There's always going to be a large majority of the population who is not informed about anything and just vote on vibes. Biden & Harris took a lot of the post-Covid economic heat that many countries are dealing with now, and isn't unique to the US or specific policies. That's causing bad vibes and rejection of incumbent leadership everywhere.
Yep.
The average person can't be bothered to do their civic duty and look up stats/facts in order to make educated decisions.. It's all about emotion. And we all know how people make good choices when emotional.
We're good and fucked. Hope everyone's ready.
Repeated ad nauseum? Only in the furthest left areas of the Internet did I hear it mentioned more than in passing. It was a very brief series of news posts. It came up in the debate, and he managed to brush it off as not being his. And everyone just let him get away with that answer.
Do you have any idea how many mailers I got about "stopping the liberal agenda"? If there had been as many, or any at all about P25, maybe people would've been appropriately concerned
Perhaps I'm just in an echo chamber? John Oliver spent a full half hour of his show outlining it all and that has 10M views on YT and an estimated half a million who watched it live. ^1^
This is the most baffling thing, he can do every career suicide move and get away with it.
1 - https://ustvdb.com/networks/hbo/shows/last-week-tonight/
Most people werent aware of it.
And of those who had heard the name, some number of people assumed it was nothing more than yet another impotent rage document from some fringe group that was so outrageous as to be beyond the possibility of actually doing.
Sadly search interest for Project 2025 only peaked after the election. I assume of the people that heard about it, they either assumed Trump wouldn't be elected, and they therefore don't need to care about it, or think they'll be unaffected if Trump is elected. Now they're seeing the ideas outlined in there and probably freaking out.
As they should be.
Hopefully they'll wake up enough by mid-terms to vote for some level of damage control.
I hope we have mid-terms
But WHY?? This is the one thing I just can't wrap my head around. How were all those warnings and the fact Trump would run again not enough?? Understand that I am trying to make sense of this election from an outsiders perspective. But it feels like I'm trying to uncover a magic trick.
Because a bunch of whiny little bitches decided to become single issue voters.
"WAAAAAH, PALESTINE!!!"
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the guy that will allow Palestine to turn to dust becomes president.
"WAAAAAH, STOP GIVING MONEY TO UKRAINE!!!"
Fails to understand that we're doing that to keep our adversary from expanding their borders and threatening Europe/NATO.
"WAAAAAH, DEMOCRATS DIDN'T ENSHRINE ROE INTO LAW!!!"
Refuses to vote or votes 3rd party, guaranteeing the party that literally repealed Roe controls all aspects of our government.
The real answer to your question is that Americans are STUUUUUUUUPID. Clinically stupid. Uneducated. Uninstersted in informing themselves responsibly. STUUUUUUUUUPID.
Which is why we'll suffer and are likely to be locked in to a long period of serious decline. Sucks to be us.
In a nutshell:
Bullshit.
I voted for Harris, but I understand why people gave up.
I have cancer, under Harris, I would have still had a struggle to afford my medications AND work at the same time. As it was, I was condemned to a life of poverty to afford my medications, choosing to not have a job so I could get the ACA to cover my $18k a month medications. Debating on whether I should be condemned to the poverty of disability or continue trying to find a way to work.
I will die under Trump, but for a lot of people, the prospect of just waiting and waiting for help that will never come? They got tired and were willing to watch it all burn because what's the fucking point if no one is coming to save you either way?
In a way, at least my death here will be swift instead of stressful-to-the-end-of-my-life-in-poverty. I can see why some people chose that. I'm 43 and I'm exhausted, I'm sure there's more who are even more exhausted than me, because cancer didn't hit me until I was 42 (I guess cancer is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything), and many many many people were suffering under similar issues far younger. So they just chose to abandon the Dems because the Dems abandoned them.
The Dems were busy trying to get WAR CRIMINAL Dick Cheney on their side like that matters to people who are struggling. They spent the election crowing about how good the economy was when it was realistically only good for the already obscenely wealthy. They told railroad unions to go fuck themselves, they don't get to strike (and then followed up with trains chemical bombing whole cities in derailments). They were willing to hand the Republicans literally everything they wanted in a border bill because FUCK them DREAMers, I guess.
They abandoned us and continue to abandon us, and I understand why people who have been abandoned don't show up to vote.
Honestly so few people actually gave a fuck about Palestine its a joke to bring up. It's not like anyone even knows who the fuck Rachel Corrie is, and if they cared about Palestine, they would be chanting her fucking name to this god damned day. American citizen murdered with a bulldozer so Israel could steal Palestinian land, over 20 years later and still no one gives a shit. Americans were never going to give a fuck about Gaza, they're all too god damned selfish.
I was excited when Harris first announced and started calling out Trump on his bullshit. Then she was non-committal in actually withholding arms from Israel due to their constantly violating the conditions of being sent those weapons. Then she said that burning a flag was unAmerican or something close enough. Then it went to the step of trying to appeal to Republican voters instead of trying to motivate undecided and apathetic voters, who are the people that helped Obama win with his campaign of hope and change.
I can completely understand someone who has given up because the Dems are just slow walking the decline, not actually improving anything. It is so fucking demoralizing that the Dems can't learn anything.
They became the establishment that helped Hillary lose to Trump.
Obama had a winning message and he failed to follow through on a lot of it. It was about hope and more importantly CHANGE.
The change never came, and the candidates that came after never promised hope OR change. People stopped believing Democrats were offering either hope or change. Because they weren't, they were offering "don't rock the boat, it might upset the rich."
I mean, even Obama offered up RomneyCare instead of something more progressive. People got wise to that over time. It made them feel defeated.
Trump offered change, it's that simple. Most in this country are sadly too uneducated to really realize what his type of change means.
Democrats were too busy worrying about whether they could actually implement policy, so they tried to only make promises they could keep, and with Republicans obstructing everything they did, they stopped making real, useful promises to the electorate.
People loved Sanders whether he could make his agenda happen or not, case in point. Nobody likes a policy wonk telling them "no, wait longer."
Dems failed spectacularly by not getting rid of the filibuster when their supermajority had a couple dissenters. If they had actually followed through instead of letting Republicans obstruct when they had two houses and the oval office they could have shown that change and kept the momentum going. Well, if they actually sold their success, which they are also terrible at.
Instead they held onto their safety blanket that the Republicans neutered to stack the courts, and will absolutely throw out if they get the House too so they can pass all the terrible laws they want.
Dems screwed themselves.
By that same logic...
People could ask why Kamala insisted on doubling down on support of a genocide knowing it was seriously hurting her chances to stop trump.
If voters always have to compromise and politicians can do what they want with no consequences...
That's how Republicans got stuck with trump.
Not having standards is not an effective way to fight fascism, especially when the alternative you're holding your nose for won't actually try to get rid of fascists because the only other option being fascist is the only reason they can win (sometimes).
Because Dem voters have always needed something to vote for, voting against works for Republicans.
But there's significant brain differences between the two groups, what's effective for one isn't for the other
The problem is the "moderates" running the DNC think like Republicans, and part of that is a reduction in empathy that prevents them from understanding others think differently. They legitimately have no idea what went wrong right now, their brains can't comprehend another person's point of view.
So we've got two political parties ran by conservatives, it's just only one actually understands how their voters think. So they keep winning even with trump.
Technically Republicans are voting for something when when they are voting to destroy the government. Their goal just happens to be destructive.
I kinda thought they would learn from Obama's success in promoting hope and change, but no, they are right back to trying to peel off Republican voters instead of motivating the unengaged voters like he did.
That wasn't success for them, it was almost their deathknell.
If Obama had appointed progressive leadership in 2008 shit would be a lot different and Bernie would likely be leaving his second term right now.
The people running the DNC retain power when a moderate Dem wins because they'll stay the course and appoint the same DNC leadership.
They retain power when a republican wins because they vote for their own leadership then.
The literal only way they can lose is if a progressive becomes president and doesn't decide to ignore the DNC like Obama did.
That's why they'd rather have trump than someone that wants to ban fracking.
The DNC isn't fighting fascism, it's just the left boot.
Nice way to say it
It's worse than that though. He and those around him literally told everyone for years what they were going to do to subvert the process. At the start of the election he said he already has all the votes he needs, before voting even ended anywhere he said this. He outright announced he'd already subverted it and nobody who can called it out.
This isn't blame shifting, it's pure gaslighting.
The entire point of a political campaign is to motivate voters to vote for the candidate...
If not enough people voted, then it's the fault of the campaign/candidate.
Like imagine if you sold cars, you could blame not selling on potential customers not wanting to buy a car, but your manager isn't going to listen when the other guy can still sell cars despite being a giant piece of shit.
You'll be called a bad salesperson.
And if you don't improve in almost a decade, it would be crazy to keep paying you to not sell cars.