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I'm sure one of a great many statements that aged like milk. The sheer contempt that Democrat politicians have for voters is breathtaking. Maybe some day they'll care about voters the way they very obviously care about corporate donors.
Judging by their performance in the last three presidential elections with absolutely zero course correction, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Given the number of people in this thread stating they'll never vote Democrat again I don't expect that to change.
I'm pretty pissed at the system myself but in no way am I going to encourage more Republican leadership. Which is far far worse than what we would get otherwise.
It's really weird to shoot yourself in the foot just to spite your hand.
It's shooting yourself in the foot to stop foot cancer that was metastasized from hand cancer, to correct your metaphor. And the actual alternative is to start doing some Luigi's Special towards every CEO and politician.
We're not there yet, so voting third party, even pointlessly, is the only effective action left.
We didn't shoot ourselves in the foot, the Democratic party did in a failed attempt to court more right-wing voters.
Two things can be true you know.
Just as one can be true while the other is false.
How are you coming away with that the lesson to learn? The guys that won care even less for voters. The lesson appears to be: "Say whatever you think voters want to hear at that exact moment with no intention of following through for their benefit."
If that's what it takes to win then they should fucking do it, assuming democrats even want to win.
I don't really care what the Democratic leadership want, or even say they want. If they're not prepared to stand up to Trump, then I'll support others who are willing. If you're in a pre-revolutionary situation, does it make sense to try coalescing the resistance around a failed controlled opposition?
Agreed. To compare this to other current political events, it's like they're arguing that Palestinians need to continue to back Hamas "no matter what" if they ever want their freedom even though Hamas has done them dirty (not to mention Israel's atrocities). It's a failed solution and continuing it at this point is insane.
That's rather the point isn't it? Republicans lie constantly about everything but those lies are about things their voters want. Democrats meanwhile tell their voters that they'll get what Democrats are gracious enough to give them and be happy they're not as bad as the Republicans. In either case neither party is delivering what progressive voters are asking for. Then Democrats wonder why they have voter turnout problems.
People are sick and tired of showing up to vote for the lesser evil and the result being either things only get very slightly worse or much worse depending on who wins. It's particularly hard for people to justify investing that time and effort when they're struggling to just survive day to day and keep a roof over their head and food in their stomachs.
I and many others tried our best this last election to keep Trump out of office but we can all only do so much when the Democrats are working against us every step of the way. We need an actual progressive running on progressive policies out of the Democrats if they want to win an election, because running as diet conservative isn't cutting it anymore.
People gave Bernie a lot of shit for being a populist but you know what? He motivated people. His supporters were excited to get out and vote for him. Unfortunately he was never given the chance and instead we got the same tired "we'll run on Republican policies from two decades ago" Democrats.
Even Obama, the most "progressive" Democrat in at least fifty years, promised socialized healthcare like the rest of the first world countries have but ended up delivering a watered down half assed Republican healthcare plan instead.
So yeah, people are sick and tired of Democrats that only ever seem to be able to successfully deliver things wealthy corporate donors are asking for.
But again, the lesson Democrats need to learn is that American voters just care about what the candidate says during the campaign, not actual policy delivered if elected. So Democrats should adopt the same method of the GOP, simply straight up lying to the electorate and the Democrats will have a better chance of winning.
I'm not buying this as a reason they voted for Trump. If they saw Harris as the "lesser evil" then that would acknowledge they are actively voting for the "greater evil".
So they vote for the one that will make it MUCH worse?
Again, that appears to be the wrong message. Voters didn't want any measure of progressive policies. They voted for Trump with his regressive policies. Democrats apparently need to do the same to win votes.
I disagree with your assessment, but that is exactly what Trump is going to do, and he got the votes, so its the winning strategy apparently.
That already happened long ago. The problem this time was that the things they thought "people wanted to hear" were a bunch of right-wing talking points about immigration and genocide along with a slew of others.
Trump got about the same number of votes as he did in 2020. Trump didn't win because former Democratic voters switched sides. He won because people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn't vote at all.
Based on what? No progressive policies were on the table this election. As I said above, Trump didn't gain any voters this election. The Democrats did push regressive policies this election, and that's why they lost 10 million votes.
That's the winning strategy when you're an avowed right-winger trying to court right-wing votes. When you're supposed to represent "the left," spouting a bunch of right-wing rhetoric and courting endorsements from people like Dick Cheney is a surefire way to lose as evidenced by the fact that Harris lost so many votes.
You're proving my point. Trump just needs to lie and his voters show up. Game theory would say these are the easy votes that Democrats should go after.
Lower the costs of child care, health care, long term care, and housing aren't progressive? Strengthening Medicare and Social Security aren't either? Protecting reproductive freedom, civicl rights, and imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices aren't either?
Again, you're proving my argument. Democrat voters are too hard to convince to come to the polls to stand against the coming fascism and kleptocracy. GOP voters require no actual delivery of policy supporting campaign statements, or if so the most simply lip service will do. The GOP voters show up on campaign statements alone. The lesson is that these are the voters to target to get elected.
Except that completely ignores the context of the situation in that "Democratic lies" aren't going to be seen as appealing by right wingers in the way that "Republican lies" would be. Democrats did exactly this in the 2024 election and it blew up in their face.
These are the lies I'm speaking of. None of this was on the table. It's all empty rhetoric and lies in order to deceive people into voting for them. Why would any of this need to wait for Harris to be elected when she and Biden are currently in office right now at this very moment? It makes zero sense, and using history as our guide, Democrats will go out of their way to favor Republican plans in spite of the left a la the Affordable Care Act, which passed with a Democratic supermajority and zero Republican support.
They're not hard to convince to come out and vote, there's just nobody out there worth voting for. The left got plenty of energy from Bernie's campaign until that was squashed by the DNC and the media in favor of Clinton. They got plenty of energy from '08 Obama who heartily won his election and then transformed right into the same status-quo neoliberal we're seeing in Clinton, Biden, and Harris.
The Democratic party has these same supporters too. You'll see them chanting "blue no matter who" and calling you a Trump supporter if you dare criticize their right-wing, anti-immigration, or pro-genocidal, pro-corporate candidates. These are the type of people that elected Tulsi Gabbard, Sinema, Manchin, etc.
If your statements are correct, Democrats don't show up for "Democratic lies". History shows voters stay home. I'm not suggesting Democrats use "Democratic lies". You're right, those don't appeal to right-wing voters. I'm suggesting Democrats use right-wing lies. Right-wing voters show up for right-wing lies.
Since the GOP voters don't actually care about policy passed during the actual term, progressive polices could be voted in by the elected leadership. When the next election occurs, the Democrat leadership simply needs to lie to these voters again. Its already worked for Trump a second time.
Inaction is an action. Those voters chose to let others (GOP votes) choose the leadership of the nation, which ushered in a second Trump administration.
You seem to be assuming that people who were going to vote for Harris decided to vote for Trump. That's not even remotely true. What happened is a lot of people who would have voted for Harris stayed home, while a lot of people that normally don't vote at all decided to vote for Trump.
Democrats could actually win an election or two by running the Republican playbook of lying through their teeth. It more or less worked for Obama who talked a big game then delivered on very little of it. But ultimately that would be a losing strategy. Democrats are not like Republicans, they not only want to hear policies they agree with, they expect to see them implemented.
I'm not. Those voters stayed home. The ones that voted like to be lied to. A Democrat candidate can choose to lie just like Trump does. Same voters in play. These are the ones that vote and elect presidents.
Trump was elected twice on this. So clearly it works.
Its as you said, Democrats won't vote for it, but a Democrat candidate doesn't need Democrat votes anymore to get elected. If you just need to make every opportunistic empty promise to get elected (as Trump did), then that is clearly the winning strategy now. This is what Americans want. They voted for it.
No they still need Democrat voters. Republicans won because their supporters vote for anyone with an R next to their name no matter what policies they have, so their lies are to convince the gullible morons that don't really care about the party affiliation, they just want things to be better (and are too stupid to realize Republican policies will do the opposite). Neither parties core supporters are enough to win an election on their own, they need all of them plus some of the independents.
That's what Trump did, he got all the Republicans plus a chunk of independents. If Democrats tried the same playbook and then didn't deliver on their promises they would lose the votes of the core Democrat voters and without them the independents aren't enough to win the election. Republicans are a party of loyalty. The party goes above everything else. Democrats are a party of ideals. If you fail to demonstrate the ideals you lose the votes. That's why it would ultimately be a losing strategy for the DNC. They'd win a few elections but when it became apparent they're full of shit the Democrat voters would stop showing up.
So you're saying the winning strategy for Democrats is completely throw out policy ideals and adopt a "loyalty first" strategy which the GOP did and won the presidency, congress, and control of the supreme court? I hadn't considered that, but it appears to work, so I can't disagree with it.
No, the party doesn't get to decide that, the voters do. If the DNC could decide that yes it would be a winning strategy, but they can't.
There are essentially three groups of voters roughly representing a third of the US each.
The first group are the conservatives, they primarily want to prevent things from changing further from their rose tinted vision of the past, and if possible undo "recent" changes. They often have an overly simplistic idealized vision of how things were when they were children they want to recreate. This is of course utterly impossible. They are the core of the Republican party and reliably vote Republican because they believe the lies they've been fed their entire life that the Republicans are the only ones holding back Democrats from making the US a communist dictatorship where everyone is required to have a sex change and all the white people will be rounded up and put in concentration camps so illegal immigrants can take their homes and jobs. They are so utterly terrified of this entirely fictional bogeyman that their entire voting decision boils down to "always pick the one with an R next to the name".
The second group are the progressives, they primarily want to improve social and economic issues. These are the core Democrat supporters, but Democrats have always been the least bad option. They know that our first past the post election system means only the two largest parties are truly viable and right now that means the Republicans and Democrats. These are the main group preventing Democrats from winning because as Democrats have consistently shifted right on social and economic policies they've lost more and more of the increasingly disenfranchised voters who look at their options and see literally nobody who represents them.
The third group is basically everybody else. Some of these people are hard core 3rd party supporters like fans of the green party, some are just the entirely apolitical who don't pay any attention at all to politics or current events outside of the occasional flashy headline or overheard water cooler conversation. Yet others are those that don't really fall into either the conservative or progressive camps, neither harboring a rose tinted view of the past, nor particularly caring about social or economic issues. Sometimes these people are very dedicated single issue voters. It's this third group that Trump was able to tap into with his lies and who Harris completely failed to motivate.
Any successful campaign must attract a sizable group from among any combination of these three. Obama for instance won all the progressives and a good chunk of that 3rd group. Trump likewise got all the conservatives and a good chunk of that 3rd group. Harris not only failed to get many of the progressives, but also most of that 3rd group as well.
Republicans have both an advantage and disadvantage in this situation. While each of those groups represents about one third of the nation, conservatives are the smallest of the three by a significant margin. This is offset though by them being very reliable voters (fear is an incredible motivator even when it's entirely imaginary), and progressives being very fickle in their support. This means without taking that 3rd group into account out of the gate Republicans tend to start with a solid lead. Democrats meanwhile need to rally progressives and a chunk of that 3rd group in order to win.
How arrogant of you. No, many of the people who voted made the hard, informed decision that a slow trickle of sometimes defective tweaks to the status quo is preferable to kakistocracy. The flu is less bad than ass cancer. Anyone who doesn't realize that has probably never experienced extreme hardship. They're so spoiled that they think that anything less than 100% of what they want is unacceptable and sufficient grounds to go into a snit.
I don't know how you can look at Trumps past behavior in and out of office along with the his current cabinet nominees and think it is anything but a kakistocracy for the incoming Trump administration.
Democrats at least in the last cycle told their voters what they can get based on what is achievable during a term.
It was a realistic outlook. It wasn't just lying and pandering.
What seems to be what you would prefer which is absolutely crazy. Why do you want to be lied to just for your vote and then no actual action taken? Somehow that is better than being told what is real and then action being taken on what is possible?
The amount of commentary in this thread that share the sentiment is mind-boggling. If most of the voter base in this country only cares about lip service then this place is well and truly fucked. Nothing can fix that, not within a couple generations.
If this is the case then idiocracy really was a documentary....
What I find mind-boggling is how you can look at the actual performance and actions of the Democratic party over the last couple decades and claim that any of their campaign promises or leftist rhetoric was anything but lip service and lies with no actual action taken. The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is rotten. Keep telling us about "what is possible" while the Republican party continues to do "the impossible" day after day in their quest for power.
People don't care if it takes 1 term or 10 terms, what they want to hear is that Democrats are working on both short and long term goals to address the problems they care about. They want to hear meaningful changes. What they got is a message that Democrats are hard at work rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking. There are many systemic issues in the US right now. The Democrats just needed to fucking pick one, start working on fixing it, and explain to people how they're working on fixing it.
How about working to get Citizens United overturned? How about actually working on proper socialized healthcare instead of the bandaid that the insurance marketplace was? Working on getting rid of first past the post? Working on creating a federal right to abortion? Coming up with some way to keep the GOP from packing the supreme court with corrupt "judges" who treat the constitution like toilet paper? How about fixing our IP laws to be something sane like cutting copyright to 15 years? Just taxes in general, the 1% tax bracket should be paying 90% in taxes. Make capital gains taxes higher than income tax. These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there's dozens more people could come up with.
Long-term goals are just a carrot on a stick.
The problem with the Dems is that they're never going to color outside the lines. Breaking the back of the corrupt judiciary is going to mean a constitutional crisis, and possibly some extreme extra-legal measures will be needed. The other reforms you mentioned mean opposing some of their most generous corporate sponsors.
And if you think getting rid of first-past-the-post is a magic solution, look at any developed country with proportional representation. That you get is another set of antidemocratic anomalies with the system: in PR systems that have coalition goverments, all the power is given to small centrist parties that can make or break a coalition. Imagine a Manchin/Sinema party that's always in power, regardless of how the elections go.
Exactly.
The GOP, unlike the DNC, absolutely care what their voters think. That's the whole point of the culture war project.
Of course they care about what voters think. They need to know what to say to lie to them. It doesn't mean they'll actually intact policies that will help Americans. The most working class Americans might get is minorities being subjugated more, which for some is a win.
I mean you're not wrong but that doesn't make them better than the DNC, at least in terms of policy. The GOP enacts policies they know will hurt their voters but lie and tell them they'll help them. Then when those policies inevitably make things worse they lie again and claim they would have worked, but Democrats/minorities fucked it up. That has been their go to move since Reagan and it's worked amazingly well. Reaganomics/trickle down economics has never once in history worked to do anything but make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Likewise cutting taxes doesn't do anything but hurt the poor and middle class. But the GOP time and time again puts forward this myth that both of those policies will help the working class and their room temperature IQ supporters gobble it up despite it never once in over 40 years actually working.
That's exactly never said anything about better. The GOP is worse than the DNC by all measures, but to our misfortune they're also competent, is what I wanted to say.
Most of the thread seems to take this lesson. Which is crazy.
They would literally rather have a pandering candidate who just lies to them to get their votes and then does nothing after then a candidate who is transparent about what they can and cannot do, and pushes realistic change that can actually be achieved within their term.
This country is fucked, because the voter base is comprised of morons. The education system has failed this country and there really isn't any turning back now. If entire generations lack critical thinking ability then they lack the ability to make good choices, and are unable to see past their nose, never mind vote.
I don't understand this.
The statement made means "are you with me or not, I'm not going to stop on your behalf"
And generally the campaign trail was pro workers rights, the activism history was for workers rights.
So it sounds like teamsters had something else going on? It seems like this thread is reading it wrong.
...Biden and Harris broke multiple strikes.
Yeah, great, they advocated for the PRO act the same way they advocated for m4a or a ceasefire in Palestine.
So Pro-Labor they broke several strikes and love "Right to Work" bills that prohibit unions!