Yeah man, like 3 people on Lemmy swayed the election towards Trump lmao
What’s next, Trump actually lost and Kamala is the actual president of the United States of America?
Negro plz
Just keep on blaming the voters.
I’m sure it will work wonders
Then you guys keep asking why you lost the election LMAO 🤣
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system. Over here in the UK we had the lowest voter any living generation would have witnessed. The reason why is we are disenfranchised and won’t support the elites.
This is the kindling of a revolution.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this should school themselves on historic materialism. No amount of wining will change how large swafts of people react to their material condition.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
That’s not revolution, that’s apathy and disinterest. That’s what the people in power want.
Don’t sit out. Stand up. Do something. Or don’t. But don’t lie to yourself and others and say that sitting out of the problem makes it any better.
This is a great point. I am a paying member of the SP. I attend major demos across the southwest. Currently building housing unions in my city.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
You’re not engaging with the challenge to your original statement.
You don’t protest by sitting out. So what are you doing?
I’m not speaking for the person you’re replying to, nor do I necessarily approve of the actions of what I’m about to share, but I certainly know someone who doesn’t vote but does go to rallies and very often writes/calls their representative and senators. (Though I do think they voted this election cycle for Harris, which was extremely rare for them.)
Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
The Montgomery bus boycott didn’t start with sitting out. It started with Rosa Parks sitting in.
Not to mention the easily understood fact that an economic boycott - one which causes direct material consequences - has absolutely no relation to some sort of “political boycott”, which causes zero consequences against anyone in power.
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
Yeah, we get it, you won’t vote against fascism and genocide. You’re too pure for that.
Let the suffering of minorities sanctify your cause.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
“Letting people be genocided is bad” is apparently a liberal take now, and liberalism is, of course, fascism.
How curious.
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
Thank you for admitting it. Many of us poors and minorities will die, but that is a sacrifice you are oh-so-nobly willing to make.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
Oh, I’m missing the point, of course, sending the disadvantaged to their deaths by a reactionary fascist regime is a small detail when you have the Upcoming Revolution™.
I mean, it’s been Upcoming™ for decades now, but THIS time, with no organization, it’ll happen; definitely, you guys! THIS time the blood of minorities will sanctify your efforts!
The genocidaires will make every move of any revolutionary more difficult and more costly by their control over the levers of power. It would have cost you next to nothing to help avert a genocide. And allowing the genocide will gain the revolution nothing.
And yet, here it is, ushered in primarily by the apathy of the American electorate; an apathy embraced and celebrated by would-be revolutionaries.
News flash: you were going to be sacrificed by the corporations anyway. Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
“Elongating the struggle”? What, do you want minorities to kill ourselves as fast as we can and get it over with, in the hopes that once we’re dead, that tragedy will Inspire The Masses to give you your deeply desired revolution?
And you don’t think this is already happening. Look at our prison systems, the wars we fund, the number of homeless people on our streets. Things are rotten to the core and good for you in your unbridled support of neo-librisism but I’m out, I will be active in meaningful political action at demos, door to door but I won’t be pointing fingers playing this sad blame game you guys enjoy so dearly. Keep towing the line and see where you end up.
And portraying this as me killing disadvantage people is so fucking rotten you should be ashamed. I know what its like to be homeless. How it feels for the education system to fail. The brutality of job security. The none existent programmes for mental health in the UK.
But again keep towing the line that allows this broken system to produce fascism.
And you don’t think this is already happening.
Ultra-privileged shite. Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry that the lives of minorities aren’t worth anything to you, I know posing online with your buddies is much more important.
Not a lot to work with Pug.
Yeah, if your response to looking at the Trump administration’s openly declared desires and, even now, a fucking WEEK into this hell, already-passed executive orders, is to declare “Well this was already happening”, there’s not much to fucking talk about. Some of us are going to have our already-hard lives get significantly worse, and quite possibly end.
Every fucking day is a struggle, and seeing people who proclaim themselves as allies of the disadvantaged help flush what little we have down the fucking shitter? And then say that it doesn’t matter?
There’s not a lot to be said except that it’s ultra-privileged shite.
This comment section gave me acute radiation syndrome.
I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
Great analogy.
Upvoting before mods delete this
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
You voted for her while explaining how awful you thought she was, which put other voters off voting for her. The election was won for Donald “ethnic cleansing” Trump by people staying home because Harris was so flawed, a point made by republicans and useful left wing idiots alike.
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.” Do you fucking hear yourself yet? Do you still not understand why people call you Blue MAGA?
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.”
Do you not think campaigning has an effect?
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
A “state patrol” would be nice about now. Know where to find one?
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.
Ahhh, okay! Got it. Well, in this case, we might not be able to go to the authorities, given that the authorities are kinda the problem. There’s really only two things you can do when that’s the case: give up, or organize within your community to build resilience. I mean, for all the jokes about violence, Trump and Elon are symptoms as well as causes. If someone redacted them, we’d still be stuck in the same causes and conditions that led us here, so it’s not a fix. The best cure for what we have is building resilience as much as we can where we can.
Fuck off. Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man. Dems offered nothing compelling, only the stick of a worse outcome. Bring policies like healthcare, housing, and ending genocide and see what outcome you get instead.
But keep blaming progressives rather than fixing your failing party that now got us TWO wins for the bad man.
Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man.
Yeah, except for the fact that I know a lot who didn’t. It might be a shock to you, but there was a big push in left-leaning communities here on Lemmy and elsewhere on the web to either not vote for Harris or not vote at all. It was so fucking full-force in major leftist communities with so little interest in Trump that I’m convinced it was a targeted disinfo campaign. One that worked.
Lemmy and leftists communities aren’t even a blip on the graph. Go to a PA town and ask them what lemmy is. Or what communism is for that matter. They voted trump because his misinfo campaign was way larger than the one you’re complaining about. And also because the democrats suck.
I love when people ignore parts of my comments for the sake of their argument.
Cope harder. Your comment sucked and I addressed the parts that were worth anything.
I think so too…
When liberals lose, they always blame someone else.
This is what happens when your campaign entirely consists of cringe memes, preaching “civility”, and talking about how eager you are to submit to the wills of the opposition.
I can’t tell if you voted for Harris because you said you voted against the bad man but are being really defensive of the people who helped Trump win.
If you did anything but vote Harris, you did not vote against Trump in our shitty first-past-the-post system. Don’t kid yourself.
If we’re going to start blaming people who let Trump win, let’s start with Joe Biden, who was too stubborn to drop out before the 2024 primary. Then, let’s move on to his aides, who kept his declining cognitive abilities from the public. Then let’s move on to any Democratic Party members who met with Biden before the 2024 election and were aware of his diminished capacity. Then let’s move on to the members of the DNC who decided to protect Biden from real primary challengers (they drove Dean Phillips out of politics for trying to run, by the way), despite the fact that 60% of Democrats wanted a different candidate.
Once we’re done blaming those people, let’s move on to blaming Harris, who did nothing to distance herself from Biden on Gaza despite knowing that it was polling very poorly with a base she needed to motivate. Then let’s blame her for adopting a flacid, middle-class oriented economic policy and abandoning the economic populism that worked in 2020. Let’s also blame Harris’ top strategists, Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter, who ran the same strategy of trying to flip moderate Republicans that lost in 2020.
Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters. And before you ask, yes, I voted for Harris. I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
How are these people any different than “I care about the economy” voters who never verified any of Trumps claims? Just a little mistake, nothing to hold against them.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You think when I said the powerful, i meant Muslims and anti-war protesters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Harris? Or working-class voters who decided Harris’ shitty economic plan wasn’t worth standing in a poll line? And I guess you must have thought the powerless were the people who spent over a billion dollars campaigning with Mark Cuban? Is that how broken your brain is?
Why are y’all so obsessed with third party voters lmao
Because it would be the solution to a better voting system
More parties are better, because there is never just black or wait (or better said just blue and red)
The world is more nuanced than that, but sadly this is already too complex for too many people.
I voted 3rd party in the last UK election, it probably helps that our system is 650 elections at once across the country. You are only voting for your local representative. But it is still FPTP which is pretty bad as a system, it’s still less shit than the US system though.
My thinking is that sure they won’t win this time but if support for them starts to increase (it is doing so) then the party may at some point put more focus on this area for a future election and win. This is how they have now got some influence and also if you look at the local level it takes even less. Most local council elections where I live are won with less than 1000 total votes because they cover pretty small areas. There are of course also cases where a party loses narrowly because of a 3rd party, a local one here had the minor parties fighting between each other and the incumbent national party came dead last with 5%.
If they can blame the voters then the DNC doesn’t need to change.
Sounds true… but if you remove one excuse, they will find another. They would rather go down with the ship than change.
After all, changing means losing thier cash flow and influence. Letting the reps win means they can probably keep those things for the rest of their personal lives. They’ll be dead before we become a true one party system.
and this is just week 1 of episode 2. it’s gonna get a lot worse and they won’t waste any time. they have to shovel all the shit they have planned before midterms while they still have congress.
if congress doesn’t flip and flip hard–like impeachment-ready and veto-proof hard, it’s ‘game over’. instead of a few decades to fix episode 1, it will take generations, if it is even possible to recover completely at all.
There is nearly 0 chance of flipping to veto proof. But flip it probably will.
I would say, prepare yourself to free your country from Nazis…
It’s cute you think there will be a real midterm election
They still put forth the mutually exclusive arguments, simultaneously. “Our protest couldn’t have had an effect, so we totally didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folk for a chance at saving Gaza” + “If the Dems had just given in to our protest, we would’ve voted for them and they would have won”
Both arguments are stupid on their own merits, but together, they paint a picture of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
We’re probably making the classic mistake of homogenizing a heterogeneous group.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
They put forth both arguments simultaneously, regardless of whether they believe one or both. Or neither.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re not that stupid so why pretend?
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one” are the same statement: both point out that not enough people did the thing you’re so pissed about
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one”
“Had more people agreed with us, we would have had more people who agreed with us” is not anything but a statement of obvious, if wishful, fact, and is not what is being said; not in my summary nor in the arguments of the people I’m referring to. Nor does it make any sense as an argument, explanation, or point of any kind. Utterly vacuous.
The argument being put forth, and I suspect you’re well-aware of this, is that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
And your claim is that they were actually saying “If more people agreed with us, we would have more people who agreed with us.”
Would you like to explain how that is, in context, anything resembling a salient point? Or is your argument that they were spewing empty phrases, and I was wrong to apply meaning to their words?
Your supposed to vote for the candidate that represents your views. Doing so should never be considered sacrificing anyone unless you candidate is the bad guy.
Decades of blaming third party voters is why we have two parties that don’t represent the people today. There will be pain breaking that trend, but eventually it will pay off.I mean, they didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folks for a chance to save Gaza. They sacrificed us for absolutely nothing.
Based on news of Elon setting up fake pro-Trump liberal advocacy groups before the election do we know how much of these arguments are coming from legit leftists IRL vs manufactured consent? Just curious, when you say ‘they’ are these people you’ve talked to IRL or online?
There are a good number right here on Lemmy.
Others who scrubbed months of their comments immediately after the election.
Lemmy users is really not a group that represents voters in any category other than lemmy users.
I don’t believe I claimed anything otherwise - just pointing out they exist, and you can find examples here on Lemmy.
How prevalent outside of online spaces… I don’t know, not something I’d be tracking personally.
If protest voters had voted for Harris, she still would have lost, because twenty million democrats stayed home. She didn’t lose because of protest votes, she lost because white middle class voters decided they didn’t want to bother, because the election won’t affect them anyway.
If 77 million people vote for Trump, and 75 million vote for Harris, that any single voter’s vote is only one vote does not mean that if they vote for Trump, it’s a morally neutral act. Not being the tipping point is not absolution for one’s actions or inaction. And doing mental backflips to justify a vote for Trump because they were ‘just one vote’ instead of taking some time to fucking reflect if Trump winning was the outcome they wanted to support would make them an utter cretin.
The core issue is that many Americans don’t seem to care if fascism comes to America. This includes protest voters, but yes, protest voters are only a small percentage of that much-larger category.
Still thinking the people to blame are the DNC elites that went on to run on a right platform, even inviting fucking war criminal mass murderer Dick Cheney to advocate for them.
Also Trump is not something that just happened. The US is an empire in decline and Trump is a symptom of that. The conditions of decline are maintained by the Republicans and Democrats and voting either won’t be enough to turn things around.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Yea, it was happening, not very fast but RCV or other FPTP alternatives were spreading. Now it’s probably going to take a back seat now that Trump and Co has returned to power. Yet another consequence of the short sighted bLuEmAGa folk
I am so tired of strategic voting
Have a look at the swiss voting system 😇 hope you see the way for improvement 😁
But first kill this stupid pardon right of president making all courts a fucking joke and waste of money
First pass the post suuuuucks. Literally anything else is at least slightly better.
Alaska actually had ranked choice this last election. No green candidate in a state they could have done the most good in though
Well apart from outright vanguard single party rule or dictatorship. Absolutely.
Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of voting there is, so long as there are factions and negotiations (ie always, realistically speaking).
People think of voting at the polls like an opinion poll, but it’s not, or shouldn’t be treated as such. We are the equivalent of electors in a college or legislators in a parliament. What we wield is not our opinion, it is our political power, what little sliver of it we have in the great mass of the electorate. If Senator John Q. RealtivelyLeft abstained on a bill for universal healthcare tomorrow because the wording displeased him, we wouldn’t say “Well, that’s just his opinion”, we’d lambast him for forsaking a chance to make this fucking country a little less miserable for his own petty partiality. Same with voting.
Look to your left and to your right. Your fellow voters are there, and it’s only by majority vote that anything gets passed.
Be strategic. And also, be loud and unafraid of your own position; it’s the only way the calculus on strategies changes.
Yes, and that is why you have to have a mechanism to trigger a national vote to cancel any new written law before it takes effect
It is called a referendum
As well as a way that anyone can issue a change of the constitution by triggering a so called initiative which than has to win vote to get through
And of course, make sure nothing disturbs separation of powers like a pardon law or president setting judges without a vote.
And vote for ranked voting when it comes up in local elections.
Or approval voting
aren’t you enjoying your pseudo-democracy?
As I said in another thread elsewhere on the same subject:
The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Whether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone: “We told you all what would happen!”
• Onnoxiously claim there is: “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true
They absolutely can. Protest voters not voting don’t encompass every democrat vote lost, there are simply many unconvinced people who became apathetic and didn’t vote despite having nothing to do with protest voters, with the latter being a minority. Stop your logical fallacies based on false premises.
So, you’re claiming that the protest both worked to help elect trump, and simultaneously didn’t work to help elect trump……
Gotcha.
I’m claiming that protest voting wasn’t a significant factor in trump being elected, unlike democrats running on having the, I quote, “most lethal army in the world” during an ongoing genocide, bringing the Cheney, and a myriad of other problems. The dems only have themselves to blame for being incapable of offering a better, more desirable option than Donald J fucking Trump
Sooooooo…. All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Because a LOT of you seem to think that your little protest was a clear message sent and received.
All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Not liars, just unaware that, outwards (i.e. internationally), there is no difference in policy between democrats and republicans. Now, what are you gonna do, bash to the left of you (the ones who actually organise to fight against fascism), or join us?
Okay, so-
It DID work and you all successfully got trump elected?
You’re kind of making my point for me here. Pick a lane and stick with it. Either your protest was effective and you take credit for where we are now, or it was a waste of time and effort.
The protest is effective not from the electoral standpoint because that was never the objective. The objective wasn’t to decide between lite fascism and open fascism, the goal was to hopefully push the dem administration further towards the left with the collective effort of dem voters. Too sad thay you’d rather suck Cheney than actually force dems to adopt a progressive platform. And by still sucking up to them you are actively saying that they can bring another ghoul next elections because you’ll vote blue no Mather who
- Protest voters fell for a propaganda campaign (maybe by the republicans, maybe by Russia or China trying to destabilise the USA).
Occam’s razor that versus the campaign was SO POORLY RAN that it didn’t inspire people to vote against a literal dictator.
all of the above, plus perhaps iran, dprk…
🍿🍿Popcorn! Get ya popcorn here before it sells out and the thread is locked!
This is gonna be A DOOZY of a comment section folks!!
Only 1 protest vote for a small, and two for a large! Fascism Butter no extra charge!
I see democrats are already doing their best to blame everyone but themselves. Can’t wait to see who you run against him for his third term. I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama, like the last three elections you ran against Trump.
You guys just really fucking love losing.
I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama…
You think Clinton, Biden and Harris are carbon copies of Obama?
You’re right, Obama could articulate a sentence.
Based
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Translation: “I did everything I could to usher the fat orange fascist into power, but the DEMOCRATS are the ones to blame!!!”
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Nothing disturbs Nazis like when others don’t follow the rules - the rules are there to oppress others and ignoring the rules undermines the implied order. Break rules. Fuck with their idea of safety. Mail them letters to their house. Show them pictures of their own home interior. Make them afraid.
Keep this, nix the rest.
Spoken like a Republican reading the second amendment 🙄
Uh, no. I’m a filthy socialist. But I’m also aware of how voting works within the system.
