What the fuck is this shit? Motherfucker, I lived through these elections, and this is some boomer revisionist bull shit.
Al Gore lost because he couldn’t differentiate himself from god-damned George W Bush. He was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Kerry lost because he couldn’t articulate his better vision for America, and was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Hillary lost because she didn’t even try to reach out to the left base. She was too centrist to beat Donald Fucking Trump.
Three ostensibly intelligent leaders who lost their elections to fucking morons because they thought that they didn’t need to try very hard to reach out to progressive voters.
Any one of them would have been a better President than what we got, but the fact that they all lost means they did something wrong. It isn’t the fault of the voters demanding better, it’s the fault of the party failing to meet the demand.
There’s been a flood of these type of memes lately trying to voter shame.
flood of these type of memes
Al Gore
too centrist
I am fascinated to wonder who is upvoting this.
I mean, it’s true that the left base didn’t completely show up for him. Enough of them showed up that he won the popular vote and the electoral college, but if the vigorous activist left that was focused on WTO and GATT and other non electoral issues had been on the ground in the same way that Roger Stone’s machine was, they might have been able to stop Bush from stealing the election, and we might have had action on climate change back before it was too late, no global war on terror affecting hundreds of thousands of lives, no ISIS, no 2008 financial crash, and we might not have had all the failures to take US intelligence’s warnings seriously, that led to 9/11. Plus God knows what else actual forward progress.
Reframing “the US news media is so corrupted by propaganda that the average viewer can’t determine who is better between Gore and Bush, by a large enough margin to overcome a pretty blatant coup” as being all Gore’s fault somehow, is the most Lemmy-fake-leftist thing I’ve seen today, and I’ve seen someone praise the USSR’s justice system and someone else say that Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap.
“Too centrist”
Get the fuck out of here
You’re right about Hillary though, that part is true
“Too centrist”
You young ones won’t know this, but Gore had a very different persona as Congressman and VP. Note that the only reason Clinton, a notorious draft-dodger, picked Gore as his running-mate was because of Gore’s reputation as the top Pentagon-hawk. As well, Gore led centrist wing of the party that wanted to eliminate welfare and implement austerity measures.
People who say Gore would have kept us out of Iraq, or not done all the other dumb shit Bush did, don’t seem to recall that politician Gore was complete polar opposite of post-political Gore we know today.
notorious draft-dodger
Dude I don’t really wanna play the game of “let’s pull on this thread and see if a bunch of conservative-propaganda-worldview stuff pops out” again, I’ve done it like twice in the last 2 days and it sometimes takes a while
But (a) it’s like a cat with a laser pointer (b) tbh it doesn’t look like this particular thread is all that long
I mean everyone knows we all look down on people who didn’t fight in the Vietnam War, and in general who don’t do what the federal government wants them to do. Fuckin cowards, what was wrong with them! What do you think? Clinton should have gone over and shot a bunch of Vietnamese people, amirite fellow anti Iraq War person?
The fact that Nader ran to his left and had decent success is a pretty good indicator that Gore was too close to the center to win.
But I mainly blame the design of the Florida ballots for Gore’s loss.
That doesn’t make sense for a couple different reasons, but thinking how to explain that it is wrong actually led to me to realize that Hotelling’s Law is a not insignificant part of the incentives at work in a FPTP system which is yet another reason not to use them.
(Basically, in short, whatever point Gore staked out on the little spectrum, Nader can gather some votes by picking a different point. Doesn’t mean a damn thing about how good the point either person picked was or the relation between them. But yes, mathematical pressure on both “main” candidates to move to the center and similar to each other is absolutely a real thing and I hadn’t fully realized that before, although it seems totally obvious in retrospect and like I should have realized it before this.)
But I mainly blame the design of the Florida ballots for Gore’s loss.
There’s also that minor matter of Republicans actively sabotaging the recounts by standing outside the counting office and chanting.
Man, I lived through it. Don’t piss on my leg and call it rain. I followed Gore’s campaign. I watched his debates. The man had splinters in his ass from riding fences. He picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate to prove how centrist he was.
Compared to modern Democrats, he’s basically a communist, but 2000 was a heady time for progressives. We thought Bill Clinton was just the beginning, a transitional precursor to a new era of balanced budgets and human rights for all. But it was not to be.
Well ranted, and I don’t disagree but it’s simply the case that voters not showing up gave us the shitshow we now have. It would have been very different, and you can blame the candidates but the fact is none of them are Jesus or Batman or whothefuckever is going to be all things to everyone.
And, at this point, after 2016, i do not give a single fuck about it. Get to the polls vote Biden and bitch after we’ve saved this country. Everyone gets a full three-and-a-half years to promote whatever their answer is, and if they don’t get it done by then, or have any other useful purpose, time to shut up and get to saving us from Idiot Handmaid’s Dream Reich.
This tweet or whatever - It’s not an academic treatise. It’s making the point that we can’t sit back again and let cheating fascist billionaire sycophants run away with it again. LIKE WE DID. Didn’t like Al Gore? Don’t care. Kerry too “stiff” for you? Shut the fuck up, we’re fighting goddamned war criminals. Hilary too - whatever - for you? Well no shit, me too but i’m voting for her anyway.
Be precious later. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW.
Right, and you and I are in complete agreement. I agree with the urgency and the overall goal. The only thing I don’t like about this tweet is that it blames the voters. It’s like the people who blame consumers for shopping at Walmart, driving small local businesses into bankruptcy. Or, you could go back to the classic fable of the scorpion and the frog.
People need to be motivated to vote. For me, voting against Trump is reason enough to show up. For other people, that isn’t enough. And if you lived through Trump’s presidency, and that wasn’t enough to motivate you to show up to vote, this tweet isn’t going to be any more persuasive.
The problem is not that the voters suck. The problem is that most people cannot see the world through the eyes of another person. Most people, the vast majority, are not dialed into politics. Most people are annoyed at politics. They don’t see a correlation between the people in charge and their personal quality of life.
Are they wrong? Ignorant? Out of touch? Apathetic? Maybe all of the above. But that’s who they are. You have to meet voters where they are. And if the voters aren’t showing up for you, then that isn’t their fault, it’s yours. The leaders must lead, or they aren’t worth voting for.
I desperately want Biden to win. I do not want to live in Trump’s America again. But if we have another 4 years of Trump, it’s because Biden and the Democrats are bad at their jobs. If you blame the voters, you may as well blame the tides for rising or the wind for blowing.
I voted for Nader, but only because Gore won my home state and I was still naive enough to think the DNC would get the message. I voted for Kerry and Hillary, but I didn’t expect either of them to win.
The problem is not that the voters suck. The problem is that most people cannot see the world through the eyes of another person. . . . Are they wrong? Ignorant? Out of touch? Apathetic? Maybe all of the above. But that’s who they are.
Mmmmi dunno that sounds helluva lot like ‘voters suck’.
I mean the DNC is shit at almost everything (most importantly social media and messaging). But, it’d be so great if we didn’t have to hand-feed every single goddamned person who’s choices are to be helped or be hurt by their own vote.
Schrödinger’s Left
Simultaneously stupid babies on the fringe who don’t even warrant acknowledgement, AND the singular cause of every Democratic loss of the past 30 years - no adjustments to make, no lessons to learn, just blame the left and take 5 more steps right.
I mean… It’s always Schrödinger’s left. When we talk about “the left” it’s always a constructed public. Whatever the speaker wants “the left” to encompass is in there. Like you talk to a conservative and “the left” encompasses a party like the Democrats, you talk to a democrat and Depending on the person they might consider themselves leftists or not depending. You talk to a Socialist and “the left” excludes the Democrats. The concept serves a purpose in each case. To create a body of condemnation, to create a nebulous scapegoat, to attempt to build (sometimes false) solidarity out of an incredibly fractured group, to establish an aspirational ingroup or out group… Or to self soothe that one’s highly individualized take on politics is not alone.
It’s a weakness in the flanks of the way we discuss these things. There’s a holier than thou approach to claiming where on the political compass one sits and what is worthy of scorn. The Republican base doesn’t seem to have that in the same measure which makes it more dangerous.
I don’t think it’s resolvable personally. Ditching the concept of claiming “the left” may be key to changing engagement styles to become less armchair criticism of a nebulous ill defined group… And more focused on actually tackling and pushing specific issues with more progressive non-partisan ship.
I think this election is a little different in that we have a known threat that is significantly worse than the alternative. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump is a threat to democracy and to anyone that doesn’t want to live under religious law as interpreted by the Republicans.
The other candidate is harm reduction presidentially personified. That is the best choice we actually have, and the consequences for disincentivizing left leaning or undecided voters is much worse than Bush, and that’s saying something.
Vote against Christ flavored dictatorship, and encourage others to do the same. And not some impossible 3rd party bullshit.
If either third party gets even 5% this election, they qualify for federal funding and could have a greater influence in the future. Third party votes are ESSENTIAL when the establishment wins any other way.
If they couldn’t get 5% in 2016, they aren’t getting 5%.
Note also that Perot got >5% in 1996, but that did nothing for third party politics. The Reform party doesn’t even have name recognition.
You want third parties to be viable? They need to start local and build a base from the ground up. They need to start having significant presence in state politics and legislatures, and we need to see them have a modest bloc of senators and representatives in Congress. Even if a third party did win the presidency, they’d be a complete lame duck with no Congressional support.
You should be asking yourself why third parties aren’t doing this, and instead wasting money on presidential elections and conventions. The sad truth is that we don’t have a third party because we have no serious third party contenders. None of them want to play the long game to actually win. They’d rather just grift donations.
I would agree with you if the stakes were not as dire as they are now. If any of those 5% of votes are taken from traditionally Democrat voters, you might get that 3rd party its federal funding, and you might just see them in the next presidential election, but you may not have the right to vote.
Republicans have stepped up their campaign against voting freedom, and they have a whole plan on how to seize control of our government and give dictator authority to their president. Project 2025 is going to irreparably harm us if it comes to fruition.
Try this when we are not so disastrously close to religious extremists seizing control.
It’s not that revisionist. I definitely remember “have a beer with him” being said.
In retrospect it was probably a phrase coined by the media to lure the lowest common denominator to GW. But it worked and it stuck.
Lin Manuel made a reference to this in “The election of 1800” in Hamilton:
Talk less! (Burr!)
Smile more! (Burr!)
Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for! (Burr!)
Shake hands with him! (Burr!)
Charm her! (Burr!)
It’s 1800; ladies, tell your husbands, vote for Burr! (Burr!)
I don’t like Adams!
Well, he’s gonna lose, that’s just defeatist
And Jefferson?
In love with France!
Yeah, he’s so elitist!
I like that Aaron Burr!
I can’t believe we’re here with him!
He seems approachable?
Like you could grab a beer with him
I remember the “have a beer with him,” too. But that wasn’t why people voted for Bush instead of Gore. Conservatices voted for the conaervative candidate. Moderates split their vote because both sides the same. Progressives didn’t vote, or voted for Nader, because they didn’t have a candidate.
Surely some moderates voted for the guy they wanted to hang out, but that’s not why Gore lost.
Heaven forbid we try running charismatic candidates like Obama and Bill…
Like, it’s insane to me that everyone seems to be aware of what wins elections, but the people running the Dem party just keep insisting we need to shut up and vote for someone very few people actually want.
Like, we can’t do this without the voters, they’re the irreplaceable part.
We can get different people to run the party, or just coalesce around another.
Democrats need to fall in love. Republicans just need to fall in line.
It’s like you read the meme and went yep, totally their fault. I’m ok with my life gets shittier until I fall in love with a politician. It’s not my fault. I am owed this.
Is there a term for the political version of an incel?
Yes. It’s called a political agitator.
This user canvases lemmy threads with anti Biden and anti Dem strawman arguments completely out of context of the thread. Every thread calling out Republicans for bullshit, this user is there never acknowledging how terrible the GOP is, and going straight into anti dem whataboutism.
Just look at the sheer number of comments this user posts daily. And search the mod logs for deleted comments on this user.
If they’re not being paid to disenfranchise progressive voters into abstaining from this election, they should look for a sponsor because they’re working for free.
"Everyone I disagree with is an agitator, now shut the fuck up about candidates earning their votes and do as you’re told because ONLY WE can save the country from fascist policies (even though Biden is doing half of it himself!)
No theres nothing fascist about that attitude or our incessant need to spread misinformation about anyone who thinks Biden sucks, SHUT UP AND FALL IN LINE OR ELSE!"
When the other side are fascists openly running on a platform of doing fascists, needing to feel excited to fall in line and vote against them just makes you a fascist who thinks they can get bribes out of it.
Who cares?
What works is running charismatic candidates.
So why not run charismatic candidates and beat the fascists?
“It’s not our job to campaign or do politics, the Democrats cannot fail, only be failed” - Democrats, totally caring about fascism.
If you need more than “the fascists will win if we lose”, you’re a fucking fascist.
Quit trying to make your wanting to be bribed to not let concentration camps happen some kind of moral cause or “well they should have made me want it more!” realist cynic take.
If you need more than “the fascists will win if we lose”, you are a fucking fascist, and will be treated accordingly when the people who you’re actually hurting have their chance to reap justice for what you let be done to them.
It’s not just the president, you need to vote for house of reps and Senate. Obama only had control for 2/8 years. In that time he got the ACA. The remaining 6 years of Obama the GOP were more than happy to block everything. They even shut down the government. If you need charisma to feed your emotions every 4 years, yeesh.
*Oh I caught on, it’s the thiny veiled Biden bad, hinting he has no charisma and nobody wants to vote for him. “They just have to run someone else nudge nudge. Someone else to run the party wink wink.” Nuts to that, Biden is doing great.
I get people want to fall in line at this point and I have and will vote for Biden, but your head is deep in the sand if you believe Biden’s senility and lack of charisma isn’t hurting him here. The only thing we’re lucky on is that Donald is running again who is for all intents just as senile and far more deranged and far less compassionate.
But Biden doesn’t hold a candle to Obama.
There it is again “senility”. Everyone working with him says he’s sharp, but you just gotta get it in. Would I prefer younger? Sure. But he’s not senile JFC. Lack of charisma? The guy presents absolutely fine and does great work. How much does one need to appeal to emotions.
You’re totally right they should just put their hand inside the magical candidate bag where all the charismatic candidates are stored, say the magic formula, and pull one out. How stupid can they be!
We could try running a fair and open primary…
If we really want to focus on getting the most popular candidate with voters rather than the corporate favorite moderate…
Dems have complete control of their primary, they can get corporate money out of it at literally any second.
But they dont.
Because the people running the party don’t want the candidate that voters are most likely to vote for. They want the candidate that will get the most donations from corporations and billionaires.
Lots of people keep trying to explain why if beating Republicans is the only thing that matters, everyone involved in the process should make choices that maximize the amount of votes that the Dem candidate gets.
However “moderates” keep insisting the wealthy and corporations gets what they want and everyone else need to support them unquestionably…
Which is already what the Republicans do.
So if both parties are catering to the rich and powerful…
Why not try giving the millions and millions of voters what they want and making the rich and powerful compromise?
Why do they always win no matter what?
Historically giving Dem voters a candidate they want translates to a Dem president.
Biden won by less than 100k.votes spread out between 3-5 battleground states. And has nowhere near his 2020 support. Probably because in 2020 he was pretending to be more left leaning.
And 2024 he’s just ignoring anyone that’s saying anything besides unadulterated praise.
Right!?
Young and charismatic. That’s all that is necessary for Dems to sweep elections. Proven time and time again. With a hearty message of progress and love.
It’s that fucking simple.
(signed someone who ultimately voted for Hillary and Biden but they were far from my 1st preference in the primaries).
Edit: Typo.
The last time the Democrats ran a progressive candidate allowed Nixon to sweep every state except a few in that election. I mean, just look at this shit!
So yeah, if anyone is wondering why the Democrats don’t run progressive candidates, this is why! They’ve only moved further to the right since then. Expecting Democrats to run a progressive would likely sweep the whole nation blue, but if you thought tRump was bad, a progressive would be just as bad for monied interests, which have only grown more emboldened and enriched the last 40-45 years.
It will take a lot of time, I’m afraid, to undo the damage Republicans have have done with their shitty ideals and politics, starting largely with Reagan’s racist, homophobic, anti-union, and regulation gutting bullshit!
In fairness I emphasized young and charismatic — was McGovern charismatic? I don’t know about that.
Still, I think this is the exception as opposed to the norm, considering we can point to FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton, and Obama. RFK was setting up to be another obvious front-runner.
It’s a race to the bottom to put forward someone who will water their rhetoric down and cater to ignorance; but of course, some of the country isn’t educated enough to understand why progressive policies must be better — hence why you run someone young and charismatic — hence why Obama swept traditionally red counties that neither Hillary nor Biden picked up.
Young and charismatic might mean higher taxes for the rich and more progressive policies.
The Democratic leadership doesn’t want that. They really like the neoliberal consensus, they like having funding parity with the Republicans. They like being seen as “very serious people “ and they’re deathly afraid of being called socialists.
The problem is that their apparatchiks all came of age, politically, in the 1990s under that same neoliberal golden age. That’s not the world they’re in anymore. They aren’t running against Bush the Elder, and cutting taxes while playing jazz isn’t going to cut it when they’re losing working class votes to fascists.
We saw this play out horribly in the UK: where Labour’s party leaders would rather sabotage their own leader because he was too progressive then risk him winning and give socialism credibility.
The political left really liked the 1990s, but it’s a bygo era and it isn’t coming back.
I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary. And now we have an absolute joke of a Supreme Court that will suck every single nanoliter of jizz from the corporate dick any time day or night.
I’m starting to think that the corporations (who own both parties, but prefer republicans) are sabotaging the democrats. That’s why they ran Hillary.
Oh my god you’re so frustratingly close to realizing the truth that we’ve been telling you all along.
The corporations (and Putin) did sabotage the Democrats. But not by some bizarre overcomplicated plan of infiltrating of the DNC to send up moderate candidates who consistently win the popular vote yet are just unlikeable enough to not win swing states. They just used propaganda to get people like you to hate perfectly good candidates.
You can see controlled opposition in the Green party and RFK Jr. They put up shit candidates and then try to pull some people away from Democrats. If the corporations and Putin could infiltrate the Democratic party, they would just have the DNC close up shop and we would have Republicans forever. Why the fuck would corporations try to put up a candidate who wants to raise their taxes?
You’re coming up with these insane scenarios because it’s embarrassing to admit that you are one of the ones who fell for the propaganda, but think about it. Occams Razor. That’s the simplest explanation.
Like. lets talk about what happened.
it’s reasonable to claim that Gore actually won in 2000. There were sixty one thousand votes that had not been machine-counted because of rampant, clearly partisan, bullshit reasons (among them “hanging chad”,). the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual count of those ballots with SCOTUS, lead by Scalia, decided to stay because the recount would give Bush a veneer of “illegitimacy”. (gee. wonder why, ya fucking partisan hack.) To be perfectly clear, Gore lost Florida (and the electoral college) by 570 votes. The decision in Bush V. Gore to stay the manual recount basically handed Bush the win. (and, I might add, cast doubt on the legitimacy of bush’s win. it was handed by a court that had no business ordering that stay. But did anyway, because they’re partisan hacks. I’m not angry, honest.)
Kerry flip-flopped more than a fish out of water, making it hard for independents and centrists to know what his positions actually were. 2 years prior to the election he was, for example, staunchly against gay marriage (and lets be honest, the US was very hostile to gay marriage then. There’s been a massive sea change in that, but it hadn’t happened yet.), but in 2004 signed a letter urging Massachusetts to not outlaw gay marriage. Further, he had the personality of a cold fish. and his running mate was an empty suit with nothing to back it up- who couldn’t even deliver his home State of North Carolina… In short, you had a couple warm bodies running. At the time, Bush was still riding high off 9/11 and the Iraq war and americans were still angry at that; the war wasn’t unpopular yet. Katrina hadn’t happened yet, and Bush was still reasonably popular. So, of fucking course Kerry lost.
Hillary. Where do we begin? her emails? lets start there.
Sure, “HeR EmAiLs” and “LoCk HeR uP” is an idiotic rallying cry of MAGA morons everywhere. But, even so, she conducted official Sec of State business on a personal email routinely. It’s such a great rallying cry because it actually has some teeth. it should be scandalous. Even if she was perfectly not-at-all-corrupt, it looks that way. I- and most everyone else- would be legitimately fired for conducting that level of business off a personal email. it should be 100% unacceptable. Not saying she should have been locked up or grilled the way she was. But seriously. It looked bad. and it played in the news.
Then we got Benghazi. an American ambassador died in a terrorist attack. There’s some things that hindsight says they could have done differently. Republicans latched onto it for political theater, with 10 different investigations and multiple sessions of grilling Clinton, who even then was the presumptive nominee to replace Obama. there was some funding that her office denied, she might not even have been aware that “she” denied it. Hindsight’s a bitch. Anyhow… the republican shenanigans played well in the media.
Oh. “Super Criminals”. Hillary was very unpopular with minority voters- particularly Black and Latinos. sound clips calling for law-and-order tough-on-crime calling black people “super criminals” didn’t help. there was a lot there, especially with her attitude, but in the end they simply didn’t show up for her. Even if you look at women voters, she under-performed compared to Obamma. (i mean, he looks mighty fine in a tan suit… sorry, sorry. couldn’t resist.) Like, how unpopular do you have to be as a woman, to lose women voters from Obama’s election, when you’re running against Donald- “grab them by the pussy”, “When you’re that rich they let you do it”, “Octopus-Arms” -Trump.
Lets also talk about how she boosted trump specifically because he was “a clown” or whatever. She gave us trump and then proceededly arrogantly not campaign in key states.
oh, and there’s more that I just don’t have time to get into… but we got Whitewater, Travelgate, filegate; and shit rolls down hill so lets toss in Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky scandals. Like there’s a lot of smoke there, and there might be a couple fires, or maybe they’re just really not that corrupt as people and it’s all a big missunderstanding. but again, that plays in the media, and it looks bad. Hilary was the definition of The Establishment™️ running against an anti-establismhent candidate. Of fucking course she’s gonna lose, and she really didn’t help matters by fucking around with not campaigning in key swing states because, “naw, it’s fucking trump”.
Yup. so aside from Gore, there’s really rather good reasons to have not liked them, and the DNC idiots thought they new better and ran them anyhow… and we got fucked because of it. blaming voters for your own stupid blunders seems to be a DNC favorite. And they’re doing it again.
You missed basket of deplorables which is likely the exact moment she really lost.
I’m no Hillary fan, but I thought the consensus was she lost because of Comey’s bullshit October surprise.
Her Basket of Deplorables remark is actually the moment she MOST energized her base and grassroots coalition. That was a blip of authenticity I and many others appreciated.
You know, the people who actually go out and do the door-knocking, phone-banking, fundraising, and pushing back against Uncle Bob and their parents while dragging their friend to the poll out of voter-enthusiasm.
Pokemon Go to the polls. That campaign had a death by 1000 paper cuts. Yet she still won the popular vote.
I miss when Lemmy was a socialist platform. It’s full of “vote blue no matter who” people now
Somehow, despite having a majority for only several months out of the last several decades, that is all the Dems’ fault for not trying hard enough or whatever.
Therefore I (definitely not an accelerationist cosplaying as caring about leftism) could not possibly support anyone other than candidates certain to lose the election.
ITT: “Yeah but it’s their job to ‘appeal’ to me; it’s not my job to vote for them, and I gotta say ‘not the end of democracy’ isn’t a big selling point for me tbh. Dance for me, candidate! Dance!”
Imagine politicians actually trying to get elected. How absurd would that be?
OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country
Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates
Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.
You can have the best product in the universe, but if you can’t sell it, then it doesn’t matter. When trying to argue a douche is better than a turd, you really need your presentation going. None of the American politicians (except maybe Bernie) are remotely qualified to run a country of any size, so stop trying to make it about who is the most qualified.
“The candidate has done nothing to earn my vote, so I’m not voting for them.”
“wtf why aren’t people voting for the candidate I support?! They must just hate everyone and be a fascist since they can’t see the obvious righteousness of my candidate”
These people never realize that this is a two way street. If candidates are going to earn votes, that means their candidate has to earn votes too and not just accept them for granted. They have to build bridges to achieve their goals. You can tell that those burning bridges don’t actually care about their espoused virtues – they just want to be right and stick it to their enemies.
Yeah. Plus the continuation of that conversation tends to go:
“Okay. He raised literally about a trillion dollars via corporate tax increases, which he then spent on climate change and working people, achieving incremental but quite significant results.”
“Yeah but did he OVERTURN CAPITALISM AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM? Because if not PROJECT 2025 BECOMES ALL THE DEMOCRATS FAULT”
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
Ironically most of these people also tend to make arguments in favor of Russian imperialism when they talk about how NATO is actually to blame for the war and Ukraine should accept a peace agreement.
This is like saying that if you go to a restaurant, and the food tastes like shit, it’s the customers’ fault.
Holy Jesus is this a flawed analogy. I’ll try to fix it for you:
If you go to a restaurant where for some reason every present customer votes for a cook out of a lineup of cooks who each only prepare certain dishes, and out of which only two are consistently popular enough to get the majority of customers to vote for them.
Out of these two, both let the manager pick the dishes. But one only makes meals out of tofu, which isn’t terrible but not worth going out for, and the customers only vote for him because they’re afraid it’s the only choice that will beat the other guy. The other cook just scrapes and serves the sludge off the bottom of the stove but has run a successful decades-long campaign to convince their customers that sludge tastes better than tofu. None of those customers have ever tried tofu so they don’t know better.
Despite the fact that it’s obvious that the issue with this system is overwhelmingly the manager running a shitty restaurant and the cooks pitting the customers against each other, the small but vocal subset of customers who just want a steak are blaming the other customers like it’s their fault.
