This is what believing in elections does. Complacent on victory, depressed in defeat. Disregard elections and take direct action. Nobody can take that away from you.
This rings particularly tone deaf to me, given that the reason it happened again was low voter turnout.
The reason it happened was because the Dems supported unpopular policies like genocide
Ah yes, that old chestnut. Well I’m glad we solved that problem. Good job team.
/s
well this sure showed the dems didn’t it. sure there’ll be some acceptable losses under trump. but thats ok if get the chance to do what exactly? watch the genocide get less media attention as it continues? watch violent crackdowns on any protests? make a convincing graph showing the increase in queer kids not doing the alive thing anymore? whats the grand plan? bitch about the dems in the mid* terms if they still happen?
What direct action will get me the testosterone I need to not kill myself in the event Trump bans all gender affirming care?
I hate to say it… but DIY. There are resources for help. I am hesitant to post direct links, but know help is there!
Estrogen is kinda fine, testosterone being a controlled substance makes DIY much more illegal for me.
I know this is from a different account, but fml. I’m sure you are aware of how depressing things are as a fellow anarchist. I have to go vote, because I try to give a shit.
It’s because I give a shit that I try to point people should not give up hope because the electoral system didn’t go “their way”. If you’re already doing direct action, just keep doing it. Nothing changes and your direct actions actually changes things. If you’re not doing it, why not?
Voted as an attempt at harm reduction. But i had mail-in so it took me 2 minutes.
Believe in them or not, they’re not for change. You’re right insofar as popular direct action creates tangible change in the world.
People keep insisting how little time it takes them when the argument against electoralism is toward the massive amount of volunteer work wasted around it and the show of support to the concept itself.
Yeah but we can see from liberalism that a “show of support” means jack shit. The ballot is a tool to quell the masses against revolt. Participation there doesn’t mean you accept it as the whole of your political voice.
The volunteer work is a bullshit aspect. It certainly means the majority of electoral workers are those with the ability to volunteer. Hence, lead poisoned boomers.
Whatever you do, don’t blame voters though. The only people who could possibly be at fault here are Democrats. Because voters are perfect little angels. Who can blame them for their strong desire for fascism? That’s just human nature after all
I get it, everyone is upset that Trump won (including myself). But the voters are not solely to blame here.
Democrats put forward a candidate who lost to fascism. What does that say about your policies, your messaging, how the voters feel about you when you tell them “You have to vote for me because I’m not the other guy!”
Y’all need to accept that 1. The Democrats can grasp defeat from the jaws of victory like no one else, and 2. The American people want change, they want progress, they have had enough of the status quo system that isn’t working for them anymore.
They spent the last four years living under Biden, and despite all the screeching about how well the economy was doing, Americans don’t feel it. And instead of addressing that, or doing anything about it, Biden and the Democrat establishment would just point the finger at Republicans and say, “No, no, they’re worse, trust us, they’re worse, they’re worse.”
They’ve spent a year telling Americans, despite everything they’re seeing and hearing from Palestine, that Israel needs this unconditional support, while the world votes to hold Israel accountable and the US vetos it, under a Democrat administration. Multiple times, while refusing to let any Palestinians on stage at the DNC to speak, but parading Republican after Republican because they finished licking Trump’s ass and decided to give Kamala’s a go. Arab and Muslim Americans organized a protest vote, over 100,000 strong in Michigan alone (which she’s projected to lose, btw), and the Democrats sent Bill Clinton to lecture them on how Israel is only doing what’s necessary to defend themselves.
So we’ve had four years of milquetoast progress at best from a candidate the Democrat’s constituency already didn’t like. He dropped out but didn’t leave enough time for a new primary, so the Democrat Party pushed Kamala on us, and then had her run on a centrist, return-to-the-status-quo platform, while refusing to take any meaningful stand on Palestine, with their biggest policy being, “Hey, you have to vote for us because we’re not fascist.”
If the American people, people in general, don’t feel like they’re being represented, why would the feel like voting? This is a failure on the Democrats, 100%, for running platform policies and candidates that don’t drive people to the polls. Say what you want about Trump, and there’s plenty to say about the absolute piece of shit of a human being he is.
But he makes his voters feel listened to and heard, and Democrats may consider it regression, but Republicans get their policies done, and they show progress to their constituents. Democrats get nothing done, usually due to Republican fuckery, but the Republicans don’t face similar fuckery, so the average voter doesn’t care, they just see one wide getting their agenda accomplished and the other not.
So now I pose this question to you, and I’m genuinely asking, this isn’t an “I gotcha, I am so smart!”
If a person doesn’t feel represented by their government regardless of who’s in power, and your life doesn’t drastically improve under either candidate, well… What difference does it make which form of government is fucking you over?
Proving my point as to why Democrats can’t seem to win, keep winning people over to the party there, champ.
under a Democrat administration.
Dude, just admit that you’re a Trump voter. The election is over and it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
I voted Harris, and my state went to Harris. Voted Democrat down ballot.
Guess that makes me a Trump voter. 🤷♀️
What difference does it make which form of government is fucking you over?
Democrats wanted to incrementally improve things. Republicans wanted to round us up into camps.
Voters had an opportunity to prevent a christo-fascist dictatorship and they didn’t take it. Moving things to the left in this country has always involved voting. Losing our democracy doesn’t improve the Democratic Party. If there is another election, which we can’t count on, Democrats are going to learn that they need to move further to the right to pick up votes. They’ve done it before, and they will do it again. They will look at the conservatives who voted and tailor a party platform for them.
Democrats could not care less about appealing to nonvoters or third party voters. They only care about winning, which is probably part of why they suck at it.
Voting should be a mechanical choice during elections. If people want better candidates, organize, and do the work to get grassroots movements off the ground between elections.
Instead of picking a strategy based on a subjective morality people should consider analyzing strategies based on their utility.
If a strategy advances a goal it’s useful. If it doesn’t, it’s not. Voting for the Democrats demonstrates a wider voting base for them to move to the left. Moving Democrats to the left is the goal so this strategy is useful. Protest voting takes votes away from the Democrats so they look for voters on the right. This accomplishes the opposite of the goal so this strategy is not useful.
Democrats wanted to incrementally improve things.
They’ve had four years to, and to the average American, they didn’t. They improved things, but not enough for the average American to notice, or care.
In comparison, regardless of how he did it, Trump got things done that his base wanted.
Democrats are going to learn that they need to move further to the right to pick up votes. They’ve done it before, and they will do it again. They will look at the conservatives who voted and tailor a party platform for them.
They did that this time and lost. They did it in 2016 and lost. The Democrats want a return to the status quo, and nothing else. Americans want change, the status quo is not working for them, but the Democrat party will not try to rally the vote. They scream about Republicans and voter suppression, but where’s the law mandating voting? Or making it a federal holiday? Or requiring paid time off to vote for essential employees?
You’re talking about strategy, well, progressives want to align with the Democrats, right? The FPTP system only allows for two viable parties, right, because winner takes all, and third parties can’t compete? Therefore, progressive third party candidates, under the current system, can’t gain any political power because the system is broken, right?
Ok, so let’s work within the system we have. Republicans are fascist, not very progressive, guess that leaves the Democrats. And they seem open to it! But they keep telling us no, now’s not the right time for XYZ, we don’t have the support, we have to stop/prevent XYZ. We keep voicing concerns and want our issues addressed, and we keep being ignored, told we have to get back to normal before we can move forward, condescended to, or outright dismissed.
You keep saying the Democrats will just keep moving right, and that’s exactly the point I’m making, and the reason people didn’t go out in droves for Harris. You keep saying the Democrats will just try to keep stealing Republican voters, well, then they deserve to lose. 37% of eligible voters vote, and instead of trying to garner that other 63% of the voters to come out, they’ll cut off their nose to spite their face and refuse to adopt progressive, populist policies?
You’re basically telling me the Democrat’s strategy is, “Do what we say or we’ll become more like the fascists.” Cool, so delayed fascism versus fascism… Hence “what difference does it make if our wants don’t matter.”
You can say this but when a republican policy is “drill for more oil” and a democratic policy is “focus on clean energy,” one is easier, cheapens prices, and has readily apparent effects. Many democrat policies are long term goals that people won’t notice, and might even hurt them in the short term, but they need to be done. Medicare will increase taxes, supporting Ukraine and not taking Russian oil increases prices, and most people agree these policies are good things. Yet what is the biggest complaint under Biden? Skyrocketing inflation, because the average voter doesn’t care about policy they just care how it affects their lives.
You’re asking for an impossible solution if you want the party of “this is a hard decision but will benefit us all in the future” to have the same draw as “here’s cheaper prices NOW, we’ll ignore the future.” Not to mention as you already said republicans will block any and all attempts at real change. It’s completely unfair that even if 90% of a democrat candidate’s platform is beneficial, that’s not good enough since they don’t have the short-term effects to wow people with. If democratic policies reduced prices and republican policies increased them (say, swap the stances on oil and climate), we could have a literal potato as the candidate and people would run to vote for it.
I’ve written a lot of comments this morning, and I don’t remember which one’s I’ve said what in, so I apologize if I’m repeating something.
I understand what you’re saying, it’s not fair that the Democrats have an unrealistic standard compared to the Republicans. But the Democrats have to figure that out and get over it, and they’re just not.
I’m seeing a lot of polls now showing the biggest factor for Americans voting was the economy. The economy has, verifiably, improved under Biden, and I will not argue against that.
But polls also consistently show that, despite the improved economy, Americans don’t feel it. And that’s the problem: the Dems were presented this information (Americans don’t feel better under this economy), and just kept doubling down, spouting metrics that mean nothing to the average American.
I think in response to the economy polling, Harris trotted out the $15/hr minimum wage increase. In our political hellscape, that’s a progressive policy. But it’s 10 years too late… Minimum wage should be around $26/hr if it was (and should be) tied to inflation, the magic buzzword everyone has on their mind. But they’re not campaigning on $26/hr, they’re barely campaigning on $15/hr.
Someone in another thread pointed out bodily autonomy and how much worse it would get under Trump. Fair enough, but what has Biden shown the American people he’s done about bodily autonomy in the last 4 years? Why wasn’t it enshrined into law at any point during the decades since the initial Roe ruling? Why should voters believe Democrats are actually going to do it this time and not continue using abortion as a campaign tool?
You and I both know the answers to all of the questions above are not black and white, their answers range from the complexity of different administrations to the limited power within the executive branch to Democrats lacking a political majority outside of a few months every couple decades, etc. I get that, but even I’m tired of it being an excuse, and the average American doesn’t even consider the excuse. They just don’t care: they see their money worth less, their paycheck barely increasing to match inflation most years, and laws not being passed.
On the flip side, Trump got a lot done in his first four years, regardless of whatever legal obstacles got in his way. This flies in the face of our constitution and the very rule of law and is a direct threat to our democracy…
… But he got things done. No one can deny that, Trump got things done, and he did things his base wanted him to. As much as Trump hates his base, he at least panders to them, and if he doesn’t support them, he shows faux support, which is good enough. He represents the worst of humanity, is a serial rapist, convicted felon, racist, misogynist, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic orange shit stain on the annals of history…
But he got things done, and in the eyes if the average American, Biden didn’t, and Harris promised 4 more years of the same. So voters stayed home, and it is 100% the Democrats fault.
It wasn’t the voters that once again generalized half the population negatively. It’s now 3/3 on comments doing that ending with a loss.
Is this English? The words are familiar but I literally cannot extract meaning from this.
Whether you have binders full of women, baskets of deplorables, or garbage, it ends badly for you.
It’s of the upmost importance that we don’t hold power to account and assure them they’ve done nothing wrong. They are powerful after all. What wrong could they have done?
Right?! My whole philosophy is why do more than one thing? That’s bad. What we need to do is scream into the void on lemmy about democrats and swat away any hint of voter responsibility. That’ll teach the voters the right lesson: they could never possibly have done no wrong no matter what!
I know. I figure they haven’t been listening about how bad they are this entire time, the solution is to do it harder and louder. BAD FASCISTS. ALL OF YOU. NOW VOTE FOR US.
Believe in people. All we have is each other. And we all need each other now.
Didn’t people vote for Trump?
Seems the people have abandoned us.
We’re on our own.
The fascist dictator in waiting is literally leading the in the popular vote. Even if that changes in the coming weeks, it’s gonna be a very large minority…
This is emphatically true, however, the majority of this country is silent. They don’t vote.
This is how democracy dies, and this is how evil wins.
Yeah, we all know people like this… People who should care, but they don’t. Most are older folks in my experience.
On the bright side, Trump is very old and unhealthy. I’m not sure he can make it another 4 years. His mind is already going, it’s very clear to anyone not drinking the Kool Aid.
Belief can be a source of hope during dark times but the Nazis weren’t stopped with good intentions and a pat on the shoulder. They were fought back with blood, steel and a fuckton of bombs.
“Planet…”
goddamn yanks, I get you’re mad, but it ain’t the end of the world. Rest of the world is unaffected by this. I’m not saying you can’t be upset, please, get mad–I’d be mad. But don’t invoke the world’s name, please, we don’t care.
Is the rest of the world really unaffected, though? You may have thought that the drone strikes under Obama were bad. Let’s just go ahead and get a near octogenarian in office that does nothing but hold grudges and shake hands with dictators. That won’t affect the rest of the world at all, no sir.
Nothing changed in my country since 2016. Nothing changed in my neighbouring countries since 2016. Nothing changed in my country’s allies since 2016. I was unaffected, along with everyone else.
The only thing that affected me was the mild annoyance of Americans assuming they are the default. But that existed before 2016, and after, and this is no different.
I don’t know where you are. That is irrelevant. Fucking Sealand felt the results of 2016 and 2020. Maybe nothing changed that you noticed, but I would bet everything I have that it changed things. Be it UK, EU, RU, CCP, DPRK, SK, India, the entire Middle East and Egypt, South Africa, the Republic of Congo or many other African nations allll the way to places like Moldova or Sudan - the US elections did affect you, in ways that might not have been obvious.
Every day I look back at one day I had in 2016 when I felt like killing myself and wonder why I didn’t just fucking do it.
I’m sure in ten years, I’ll look back on this and… wish I had done it now.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to kill him instead of just yourself? Strictly hypothetically speaking
