this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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Leopards Ate My Face
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This post is a really good example of how the disinformation campaign actually worked on people and created this believe. Fascinating. And terrifying.
Or maybe, like they normally do, the Democrats failed to rally their base to vote, or didn't give them enough incentive to get out and vote.
Biden had 4 years to make meaningful progress for the American people, and whether or not he did is irrelevant because Americans don't feel better off than 4 years ago. Democrats spent the last year screaming about the economy doing amazing, while ignoring all of the polls showing Americans don't feel that way.
Democrats spent the last year sending weapons shipment after weapons shipment to Israel to bomb Palestinian children, despite polls showing the majority of Americans wanted contingencies on the shipments. And the Democrats instead lectured their constituents about how what they're seeing and hearing isn't actually what it is, and it'll be worse with the other guy!
Democrats spent the last 4 years doing nothing but try to return to the same status quo that isn't working for the average American anymore. Biden's hubris took the decision out of the people's hands, and we were given a candidate we didn't choose and told to shut up and like it because "fAsCiSm."
Well, congratulations Democrat Party, we fell to fascism because that's obviously a better alternative than actually putting forward progressive policies. And whether you like to hear it or not, the Republican voter supporting this fascist movement is doing so because they want change in this country too.
Only difference being, the Republicans are actually "progressing" their party along like their constituents want. Maybe the Democrats should try listening to their constituents for once and, idk, see if that maybe works in their favor for once?
No, the base let themselves very much get rallied.
They had a candidate that said "I'm not going to stop the genocide in Gaza" and one that went "I am fully pro-genocide in Gaza, and I want to burn it all down". And they all rallied behind the second one. This does tell me, as someone not from the US, one thing: A lot of voters in the US really dislike people from Gaza and want them to die. Fuck you people. Yes, I blame you voters. Fuck you.
No, the Democrats let their base get rallied by the Republicans, I don't blame the voters at all.
And you're acting like people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, when it seems more like a lot of people who would have voted Kamala stayed home. And that's thanks to the Democrats running a centrist platform that didn't inspire anyone, Biden being a centrist Status-Quo democrat for four years, ignoring the Palestinian Protest Votes during the primaries, refusing to let any Palestinians speak at the DNC but allowing numerous Republicans to, while their best piece of policy to the average American was, "Hey, we're not Trump."
I voted Harris, btw, but not because I liked her particularly much, and I think that's a big part of it. Democrats don't listen to their constituents, so their constituents stay home due to apathy. That's on the DNC, not the voters.
This is the point I'm trying to make too. I don't even think Americans care about Gaza enough to make such a large difference in votes as we've seen last night. I guess the scapegoating must start as soon as possible to avoid enacting any meaningful change in the status quo.
I see the Palestinian issue as a great proxy for inspecting the Democrat mindset even though it's not itself an election winner. And as they say, they failed the vibe check horribly. It's not a "single issue" if the mindset applies to every decision they make.
Indeed, this one gets it for all the folks championing lesser evil fptp nonsense.
What exactly is wrong with what they said? At the end of the day, democrats support the genocide too. You can't say "republicans will do it harder hurr durr" and expect people to vote for the one that still is for genocide, but is a little bit shy about it. The end result is the same - the Palestinian state will never exist and the people will be killed. There is no difference if it happens over a year or over three. So that issue is brushed aside, or is the cause of not voting at all.
Then you have the absolutely idiotic move to the right. Saying "the border wall is a good idea" as a democrat? Come the F on.
Yes, now you mentioned two issues.
Want me to add a few more, and you give your takes on those?
Let's start with a few easy ones:
You make the exact same mistake, too. You let people direct you towards a singular, specific, feels-driven point instead of trying to give an informed vote. Any large-scale politics is always going to be a hybrid vote. You won't have any even city-wide, nevermind state-wide candidate of any party (over here, I know it's only two for you folks :P ) where you agree with all of their stances.
But if you let someone train you to ignore the vast majority of stances in favor of just 1-2, I hopefully don't need to explain to you how you have effectively turned yourself into a voting-drone. You can be trivially led by anger and feeling, not by rational thought and informed vote. And especially on large-scale politics, the problem is not with immediate feels, in particular if people start putting those in power that want ot actively dismantle their own checks and balances. Because then even if they later decide differently, they cannot remove them any more. It's now too late for that.
It says a lot that everybody commenting is so hyperfocused on Gaza. This is exactly what the right wing wanted. And I blame voters for so readily - and greedily - walking into this "trap" (for lack of a better word, not my primary language).
The same bodily autonomy Democrats failed to enshrine in law at any point in the decades following the initial Roe v. Wade decision? Or the bodily autonomy that Harris and the dems wouldn't have had the votes to pass anyway even had they won? Or do you mean the bodily autonomy that Biden has done nothing meaningful with since he took office four years ago?
What specific policy platform did Harris put forward and advertise to the American people regarding gerrymandering? I don't recall anything specific beyond "we need to stop it." Ok, how? How do you plan to do that when, once again, you won't have majorities in both houses, and SCOTUS is corrupt and you/Biden refuse to do anything about that, either, like pack the court?
She reversed her policy on fracking a couple weeks into her campaign, might make voters think you can't trust her and her commitment to the climate crisis, which Biden has shown to also not be doing great on.
I'm assuming this is related to housing? Yeah, Harris said she wanted to build 3 million new homes and offer first time homebuyers down payment assistance. This doesn't address all of the corporate consolidation of housing, and it doesn't prevent these corporate entities from gobbling up huge amounts of these new homes.
What has Biden done in regards to this? Have the tax breaks put in place by Trump been reversed? No? Because they have to be undone by Congress? Cool, so what's Harris's plan if she doesn't control both houses of Congress, send me 8 emails a day for the next 4 years begging me for money while not raising the minimum wage in any meaningful way?
I voted Harris, to be clear, but her policies were centrist at best, and that's why she lost. Regardless of what the stats and polls show, Americans don't feel better off than four years ago. Americans want change, and if it's not going to be progress, then I guess it'll be regress. And the Dems have no one to blame but themselves.
It's cute you think the dems give a shit about any of those issues
"feels driven point" as if I don't have coworkers and friends in Gaza who are living through the hell that Israel, and by extension the US put them through. That's why "she's not Trump" isn't a good strategy. Fuck "other stances" - I care about them right now. Saying I should stop and "deal with it" is like walking up to a grieving family and telling them they should "deal with it" that their child is dead. You call it "a trap" you call it "stupid" when in reality it is an important issue to some people, just not you. So keep going on about how people are idiots, when it is 100% on the candidate to say "we need to stop what's happening there". And when the polls came back and it turns out "oh hey that gets us votes, lemme say that!" she immediately flipped 180, two days before the election.
People like you like to quote the "First they came..." poem like the first line isn't "First they came for the Palestinians".
No, I just feel it's ridiculous to try make an issue out of Gaza while you're actively electing a fascist at home.
You know, if my neighbor is gasping for air, I sure would like to help them. Turns out, there's a good reason they tell you on planes to first put your own air mask on, because otherwise you're unconscious and can't help anyways.
Which is what'll happen now. Because apparently in a choice between 1-worse-99-better and 100-worse-0-better, the latter felt more natural to the majority.
Again, the reason I blame voters is because they let themselves get controlled into caring about such a singular issue, to the point where they have now fucked themselves over because they forgot to look at their own country even for just a second. Which is even more annoying because unlike last time, they had a lot of preparatory time in which to see just how exactly electing Trump will fuck them all up.
That's he's also going to make Gaza worse is a given, he has explictly said so. But that's not what I blame the voters for. I blame them for putting him in power by letting themselves get controlled to only see a single issue.
There is no "control", there is important things to people. Hell, some things are more important than others. And genocide of your friends is one of those things.
Explain to me - why didn't they stop the genocide (or at least the arms shipments) to Israel when they are in charge for the last four years. If you are able to do that and not sound like an absolute cynical monster, then we can talk about politics. But you can't.
Again, you wouldn't walk up to a gay person and try to convince them to vote for Trump because the border wall was "a good idea" (as Harris put it). They'd call you insane. They'd tell you fuck Trump because he is anti LGBT. That would still be "a single issue" for them. So why are you trying to come in here and be holier than thou, to a different group of people who have a similar dealbreaker about Harris?
Well you better hug those coworkers in preparation for what’s coming under Trump.
You are saying that as if I didn't have to sit in stunned silence for an entire day already, when one of them lost an entire extended family (uncles and their family) who literally lived nextdoor to them. The bombing took out the wall in their bedroom and hurt their 3 months old child.
If you ever think "I'm an empathetic person", think about this post, how you used tribal politics to basically say "that thing that happened earlier to them already? It will happen to them again, and it would still happen if 'my candidate' won the election".