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If voters bear no responsibility, do you really believe in democracy, or are you thinking about this as an issue to be solved by authority?
The self-righteousness of this discussion is a problem. Politics requires some humility, which we seem to be short of.
You are misunderstanding how the system is supposed to work.
We have a responsibility to vote, but no candidate is owed a vote.
The government is meant to execute the will of the people. That's why we live in a democracy. That means that the government is supposed to work for you. The politicians are supposed to essentially be public workers that are hired via votes of the citizens.
These public workers are supposed to be a reflection of the will of the people. If they don't match what we want, then they don't win.
No one is owed our votes. They are supposed to earn it.
None of the people clamoring for a better candidate are stepping up, or getting out there to get it done. They just want someone in power to do it, which is counter productive.
While claiming to be anarchists, socialists, progressives, leftists, whatever. I get the sour grapes, I do, but the reality is that you're going to have to get off your couch and actually organize if you want something better than the corporate handout candidates the DNC is going to give you.
For all of the awful things about Trump, it's really difficult to deny that he spent much more time and energy building a political movement than any other candidate since Obama.
makes me happy seeing politically intelligent people in the thread here.
These type of threads always suck for the first few days to a week though lmao.
Why do American voters dodge personal responsibility better than bullets?
Since we are asking questions, why are you taking bullets for the DNC after making the exact same mistakes again. You wanna talk personal responsibility, where is the responsibility expectation for the multi billion dollar campaign.
This is maddening. It will never stop. The democrats refuse to campaign on progressive policies, which are incredibly popular among the entire electorate (yes, also among republicans, see the recent ballot measures in Missouri on paid sick leave and higher minimum wage, for example), instead opting to position themselves as "republican light". They completely capitulate to republican messaging on pretty much every issue (border wall, fracking, pro war, etc), and predictably lose to the people who invented this messaging. And then comes the worst part: angry libs start blaming the electorate instead of the people who lost. It's not the lack of the dems even mentioning universal health care, no it's the trans people. It's not the genocide that the current democratic regime is committing, no it's probably actually latino voters. It's not the fact that the Harris campaign asks us to pretend everything is hunky spunky with the economy, offering nothing to relieve the 80% of the population who live paycheck to paycheck. Noooo you know what it's actually white women and muslims faults. You fucking morons.
Can't wait for the 2026 anti-transgender dem ticket, and the anti gay marriage ticket in 2028. It's gonna be great.
then comes the worst part: angry libs start blaming the electorate instead of the people who lost
I feel like even calling them "angry libs" gives them some measure of undeserved credibility. Let's call them "fucking crybaby closet fascists" because that's what they are.
Try some lefty moves or keep losing Dems.
California couldn't get minimum wage, rent control, health care, it even slavery, One state moving progressively is not winning the federal election
Money.. the big donors won't let them
(yes, also among republicans, see the recent ballot measures in Missouri on paid sick leave and higher minimum wage, for example)
this IS true, but it is not true among left leaning candidates. Just look at florida. People are way too functionally stupid to do anything in line with what they actually want.
I believe there is even some older data to support this, something along the lines of "people like welfare they don't know they're paying for, but when they know they're paying for it, they don't want to"
It’s not the fact that the Harris campaign asks us to pretend everything is hunky spunky with the economy,
as far as economic measures go, it is. Inflation is still fucking people over, but the popular sentiment sort of lags the economy. But just because inflation is brutal on goods, doesn't mean that inflation is high, or that the economy is "struggling" it's just that people don't feel good about rising tides. Until they start to lower. (which they can't do)
it's just a human psych thing.
Perfection is the enemy of progress.
I can tell that many people in these comments have given up on every artistic skill they've ever tried to learn because their attempts were never good enough right out of the gate.
Great way to put it. People use the excuse of bad candidates to dodge personal responsibility and duty. Also the people complaining about candidates are very rarely doing anything about it or stepping up, they just sit at home and wait for it to just materialize
Unpopular opinion: Kamala was a solid candidate.
Biden was headed to a humiliating defeat. Another couple debates, and maybe he loses NY and CA and we have a Dukakis- or Mondale-level annhilation. Kamala stepped in and ran a solid campaign on very short notice. Trump didn't even have time to come up with a good nickname for her! She kicked his ass in their only debate, and he was literally too scared to do it again.
In the end, she lost by a couple hundred thousand votes in 3 states. She was wrong about Gaza and the economy, but PA, MI, and WI are credibly winnable in future elections. Kamala was not a garbage candidate.
I hope you realize this but Harris ended up in a humiliating defeat.
If Kamala was a garbage candidate, what does that make Trump?
For bonus points, how is it not the voters fault considering any rational answer to the above question? You may open your book to look up topical issues like peace, climate, genocide, rights, hate, juvenile bullying, criminal bullying, felony conviction, bigotry (don't miss misogyny relating to to "garbage candidate", see above), and tariffs.
If Kamala was a garbage candidate, what does that make Trump?
The guy who told voters what they wanted to hear. "I know you're upset at the world, and I'm going to make it great again."
The best Kamala could do was "I won't do anything differently from the Biden administration."
If Kamala was a garbage candidate, what does that make Trump?
47th President of the USA?
Turns out, lecturing the voters doesn't make them want to vote for you. Everything you said is correct, but those weren't the concerns that resonated. To quote Bill Clinton's strategist in 92, "it's the economy, stupid." Yeah, the economy is doing great right now, but you have to ask, "for who?"
It's kinda crazy to me that a sizable amount of people expect a perfect completely spotless candidate, or they don't vote and hand over the win to fascism.
In a rational world, Harris would have won without even doing a single rally, because the alternative is Trump and his cronies.
People generally don't realize that the only way to get an option to the left of the democrats is if Republicans no longer win elections. But with each "punishment", voters give the democrats, the Republicans' grip on power gets tighter and tighter, with more cronie judges, more gerrymandering, more voter purges, more ID rules, and more propaganda.
So, are the voters, or rather those who didn't vote, wrong? Fuck yes, for the reason that because of them, we now have Trump as the US president rather than him going to prison like he deserves. Of course they are wrong. How is that even a question?
Good luck with shaming people into voting for you. It didn't work in 2016 and it didn't work now. Letting the DNC off the hook won't change anything.
People generally don't realize that the only way to get an option to the left of the democrats is if Republicans no longer win elections.
Absofuckinglutely wrong. The number of Democrats still buying this bullshit is astounding. THIS is why you lose so damn much.
No Democratic candidate has had more support from right leaning voters than Bernie Sanders in the last 30 years. Explain that with your model. It's not just about some smooth gradient from left to right and capturing the middle. We are in a populist age. The people are totally fed up with the status quo.
It's disruptors that win, not whomever captures the center of a spectrum that only policy wonks even care about. Anyone who's chief concern is left vs right is already a decided voter.
Its a two party system. You will not get anything close to a working progressive government until there are more then two. If the Dems win, they get a bit more corrupt and take money to slide a bit right. If they lose, they slide right to "capture" more votes/money (the money works the votes not so much).
The nasty things that get done (say under 2016 trump) are not undone by the Democrats when next in power. This makes them at best an enabler of crap policy and at worst (also most likely) guilty of using the bad actions of the Republicans to stay in power.
I don't know how at this point you doods can fix it, but you don't have a democracy at the moment. Its just authoritarianism under threat of worse authoritarianism.
Little bit of A, lotta bit of B.
Trump was the most garbage candidate in every way in the history of our country.
He basically coasted to victory.
Double-standards for days.
