The modern Democratic party fights harder against its own “base” than they do against the opposing party. People still came out in droves to vote for them despite that but their dedication to complacency in a system that is failing everybody but the rich left enough people behind to tip the scales. The Dems have enabled this and anybody who expects them to save us from it is delusional.
Tens of millions of people voted for the Democrats. Do they not get to complain?
I think if you voted for Democrats you get to complain, but if you were eligible to vote and didn’t have to jump through a ton of hoops to do so you don’t get to complain. This could have been avoided.
edit: to be clear, I don’t think Democratic leadership really cares that we’ve got a dictator. But voting for them was harm reduction and too many people couldn’t be bothered, whatever the reason.
Why do people pretend that each election is in isolation? That if somehow we had all just voted for Harris even harder that America wasn’t headed down this path anyway. This shit has been a plan of American politics since Ronald Reagan.
I’m not an “accelerationist” by any means. But it’s just silly to act like this is a problem with voter turnout and only if we had “voted harder” it would all be fine. No. The entire system is fundamentally broken. That’s how we got here.
I don’t claim this election was in isolation but I agree with everything else you’ve said. We need people to vote for the harm reduction, and we need people to organize because our system of government is trash. Biden being in office gave us four years to organize with the usual amount of opposition instead of the federal government being ordered to go after anyone the fascists don’t like; his response to the Gaza camps last year was fucked up but if/when something like that happens again, Trump’s gonna have the military kill people.
I think this was inevitable too, it would have taken the people at the top choosing to fight fascism like the threat it is and I didn’t/don’t see that happening. I voted for Harris because it gives us breathing room, and if Trump doesn’t survive the next four years it would be harder for the fascist movement to retain its power if they didn’t have complete control of the government. At the same time I’ve been involved in activism for the last few years, because we need people to do both.
And over one third of voters didn’t vote for anyone. This is talking about them:
https://www.environmentalvoter.org/updates/2024-was-landslidefor-did-not-vote
The people complaining hardest are the ones who called democrats genocidal fascists and refused to vote. This site was filled to the brim with anty Democrat posts at election time, now it’s filled with “why aren’t they doing anything??” Posts, it’s the same people
TBF I voted extra hard for Harris and I’m still wondering why Democrats are voting yes on Trumps cabinet picks and why an 83 year old Bernie Sanders is out drumming up the masses while Hakeem Jefferies tells Jon Stewart that we’re all too stupid to know how amazing Democrats are.
ALSO, Democrats don’t seem to give a shit about the genocide, including you. So IDK what the fuck you expect me to say. I voted for harm reduction because I knew exactly what Trump was going to do, but that doesn’t mean I gave up all of my rights to complain about the shit job that Democrats do.
You need to understand that American non-voters are unironically fucking stupid. They heard you complaining about Democrats and that just reinforced their decision to not vote for anyone.
Its simple cause and effect.
Wait, so it’s up to me to sweep all of the bullshit under the rug so we can trick people into voting for the lesser evil instead of the Democrats being responsible for giving the people what they want and need?
Wtf
I’m not saying that. I’m describing cause and effect.
You need to ask yourself what is more important, consequences or virtue? Because sometimes you don’t get both.
What’s more important to me is that we demand better from our elected officials and stop accepting “at least it’s not the very worst” as acceptable.
You can Susan Collins at me all day but you’re never going to convince me to go out and cheer on “could be worse, bro”. I KNOW it could be worse and that’s why I vote against republicans but I’m going to demand the people I vote for DO BETTER.
Our officials mostly lost this election. And might not even have a chance to run again.
Demanding better can be phrased in a way as to not encourage people to abstain form voting them in.
Its doesn’t really matter anymore.
Maybe the Democrats should prove the complainers wrong. The Democratic leadership has had plenty of opportunity to build trust amongst the voters, and decided to ignore them instead. They’ve spent years letting their voters down, which is why they aren’t trusted.
I agree.
We still should have prevented Trump from winning by more people voting Democrat.
And then what? Get 4 more years of a genocidal Cop in the white house further normalizing “tough on the border” policies and genocidal foreign policy. And then follow it up with another Republican with even more of a “mandate” to murder immigrants and bomb brown kids? America has been a dictatorship of the capitalist class since it’s founding. Voting for president is like voting for a temporary court jester. It doesn’t change who runs this country. It only changes which interest of the ruling class are served.
Removed by mod
What has the Democrats offered in the face of growing inequality and increasing power of corporations?
They probably told people, however media and the people where busy watching the Trump freak show, and listening to all the lies about of how bad the Democrats are.
That is irrelevant. You don’t seem to understand the point I’m making. I’m saying the average American hears critiques and only process them at surface level and forms a black and white evaluation on that basis. This is incredibly fucking stupid.
And knowing that there are so many American’s like this: it is legitimately going to make fewer Americans vote to prevent the fascist from taking power (and did!) because they’ll feel like they’re aligning with the “bad guys” if you critique Democrats in public without a load of additional context (that some wont even absorb anyway if you provided it).
Why should people vote for a party that do not even want to resolve the most pressing issues that affect their daily lives?
To prevent fascists from taking power.
I feel like your missing that many people do see the Democrats as the bad guys, and I can’t say that I blame them. We recently asked them to say “Genocide is bad, and we won’t support it” and they wouldn’t. They are the baddies
I feel like your missing that many people do see the Democrats as the bad guys
No I’m not. I literally said that they would. And I hold that such a black and white surface level evaluation of the situation and to then choose not to vote is aggressively fucking stupid.
And TBH, I don’t want to help stupid people if they’re going to keep dragging me into the mud. I’ve worried about politics for most of my life and worked to make things better for other people but this election has freed me to focus on helping mostly just myself and a few close people that align with me. Most other people are hopeless. I’m done swimming up a waterfall.
Realistically, it’s the Democrats who failed the voting public. Their campaign of “We offer you nothing!”, did not seem to drag in very many undecided voters. You and I might be very politically active, but the majority of Americans are not.
You need to give them a reason to go out and vote. A lot of people have very short attention spans, and easily forgot how bad Trump was the first time around and shaming the people for their shortsightedness is not how you win elections.
The democratic message was less “we offer you nothing” than “nothing will change”.
Nothing will change has good sides and bad sides. The bad side is that there are no new radical fixes, just small, incremental changes.
The good side of nothing will change is… well look at the absolute chaos of the Trump second presidency. Installing absolutely unqualified candidates everywhere, the military’s first DUI hire for secretary of defence. The absolute destruction of USAID. Musk’s chaos putting BigBalls in charge of trillions of dollars of government spending.
(And, as an aside, it’s not even true that with the democrats nothing was going to change. Just look at the progress they had been making on antitrust. But, it’s true that they were shit at messaging and taking credit for their accomplishments.)
“We offer nothing” and “nothing will change” are fundamentally the same thing when things are objectively bad.
Biden was the “Nothing will essentially change” candidate. We finally pushed him out, but Harris only had 2 weeks to come up with “Something”. That something? A small tax credit for small businesses that was DOA in the house. It was probably why they didn’t promise anything else - if a TAX CUT isn’t passing the GOP controlled parts of congress, what the heck could Harris promise that would?
Keep telling yourself the democrats failed and somehow they are now suffering, they aren’t, they’ll get to take 4 years off and enjoy their wealth, it’s the voters who tried to punish the dems by not voting who are the morons
Keep telling yourself the voters are morons until we lose in 2026 and 2028. If Democratic candidates don’t convince people to come out and vote we are lost.
Hey I’m Canadian, looking at this from the outside. You guys inside the shit show can’t quite see how the rest of us see you and your situation
People love it when outsiders comment on their country’s politics
lol the irony and utter hypocrisy of an American saying this 😂
P.s. im native, it’s MY continent
you’re a native in canada and you think voting is gonna fix america’s problems? what an extremely unique perspective you offer. tell me, should the native americans vote their land back?
But that’s the problem. The voters are all morons. The Democrats knew this. And Republicans were giving a master class on how to make that work. But the Democrats didn’t do anything. They treat politics like a friendly game of Monopoly. They assume the rules are magically enforced. So when the Republicans started to cheat, the Dems kept playing by the rules. And now we have a fascist government.
Also, I don’t think the Democrats are suffering. They’re all rich. They can live just fine in a fascist US, they have enough money. We are the ones that are going to be loaded onto the trains.
Their point was that the Democrats didn’t fail, because they didn’t try in the first place
fuck it. I voted dem every election and they did fuckall. We got obamacare, whoop deee doo. we have to buy insurance now. fat load of good that did.
Fuck the dems. I’m leaving and voting for some other party, and you should too. campaigning for a third party should start right fucking now, so the dems can’t say “oH, ThE TiMe FoR SuPpOrTiNg a ThIrD pArTy IsN’t 5 MoNtHs BeFoRe An ElEcTIoN!” Fuck you, you goddamned fake ass left party.
You’re 100% right, but just a heads up, you absolutely will hear dems say that. Campaigning for a third party started long ago and you just joined in.
Dems will have no idea how long you’ve been supporting third-party candidates, and will only recall the discussions they hear while engaged - during election season.
This is a little bit dishonest. It’s not about the length of time you support a party but how much general support they have. You absolutely should support third party and grow the voter base on local and state and even push for larger support. But the spoiler effect is very real. In major elections where voting third party will elect the individuals most likely to harm you and your lifestyle in the most severe ways, and it is extremely obvious that third party has no real horse in the game, you hurt more than yourself. I agree Dems either need to figure their shit out and cut out the cancer or they need to get the fuck out of the way, but until third party candidates stand a real chance at national change for good, i will only be voting for them in elections they either stand a chance in or where showing support for them will help grow the voter base while limiting harm. Mid terms, vote 3pt. Primaries, vote 3pt. General election? Vote to minimize harm while maintaining a potential win.
Damn right the spoiler effect is very real. It was obvious to everyone that it needs to be fixed at a national level in 2000, and obvious that it needs to be fixed in the Democratic primaries in 2016.
So why would we believe any excuse for not opposing it with clone independent voting systems, like third-party candidates do. I’m surprised those don’t strike you as dishonest.
Yes! This is the time to campaign for a third party, or put forward more progressive Democrats, or take a short-sighted meaningless stance on a genocide being done by someone else somewhere else.
However, 2 years from now, in November, you need to vote for the candidate that is most able to win against the fascist ass-kissing trump sycophant, even if they aren’t a 100% match for your political views or objectives.
I will vote 3rd party from now on myself ever since biden signed that funding bill that screwed trans youth of military families. I see now that the democrats will eventually throw us all under the bus and that there is no future remaining in the party.
However… there is a way to get me to list the democrats as my bottom pick. With a more representative electoral system, I would be able to vote 3rd party yet still put the democrats as ranked down as possible on my ballot so that if my preference doesn’t win my vote would be transferred to the democratic candidate.(I won’t be listing the republicans on my ballot)
So in conclusion, if you would like for my vote to count for the democrats, you MUST push your state legislature to pass electoral reform and to do away with First-past-the-post voting. Feel free to not do so, but if the republicans win that’s on the blue conservatives for keeping FPTP voting in the states they control.
or put forward more progressive Democrats,
Beat this drum.
SHOW UP TO THE FUCKING PRIMARIES.
I remember it being fucking dead in my polling place back in 2020 for the primaries compared to the general.
Yeah, primaries are depressing.
Also, at least in my state (a red, semi-regressive state) you can register for and vote in the primaries completely by mail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Joe Biden won that primary with a mere 20 million votes. Bernie had 10, out of a potential voter pool of 87 million.
I feel like too many people don’t know how passing laws work.
The voting system doesn’t have to be this way. There are many far more representative electoral systems we could use over First-past-the-post voting.
Why aren’t the democrats doing anything? Because they don’t have to. What are you going to do, vote republican? “Vote for us… or else” is not democracy, it is a hostage situation. It is an abusive relationship.
If the democrats supported democracy as much as they say, they would be scrambling to pass electoral reform in blue states. If democrats believed what they say about the republican party, they would not hesitate to open the voting system to 3rd parties. If it’s all about preventing republican control, it wouldn’t matter who beat the Republicans so long as they are defeated. Who could possibly say no to more then one chance to beat the Republicans?
Here on lemmy and across the internet you should have seen many blue conservatives screaming to the heavens about the spoiler effect and how voting for 3rd parties is a vote for Trump and the republicans. This is the democratic party showing us that, yes, they do in fact understand that the voting system is a issue.
This has happened for longer then ive been alive. So if the issue is understood, and no reform over how we vote gas taken place, then we can easily assume that the democrats prefer this voting system alongside the republicans. The democrats, don’t want you to have any options in the voting booth. The democrats want this hostage situation. The democrats prefer trump and the republicans to win over having to actually compete for your vote.
We all understand that the republicans don’t support democracy, but now is the time to stop living in denial. The democrats also do not support democracy. They want safe states and the world’s easiest campaigns against the worst of us all. Democrats dont want to answer tough questions at debates. They want to put a party hack in front of you and laugh at your lack of an alternative. They will smash that “most important election ever” but 100 trillion times, collect checks from us and call it a day.
Electoral reform is not some impossible dream. We control how we vote at the state level. We dont need to wait for federal reform, it could still happen before the mid terms. So we must all demand the freedom to vote how we want from both the republican and democratic party in the states that continue to use FPTP voting.
Now is the time. No more waiting for the democrats to suddenly grow a backbone. We can choose a better way. We can have a future to look forward to. We can make the world a place people want to live in, at least more people then just the corporations and landlords that lord over us all.
Feel free to hate me bringing this up time and again. Shut me up by passing electoral reform across the country. I know more democracy is the solution to then problems we all face. Yeah it’s a long shot. But it’s better then having no shot at all.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Yeah now is the time to promote voting reform and try to make a serious third party.
A serious third party needs to start with congressional seats. Not the presidency.
A serious third party probably needs to start at the state or even municipal level, realistically.
Thank you for writing this.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish©
(Yes, I want people to search for this quote and listen to the man)
The dems failed to convince enough people to vote for them. The largest share of votes in the last election was for no-one. Your primary job as a political party is to convince people to vote for you. if they can’t get people motivated in the face of bare faced fascism then they need to take a serious look at why their policies do not speak to americans.
Very few people who voted for Kamala were voting FOR Kamala… they were voting AGAINST Trump
Most of the members of Congress are extremely wealthy, Republican and Democrat alike. They’re not doing anything about this coup consolidating capitalist class power because they stand to personally gain from it. They don’t have to pretend to not have the votes to stop yet another grab at working class wallets because they can point at Elon and say “we have no power here.”
There are certain people who never want to hear it, but very few national politicians give a shit about us, certainly not enough to make a difference. They’re in it for personal gain, everything else is performative.
Some of them also don’t want to risk being violently purged by fascists so are bowing down early.
The handful that are actually speaking out are risking being very dead.
Which is fucking terrifying and why I’ve (and others) been screaming that nobody is coming to save us, we have to save each other. Put down the identity stuff for now and rekindle the militant labor movements we used to have in this country. Withholding our labor is the only way out of this - they need us a lot more than we need them.
My sentiments exactly
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I’ve been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it’s a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They’ve given unanimous consent to Trump’s agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they’re actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Why the lies?
Democrats used every second of their allotted talking time to block Gaetz’s confirmation as much as they could while holding a minority. You genuinely need to look up the meaning of the word “unanimous”.
Republicans obstructed democrats for so long by preventing a majority. The American people enabled that by voting them in.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn’t even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, “unanimous consent.” It’s a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It’s one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump’s agenda if they had the willpower.
I’ll walk that back - I think at some point I mixed up the hearings on RFK and Gaetz, so I gave the wrong name there. I apologize for that.
But even then, for RFK I read articles specifically highlighting the Democrat initiative to hold the floor; and the final vote came out along party lines (excepting some R senators that rebelled). So it sounds like the unanimous consent topic you’re referring to is on regular Senate work, not the confirmation. You specifically said they’ve “fast tracked his appointments” and I’m trying to understand that claim. To me, I’m more convinced that Democrats have political experience telling them that Indivisible’s plan is too easy to backfire, too easy for media to twist against them, and get them forcibly removed from office; especially since their efforts at filibustering have shown they’re not beyond putting in effort.
Given there’s clearly a differing view on what we’re talking about, I’ll apologize for calling you a liar, but it still doesn’t seem like a claim that makes sense to me.
I’ve been voting. Doesn’t seem to work.
It only works in aggregate. Like how a drop of water won’t quench anyone’s thirst, but a 20 gallon barrel generally will.
This is why I hate group projects
One person puts in all the work
Five people don’t
Everyone fails
:) :) :) :) :)
(please kill me)
College in a nutshell. Fuck you steve, thanks for phoning in your part of the final.
One thing I learned early in my academic career was that if I wanted a good grade on a group project it was easier to just do everything myself.
The sooner I can fuck off to the middle of nowhere and not deal with any of you anymore the better.
I thought the system was to dump the barrel out at the top of a hill so you can proclaim how much you’re doing for the thirsty person at the bottom.
Trickle down, but for voting too!
Oh, and I guess that’s what Trump literally did with the water in California, except they were different hills altogether.
Thats piss in that barrel, not water. We are not a society thats content to just leave everyone else alone if they arent affecting you.
It only works in aggregate.
It just plain does not work. Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think
Have you tried the second amendment?
that’s that what they call every week, when a mass shooting happens, right?
Boardrooms not classrooms
I cant get behind that idea because the logic doesnt check out.
What good is a small antipersonnel device against tyranny thats so well staffed? Seems to me like suicide. Do you figure your neighbors will join you? Seems doubtful to me.
Is taking someone down with you some sort of comfort? If it comes to it, running for your life seems a significantly better option. What are you fighting for, your country? your housing lot? our “way of life”?
It’s mitigation.
Show me the part where it mitigated giving the entire government to nazis
Took longer
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
“This is super important but will ultimately fail and you’ll have to shoot the Nazis anyway.”
mit·i·ga·tion noun
the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something.
“the emphasis is on the identification and mitigation of pollution”
Are there not Nazis in charge of our government? How was that at all mitigated and not just delayed?
Democrats
Not opposing Trump, because unlike the last 40 years, we learn that a party has to have a super-majority in a government body to stop the opposing party from doing everything they want all the time.
How could non-voters do this.
I’m not sure we can attribute this inaction to much more than the established Democrats actually stand to personally benefit from these policies. They don’t really have a reason to push back because their donors are the same people in most cases (there are a few exceptions) and so many of them have the same level of gerrymandering and name recognition in their districts as the opposition.
This is not a statement that both parties are the same. They demonstratively are not as Democrats won’t typically be the ones to enact these policies but they also don’t really have a reason to stop them either since things like the tax breaks personally benefit them.
Now is exactly the right time to criticize the dems, make them step up their game. Would be better 4 years ago, but here we are.
Www.indivisible.org is doing some good work getting on democratic “leaders” asses to do something. They also have something called the Payback Project. They are making a public list of all of those who do nothing during this administration and will use funds to buy ads during election time showing what that specific Democrat did or didn’t do.
Totally agree “but here we are”, but a better time would be 1992
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikaanse_presidentsverkiezingen_1992
If you’ve got a time machine, feel free.
The Dems are a minority in both the House and the Senate at the moment, they’re literally powerless.
The best time to criticize them would have been over the last two years, when they actually could have done something about the mess.Being in the minority never stopped the republicans. There are things the democrats can do to obstruct.
The Republicans seem to be able to stop a lot of things, especially if the opposing party not only doesn’t control every branch of government, but doesn’t have a 60+ majority of the senate with a comfortable margin to write off the {Manchins, Sinemas, Libermans, etc.}. But now suddenly a minority party can’t stop their opponents from doing things, even if it is blatantly unconstitutional? It seems like the Democrats are never playing to win.
In reality, the Democrats want this all to continue, because if Trump fucks things up enough and destroys things enough, the Democrats only appeal of “we aren’t the Republicans” can for once, become a winning strategy in 2026/2028.
That’s the key “stops a lot of things”. The way that Congress is structured makes it pretty easy to stop things since there are many choke points. Notice that republicans aren’t really trying to “do things” in Congress?
The current issues and actions are being driven by the executive branch where they’re ignoring the law and constitution . Being in the minority in Congress means that Dems can’t trigger investigations or much of anything to formally push back unless they’re joined by some republicans.
I’ll agree that they could make more noise and should block things up more than they’re doing presently, but these actions wouldn’t really stop or significantly slow any of this.
I’m sick of the green lanterism that gets trotted out to suggest that they’re not stopping things because they don’t want to. Voters didn’t give them power in the last election, so we’re working from a position of weakness.
There are still veto points and lawsuits to be made. Along with the more vocal opposition that you admit that they should engage in. It is neither that they could perfectly stop everything, but that they could actually start trying. The Democrats decided that they should sit back because if Trump fucks things up enough, they will have an easy time in 2026/2028, without changing their usual platform of “We are not the Republicans, we will give you nothing else”.
Now is a great time to criticize them for their past actions and current attitudes, but a poor time to expect protection from them, on account of their minority position in the government.
but a poor time to expect protection from them
Where did this “protection” idea come from?
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do, or get the eff out of the way and let someone with a spine and some morals get it done. The only one out there doing the job is sanders and the progressives. All the other dems only came together to vote for tougher laws on illegal video streaming sites, and now they are pushing to gut peoples protection to say what they want online.
and back in jan: https://politics.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/028201/democrat-teams-up-with-movie-industry-to-propose-website-blocking-law
They are doing nothing but what their donors want, as usual. They learned nothing and continue to do nothing.
No one expects “protection”, we expect them to lift a finger to do the job they were sent to washington to do,
What were they sent to Washington to do, again?
Dont make me pull out school house rock videos of how our supposed “democracy” works.
They were sent to Washington to participate in the legislature. I could go for several more details here, but the core of it comes down to - they were sent to Washington to protect the rights and interests of their constituents through the passage and restriction of laws.
ie ‘protection’.
I expect them to do at least as well as the GOP from the minority position. If they can’t do that, what right do they have to expect our votes?
This is assuming we didn’t vote and things weren’t “lost”.
We deserved a hand recount at least. The fact that they didn’t try is telling.
You can’t berate people into voting the way you want. That is the lesson the DNC needs to learn if they actually want to win.
Social media trolls could do to realize that too.
‘why oh why couldn’t we be as humble as the trump voters!?’
