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.
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.
Not saying you shouldn't do the right thing when the choice is limited, but how about the DNC stops putting its finger on the scale for unpopular establishment candidates?
It's clear that the 'safe' choice can still lose, so why not go for the person the base actually likes instead of another centrist wet napkin who appeals to no one?
I just want to join in to remind everyone that multiple things can be true at the same time.
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The DNC/Biden can and should be doing better.
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We only have 2 options for president. It will be one of the two main candidates because that is how the system works. Don't pretend it doesn't. You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
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We should be pressuring Biden to do more about both Ukraine and Gaza. Ending both conflicts and getting aid to people.
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Choosing to vote for a 3rd party to protest Biden's response to Gaza/Israel is only going to help Trump in the short term. Yes, long term Biden and DNC may notice their total votes going down, but in the short term it will put Trump in the Whitehouse and now what? What did you accomplish if the DNC realizes they fucked up, but can't do anything about it because Trump is now a dictator?
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Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won't compromise on anything. That isn't how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn't happen in one election cycle.
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We should have been and should be campaigning and pushing for changes to our system so that we can have better options in the future. We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP). And voting in local level elections to make small changes across the country. Term limits. Campaign finance reforms. Etc etc. because until we get a new system we effectively can't just vote for who we want or it doesn't do anything more than a fart in a hurricane.
I see a lot of people who are saying they will not vote for Biden because the Gaza/Israel issue. Which I completely understand. But the two truths you have to accept in doing so is that you will not be complicit in the genocide. But you will be complicit if Trump wins. Both can be true. You decide which one you would rather see. If you don't want Trump then the only option is a vote for Biden. And until we reform our voting system we don't have viable 3rd parties and pretending we do is just delusional. Look at every election for the last hundred years and you will see enough proof. It's not ideal, but it is reality. **Accept it **so we can change it together.
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Yeah, it's totally our fault the Dems have to see how far right they can possibly get away with. And they just "aren't for us" completely diminishes our issues. This is a problem created by the DNC, it is not created by the voters.
Donald Trump was the DNCs fault for running a centrist, dirty candidate. Not ours for not falling in love with her. Your fucking guilting us into voting for a turd sandwitch is bullshit. Stop sucking.
I have and will vote against Donald Trump, but I am not donating and making calls like I did for Bernie. Biden is a big pile of literally not Donald Trump, that's all he is.
The fact that you need grassroots help to win an election when you can easily represent a large majority of the voters by just representing the voters is your fault.
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.
While you should vote for the best possible option, I feel like these kinds of posts are constantly shifting responsibility away from Democrats for their own short-comings.
A couple of weeks ago I voted in the European Parliament elections for the option that had, in my view, the best possible agenda: socially progressive, ecologist, economically left-leaning, decent foreign policy and coherent voting records. But the campaign they ran was absolutely terrible, starting by the candidate. Even though she is admittedly an accomplished woman who has had a very solid career, she doesn't know about the concept of charisma. She wasn't selected because she was the person who would perform the best in debates or in speeches (and she definitely wasn't), but rather, because she was an option that would provoke little conflict among the different factions of the coalition. That was the sign that the internal dynamics of the coalition had degenerated and were acting out of their own inertia, rather than seeking the best possible outcome.
Expectedly, we got about half the seats we were aiming for.
The very next day, the leader of the coalition resigned from that position. Even though she's a great minister (making policy), she's proven she isn't good at keeping the aparatus under control in order to achieve good results (doing politics). It's a painful process, but a necessary one where mistakes and short-comings must be admitted in order to grow into something more virtuous.
Having read US liberals for years, I grow more and more convinced that they're instinctively hostile to constructive criticism of their party's aparatus. And, when your country's voters declare themselves to agree far more with your party's policies than those of their direct opponent, and yet they can't bury their opponent into irrelevance, you have to admit that your party is doing electoralism wrong, and must question why.
I remember history different. I remember Gore losing the debates because he listened to his advisors. That was cringey.
But you think it's the voters who blew it every time. You even think minority voters in hardcore Red states blew it, which is quite absurd.
Maybe the candidates were shit? Maybe their policy positions sucked? Hmm. That might be relevant too.
This is a truly terrible take. If I run a restaurant, and it goes out of business, I don't get to blame my customers. If I ever want to run a successful restaurant, I have to look at my product, marketing, and service and figure out where I failed. If Biden loses, then the Dems need to look at where they failed; I'd start with the fact that they chose not to hold a primary when the majority of their own party didn't want Biden to be the candidate.
I've never understood how so many voters could earnestly think that increasing the overall amount of condescension would ever actually net them more allies & supporters.
People still underestimate the damage the GWB presidency has done to the US' international standing and the living conditions of the average citizen. But sure, Gore was a huge bore with a giant stick up his arse.
But don't worry. We the people don't actually get to vote the new fucker in chief into office. We're too dumb. The electoral college composed of some random people who we don't know is the small group that actually gets to vote for the president. Our ballots are just suggestions.
Think how boring the world could be with Al Gore. US taking proper actions against climate change two decades ago.
You can't claim world wide pandemic followed by the world war three is boring.
“Boring” “Unlikeable” “Stiff”
“Can sit down and have a beer with him” “Tells it like it is” “I like him ‘cause he’s not a politician”
I wouldn’t be too hard on the electorate, although I 100% agree with the problem description and that counter-educating them out of being duped by these framings is important. But they didn’t come up with the framings. There’s a whole ass science of how to resonate with people emotionally and produce behaviors you want, and professionals have been studying it for over a century now to sell toothpaste and beer and deodorant, and it works. It’s actually one of the primary focuses of hard scientific study in our society, much much more so than addressing climate change. And so, when they turned that whole machine in favor of particular candidates and against other candidates, it’s not surprising that it worked on a whole fuck of a lot of people.
Now let’s start to talk about how “I could NEVER vote for a genocide” and “Here comes the biggest election of our lifetime, just like every other one before that 🙄” fits into that framework…
Democracy is when your government holds your (and many others around the world) life, health, and welfare hostage.
And btw, Obama gave his pick away. He thought he was gonna win.
I blame Dubya for a lot, but the Great Recession was caused by the housing bubble which was based on laws and practices that predated his presidency (partly Clinton's fault for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act). He did a shit job of handling it and leading recovery from it, but the event itself wasn't his fault.
I dont see this changing anytime soon. 2024, trumps looking likely, US continues getting shittier. Maybe Biden wins, US continues getting shittier but slower. 2028, either trump running again, or trump jr, or desantis, another big threat of far right fascism leaving progressive voters feeling pressured once again to put pushing for reform on hold and holding their nose for a well connected "safe" centrist candidate.
The USA is going to shit FAST bro
Don’t forget Reagan. Jimmy Carter, one of our best presidents and true nice guy, the only nuclear scientist, someone who truly wanted life to be better for all Americans, spent the rest of his life helping people ……. Wasn’t “likable”, but Reagan was. Maybe y’all better think about that when you want your candidate to be likable, to schmooze, to tell you what you want to hear, or to be a “Great Communicator”
I just keep reading ai gore...
They can get excited for a candidate who's literally the living antithesis of their supposed values and yet Democrats not only have to be more popular but wildly so for electoral results that let them go anywhere meaningful.
Not even nominal trifecta control is evidently enough if even one dem thinks a procedural glitch caused by only repealing half a rule by accident, because somehow the cornfields get to hold everything hostage by just declaring "nah we're not done debating yet" and then just never letting it be discussed again.
It's frustrating beyond imagination and even worse it is all entirely by design with the intention of continuous disenfranchisement, against the young, against women, against people of color, and even past all them, against people who don't own their own land.
The establishment types and chrisnats drone on and on about how America is a shining city upon a hill, and in doing so have completely lost the plot. America should never accept that it is the city on the hill, it should forever be striving to be the city on the hill. We need to find a way together to break the walls down and rebuild the structure of this country to be one that is well and good capable enough of getting out of its own way to be able to seek constant and pro-active improvement to the model.
If by “rigged” you mean part of the constitution added to appease slaveholders, then, yes.
What about TRON PAUL
The moment Clinton announced Al Gore as his running mate he lost my vote. I was very familiar with Tipper Gore and the PMRC and had even read her book "Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society"*
There was no way I was going to vote for anyone remotely related to her to be in the White House. It was the first election I had participated in. I do not regret this vote because Clinton still became president and things didn't work out for various reasons.
- These days that book couldn't even get published. The page count was too small. You can't get a book that is less than 300 pages published anymore as a standalone thing through major publisher. This should make you question how much filler there is in current nonfiction books.
