The democrats did this to themselves
The democrats did this to themselves
The democrats haven’t held a legitimate primary since 2008!
In 2008 it was a genuine competition between Obama, Hillary, and a handful of other lesser known politicians. Obama won the general in a landslide.
In 2012 Obama ran unopposed. Obama won the general.
In 2016 the democrats rigged the primary against sanders for Hillary, and to absolutely no one’s surprise who was paying attention, Hillary lost the general. Why? she didn’t genuinely win the primary. Shocking!
In 2020, refusing to learn mistakes from 2016, the democrats once again screwed over bernie and didn’t run a legitimate primary - rigged it so that all the candidates except no-path-to-win Warren exited the race to split the progressive vote away from bernie. Joe biden won by the skin of his teeth, and he would of lost if it weren’t for the country reacting to trumps handling of covid.
In 2024, once again refusing to learn the democrats didn’t even bother with a primary, ran an old demented geezer as a presidential candidate, realized that wasn’t going to work, and then anointed unelected Kamala Harris who didn’t even need to compete in a primary.
And they’re shocked they lost?! These people make way too much money to be this stupid.
I can't stop thinking about how in 2016, my conservative grandmother watched the primary debates and told me she actually thought Bernie made a lot of good points.
And then she went on to vote for Donald Trump in November.
This, I think, is the disconnect the DNC keeps failing to recognize.
We just keep nominating milquetoast centrists whose message is little more than "maintain the status quo", when nobody is happy with the status quo.
But we have to run centrist candidates, they say, or else we'll lose all the voters in the center!
If that's how it works, then why is the GOP winning by doing the exact opposite?
In a world where rent keeps going up but wages stay the same, people are scared and frustrated, and they don't feel like their frustrations are heard.
Along comes a smooth-talking con man who tells them, "I know you're angry at the world, and I'm going to give you a scapegoat to blame it on. It's the immigrants' fault. It's trans people's fault. It's the woke left's fault. It's whatever target I tell you to hate next's fault. And if you elect me, I will stick it to these people in order to Make America Great Again!"
Meanwhile, the best we can do is "Vote for me because everything that other guy said is horrifying." That's it. That's the only real sales pitch we have for Harris. But no matter how terrible the other guy is, it reflects horribly on us that we can't even talk about our own candidate's merits at all.
We need to run a candidate who can say, "I too know you're angry at the world. And I'm here to offer real solutions, not snake oil, and more importantly, not the status quo either."
The difference between the right and left here is that the right actually likes their guy. And if not even we like our candidates, why should voters?
Alas, we learned nothing in 2016 and I suspect the DNC will continue to learn nothing now.
My view: yes, the Dems could have some better, but they still put up a legitimately good candidate. The GOP put up a pile of orange dog shit... And the dog shit won. How is it the Dems fault that more than half the population enjoys dog shit?
For the Dems to win, they need to run a fucking perfect campaign and the GOP doesn't. Why? Because media fragmentation and propaganda. The bulk of the population doesn't want to be informed. How is that the Dems fault? How did the Democratic party reach those voters that don't give a shit about truth?
This isn't a failure of the Democratic party, this is a failure of our society.
Dems are the greatest ally the GOP could ask for. Lost to Trump at his weakest, literally doing a Nazi rally. Being spineless doesn't get you wins. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar won re-election by comfortable margins and the rest of the party are fighting for their lives in these states. Some Red States still voted to protect abortion rights and just choose not to vote for Harris.
Even if Jill Stein voters had picked Harris she still would have lost. There is no-one to blame but Harris and embracing people like Dick Cheney anrd The Blue No Matter who crowd themselves. You let Republicans unapologetically be themselves but your're whole brand of politics makes any group who works with you expendable and centers a chance for that 1-2 GOP voters joining. I hope it was worth it.
The electorate swung solidly right, giving Trump the popular vote. Much as I'd like a more left-wing administration in the US, the evidence does not support the theory that a left leaning campaign would have helped. The US apparently wants an authoritarian government, and it got it.
This is not just the US either - globally we are shifting rapidly to authoritarian regimes. In my own UK where the center left (at best) Labour won the election, but only because the right wing parties were split by FPTP. The Tories elected a far right leader last week and got derided for it, but for them, it's absolutely the right move, and the next election will likely deliver a far right Tory or Tory/Reform coalition. For reference, Labour got less votes than the previous election that they lost in a land slide.
Same where I currently live, Germany, and my fiancé's France.
Dark times are ahead. Prepare for the worst.
On top of that, dems have done a load of jack shit in power, even with a majority for half of the last term. Most of the policies Biden promised never came to fruition. Just sitting back and slowly letting the people shrivel. Advertising themselves as "maintaining the status-quo" isn't appealing for the average voter. As a Harris voter, I say that dem voters have an apathy problem.
Fuck no, the republicans shouldn’t even be close. The fact that they're tolerating Nazis and other similar views is why they felt comfortable voting for Trump. I will NEVER forgive them.
I don't think it's exactly a matter of appealing to progressives, but an inherent difficulty in trying to appeal to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of interests. You end up having to make vague promises in order not to offend anyone, which comes across as being boring or disingenuous, like you are only saying stuff in order to get elected and not because you actually belive in it. Conservatives can have much simpler and more straightforward messaging because their base is much more homogeneous.
Actually, the American people have done that to themselves.
Every American eligible to vote had access to all the info about both candidates. And the majority of voters chose to vote for Trump.
More than 70% of eligible voters chose not to vote against Trump.There's no reason to believe the election was rigged.
Americans, you've made your bed. Now lie in it.
I just hope that my country's government will finally find their backbone and realize we can't rely on or trust yours any longer, and draw the necessary consequences.
They both have their corporate masters. It's just RedPubs run a pro corporate ticket and Democrats have a platform that is perceived as anti corporate. RedPubs get into the office and do exactly what they promised, Democrats get into the office and have to pretend to not bite the hand that feeds too hard (more of a gentle lick).
This is why the Democrats strategy is to lose. They are essentially paid to lose. Corporatism is what is getting in the way of democracy.
It's been on my mind too, especially 2016 and 2020. My first vote was for Obama in the primary in 2007 and it got me interested in politics. What we have now just... sucks. I wanted Warren in 2020, but states that don't even vote blue decided Biden was the pick.
Had there been a primary in 2024, though, it'd have likely gone to Harris anyway and we'd probably have had the same results. I don't think we'll have a good primary until the electorial college is abolished and the red states who vote on primaries actually have say that matters, or we change how primaries work so that it's reflective of states that actually vote blue (and while we're at it, have it on the same fucking day so it's not first come first serve).
There was a 2024 democractic primary. I voted for biden. Barring that they use the super electors so yeah its basically rigged. They actually rigged it to make it hard for extreme canidates to win which is just another reason why the dems are not the left party but the centerist party. Its just there is no left party that wins the way the right wins. That being given though the super electors have been around for awhile so the all the primaries including 2008 are equally legitimate or illigitimate and have been so by and large since 1984. They really should get rid of the superdelegates as it was a knee jerk reaction to reagan "democrats".