[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @delaney_nolan, which says, “Biden/Harris saw this polling and decided to keep unconditionally arming Israel”. Below the tweet is a screenshot from an article, which states: “In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they’d be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they’d be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely.”]
Having trouble seeing those who (non-)voted for ending democracy, women’s rights, and oppression of LGBTQ+ and non-christians as allies. Not enthusiastic about the candidate? I don’t care. If they’re going to do less harm, they’re the only ethical choice. The basic numbers showed that one of two candidates would win. Ignoring that and the suffering that would be caused to vulnerable groups by one candidate for ideological purity is a hard thing to forgive.
The people you want to blame aren’t here in a politics community. Maybe a few posters here did a protest vote, probably in a safe state where it didn’t matter, but most people here voted. The people who didn’t vote (in numbers meaningful to winning) weren’t sitting down to think about what the world would be like in each outcome and then saying “eh, it’s fine either way”, they were marginal voters who just didn’t really think it was important because politicians either don’t care about them or don’t follow through on promises. They’re just going to check out when you call them or the other politician names, because it’s a tiring endeavor that they don’t care about. You definitely have people in your life that say “they’re not political” and check out as soon as politics is brought up. You’re never going to reach those voters by expressing your disdain in a forum for politically engaged people, the only way to get to them is to actually motivate them to vote en masse with legit campaigns to inspire them that their lives will get better if they take this action.
Then get used to losing elections, I guess. You generally can’t change a person’s mind unless they already respect you.
And I can’t respect those that are willing to selfishly sacrifice others for their own sense of moral purity, rather than pragmatically save as many as possible. Actions and choices speak louder than any philosophical statement and allowing fascism, all-out genocide of the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples, and oppression of women and LGBTQ+ to win speaks loudly of one’s character.
Everyone here missing the point…
I want to build a broad-based coalition that marginalizes these fascists so we never again have to choose between a fascist and a genocide-enabler. But nah, let’s just stay in our echo chambers and tear each other to shreds while society crumbles outside.
Just want to clarify I was referring to the comments and not your post. I will be right there with you.
I know I got that! I was just adding to the sentiment. If anything, I’m getting the sense that more here agree with us than disagree, and I find that heartening.
Gentle reminder: changing her stance on the Gaza genocide was the “damned if you do” side of the trap that she didn’t go for.
Gentle idea: maybe think a few moves ahead. Even the conservatives were.
Nah. I’m blaming our American people for this shit. Isreal or not, it was absolutely stupid and embarrassing to let that senile dumbass back into the white house. I would have rather had a slice of buttered bread running the country than this embarrassment.
I’ll remember how this was all Kamala’s fault when Trump starts rounding people up. I’m sure it will bring me great comfort. I’m also sure it will bring great comfort to the people of Palesine because Trump DEFINITELY isn’t going to keep arming Israel, and we know he’s way more susceptible to public pressure than Harris would have been.
I’ll also accept cursing Trump voters, as it is obvious that they will never be allies.
So so so many people keep pointing at Trump and saying “But he’s the worst/we’re all doomed/holy shit you need to vote blue no matter who” and comments about “perfect being the enemy of the good” so we should hold our nose and support Democrats.
I feel like I’m the only person who remembers how hyperbolic we all were about Mitt Romney or John McCain being existential threats to democracy. South Park literally made fun of everybody at the time pointing at how running such a divisive campaign let them distract the public from their real goal of stealing the Hope Diamond (obviously). How many of us would BEG for Romney at the top of the Republican ticket at this point?
So sure, Trump is the threat now. When are we supposed to stop rewarding mediocre neoliberalism then? If it wasn’t 2016 or 2020 or 2024 then when? Trump will eventually die and some new Republican will take his place as the leader of the party. EVERY Republican will be the next existential threat and we’ll be scolded and told to hold our nose yet again and vote for the Democrat. If someone can tell me the “end date” where I don’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils, I’d love to know when that is.
I don’t blame other citizens for voting how they do. Everyone has to decide for themselves their red lines for support and in the privacy of the voting booth who they want to support. I do blame Democratic leadership for not learning a single lesson from 2016 about hand picking candidates and browbeating everyone into thinking that’s OK.
You’re exactly right, and this is my point. I’d bet damn near everyone commenting in this thread voted for Harris. It doesn’t matter, we aren’t the swing voters. And the swing voters are the ones that decided this election. There is nothing we can really do to convince swing voters, unless they are already our friends or family. It was Harris’s job to come out with bold policy proposals and messages that would convince those swing voters. Instead, she peddled the same milquetoast neolib shit that has been losing Dems elections since the 90s.
When are we supposed to stop rewarding mediocre neoliberalism then?
When neoliberalism is consistently beating fascism.
So until failed neoliberalism stops failing, we have to keep supporting it? Seems a little backwards. If mediocre neoliberalism was beating fascism, I’d be more okay with getting behind it.
Why keep supporting the losers and thinking they’ll miraculously turn into winners?
After Biden dropped out, I was cheerleading for Harris. I didn’t like her policies, but she had much better chances than Biden, and it seemed like she understood what pitfalls to avoid.
Didn’t matter. The DNC doesn’t understand what is needed to win. They’re still running a playbook from 1996. They think the undecideds are in between them and the GOP, when in actuality they’re to the Left.
Instead, the DNC has now absorbed a bunch of “never Trumper” repubs who clearly aren’t willing to vote for a woman, but will let a geriatric white guy eke out a win if you promise not to do the social justice.
I think the DNC being a “big tent” party has allowed it to accept a large number of very questionable supporters, who for instance won’t vote for women, and who think that Cop City and broken windows policing is totally fine akshually, and whose jaws don’t drop when someone says to “send social workers into the homes” of black parents…
Ultimately, we probably will never know exactly which demo(s) sat out, and everyone will end up just interpreting their own side as the right path forwards. Depressing stuff.
OK, how do we know we’re “beating fascism” and can back off? What stops Democratic leadership from arguing that the most boring ass middle of the road fiscal conservative Republican on the planet is “Trump 2.0” and must be stopped?
I don’t disagree on what you said at all, but so much of this is a war of messaging and marketing. If an amorphous “leadership” just keeps arguing the Republicans are all fascists regardless of what their actions/deeds/etc…actually suggest, how then do we push back on that narrative without being called a Russian plant or Republican sympathizer? In an age of clickbait, outrage manufacturing and people isolating in their own news spheres, it’s super easy for those with power to just lie and stay in power.
It was obvious in 2012 and 2016 that we needed somebody further left than Obama and Clinton. It was obvious in 2020 that Bernie was the best choice of Democratic candidate. We weren’t rewarding neoliberalism then. But when Biden won the primary, we put our feelings aside and rewarded neoliberalism, and we bought our trans comrades 4 more years of life. Then, in 2024, we stopped rewarding neoliberalism.
If Kamala had won yesterday, then you and drag would currently be talking about AOC 2028. We would be able to stop rewarding neoliberalism. Drag would be posting clips of Harris saying that she’s overseen the greatest growth in oil production in history, and calling her a genocidal maniac. It would be clear.
But Trump won, and it’s equally clear what we have to do in this timeline.
It was obvious in 2012 and 2016 that we needed somebody further left than Obama and Clinton.
When Republicans win, the Overton window doesn’t slide to the left. It’s slides to the right. Expecting it to go even further left is a misunderstanding of politics.
Good thing Republicans didn’t control the white house in those years, then.
Trump wasn’t elected in 2016?
He was elected at the end of 2016. Drag is talking about the rest of that year, when America had just had 8 years of Obama. Bernie could have beat Trump in 2016, if we had pushed hard enough. The will to choose a progressive candidate finally came… In 2024 when it was useless. Some people just don’t adapt fast enough, even when the stakes are clear.
Neoliberalism doesn’t beat fascism though and that’s the point.
Fascism is capitalism’s immune system to eliminate dissent and critical ideas.
And then when everyone is united against the fascists who’ve rounded up the socialists, the students, the ethnic and sexual minorities, Neoliberalism steps back in, wipes the blood off of its hands, and says “wow, wasn’t that bad. Let’s stick with me from now on”.
Source please? I’d like to share the poll stats with a friend
Sure thing. This the source for this report: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/memos/joint-resolutions-of-disapproval-needed-to-block-record-weapons-sales-to-israel?rq=yougov
Here’s another one from around the same time: https://www.commondreams.org/news/harris-arms-embargo-israel
I blame the people who voted for trump, personally. I’d be happy to watch the leopards eat their faces, but unfortunately we’re all stuck with them.
Also a fair response. How the hell did a rapist and convicted felon win the popular vote?
People are stupid and value in group solidarity more than anything else.
The only way forward is to make them feel like a member of a better group, or violence.
I’m sure the trans people whose lives are now in danger will sleep much better tonight knowing that the blood of those Palestinian children who are going to continue dying because Donald Trump has promised not to even try for a ceasefire isn’t on your hands, because you didn’t vote for Kamala Harris.
I hope you’re fucking happy.
I’m sorry, did you personally check my ballot?
Instead they opted to air opposing views in Michigan and Pennsylvania
Fuck that, I’m blaming every single person that didn’t vote for Harris
You’re going to have a busy day.
I mean, if you’re referring to the people that voted for Trump, I’m right there with you. It’s absolutely mind-boggling that a rapist and convicted felon won the popular vote.
The majority of population aren’t the ones who voted for Trump. The majority of the population didn’t vote at all.
Yeah, they are just as guilty as the ones that voted for Trump (and the ones that voted third party) in my book
I’m blaming those who didn’t vote the most.
No number of additional blue votes in Massachusetts or Hawaii was ever going to matter.
They made their decisions and you made yours. If you decided that we’d be better off with Trump, that’s on you. Own it.
Putting Trump in office makes Gaza worse. He’s promised us as much. Maybe you proved a point to the Democrats, and maybe you didn’t. Maybe now they’ll lean even harder to the center. Who knows. That’s a gamble you took, and you made steep sacrifices to make that gamble.
Gambling with someone’s life to make a political point does not make you their ally.
I’m sorry, did you personally count my ballot? Or are you just making assumptions about me?
The same thing is looking like it’s going to happen in Canada
Current Liberal government is going to hold out all support for a genocidal country doing genocidal things for no apparent obvious reason and any moderate voter out there will avoid them for them it.
It doesn’t matter what your politics are … if your political party openly and wholeheartedly wants to support something that does no benefit to your country, ruins the lives of others and supports a maniacal regime, and does it at the cost of millions and billions of dollars -> why would you want to vote for them?
I don’t get it … sure Israel is pretty important but why would political leaders obviously tank their entire prospects just to save the support of a country that has very little to do with their own other than to cost everyone money.
But they got the Cheneys!
Hard to see people as allies who are willing to let the world burn because the only other option wasn’t perfect. The campaign fucked up, for sure, but every voter that stayed home shares blame in this.
Same. I can’t see you as allies if you throw trans people, immigrants, disabled people and homeless people under the bus to protest a policy that will be even worse under the opposition.
A lot of people (probably the majority) that stayed home didn’t do so because of Gaza. They did so because they are too busy to keep up with the news, and nothing they heard about either candidate was compelling enough to get up off the couch on election night. It was Harris’s job to reach and then convince those people.
I didn’t say Gaza, and it doesnt matter why they couldn’t be bothered. Their share remains the same.
you just have zero empathy for people with busier lives than you? what about people that work a full-time job while caretaking for an ill parent and maybe also raising kids? people that can barely find time to sleep? it was Harris’s job to find a way to reach those people, and convince them to make time to vote. she didn’t.
Goal-post yeeting aside (first “off the couch”, now “no time to sleep”?), barring actual factual voter suppression, there’s little-to-no valid excuse in the US to not vote at all. Only 3 states have zero early-voting or vote-by-mail options (for now). The thing with democracy is that everyone shares responsibility to take part. Shirking that responsibility doesn’t absolve anyone of guilt, more so the opposite. Now democracy very well may not be an option again, so no, I’m not going to spend much time empathizing with the people that enabled that.
