Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, has suggested he may run for president in 2028.
Reflecting on the Democrats’ loss to Donald Trump and JD Vance, he admitted: “A large number of people did not believe we were fighting for them in the last election – and that’s the big disconnect.”
Walz said his life experience, rather than ambition, would guide his decision.
Though his VP campaign was marred by gaffes, he remains open to running if he feels prepared.
The Harris campaign had to cover the governor’s tracks when he tripped up during a California fundraiser by stating that the constitutionally-mandated system used to select the president, otherwise known as the electoral college, “needs to go”.
How the hell is that a gaffe? It’s both the truth and exactly what people want to hear. Any lib who thinks like that needs to kindly keep their mouths shut for the next four years. This country needs radical change, the only choice you get is which one you want.
and exactly what people want to hear
It’s what people who care about democracy want to hear. That certainly isn’t everyone.
Here, let me grab a sharpie and fix that.
The Harris campaign made a cowardly attempt to walk back the governor’s statements when he said during a California fundraiser that the broken election systems used for gerrymandering and enabling the double elections of Donald Trump, “needs to go”.
Just guessing, but it might be a gaffe because it could be skewed to sound like he doesn’t believe in democracy. Of course, this makes no sense because Trump has quite literally said that we might not need another election in four years.
A more careful statement might have been, “the electoral college needs to be replaced with a system where every citizen’s vote has the same magnitude.” If that’s not the mathematical ideal of democracy, I don’t know what is.
Edit: For you pedantic mathematicians, I’ll add that everyone’s vote should have the same magnitude, and that magnitude should be greater than zero.
If that’s not the mathematical ideal of democracy,
That is the mathematical ideal of populism.
Democracy is “government by consent of the governed”; There is no good way of democratically electing a singular individual. Which is why the presidency should be little more than a figurehead, with very little actual authority.
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most of the electorate
You just defined “populism”.
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The pearl-clutching Tone Police in the Democratic Party are nothing if not exhausting, that’s for sure.
The Republicans can and do say just about whatever the fuck they want, and that’s sanewashed, and overlooked, and brushed under the rug, sometimes even celebrated, but the tone police in the “liberal media” and the left, and the Democratic Party itself will be there, wagging-finger at the ready, if some Democrat misses a semicolon .
i’m not even sure what that text is supposed to be referencing?
I assume it’s not literally the message itself, because that would be kind of broad. I’m guessing he just said it weirdly, and that bothered people, because of course it did.
I’m not convinced there will be an election in 2028…
There won’t at the current trajectory. There won’t even be midterms.
I remember Republicans checking out on elections back in 2018 because they bought hard into the Trump “elections are rigged” propaganda. The GOP lost seven Senate seats that year as conservative turnout plunged.
I wonder if Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
No, I don’t think Democrats are ready to make new mistakes yet. They still won’t abandon their devotion to the old mistakes.
Not sure about rigged, but honestly, depending on how the next few years go, it may be straight up dangerous for non-republican Americans to vote. While that’s by no means a certainty, people should keep an eye on any electoral changes made in their state.
If Republicans experience a route like they suffered in 2018, it will likely be due to the mushy indie republican-when-its-convenient voters breaking ranks in droves, just like they did in prior Dem wave years. That’s what Harris was banking on in 2024 when she paraded around her pet RINOs Liz Cheney and Jeff Flake. She just failed to understand that these wishy-washy voters are chasing less war and less disruption and more protectionist economics, something Trump was able to dangle over their heads (twice!) to win the GOP primary / national election.
Republicans don’t really seem to get it, either. Which is why they think the midterm after a wave year is the perfect time to put Grade A psychos all over the down-ballots and end up losing statewide in Alabama of all places as a result.
The “we won’t be having any more elections” crowd is heavily invested in a theory that Republicans can get their own base to sit down, shut up, and follow orders. But the last eight years of Trump should be an indication of the exact opposite. The party is being lead by the base, which means the prior generation’s power brokers like the Bushs and Cheneys and Bloombergs no longer have a place in it.
This line of thinking has preserved whatever is left of my optimism. Let us hope my fellow Americans continue to function predictably.
That’s completely wishful and fantastical thinking. By midterms the base will be so propagandized again to just forget about the regime robbing them blind left and right. I want to believe it, but recent history has taught me otherwise.
By midterms the base will be so propagandized again to just forget about the regime robbing them blind left and right.
DOGE is currently lining up a big chunk of the Social Security Administration. There’s some speculation as to whether they’ll even be able to keep delivering checks in another few months. Onboarding new recipients will be functionally impossible.
Then you’ve got the seemingly routine instance of airplane collisions and accidents. Big historically conservative-friendly districts are losing whole swaths of their workforce. NASA is downsizing in Huntsville, Alabama and Galveston, Texas and Cape Canaveral, Florida. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
All the friendly Republican press didn’t save Congress in 2006 or 2018, and for good reason. You have a very different perspective on politics when you land on the unemployment line.
That said, if Dems fumble as hard as they did in 2002, its very possible they could hand the GOP a historic victory by disenchanting the entire liberal electorate with their cowardice and inaction.
Again, I want to believe, but recent history doesn’t provide that angle. During COVID there were people saying it was a government hoax as they were dying in the hospital. If they can be brainwashed to not believe their own fucking death, then nothing will change them.
I’m not talking about some of the moderates who don’t really mind Trump but don’t stay informed, by the way. I think some small percentage of these folks will be able to see the reality, just not in time.
Time to start over on Lemmy and use a VPN, sounds like…(?) been worrying about this kind of thing
They made it in 2024. The results of abstaining or protest voting were obvious, and these idiots did it anyway. And here we are.
The results of abstaining or protest voting were obvious
Absolutely. The current Dem leadership is now wildly unpopular and vulnerable to primary. Just like after 2016, the seeds have been planted for a big anti-incumbent wave.
I wonder if Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
i really, really fucking hope this doesnt happen, i’m going to fucking lose my shit if it does. Because unless things change, it’s not looking great for the trump midterms right now.
That makes no sense at all. 2018 was two years after Trump won in 2016, and he rarely claimed elections were rigged in 2016, because he won.
In 2020, however, he was gloating about how elections were rigged, and republicans did okay in the midterms later in 2022.
he rarely claimed elections were rigged in 2016, because he won.
He was highly outspoken in 2016 straight up until the elections closed, then did a number of interviews after the fact where he insisted he could have won in states like California and New York if the vote hadn’t been rigged against him. There was also a big wave of “RINOs are undermining the party!” discourse, particularly after McCain spiked the Senate vote on repealing Obamacare that lead to a ton of internal GOP drama.
In 2020, however, he was gloating about how elections were rigged, and republicans did okay in the midterms later in 2022.
The J6 riot was the product of four years of Republican discourse, insisting elections were rigged. Once Trump was out of office and banned from Twitter, his ability to amplify conspiracy theories was diminished. The Republican media machine was able to pivot back to a “We’re the majority! We’re going to flood the polls! Red Wave!” exuberance and away from the internalized defeatism post-2016.
Shouldn’t be hard. All they have to say is “Remember the townhalls, and how they mocked you while you paid for them to make your lives worse? We’ll put it back.” They don’t even need to add anything, just try to rebuild. Anything would be a positive change when you’re sliding into the negative side of the scale (and in two years, it’ll be far far far to the left)
Democrats will make the same mistake in 2026.
The only thing the Democrats failed at was fielding a fat old white male felon narcissist serial rapist with ties to a foreign nation-state. If they can just do that they’ll win no matter what.
Sorry if you didn’t get a personal hug from America’s Mom and Dad but you’re kinda expected to make a value judgement between two options and choose the best. As a group, you did not.
Only blame Dems who voted for a kleptocratic felon. The rest did their best to field the best candidate they could and lost to a traitor – and those guys need to start with our apology for being stupid, same as all of Ukraine needs our apology, and next Moldova.
The only thing the Democrats failed at was fielding a fat old white male felon narcissist serial rapist with ties to a foreign nation-state.
Is that why Obama lost in 2008?
Look, guys. I’m rather concerned that the states that haven’t seceded by then won’t even have electricity anymore.
There will, but it won’t be a fair one. They have “elections” in Russia, too.
There will absolutely be an election.
It will be a farce, a Russian election where there’s only one possibility to win.
If we’re not pitchforks in the street before then, I don’t hold much hope
Or maybe a Hungary-style election where the entire media landscape shills for the ruling class and people on social media are bombarded with misinformation and one-sided reporting.
sounds a lot like the last 12 years TBF
Sounds like you described the US process as well. May not be far from it now.
That’s close to what happened in 2024 tbh. Sites like Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube were heavily botted and full of bad faith actors to promote misinformation. Since there are no guardrails like BlueSky has for instance, the bots could show up early to every thread/post/video to set the narrative and then they’d be the last to reply before threads closed to get the final word in.
I believe the future depends on more Federated sites to become mainstream and for Federated sites to adopt the same moderation mechanisms used by BlueSky.
Certainly could never happen here, twice at least. /s
States run the elections, so I’m positive there will be one. But whether or not the results are respected… I’m not so confident in that.
I’m not confident the results in red states will be accurate to begin with.
There will be since elections are held at the state level. Many won’t be free or fair in the red states, but they’ll be good in the blue states.
If red states don’t hold elections, that’s fewer electoral college votes we need to win the presidency and we wouldn’t win in red states anyway.
Please, Texas and Florida. Oh, please, don’t hold elections. 🙏
The way I read it, electoral college votes are the one thing where individual states can somewhat easily cancel elections for President, as long as they do so before the election. States have broad discretion over the appointment of electors. All states currently appoint them based on the results of elections, but the rules around that are all set by State legislation, and can be reset by States as well. The only Federal requirement is that the rules don’t change after any election is held.
Prior Supreme Courts have ruled that things like the Equal Protection clause may be used to challenge any act where the legislature restricts voting rights once they have been granted. But who knows what this clown Court would make of that.
Congressional elections, on the other hand, must be held in order for those seats to be filled. So any state that unilaterally cancels elections across the board will be sending nobody to Congress (and likely any expired Senate terms as well). Some states may go the extra mile and cancel the election for President, but not for Congress. We’ll see how that turns out.
The one thing we have going for us is that Don’s dementia and age are going to increasingly make it difficult for him to hold his party together. And there is the chance one of those things will leave the GOP trying to field a new traitor to try and get the cult to consolidate around.
once he kicks the bucket, assuming they can’t find someone the republican base will support as fervently as trump, the entire party is done for, it will collapse into a blackhole of nothingness.
I’d like to believe that, I really would, but let’s be honest with ourselves. The current republicans (in leadership) aren’t stupid. They’ve gotten pretty decent at running with donald’s bullshit and spinning it. They also know that politics isn’t much different than sports teams for the vast majority of the voting public in america. They’ll not have trouble finding someone who is charismatic enough to spit verbal acid at opponents in a primary AND can be riled up against the demographic target of choice.
The only real challenge for them will be 1.) finding someone with donald’s ‘blessing’ or a connection to him to set it up as ‘taking over’ so the republican voters will find it so amazing, AND 2.) ensuring someone like musk doesn’t try to torpedo everything by using vast amounts of money to try to buy their way into the ring.
maybe, but you’re talking about finding someone who can win the graces of the people who like trump, who see trump as this historic figure. That’s a REALLY tall order. Even if you hemorrhage like 10% of your voter base, that’s enough to lose. If the republicans are smart they’re already working on grooming the next republican figurehead, but i doubt they are. Though they might end up playing their cards right, i’m not really convinced it’s a reliable determination to assume that they will find someone to replace trump, these things are just way too volatile.
Just like the dems. Who will we vote for then, the greens?
no, the dems, because literally who else are you going to vote for lmao. There is always a budding dem/left leaning candidate, we will never have that problem, we don’t play as aggressively on that.
because literally who else are you going to vote for lmao.
Well, I’ll leave the entry blank. And I dont agree that theres always a budding dem candidate. The party is sickly and captured by the donors, particularly aipac. There is no way it magically becomes uncaptured without losing elections. So thats what I’m working on.
protest voting is definitely an option, although i wish it listed actual numbers. Kind of ruins the point if it’s just worthless to do.
Losing elections to the republicans? You mean the party that most lefties accuse the dems of being in bed with? Seems like a bold strategy. Do nothing and, when you do end up doing something, make sure it’s something that doesn’t actually do anything.
Kind of ruins the point if it’s just worthless to do.
My vote and other voters like me made the point to the DNC that if they ignore the will of a large enough segment of their base, they will absolutely lose the election. If everyone thought like you did, the DNC would completely ignore the entirety of their base. They clearly operate from a completely amoral calculation these days. They dont care about much of anything. Not law, not human dignity. Nothing.
Even Russia has elections
Nah, there probably will. Whoever is taking control of the US really don’t care about MAGA’s and 3rd terms. They’ll just put another puppet there, the new way of doing things in post-capitalism still maintains and some people will continue to get increasingly very rich doesn’t matter who the prez is. We finally reached “the future”.
There will definitely be an attempt to eliminate or “postpone” them. I’m certain Trump is looking at Putin in power and other governments in a state of war without elections as inspiration.
Give me AOC or Bernie.
Bold of him to assume there will be elections in 2028.
Tim Walz unleashed would have won this.
He was hamstrug by Harris. He’s likely the dem’s best choice for 2028.
So of course they’ll run Newsome or Shapiro or Hillary Clinton again because they’re a bunch of idiots.
It’s cute that he thinks there will be an election in 2028, or ever again, for that matter.
Him calling the GOP weird was not a gaffe but the campaign made him walk away from that language because it might offend potential turncoats. The fact he is internalizing the criticism worries me.
My only “problem” with the weird-comments were that they were overused. While it is certainly true, and Waltz had every reason to call it out, supporters often kept repeating it in the context of “look how triggered Republicans are by this”. After a while it gave me the same vibe as people shoehorning “let’s go brandon” into every situation.
My only problem with the “weird” verbiage is that it was far too soft.
The GOP is far beyond “weird” and well into full-blown Fascist territory.
But we wouldn’t want to “alienate” anybody by speaking facts!
But the thing about the “weird” verbiage is that it pissed them off way more than the harder insults. Especially if you phrase the accusation correctly.
For example, here’s a good response to a MAGA shitting on trans children, “it’s really weird that you care so much about children’s genitals.”
It’s because they don’t have a defense for it. They can do mental gymnastics for the harder stuff pretty easily because those terms are in black and white. Weird is a very grey area term, and they have to explain why the behavior is normal.
They can do mental gymnastics for the harder stuff pretty easily because those terms are in black and white. Weird is a very grey area term, and they have to explain why the behavior is normal.
They also spend most of their time trying to argue that their political party is on the side of normal; so they find it very necessary to discuss at length how normal they are which only makes them look weirder.
It really was an effective line of attack. I guess that’s why it had to be jettisoned in favor of parading around with Liz Cheney.
Yeah, but they don’t care if you call them fascists. Calling them weird made them freak out, because not fitting in is what makes fascists target you next
They all think “if I were in charge of the world it would be great, and they’re all just like me! We just have to get rid of a few problems mucking up the works”
Weird works because if they were looked into even slightly, they’re creepy as hell. They’ve got all kinds of SA allegations, say creepy things they’ve been thinking about kids, and they go around accusing others of their kinks
They can shake off being called a Nazi, you could bring up their rape charges, but none of that matters
It’s vibes based, so you have to question their vibes before you can apply logic
The point was it was something you could say to someone in real life to let them know those political positions aren’t okay, without getting their defensiveness up. Just, “I dunno man that seems weird to me, want another beer?”
I guess.
Then again, I’m done “having a beer” with these cousin-fuckers, so
Yeah, but there’s a lot of people that were on the fence. And being social creatures we usually tend to float things with our friends to check the vibe. There’s no point in sharing a beer with a die hard MAGA supporter but your union buddy who is getting seduced by talks of lowering regulations?
After a while it gave me the same vibe as people shoehorning “let’s go brandon” into every situation.
Except that…worked?
One of the takeaways from the 2024 election is that if you have something that works, repetition is key for the idiot American electorate.
Yeah, interesting how the Harris campaign had all the momentum after the Waltz nomination, then pivoted back to neoliberal wonkiness and then crashed and burned again.
It was her perpetual problem too. She’d start out with energetic support for progressive policies, get momentum, and then a few days later (presumably after talking with advisors and donors) clarify that actually she didn’t mean it and what she really wanted was strictly limited neoliberalism. It’s why she failed in the 2020 primary and I wish she learned something from that.
Could she have given donors the middle finger and overcome lack of money to win through better policy?
Could she have given donors the middle finger
“Losing” is a middle finger to the donors.
To a donor, the only thing worse than losing is winning without the donor’s support. A donor would rather lose than be proven irrelevant.
Probably? At least the big ones I’m sure shed have gotten a lot of small ones.
context of “look how triggered Republicans are by this”.
If you want to shake the cult’s faith in their cult leader, then yes, you want to trigger them. They’re triggered because they sense the loss of innate, automatic strongman support.
When you’re trying to get a political movement going, there’s no such thing as an overused slogan. The fact that it was getting used so much was evidence it was working, and part of that was because it got at the right in the same way that they try to other minorities
Yeah, let’s keep alive the existence of Walz’s couple of misstatements, while ignoring the insane, senile nonsense that Trump spews on the hour. Fuck the media.
He’s the one who wanted to go hardball on Republicans and they couldn’t find anything to stick to him, as hard as they tried.
Dems can do worse and have done much worse.
Personally, I’m hoping Zelensky will run for US president after strong Dien in Ukraine. You might be thinking that someone from another country can’t be president. Well… looks at current situation in White House At least this one would be elected.
Oh man I can’t wait for right-wing/foreign propaganda to tell progressives what they should hate about Walz.
And don’t forget this from a russian propagandist in 2015 (archived reddit link):
“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”
To be fair it doesn’t take much to cause an idealogical split between leftists.
I mean yes, but that’s why it’s important we push back hard for leftist unity and use propaganda-like approaches to simplify the message into easier to digest chunks for everyone else.
I think it’s fair to say nazis and imperialists/colonizers/fascists/insert-word-for-oppressors-here are a common enemy we can fight against, and access to housing/food/healthcare/etc. are basic human rights.
Theory is great and all but semantics between ourselves can happen after action. It’s a small start but the economic blackouts seemed to break through to the wider populace a bit - I’ve had loved ones who were aware/tried that are otherwise pretty embedded into corpo ecosystems and they didn’t even hear about it from me.
TL;DR: Yes, but “apes together strong.” We can break stereotypes and now’s our chance to reach outward too.
simplify the message into easier to digest chunks for everyone else.
This is a must. America is a country of morons who barely read above a 5th grade level.
You’re an interesting Lemmy, I’ve been watching your work.
I’m more interested in seeing if democrats hold honest primaries.
Or primaries at all.
Continue to pretend that every criticism from your left is from your right. It makes it easier to blame the left you hate when you lose to the right you admire.
Considering democrats held primaries in 2016, 2020 and 2024 and they lined up with what polls where saying what would it take for you to believe that the primaries are honest?
Actually having one would be a start.
They actually had two in 2024.
Uh huh.
I get it after Bernie lost in 2016 a bunch of people lost faith in the system and the DNC using the easy excuse of ‘it’s our primary we can cry if we want to’ was real easy for right-wing and foreign propaganda to bait a hook with and fishing was real good for them.
I get it after Bernie lost in 2016 a bunch of people lost faith in the system and the DNC using the easy excuse of ‘it’s our primary we can cry if we want to’ was real easy for right-wing and foreign propaganda to bait a hook with and fishing was real good for them.
I get that you want to dismiss everything to your left as being all the way to your right so you can keep ignoring the left and moving to the right until you have become the second republican party.
The winner has to be the one Mr. Crab likes the most. That person will also go on to win the general election easily, because what Mr. Crab likes is proven to be widely popular.
Interesting response as well to that quote. How you feeling about the Republicans right now. Love or hate?
If you aren’t going to be voting in a R primary or for a R candidate, how one feels about them is immaterial.
If you do plan on voting in a D primary or eventually for a D candidate, you may have some small impact on them, their policies, or their trajectory.
“R worse” as a campaign strategy and as political philosophy is why the life raft called the Democratic party is at the bottom of the sea right now. No one who was going to vote D was going to vote R. No R’s were going to vote D.
It was only EVER about D’s doing things that would get D’s to show up, and R’s doing what R’s needed to do to get R’s to show up. R’s understood the assignment and did those things.
Democratic leadership wishes they had R’s for voters. Its the goal of leadership, to turn the D’ party into the R’ party, and has been for decades. Every instrumental decision leads them in this direction.
The problem is that what D’ voters want and what R’ voters want are diametrically opposed. If you run an R’ campaign trying to get D’ voters, you WILL lose. See Kerry 2004, Hillary 2016, and Kamala 2024.
When you run a D’ campaign focused on the wants and needs of D’ voters, you win. See Gore 2000, Obama 08, and 12, and Biden 2020.
The question your asked is a kind of intentional whataboutism that serves to distract from the real issue of why D’s don’t win elections when it matters most.
When you run a D’ campaign focused on the wants and needs of D’ voters, you win. See Gore 2000, Obama 08, and 12, and Biden 2020.
I agree with that.
Now do the Republicans. What did they do wrong in 2020 and what did they do right?
what did they do right
Why would I care about giving information or creating analyses to help the Republicans win?
Every comment you make shows a deep misunderstanding of, well, everything. So why don’t you give me some reasons why I should bother beyond a performative exercise to show how deeply out of touch you are?
What evidence do i have that you ask these things in good faith when you don’t seem bothered by your own nonsequiters?
Continued hate. How about you? Still prefer trump to any progressive?
What do you think the R’s did wrong this last cycle? Do you think they legally cheated and maybe had some actual cheating by his minions? Or do you think they won it because the democrats did everything wrong?
they won it because the democrats did everything wrong?
This isn’t even up for debate. R’s won because D’s did everything wrong, at least during and post convention. Trump had an approval rating almost as low as Biden, and even with the incredible opportunity swapping out the candidate represented, they still managed to blow it. Its in the data.
Biden was dead in the water as far back as March of that year, but realistically, he never had a chance. I’ve posted the analyses here and can dig them up for illustrative purposes, but Biden’s probability of turning it around in March was coming in at between a 1:1000, to 1:10000 chance. It just wasn’t going to happen, and the sane among us were down voted into oblivion, banned from important subs, banned all over the place for pointing that out.
Once the candidates swapped, Harris was suddenly on a trajectory to wipe the floor with Trump. In the few weeks where we had meaningful data, before the convention, She was on pace to be in the range she needed to be in to take the game home in a lunch box. Her polling looked great, she had done no real damage to herself, and voters were mostly basing their estimates of who she was based on her 2020 primary campaign. Her trajectory was on base to be in the range of 50-55% by November in those models. Things looked really good.
Then… the convention happened. And she took all the wrong advice and made all the wrong decisions. She swapped out the progressive policies for neoliberal/ neoconservative polices. She refused to step away from Bidens deeply unpopular positions, which were many. She elevated Republican voices at the convention and silenced Gazan delegates.
And her polling tanked. She then proceeded to double down on these things that were deeply unpopular among Democratic voters. And thats the key. Doing almost nothing before the convention, and she was set to coast to victory. Every move she made after the convention was the wrong one, and cost her, substantially.
So again. This isn’t even a discussion. If you require this kind of enlightenment, you might want to just pay more attention on a regular basis because everything I’m putting out here is pretty much common knowledge and has been, since/ as/ when it all happened.
It just makes me so infuriatingly upset how right you were on just about all of it, btw. It was like watching a slow motion train wreck to watch them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
As frustrating as it was to watch it from a distance, it was orders of magnitude more frustrating to watch members of our own community, u/jordanlund , and u/FlyingSquid, convert several high-profile subs into echo-chambers effectively devoid of dissenting opinions with regards to how the Democrats were performing, how successful they were being, and what it would take to win the election.
Its one thing when its happening at a distance, but these individuals did real damage, here, in our community. And it wasn’t unique to lemmy. It happened on almost all social media platforms and in mainstream and alternative media as well. I’ve got standing ban’s in c/world and c/political_memes from expressing the exact points I’m making here, when these things were happening. The campaign was largely shielded from the dissenting opinion that what they were doing wasn’t working, and it cost them the election. Even as late as October they could have pivoted/ re-calibrated, but they didn’t think they needed to because they weren’t hearing the opinion that shit wasn’t working. I think its just more painful when its your own community doing the scum-bag thing.
Democrats won’t win an election by ignoring and silencing legitimate criticism. They’ll need to deal with and elevate criticisms and discuss how they’ll be doing things differently. The constant and pernicious gaslighting, its why they lose elections. Or maybe the right phrasing is that they couldn’t win? The relevancy isn’t clear to be because I’m unsure we’ll have elections again.
There was so much on the line and they cost us everything.
Thank you for saying what’s been on my mind for weeks without proper ways to convey it.
Do you think they legally cheated and maybe had some actual cheating by his minions?
What about this part? When I say legally cheated, I mean gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.
I think you replied to the wrong comment.
What do you think the R’s did wrong this last cycle?
Same thing the Democrats did wrong. Moved to the right. The difference is that their base likes it.
But they didn’t win, so if their base liked it, why didn’t it result in a win? I think you understand what I’m saying. There is no black and white, only grey.
Ok, you’ve chosen to deliberately misunderstand what I said in absolute bad faith. I should have expected nothing else.
Republicans’ base likes it when republicans move to the right. Only centrist democrats like it when democrats move to the right. Now misunderstand this on purpose as well.
I mean this is Tim “Israel has the right to expand its borders” Walz. Unless he walks that one back he’ll probably alienate the Palestine vote.
But if he walks back that is he going to lose the Israel vote and will they finance a primary challenger?
The Israel vote basically doesn’t exist anymore. Even most pro-Israeli voters won’t go so far as to base their entire voting strategy on whether Israel gets to expand. Aleo if they’re Republican-leaning they don’t vote Democrat in a million years and vice versa. The reason this logic didn’t work for Gaza voters was because genocide is a massive red line for a lot of people (and the existence of a sizeable Arab diaspora), not because most Americans particularly care about Palestine.
The Israel vote definitely exists and the Israel lobby can make or break almost any political career.
Single issue Israel voters? Do you have data for that? Because if they exist one would expect them to make more noise in favor of Harris instead of the narrative being set by Palestine voters.
Single issue Israel voters? Do you have data for that?
No because that wasn’t what I said.
Here’s some stuff about the Israel lobbyists though
Vocal anti-Israel candidate Bowman loses New York’s primary election
Pro-Israel groups spent big to oust two Squad members in primaries
Pro-Israel groups tout Dem primary endorsee winners, but yet to target safer anti-Israel incumbents
No because that wasn’t what I said.
The equivalent to Gaza voters in 2024 would be single issue Israel voters. With a good candidate everyone else will fall in line, so only those two need to be considered.
Here’s some stuff about the Israel lobbyists though
Yeah I know about those, but lobbyists aren’t all powerful and in something as large as the presidential election their impact will be outweighed by the Gaza vote. Israel lobbyists are so effective because they put all their weight against defectors who can be primaried and pick their battles; increase the scale of the election and their impact will wane accordingly.
Sure is neat watching which incumbents party leadership won’t rally behind.
When AIPAC has thrown its weight into a race to try to unseat a Democrat, they mostly haven’t used “Israel” to do it. If the Israel vote was actually a critical voting bloc that would sink campaigns, you’d think that would feature front and center.
The Israel vote definitely exists and the Israel lobby can make or break almost any political career.
This is my comment which almost lines up perfectly with the article you posted.
That’s not the “Israel vote”, that’s the Israel lobby. And the Israel lobby has the money to attack a vulnerable representative, not the money to swing a presidential race. They failed to oust Omar and didn’t even try to oust AOC. They’re an enemy PAC, not god of elections.
Money you can get around. Voting constituencies you can’t.
Zionism, obviously. But if course, anyone who criticizes Israel or it’s supporters must be a secret right-winger or foreign agent, nobody could possibly be legitimately bothered by an apartheid state doing genocide.
It already happened. I vaguely remember something my boss would tell me about him being gay or something like that. Idk it was some completely made up horseshit.
you do realize Biden’s neolibs just supported a far right leaders muderous war crimes right? And the progressives were fighting that criminalality the whole time.
Biden and Blinken should be in chains at the Hague, but somehow you want to blame progressives for your sides rampage against human decency.
Thinking there is going to be a real election in 2028 is the most optimistic thing I’ve heard in a while.
He was the better half of the ticket.
It’s cute that they think there’s gonna be another election.
Fuckin should have been the nominee in the first place - him or Sanders.
Not sure of moderates are ok with Sanders. The center and right will keep calling Sanders a socialist and communist.
Who fucking cares? The moderates who were supposed to swoop in and save Kamala pointedly didn’t. Catering towards a fictional segment of the electorate is (demonstrably) a recipe for failure.
You’re right, we should stop try appealing to moderates like Kamala did and just do what’s best for the working class.
That’s the vast majority of what I’m saying.
The moderates who were supposed to swoop in and save Kamala pointedly didn’t.
kamala had 75 million votes, to the 77 million that trump got.
If anybody fucked up the election it was the hardline commies or super aggressive left leaning people that refused to vote for kamala because of whatever silly reason they had.
IDK why people on the internet are willingly this fucking stupid. Evidently looking at the biden results, there were about 7-8 million more votes than kamala received, which is considerably more inline with what you would expect had younger voters actually, well, voted.
You would literally need to be on fucking crack to take anything else away from the results of these recent elections. IF ANYTHING, the obvious answer is that the younger voting block NEEDS to go and vote, because historically, they don’t.
TL;DR if you didn’t already pick this up from basic civics knowledge, the vast majority of the voterbase is going to vote for “whoever is on the ticket this time” that’s why trump even gets traction at all, maybe 10-20% of his voter base actually cares about him in any substantive manner. It’s the same for the dems, 75% of the base is people who will vote for WHOEVER gets put on the primary ticket, some of those are going to be more moderate though, and if you run someone like bernie, they will pull out or switch support, which is one of the risks you take when running a more hardline candidate.
Trump was just able to viciously mobilize his segment of the population against the republican voter base (who are historically known to behave like this)
We do not have this advantage on the dem side, we literally have to mobilize the youth, that’s the ONE thing that can save us.
Voter turnout in these elections was lower than in the 2020 elections
yeah, primarily because you can’t vote by mail in the 2024 election, where as you could in the 2020 election, enfranchising more people to go out and vote, and historically, it’s not republicans that struggle to vote, it’s the democrats.
I still think it was voters showing their protest against the Israeli Genocide. I mean, I voted for Harris, but ffuuuuuuckk, all she had to do was say she’d at least try to find another way other than selling weapons.
i’m not really convinced it was a significant enough margin to outpace the usual no show voter rolls. Historically we’ve had issues with turnout, and when it gets easier, more people vote, when it gets harder less people vote. I really don’t think something that seems to really explicitly mobilize people under the age of 25 and above the age of 18 would be a very significant voter block to begin with. There’s probably more people in there, but you’re talking about people who are ethnically arab, and i wouldn’t necessarily count those as those are going to be opposed to pretty much anything you do in the middle east regarding israel.
Someone would have to do some actual polling or research to find out whether or not it had a significant effect, but i’m betting it wasn’t. It probably had something to do with it, but literally every campaign has these 1% base issues, it’s literally unavoidable.
If everyone voted mainline Trump still would have won the election. Greens got 860000, while the Libertarians got 650000 and RFK got 750000.
Snarks over “basic civics knowledge” in tl:dr longer than actual post.
Rails about the popular vote in a nation using an electoral collage.
Rails about the popular vote in a nation using an electoral collage.
we use both the popular vote, and the electoral vote in presidential elections. Popular vote doesn’t actually contribute to anything other than demonstration public sentiment, very clearly.
The electoral vote primarily fucks with the house and congress, since it’s on the same level, it does also elect the president, but that’s usually irrelevant, as the popular vote generally tracks with that.
left leaning people that refused to vote for kamala because of whatever silly reason they had
we literally have to mobilize the youth, that’s the ONE thing that can save us.
The youth think centrists are useless traitorous war criminal arseholes. You think you can talk down to progressives but somehow get the youth vote? You’re on crack.
Didn’t ‘the youth’ break for trump in historic proportions compared to previous elections? The males, at the very least.
Harris lost 6% of youth (under 30). Largely because dems ignored the economy and jobs concerns, according to NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/07/g-s1-33331/unpacking-the-2024-youth-vote-heres-what-we-know-so-far
Ah, so it wasn’t that they voted more for trump, just that there was a shift towards him from a solidly democrat lean before… and a huge one in terms of males (41% to 56%, looking at that article), like I said?
sort of, this is like running a trial on whether “murder is bad” and being surprised when somebody answers “no” even though it was an option you gave them.
the youth follows the same trends seen in older demographics, but is still consistently dem/left leaning over all. This is nothing new, and i’m not sure why anybody is really talking about it. If anything, the strongest indicator we have for who you vote for is going to be age group, and then minority/ethnic status.
The youth think centrists are useless traitorous war criminal arseholes. You think you can talk down to progressives but somehow get the youth vote? You’re on crack.
yeah, that’s the meme. That’s the problem. People are pretending like it’s the 65 year old life long dem voters that are fucking us over, but it’s realistically going to be the youth, who mostly don’t vote, and when they do, often not productively.
Well, your supposedly existing leftists didn’t achieve even that. I don’t remember where I heard it, but the saying gows something like “Catering towards a fictional segment of the electorate is (demonstrably) a recipe for failure.”
Probably because Harris and Biden succeeded in alienating a group that SHOULD have been a slam dunk for them: Arab-Americans.
And also, they listened to their consultants instead of, you know, normal people. They were too busy jacking themselves off about how “great” the economy was to notice that MOST people in the country are straight up not having a good time.
The Arab-American vote was crucial in Michigan, and they threw that away. And frankly, I’d argue that they alienated a lot more moderate voters by INSISTING the economy was better (failing to realize economy != people’s actual lives) and staunchly defending the status quo on that front.
Ah yes, Arab-Americans, known for their tolerance and feminist ideals, did not turn out for the woman preaching tolerance for all and love for Israel.
To capture a more left leaning audience you are going to have to abandon this notion notoriously conservative and backwards cultures will suddenly be progressive and accepting.
“Have you considered that the people we’re genociding might be kinda problematic?”
Don’t do that
It’s true, why should we try to support a group that fundamentally disagrees and hates a large part of the base? There’s no salvaging such disagreements.
They called Kamala a communist too. It doesn’t fucking matter, they’ll say it about anyone, you can’t be afraid of it.
Moderates can take their own fucking advice for once and vote blue no matter who.
Left Sanders Republican reich (rnc) +-----------------------+---------+--------------+ Republican lite (dnc)Removed by mod
