The only other message that could be sent is “Yes, good, keep doing that.”

The back half of the shell is easy though, I swapped mine with a transluscent purple backplate a few months back. ^_

I voted for Harris, how did that work for me? Did she win?

No, because I don’t support a weapons ban. That’s beside the point.

On the contrary, that’s precisely the point.

Why do you keep acting like people who don’t support the things you do are obligated to support your preferred candidate?

If the result was inevitable then the voters have no agency and are in no way responsible for the outcome.

I think you’re smart enough to know how a FPTP voting system works.

Indeed, the party with the most votes wins.

We had 2 real options. Voters have agency as to which one of the two are elected. Stop pretending like you don’t understand how this works.

This proves that we don’t share political perspectives, because there were no real options. Just the inevitable and the also-rans.

You’re giving the most heavily propagandized segment of the most heavily propagandized country on earth a lot of credit when they can’t even seem to understand that a tarrif is a tax on imports.

How sad is it then that this group understands this better than you pretend to?

There’s no “understanding” involved, as proved by the fact that those people voted for higher prices out of “economic anxiety”. You just don’t want to admit that the Republican party is better at convincing people to vote for it than the Democrats.

No, it would be like funding a third party candidate that is close to Trump with the express purpose of peeling votes off Trump.

They do that too, hence the Libertarian party.

Damn that’s crazy because here’s me before the election telling the future. How in the world did I perform this feat? Do I have amazing powers of precognition?

Did you ever write to your congressional representatives like they suggested?

Again, you’re telling us what you’d wish would happen. I was telling them what would happen.

If the result was inevitable then the voters have no agency and are in no way responsible for the outcome.

What’s more is this is a concept that both the GOP and their voters understand.

You’re giving the most heavilly propagandized segment of the most heavily propagandized country on earth a lot of credit when they can’t even seem to understand that a tarrif is a tax on imports.

It’s why the GOP funds campaigns like Stein and gets others like RFK Jr. to bow out.

You mean like how the Democrats promoted Trump thinking that he’d be an easy win for Hillary?

If you think that what happened before must inevitably happen again then you are the problem. The major parties only win because they have people like you convinced that they are the only option.

And Democrats tried to appeal to MAGA instead of their own voting base.

If they didn’t set themselves up to be the only solution then they should disband so another party could do so.

You’re describing an oligarchy with extra steps, not Democracy.

There’s no “wishing” going on here. I’m explaining how your concept of voting has cause and effect reversed and you’re pretending that it’s “wishes” instead of basic political literacy.

People should be smart enough to work backward from a foregone conclusion: We’re getting the Dem or Rep nominee.

Not if the voters vote for someone else. You’re only assuming that the two major parties are inevitable because you’re drinking their kool-aid.

If they can’t convince people to vote for them then they lose. It’s on them to convince us, but you’ve already decided that they don’t need to because they’re owed your vote. You have deliberately rejected your civic duty to the nation in favor of blind obedience to the party just like Washington warned us about.

Grow up.

You first.

What policies changed when they courted Republicans?

They didn’t need to, because the Democrats have already been governing like Republicans. Pro-fracking, pro-genocide, pro-“States Rights” to deal with trans people as they see fit, etc.

Because as far as I can tell nothing changed for that but they did say that even with our policy differences, Republicans advocated voting for Dems.

Admitting that the Democrats are good enough for some right-wing talking heads is a damning indictment of the Democrats.

Which one, “left”?

You’re not wrong but you also aren’t saying anything.

They stopped trying to be “big tent” when they started courting Republicans instead of their own voting bases.

You’ll be blue in the face 'til the end of time, 'cuz you’re still trying to blame the electorate for the failures of the party. Your conception of how voting works is so backwards you think that the party is owed the allegiance of the people rather than the people being owed the faithful representation of their interests regardless of who is in power.

“The Democrats can’t fail, they can only be failed!” That’s you. That’s what you sound like.

And that is a deeply deeply undemocratic thing to say.

Of course it is, America’s “democracy” is deliberately undemocratic.

You’re taking away all agency from the voters.

The parties did that from the moment they got to start picking their voters rather than the other way around.

In what you’re saying, voters are completely unable to understand anything and are led by elites against their own will. This is how Putin, Hitler, Xi think about their subjects.

You forgot to mention Trump in that list as well, and it doesn’t matter whether the voters understand anything or not. The people who get to make the choices did so long before the voters were brought in to legitimize the government.

There is manipulation, without any doubt, but every single voter in a free country, like the US, has the ability to see through that.

I wish I could still have that much faith in the intelligence of Americans, lol~.

I’m German, and the “We didn’t know of anything!!!” quote of the willfully ignorant Germans 80 years ago is infamous here.

I’m American, and the epitaph of the country I was born in will be “Thoughts and Prayers”.

Voters are blameless, they don’t get to choose how the parties manipulate them into voting or what they do afterwards.

I’m not discounting that, but if you were disabled or on a fixed income then that one month’s living expenses might be the biggest windfall you’ve had in decades.

A lot of folks actually were better off back then due to the stimulus checks…

Careful now, you’ll get downvotes in this thread if you don’t focus exclusively on blaming the voters for it getting worse. Admitting that it might get better afterwards is like admitting that the Democrats might be somewhat responsibile for their electoral failures.

It’s been so frustrating to have to put up with Democrats that try to enforce a Republican-style party line instead of building the coalition they need to win.

It’s even more frustrating when they put a hundred times more effort into trying to build a coalition with members of the party they claim to be a threat to Democracy instead of their own left wing.