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Great. Glad to see that we’re learning nothing here. If I wasn’t pushed into despair by the election results, seeing progressives respond this way to the loss might push me over the edge.
We are a bigoted country, no doubt. But, our working class is struggling. People are inherently good, inherently bad, brilliant, dumb, and all sorts of combinations of those. Material conditions, messaging, and framing all work together in bringing out these different sides of ourselves both at the societal and individual level.
Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right. If we decide to roll over and die because we’re too chickenshit to fight, too cynical to have any imagination, and too self-pitying to even lift a finger, the most vulnerable of us (which includes me) will perish.
We HAVE to be better than this.
These aren’t progressives. These are liberals. These are the same people who, when they were told 8 years ago that economic anxiety made voters turn to Trump, mocked them, saying, “Oh, I guess the economy made them racist!”
Yeah, racism and misogyny played a huge role in this election, but people don’t vote for a guy who promises to burn everything down when they’re doing well. I’d have thought this time, given that the Democrats lost ground with both black and Latino voters, they might finally have to acknowledge that their failures are due to more than just bigotry. I’m starting to doubt that, though…
I’m can only follow this logic so far though. The problem is they are better off, the economy is better, but how do you get people to see it, believe it?
The obvious example is inflation, not that President really has much control over it. We’ve gone through a wave of inflation, triggered by causes during the previous president’s term. It generally trended down during Biden’s term and is now close to what we’d normally expect.
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many people see the accumulated inflation of four years during Biden term and are frustrated by how much more expensive everything is
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another perspective is inflation was triggered in Trump’s term, it took four years to get under control, now people voted to do it all over again rather than stay the course that got it under control. Staying the course is boring
Analyzing the economy is a measure of how well the capitalist engine is running. Is the supply being met by demand (perpetually rising GDP)? Is everyone contributing to growth (low unemployment, growing market caps)? To focus on these points is capitalism, what the corporations want. This is necessarily paired with trickle-down economics to explain why you should give a shit about stocks you don’t own going up.
You won’t ever see measures of the economy focusing on people. Are the workers able to pay rent and bills and contribute to savings? Are workers going hungry? Does the minimum wage provide an acceptable minimum standard of living? Are wages keeping up with inflation? Are workers accumulating their own wealth? To focus on these points is populism, what the people want.
The economy is doing great! Corporations are posting record profits every quarter. But workers are getting fucked harder every year. People are mad because their life isn’t easy and they can’t afford a stable existence. When lots of people are unhappy, they want drastic action. 20k on a 500k house and a child care credit ain’t it. Deporting 20,000,000 people and “draining the swamp” is drastic. It’s objectively stupid, but at least it’s action and people are thirsty for anything because what we’re currently doing isn’t working.
If anyone wants to win the next election, all they need is a populist platform. For Dems, that’s progressivism and an infatuation with unions. It’s us (the people) against them (the corporations). For Rs, it’s a straightforward culture war. It’s us (the true patriots) against them (the social outgroups).
Some of the most important measures of the economy are focussed on people. There’s a huge industry to measuring inflation as literally the costs that people bear, and yes there are various measures of income, typical families, job trends. How can anyone miss the concern over the last decade or so about the growth of low paying service jobs over better paying more specialized jobs?
“Draining the swamp” is surely one of the catchiest of many catchy slogans coined by Trump. We’re all frustrated about how much of our income disappears into government especially when we don’t understand where it goes. But the goal people think they’re voting for is entirely inconsistent with gutting agencies that help them, with the rampant cronyism, corruption, corporatism. Essentially every fact and four years of experience show the reality as entirely the opposite to the myth.
But yeah, I see the need for populism. Clinton had it, Obama had it, but so many Democrats can’t get across the finish line without it, regardless of intentions or capability. I had a lot of hope for Harris and Walz as campaigns built their popular images, but then it fizzled
The problem is they are better off, the economy is better, but how do you get people to see it, believe it?
The thing is they’re not. Yes, inflation is down, but that doesn’t mean that prices are going down. It means that the rate increase goes down. So if you were living paycheck to paycheck in 2019, you are doing objectively worse in 2024.
This isn’t new either. Over the last 30 years, the middle class has collapsed, the cost of living has gone up, the bottom of the manufacturing industry has fallen out, and wages have remained stagnant. Sometimes when Democrats have power, things get marginally better, but it’s more accurate to say that things get worse more slowly. Donald Trump promises radical change, and the Democrats don’t. They can no longer survive on this impotent half-measures like subsidies for small business loans. They need something radical, like a New Deal, if they ever want to win again.
when Democrats have power, things get marginally better, but it’s more accurate to say that things get worse more slowly. Donald Trump promises radical change, and the Democrats don’t.
I understand simmering frustration, but yes: we had gradual change happening, but fell for the emotional outrage, the promise of radical change. And this is despite all evidence of how much is false or inconsistent, how much will be completely ignored, and above all else how much will make things worse for most of us. Potentially much worse
Yeah, to be absolutely clear, Trump’s change is a lie and he will be objectively worse for everyone on everything (unless you are very, very wealthy). I also think things would start to improve for the working class gradually if the voters had given Harris another four years. But the losses to the working class have been huge, and the recovery is always anemic, so things are usually a net loss for people.
Look at the Obama administration; he decided to bail out banks instead of homeowners after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. People argue over whether or not that was the right move (and for the record, I think that was a really fucking bad move), but pretty much everyone agrees that the recovery that he created was pretty slow. The economy did recover though, and by the end of his term, it was actually very strong. Now, if you were someone who weathered the crisis alright, great, you’re 401K got better! But if you lost your home in the mortgage crisis, got laid off, lost your life savings…that slow recovery killed you, and when Democrats start telling you that the economy is good, you’re gonna wonder what the fuck they’re talking about.
By making sure they can buy groceries.
The economy is not better off in the lower half.
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Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right.
And the joke is that Dems will still lose on these terms, because they are already branded the Woke party. Might as well try and out-racist the KKK as the GOP. It’s not a race Dems are in a position to win. All they can do is shed even more of their base to Jill Stein and Uncommitted.
What’s hilarious is the Dems are branded as woke not because of their politicians but because of their average voters are. You can convince a conservative voter that a (D) politician is not woke but they still won’t vote for him because only woke people vote (D). Dems would have to purge some of their most fanatical supporters to win those conservative votes.
Imagine suggesting the Democrats tell people with the “In this house we believe…” signs to take those signs down. For some reason people are taking this suggestion seriously instead of immediately dismissing it as either inane babbling or deliberate sabotage.
Dems would have to purge some of their most fanatical supporters to win those conservative votes.
That appears to be exactly what they did, as of last week
The response by so many people has been pathetic. Liberals are learning nothing.
But they picked up the coveted Cheney bloc!
They actually performed worse with republicans than in 2020 lol.
The liberals in control are paid not too.
If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men
Older white men were the demographic that stayed home because they didn’t want to vote for a woman who had identical policies to the man they previously voted for.
Pretending like white men sat out exclusively because of “inflation” while no other demographic did is probably not the takeaway
That being said we absolutely need to kill the Duopoly, hopefully a third progressive party can exist with the Dems sucking corporate cock
I keep telling myself I won’t comment on political posts, and yet here I go again.
If we stop looking at non-voters, and start actually looking at voters, you’ll see that Trump gained support among both women and non-white voters. Why is nobody asking about that? I would rather they have stayed home than given Trump the extra vote, but all you hear about now is low turn out in white men. She lost in almost every bloc because she didn’t inspire any of the dem base. High turnout skews dem and she was just not an inspiring candidate.
Kamala had no time to campaign, was an unknown to voters despite being the VP, made no strides to distance herself from Biden, and failed to run a cohesive strategy. People just were not excited to vote for her. Do I think a popularity contest is the best way to elect the president, no, but that doesn’t change the system that we have.
The race was extremely close, and the fact that Trump GAINED in POC and women blocs probably speaks more to the campaign that was run rather than America’s inherent sexism or racism. Just to be clear, America is sexist and racist, and people can be self hating or whatever, but she GAINED points in the white male category and lost in the black male category. Sure, white men should have shown up, but it’s very easy to cry “racism/sexism” if you ignore all the other people who didn’t show up or the people who DID show up and voted trump. She might’ve run as well as she could have, but it was a bad campaign.
There was a 5% loss in young voters. I wonder how energized they would have been not just to vote but to donate and volunteer had she run a different campaign. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback, but Joe ruined the chances of a dem winning this year.
If dems still want to blame racism/sexism, then I don’t want to see any dems support POC/women in primaries. Dems should only run white males and if I see a POC/woman being pushed again I will assume they want to sabotage that year. I expect “I’m not voting for a POC/woman candidate” to be a well regarded and widespread dem opinion for practicality sake. Either stop running them ever, or admit they can win with better campaign strategies. You can’t have it both ways.
Going off these numbers: https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-turnout-election-demographics-trump-harris/3762138/
There was also a significant portion of black men who voted Trump because they were misogynists. It’s just a fact.
But that’s still not discounting the fact that someone with Bernie’s message and goals would have won in a landslide.
I can’t speak to the misogyny, but to your second point, I try so hard to not mention him because your opinion gets disregarded in dem spaces as soon as you bring him up. He did everything right and dems would rather lose than actually be progressive.
If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men
Kamala Harris won 28%, while Donald Trump won 47%, according to unofficial results from the city clerk, reported by the network.
Metro Detroit is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large proportion of them living in Dearborn. The city—which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin in 2020—has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Third party canidates did not receive enough votes to sway anything this election.
If every third party voter voted dem nothing would be different
Third party canidates did not receive enough votes to sway anything this election.
The biggest spike was in non-voters. Around 16M - overwhelmingly Dems - stayed home between 2020 and 2024.
Dems were successful in scaring voters off the Green Party. Greens got 1.4M voters in 2016 and a mere 636k voters in 2024.
But that was just a tiny slice of the overall atrophy of progressive support.
Socialism or Barbarism… We’re making a choice
If you look at the voters who voted for the dem in 2020 and sat out this time it was almost all older white men
Sorry, can I have a source for this? How could they determine the gender of non-voters?
Who you voted for is secret but that you voted is public information. I haven’t heard if it was predominantly white men who sat it out, but that wouldn’t be hard data to gather.
I’ve been searching, and can only find that non-voters are racially diverse.
Older white man here. I stayed home because of Gaza. I have 3 progressive friends who say the exact same thing. None of us are Muslim, and we’re all white and older.
By the way:Democrats had bet on women showing up in force. They didn’t https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e8z53qyd5o
Well all the Palestinians are dead for sure now
Good job idiot
I disagree with your sides talking point that Biden and Harris were doing anything for Palestinians or were about to. And Harris could have stopped the weapons shipments in the last few days of the election and gotten the progressive votes she needed. She opted not to and chose defeat.
Whatever you need to tell yourself.
They’re all dead now
Its this sort of fantasy nonsense that lost the election. It obviously doesnt work, and you should stop.
It is clearly a joke aimed at the futility of trying to capitulate to reactionaries by becoming reactionary
Responding to this loss with “the only way to win is to be racist” is basically just giving up and saying the fascists are right.
Nobody is saying that.
I mean… it’s hard to interpret “the problem is her messaging is she didnt come across as a white man with grievances…” as anything but claiming sexism and racism. There’s hyperbole there, but blaming the loss on those factors assumes that people couldn’t have possibly abstained from voting, or voted against her without those factors. I don’t believe that’s the case.
Too frequently we call people these things and basically lock them out of discussion. For example, if you called me a racist, I’d no longer trust anything else you said to me because I know myself and clearly you like telling people things you know nothing about. I think that exchange happened with a bunch of people, which is why there were so many people who just assumed many of the things said about Trump were just political lies made to discredit him. After they experienced the same hyperbole themselves.
That said… theres alot of bigots out there too.
I think you’re right.
To be fair, you and the other commenter just did.
Democrats continuing to insist they need to get more racist instead of appealing to their base.
Is that your takeaway, genius? Was that how Biden won over Trump FOUR SHORT YEARS AGO, by appealing to the democratic base?
Funny, I don’t remember the base being pleased with Biden’s record AT ALL. But… he was a white male, wasn’t he, hm?
You seem to have a very foggy memory of Biden’s campaign because he did make numerous concessions to the Bernie wing. His failure to deliver on those promises didn’t mean he didn’t make them.
On the other hand Harris openly flaunted her conservative endorsements and campaigned with Liz Cheney. Her strategy was explicitly to court moderate republicans who voted Trump anyways. Perhaps she would’ve peeled off more moderate republicans if she was a white man but that was my point. You want the democrats to appeal to more racists and you’re insisting that they do that by being more racist.
They had a damn cop run for president and then took the black vote as a given. Fucking dumb.
Republicans have a vision. Democrats have a list of policy proposals. Average people can grok the vision but since they read at a 6th grade level they don’t grok the policy proposals.
Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.
But I was told it was just that our policy proposals weren’t left enough?
Unironically, you’re right. Most voters don’t vote based on any kind of coherent ideology. They vote on feels.
God help us all.
If the policy proposals were far left enough they’d start to look a helluva lot more like a vision.
Ha. There is that.
(I wasn’t sure whether to edit my comment or reply to your first post, so I’m putting this here)
As for people voting on feels: I think that’s always been the case for most people. Most people are of average intelligence, with an average education and average interest in politics. They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.
And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.
Clinton 1 and Obama were our last successful Dem candidates. You need a charismatic candidate with a consistent message that speaks to everyone if you want to win the popularity contest. Gore, Clinton 2 and Harris failed on both of those counts. Biden won only because of pandemic and government abuse/mismanagement backlash, he would have lost to Trump in other circumstances.
In the immortal words of Bowling for Soup: “High school never ends.”
Would be helpful if they had more than 3 months to convey it too.
They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.
And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.
So why’d they vote for a rapist who is in pictures with goddamn Epstein? That’s the part I don’t understand. Are we seriously saying the average (American) is okay with a rapist being president because they like his vibes?
As far as I can tell, it’s not that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala instead voted for Donald. It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.
It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.
I honestly think you’re giving them more credit than they deserve. My point is that a _rapist, fascist, cruel, racist, misogynist who has said aloud all the horrible things he will do was running for office and a lot of people just shrugged their shoulders and refused to vote. I can’t imagine that kind of apathy when a fascist is taking over. “Sure Hitler and the Nazi’s are bad, but what am I going to do, vote socialist?”
(Also this because people need to remember he was anti-capitalist as well.)
They’re fucking weirdos with weird vibes.
I’m much more interested in the folks who didn’t vote.
I want a country where everyone pays less for healthcare. If it can be done for seniors, why not everyone else?
I want a country where everyone’s private medical decisions remain between them and their doctor, without being cleared by your local, state, or federal representative or by a judge.
I want a country where everyone who works, pays taxes, and does not commit violent crime or property theft can stay and keep working without having to look over their shoulder.
I want a country where if you work full time, you can afford your rent/mortgage, put food on the table, start a family, and still be able to retire.
There’s a vision. Apparently all of these things have become radically progressive leftist positions and are attacked as such by the media and conservatives alike.
See, the problem with all of these ideas is that they’re at odds with the billionaires’ vision that you slave away in servitude to them, while their imaginary worth line goes up to infinity.
It’s really nothing more complex than that. And, as soon as the non-billionaire conservatives—your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you pass by every day—wake up and understand that they’re covered by that vision, too, the sooner things get better for all of us.
All of these social programs suddenly become much more popular when they are restricted to the majority population. There have been surveys demonstrating this. Another way to see it is to point to places with a lot of those policies, one of the first rebuttals you will receive is a yarn about the homogeneous population, or at least one far more so, in those places.
So, it isn’t that they think they won’t be covered, it is because so many think it will cover people they don’t want it to.
With capitalism, a middle class does not occur organically, it is created by the governing body through subsidies. If you do not subsidize a middle class there can be no middle class. This is fundamental. We really started to feel it in 2015 or so. I called it the squeeze. This tightening grip of not subsidies but further attempts to squeeze more and more blood from rocks.
Why? Our government has been subsidizing the wrong class for a while now. Trump did kick that up a notch the first time. The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.
As with a middle class, health care has to be subsidized. The governing body won’t allow richer people to pay the same taxes as the poorest of us so that will never happen.
And now Elon Musk is promising “hardship” going forward, as opposed to whatever this is the last 4 yrs, on us, the poorest, rather than paying mor taxes himself. Like that would impact his alien ass at all (he’s weirdly shaped, looks like a slightly melted wax museum figure, and was born into so much money he has no idea how humans live, that’s what I mean by alien). So don’t count on it ever happening going forward.
If you have preexisting conditions expect loss of coverage. And as a fallout from that expect the healthcare system to get slammed with much sicker people trying to find loopholes and other diagnoses so they can actually keep living and working.
The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.
It works for the rich. Relatedly, shitty economies where the government pumps tons of cash into rich people’s pockets also work for the rich. They inflate their assets with their additional government handouts and use those inflated asset prices to get loans to buy more mega yachts.
the system works - for them! You spend your hard earned money and help support their death
How the fuck do democrats win here then? After the Harris/Dump debate i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough. How do you get away with talking about policy but not “sounding like a nerd” to uneducated voters? See I think this is more about the average voter not being educated enough to understand the issues and the policies potential nominees have pertaining to them, or how their lives would be affected depending who/what they vote for.
Start offering policies that help average people. Run on medicare for all. Run on forcing pharmaceutical companies lowering drug prices. Run on building new factories to create solar panels, geothermal equipment, and wind turbines. Run on creating affordable housing and ending corporate landlords. Run on campaign finance reform with a promise of ending political ads that everyone hates.
The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.
The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.
The entire American political system we have is dependent on big money donors since citizens united. America has been an oligarchy since at least the early 2000s. You will not get a Democratic party with policies that vary wildly from what industrial heads and CEOs want simply by voting (or not) every 2-4 years. And even small deviations from what they want aren’t tolerated by many of the oligarchs (e.g. Elon Musk).
i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough
Yeah, from other nerds
The Democrats don’t win here.
Just like the Tea Party transformed the GOP, we need a Guillotine Party to drag the Democratic party to the electorate.
Republicans also like to defund public schools and or encourage people to go to religious private schools. That way they’re either too dumb to vote for policies, or too indoctrinated to vote for the candidate that isn’t promising Christian nationalism.
How about do basic stuff that people understand …
… like tax the hell out of billionaires and use the money on people in the country.
… stop financing overseas wars and use that free money on people in the country
… then just keep repeating and blasting everyone that all the money the government is collecting from rich idiots and not spending on war is being spent on everyone … rinse, repeat 10,000 times.
Yep. And there’s precedent for this. (Even though with this Supreme Court precedent counts for jack shit…)
Every time Bernie got asked a question he’d turn it around to mentioning the top 1% and how they’re fucking us over. And people liked him for it. I had MAGA hat folks tell me they liked him because of it back in 2016.
MAGA would say that and vote straight R
Yeah but they wouldn’t say that about anyone else I can think of. And we’re not trying to get MAGA, we’re trying to get people to fucking vote at all.
They’ll say that about anyone claiming to be an outsider.
If insiders have done fuck all except blow money up billionaires asses, who can blame voters for liking outsiders?
But Trump isn’t an outsider
Because the DNC sceapped those proposals for more neoliberal bullshit that every one hates. People are vocal about what they care about. If people tell me they want steak and i keep giving them tacos, they are going to leave the restaurant and get pizza from the sketchy local joint next door instead.
What proposals for what neoliberal bullshit.
Also neoliberal policies from a neoliberal party?!? Surely you jest!
If a neoliberal party can’t win 2 out of 3 elections against a fascist, maybe they should pivot away from neoliberalism.
To what exactly? Neoliberalism is left wing in this shit hole.
Don’t say progressive. If that was popular there would be more than two states that have a progressive party.
Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.
If you told me this was a quote from Ideocracy I would not have doubted you for a second.
There was an era where the nerds placed up a facade to give the illusion of meritocracy and measured governance. Unfortunately that just drove a wedge between people and the “ruling class.” When it came out that bill was getting blowies in the oval office people’s brains broke and the facade was forever tarnished. Today, democrats still hide behind it and pretend like we don’t know they piss and shit like everyone else. The Republicans decided to erect a monument to trump their lord and savior, the only thing keeping them from being a foot note in the history books.
We need to look to our founders. Flawed in every way possible they did have one idea that we should still cherish. They believed in an america they could make by their own hands. They did, it sucked, it was also amazing somehow. We should be like them but be just as kind to our future as we are to the present.
“You talk like a f*g” vibes
EDIT: Idiocracy.
Do they have a vision? The scary thing about Trump that it’s uncertain what he will do the next 4 years. Will he undo democracy or keep it? Will he continue to support Ukraine or not? Will he leave NATO or not? Will he impose those tariffs or not? Will he apply project 2025 or not? Will he impose a federal abortion ban or not?
Kamala had a clear but boring vision: 4 more years of the current status quo. Nothing new will happen.
It’s right there on the hat: Make America Great Again.
And the neat part is it’s so vague that people can project whatever they want onto it.
Well that part I’m aware of, but that’s more of a slogan rather than a vision. It doesn’t tell what has gone wrong with America and how to fix it. Trump says a lot of things that sometimes contradict each other or may or may not be taken seriously, so it’s difficult to piece together a concrete vision.
They have a concept of a vision so to say.
He has concepts of a plan
you are incorrect.
Republicans are scared of brown people, and they cried about it.
democrats closed the border, reformed border control, and have set up a rational immigration system to allow as many legal immigrants into the country as the system can provide for and integrate into the US economy.
Republicans are scared of vaccines, and they cried about it.
democrats got vulnerable populations vaccinated.
Republicans are afraid of other countries exports, and they cried about it.
democrats increased employment, supported domestic businesses and funded domestic production.
Republicans quake in their boots, democrats take action.
Republicans won the last election.
Democrats… didn’t.
dems won the election before that.
Wow that’s so helpful right now
i know. that’s why I wrote it.
Democrats have a list of milquetoast, bottom of the barrel obvious stuff that they hope could show bipartisanship, and even then they half-ass it. There is real fixing that needs to get done, but the side they isn’t actively making things worse has no will to actually do it.
Democrat: *pushes up glasses, adjusts pocket protector* “Um, we propose to implement a 2-10% excise tax on health insurance plans which will allow us to increase access to Medicare by 16% according to these models.”
Voters: “I just want health care.”
Exactly. Tiny bullshit, when they should be talking universal healthcare
And I’d take some incremental improvements as long as their explanation of what happened ended with “this gets us closer to our goal of universal single payer.”
Harris’ messaging problem is the same problem Hilary Clinton had in 2016. Instead of appealing to the base, she went after Republicans and just assumed the left would be on board. The Democratic establishment does this every time, move closer to the center and right and tell the leftists shut up and go away.
The average Democrat is a well off person living in the suburbs who doesn’t want higher taxes but doesn’t want to appear racist.
I wouldn’t call that the average general democrat voter but that for sure is the average democrat primary voter by like 90%.
When she sat down on The View and said she wouldn’t change a thing compared to Biden that was a messaging problem. People can’t afford rent and grocery inflation is out of control and she thinks everything is fine and dandy? I voted for her but I’m kind of sick of being a perpetual afterthought who has been voting for the lesser of two evils for over 20 years. They dumped the working class in favor of chasing an imaginary pool of moderates and this is the result. Give us someone we can be passionate about and, even if they’re lying, at least pretend to tell us what we want to hear.
The problem with that was that she was actually answering the question, correctly and analytically. They actually made the right decisions, even if the supply chain was still a problem. Not much the president can do about that global problem.
even if they’re lying
Yeah you get it. She didn’t do the politician thing where you answer adjacently.
Grocery inflation is, in fact, not out of control: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
I’m so tired of hearing that. But I guess that’s part of her messaging problem. She couldn’t get through to people looking at high prices and assuming they’re still rising.
Food inflation is outpacing wage growth
People don’t give a shit what the CPI is
Their grocery runs cost more for less food, so there is a problem with wage growth or food prices that the Dems are not willing to acknowledge
Food prices are a component of CPI. Food inflation is also around 2%, which is like the ideal inflation rate: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states/
Note that it was out of control a couple years ago, which is why prices went way up. I haven’t looked at the statistics, but what I have heard is that wage growth, generally, has caught up to inflation, which includes food prices. This is still a feels over reals situation. People feel that their food is too expensive, and Republicans are way better at addressing the feels. One of my favorite signs around the neighborhood said “TRUMP LOW PRICES || KAMALA HIGH PRICES”. Like, yeah, that definitely makes sense. Well explained.
Sorry you have a hard time engaging with reality
Thanks for your condolences, SquatDingloid. Your contribution to this conversation has done wonders for the world.
If you were ever capable of self reflection you would delete your dumb propaganda posts
Sorry you have pride issues or whatever. As long as you refuse to educate yourself people will keep telling you this
Kind of needlessly aggressive. Why does having an opinion and stating literal facts make it propaganda? That’s not really a word we want to cheapen with a fascist regime incoming.
That’s because low inflation does not mean prices come back down, which is what people expect. So technically inflation is not out of control. But prices are still high. That’s what people mean.
That’s exactly what I said.
Not really. Sorry but you’re playing pedantic with the terms. People say inflation to mean high prices.
It’s not pedantic. People just literally don’t understand what inflation means. Wage growth, apparently, has caught up to inflation, so it’s really just that people haven’t adjusted their mindset to the higher prices now. And they’re angry about it.
It’s not pedantic. People just literally don’t understand what inflation means
In almost everything there is the scientific or technical definition of the term, and then there is common parlance. People will never know the technical terms, just accept that because all you’re accomplishing is being pedantic.
How basic of terms should we give up on? Inflation is not a difficult concept. I would barely call it a technical term.
Weird. It’s almost like colloquiality is a thing. Words weren’t written down thousands of years ago to remain unchanged through usage. Or you could choose to be an inflexible pedant in a changing world…?
I assumed I could have a discussion on Lemmy about the very clear difference between two words without getting attacked for it, but I guess not.
I also don’t agree that the word inflation has colloquially changed meaning, I think people just are not aware that inflation is normal now. They look at the current prices due to the period of previous inflation and are angry about it.
People are not goldfish with minds that reset every year. Per your own link, accumulative inflation is up 21.8% since 2020.
Are they goldfish with minds that reset every four years?
No. If you would look at the graph in the link you posted, you would see that 2020 is right before the huge spike in inflation. This sustained spike explains the current outrage over increased prices.
There was a two year spike. If you look at the graph in the link I posted, you would see that prices have been mostly going up as normal for almost two years now. When are people going to adjust to their mindset to the current prices?
When I get a 22% pay increase ill consider it
Good luck. What field are you in?
To make people happy, I think it would take a return to a running average of 2%. This requires a temporary drop below 2%, perhaps even to 0 or negative. Otherwise, you’re just telling them to suck it up and embrace the new normal.
I’m not an economist, but from what I’ve heard in the past, 2% is basically ideal. Price deflation or inflation that’s too low can indicate problems with the economy. Maybe this situation is different since we had really high inflation a couple years ago. But either way, I think it’s unlikely that prices will drop. Kamala needed to promise super low taxes on the working class or something to make up for it.
Maybe it’s back down to “normal” inflation rates… But Kamala should have come out swinging to raise minimum wage to $25/hr, tie it to inflation, and mandating everyone get a 40% raise to counter the 40% inflation we’ve had since the last time minimum wage was raised. Something along those lines… As one thing in a long list of things she should have done… Sure it might have cost her the (checks notes) zero votes she was able to scrape off Trump’s boots, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
I agree! Her messaging was terrible, and she didn’t know how to counter the “TRUMP LOW PRICES // KAMALA HIGH PRICES” ads.
so tired of hearing that
I’m tired of centrist claiming the econony is great and anyone claiming its not are stupid. grocery prices rose 28% in 5 years: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food
Mcdonalds prices are up 40% in the same period. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/29/mcdonalds-cost-increases.html And they doubled over the last decade.
Wages growth did not keep up with the last decade, or the last 4 years. People are constantly losing ground and Biden/Harris’s reply was that “they dont understand”, because the “stock market was at an all time high.”
Tone deaf and privelaged, and even after losing Biden/Harris and their allies still dont get it and wont self examine.
I’ve never claimed to be a centrist. Very far from it. Grocery prices went up, yes. Grocery prices are now going up at a normal rate. That’s all I’m saying here and people are losing their minds.
You might try listening.
Grocery inflation is also a result of price gouging, not the economy.
What do you think the economy is? It is made up of price gouging and parapsychology <yes I know that’s ghosts>
pseudopsychology might be the term
Oh I know, but frankly the total weirdness of it feels more like parapsychology
But it’s not just grocery stores as everyone thinks. Prices are up all the way along the supply chain. Supplies, feed, and seed for farmers are way up too.
You do realize that inflation is cumulative right?
It’s out of control because some of the stuff we need on a daily basis still costs double what it used to without any real increase in wages for half of America.
I do realize that. Wage growth is also cumulative, and wages have caught up to balance out the current higher prices: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/wage-to-inflation-index/#the-job-market-has-cooled-more-than-expected-this-year
That’s only one source from a quick Google, and I assume they’re average numbers, so some people will have less purchasing power than pre-2020.
Okay either you’re not getting it or you’re ignoring it on purpose. If wages in 2023 met inflation, there’s still 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2008, 2009, etc where they didn’t.
Unless wages beat inflation that’s not getting better. And wages beating inflation years later is literally too little too late. Because we finance so much stuff this means years of delayed cars, houses, remodels, tax income (for cities), etc.
That’s not fun on its own, but then to find out companies leveraged the supply crises to keep raising prices long after it was over and caused more inflation by their greed is infuriating. Especially to then hear Democrats try to take a fucking victory lap on it.
Democrats were told all of this back in early spring and ignored it. And now Democrats have lost the election in large part because they never stopped trying to take a victory lap. The country told you it’s still hurting and you’re still here trying to patch up family finances with top line statistics that don’t mean shit.
Except that wage growth, from what I’m seeing, has kept up with inflation. If you find me numbers to say otherwise, I’ll believe you. Until then you’re just stating how you and others feel. My point this whole time is that the feeling doesn’t match up with the numbers.
I get that companies have been price gouging, I get that Democrats needed to push for more policies that make people feel better economically, or at least say dumb lies that make people feel better like Trump does.
You’re looking at the median. Look at the mode which still sits somewhere around 35-40 and say that again with a straight face.
Mode of what? 35-40 what? What source? Why are you so angry? Also why is the mode more important than the median?
Its not out of control now, but that doesn’t cancel out previous high inflation rates on things. If people wages haven’t kept up then they may not be able.to still afford the standard of living they had a few years ago.
Oh, it’s not out of control? Great! I could buy a pound of ground beef in 2019 for 4.99 and the price is now 8.99. Fuck, lucky me. It’s so in control!
Right but those are grocery prices not inflation.
Reducing inflation doesn’t mean prices go down.
You can be upset about the cost of living but the current rate of inflation is trending down so you’re going to have miscommunication if you demand it’s reduction when that is already happening.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted-monthly-inflation-rate-in-the-us/
Reducing inflation doesn’t mean prices go down.
Seems like this is the thing that people don’t seem to be grasping. Inflation is a rate of change, a decrease in inflation still means purchasing power goes down.
The vibesession says otherwise.
I understand the poster may be very emotional because of the election. Yet, This strikes me as incredibly reductive.
I think she lost because, she represents the continuation of the current administration. People want to break from the status quo, even if that means harming society to do it.
The dems need a left wing populist, asap.
Only right wing socialists are electable. Billions of dollars in propaganda told me so.
Liberals would much rather turn to fascism than let a leftist win
I keep hearing this ‘status quo’ excuse but no one ever explains what the fuck that’s supposed to even mean.
Unpopular, uncharismatic, neoliberal establishment candidates that are pushed down the throat of democratic party voters (Hillary, Biden, Kamala)
I have no idea what people mean by neoliberalism, since it seems to be different every time, but there are an awful lot of article from actual experts, saying the opposite. As a simplification, neoliberalism is associated with reduced regulation of businesses at the expense of people, yet so many of Biden policies have been strengthening the role if actual people for the first time in decades. Do you have any idea how many decades it’s been since a president gave real support to unions?
I’ve had this argument with self described progressives several times. They do not understand what Neoliberalism is, even when linked 200 level ideologies study material about it. They want it to mean “Secretly the worst conservative”. It’s an outgrowth of the idea that both parties are the same. As such they must lump liberals in with actual Neoliberals.
Personally I see it as politicians that pay lip service to social causes while being corporate capitalist shills. Amazon, Google and other corporations are all bigger than ever, fleecing the employees and gouging the customers while holding a monopoly on essential services.
Sorry im worked up, but being sincere for a second, was there an attempt by Biden to break up these megacorp? And to stop price gouging? And increase pay to prioritize workers instead of share holder value?
I still believe that democrats are better for the workers than Republicans. And Trump will absolutely wreck the economy. But the democratic party has only done the bare fucking minimum
I also wish they acted more quickly, more assertively instead of always playing centrist, however real change can be slow and gradual. I do believe it’s the nature of the beast, not just cautiousness.
- Real change requires stability over time, not instant gratification
- flipping back and forth every four years can only make things worse, and has
- real change requires foundational change, but also needs to be incorporated throughout.
For example, bringing back unions may be one of the most important ways to restore a healthy worker class, but they don’t just appear. Biden gave more support for unions than any president I’ve seen. It’s especially notable that he was criticized for tempering efforts to bring back manufacturing, to build an electronics supply chain, a renewable energy supply chain, with union requirements. They would take time and need continued nurturing but could have started faster without the union commitment. In this vision, as that manufacturing rose over the years, unions would rise with it, and help rebuild a healthy working class. But you can see how this would take years. It will never be sudden improvement, exciting turnaround, but if we were able to build strong unions, it will not just grow better conditions for most of us, but reinforce that, strengthen that, keep it alive over the inevitable regressive backlash.
Biden’s administration got an anti-mononopoly ruling against Google and had no plans to stop there.
The exact same DNC also pushed Obama down our throats who had the same policies as all those canidates, and that turned out great
Great? Wasn’t it that Obamas ambivalence towards lower offices and rise of identity politics that ushered an era of Republican obstructionists and things barely got passed, if at all?
Bernie would’ve mopped the floor with Trump. But instead we got the wife of a pervert who has the charisma of a hangnail, and who on top of that, actively promoted Trump in Republican primaries because she thought he’d be an easy candidate to beat.
Ignoring, gaslighting, belittling, and berating the electoral base is not how you gather support
Newt Gingrich ushered in the era of Republican obstructionism in the 80s-90s
Obama vowed to transform health care and he did. Biden Harris did not have any policy aspirations at all.
This should teach the DNC that if you run on even a modest progressive policy that even the republicans want, you will win. And if you dont, you will lose. You dont even need to stop calling the progressives names, you just need to make peoples lives better and more Just.
Obama vowed to transform health care and he did. Biden Harris did not have any policy aspirations at all.
This just isn’t true at all
Process reality
status quo means the current state of things
I’m aware of the phrase’s meaning. It’s not being used this way from what I can tell.
Seems to me that conservative policy is the status quo. Almost by definition, ‘conserving’ the way things are, or what they believe it is. As a general trend, the us has leaned much more conservative. This is the status quo.
Changing, progressive policy is literally antithetical to the status quo. A woman in office is not the current state. So why do people say that the dem candidate is the status quo if that makes no sense?
They’re talking about the administration’s policies, not the Zeitgeist of Americans.
There’s definitely an element of misinformation here. Too many people are rebelling against a “status quo” that never existed
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A populist isn’t gonna save you from the toxicity of your society and the stupidity of your people. You guys deserve what you get
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Uh no. You don’t just give up and blow up the country. Even if he gets to full authoritarian you’d need the peaceful structures of organization to have any chance at doing more than dying at 3 in the morning. It’s not sexy to Americans but the answer is the same as always, organize, protest, slow stuff down in critical work areas, and go further only if it’s absolutely required. Until he actually does anything you don’t even have a moral high ground, you’re just going to get called a terrorist, and rightly so.
Literally all you post is political rage-bait. How is the weather in Russia these days comrade?
This kind of shit is exactly what Russia wants. Divide the US, push violence, destabilize the country. We have paths forward that do not involve violence. Now is the time to push for ranked choice voting to allow 3rd party candidates a real chance. The DNC has been out of touch for years, and ranked choice voting will allow us to side step them and choose a candidate with a real chance.
Start small and local. Connect with your local representatives. Have a conversation about ranked choice voting. Come up with a plan that we can achieve together to make this a reality.
Every time I hear about this ranked choice voting wish:
It’s a good idea but it’s so frought with controversy. I’ve yet to see the momentum needed to force it through. Like, show me you can orginiaze a national, or even just statewide, strike and I’ll start believing.
The fact that we have this tool that no one will even look at is so discouraging. Show these Trumpers what a failed economy looks like when the people on rhe raw side of the deal throw their hands up.
That’s exactly why we need to start small and local, grass roots.
I think I’ve suggested that recently. Yeah. I mean. I’d ditch the DNC if you went that route. They will hold you back.
You don’t get it. The Russians are getting what they want because the DNC has done nothing to stop it. You can keep fighting uphill and I’ll continue to lend my vote but you get nothing else. Sorry.
If you want my suggestion don’t put your political capital into the DNC. They dont know how to spend it. Form a new party and make them suffer. Tea partiers did it and reshaped the GOP. You won’t have the funding of right wing billionaires at first but if you get enough momentum they will be pouring in to try and shape things.
It’s all for naught though, once you start getting cheated out of every victory you fight for you’ll start sharpening the knife too.
I finally feel seen!
Keep pushing this message. Keep doubling down. I’m looking forward to the fact that most of you learn nothing, you insist the other side is just dumb, and you’ll scream so from your lungs as 2028 is an even bigger bloodbath for the Dems.
California just voted to raise gas prices in CA by a full dollar in response to trump winning. Can’t make this shit up.
How do you explain Biden winning over Trump just 4 years earlier, genius? How does that fit your data points, smart guy?
Well, have you been watching the AZ senate ballot counts? So weird, they’ve started counting hundreds of ballots that only had votes for the Senate race, and not filled in for the house or the president.
The idea that votes can be printed and harvested is not a conspiracy theory. I think in 2020, 20k votes for Biden were printed and counted at 3 in the morning, and anyone who tried to point out how sus that was, was immediately branded a voter denier and a conspiracy theorist.
And I’m a smart gal, not a smart guy. :)
The problem is the Democrats are scared to push back hard, they try to move to the right to capture moderate voters, and then lose 10x as many voters to the left who don’t care enough to vote because the Democrats are trying to make concessions with absolute lunatics.
The DNC seems like it just doesn’t have a spine. Doesn’t matter now, it’s all fucked and it’s too late.
She literally called him a fascist. It’s that not enough pushback?
People don’t care about shit like that. They want to know what you are gonna do to make their lives better.
She did that too…
And no matter what, nothing that is said will be listened to.
Honestly it’s fucking not. Call him a rapist pedophile, call him Jeffery Epsteins other woman, say some shit that will piss him off and once he’s mad he crumbles on stage and has a melt down.
Like seriously, they try hard to be polite and I get she was a prosecutor but that doesn’t mean she has to talk like a lawyer when calling out a child raping, tax evading, democracy overthrowing felon.
She literally allowed him to walk the streets for 4 years after an insurrection, accepted endorsements from war criminals, and snubbed her nose to millions of people who were aghast at a genocide being committed on the other side of the world by a government that supported her opponent with every tool it had.
This defeat was not guaranteed, it was earned.
She literally allowed him to walk the streets for 4 years after an insurrection
What does this mean? What power do you think the Vice President has over the prosecution of Donald Trump?
Fucking tired of seeing this shit. People literally have no idea how their own government functions.
Not if she promotes similar fascist ideas like deporting immigrants and funding genocide.
Maybe it’s as simple as: outrage is memorable, policy is boring. For all too many voters, all they remember is the last thing that outraged them.
I don’t know how you work with that though, since people on the left seem to care more about policy, character, platform.
But maybe it tracks back to the “shift yo center” right before the election. I know it’s an attempt to attract any remaining undecideds and avoid last minute mistakes but that clearly didn’t work.
I don’t know if it’s just my echo chamber, but Harris, and waltz, both came out in the stage in a flood of emotion. They were live, genuine, caring. I know Trump tried to belittle Harris’ smile and laugh but she pulled it off. She seemed genuine and alive, in contrast to that ancient senile tyrant. Her rise was emotional, and in a good way. Then as the election approached, they became too cautious and lost that emotional jet engine that had them zooming into the sky
policy is boring
Means testing everything to the Nth disagree is enervating.
Yesterday I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.
Is bad policy. Not in the same way that mass deportation is bad. But when you ask where the 15M voters went between Biden parroting Warren/Sanders on universal student debt relief and this, go ahead and ask how many people you know who will qualify.
Harris, and waltz, both came out in the stage in a flood of emotion. They were live, genuine, caring.
Maybe Walz was different. Idk. He didn’t get nearly as much limelight as Liz Cheney, so it was harder to tell.
But Harris wasn’t caring in the slightest. Between going to Guatemala and telling refugees “Do Not Come”, dismissing student debtors as entitled, downplaying the damage caused by inflation, and cheering on the police raids of college campuses over student protests, what we got was a woman whose deep genuine affections were exclusive to her in-group.
Gore and Kerry and Hilary all had the same problems. It was Republican versus Republican-Lite time after time.
going to Guatemala and telling refugees “Do Not Come”
And yet that may be the best course. All too many undocumented immigrants are refugees in some way, desperate to escape their circumstances or find better circumstances. Tiffany were not going to welcome them and help them build their version of the American Dream, there is no humane or just way to stop them. Do you want human trafficking? immigrant camps that are essentially prisons? build a wall? Military patrols at the border? Mass deportation? There is no good answer, but the current ones aren’t working. Staying in a safe-ish spot closer to where you are and doing it legally may be most humane, may come closest to serving both their needs and US needs.
Yeah let’s blame white supremacy and ignore the fact that the democratic candidate lost FOURTEEN MILLION voters this election cycle.
It was more like 11mil, and were almost exclusively white men who just didn’t vote this time after they chose to vote in 2020
11mil, and were almost exclusively white men
Got any proof of that? From what i heard she lost 15% of the hispanic vote, women didnt turn out as well as expected, lost 7% of the 18-29 vote, and she even lost some on the black vote. She lost in every demographc but you are trying hard to pin it on one group. So lets see you back your data up.
Well white men are a majority in this country period so any aggregate population is probably going to be mostly white men and of course the only possible reason a white man might sit out is because he’s sexist and racist. I’m a liberal looking for anything to blame but my candidate’s feckless campaign and to me that’s just math. 🤷🏾
So I guess it’s finally our turn to get out the pitchforks and start going after our fellow americans while somehow retaining the moral high ground over MAGA.
/s
I mean yeah,
If they voted for the man who had the exact same policy but not the woman then the only difference is the sex
You know we can Google the vote totals from 2020 right?
Oh I’m sorry, only 11 million, my bad. That suddenly decided to become white supremacists out of nowhere when they had rejected trump the first time. It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?
11mil who were too insecure to vote for a woman
Again, source?
The problem with Harris is the problem of all liberals: they don’t understand the problems liberalism is causing. Fascism offers terrible solutions to those problems, and thus it wins.
The only messaging problem was taking the momentum of the debate and shitting on it with the right-wing heelturn the moment the Cheneys said “never Trump”.
The problem with Kamala Harris’s messaging was that she didn’t have millions of Xitter bots scaring people into voting for her.
She had like triple the money trump had in his campaign and still got her ass kicked. She might have just sucked shit as a candidate ya know
I do know, but I don’t think “sucking shit” is a specific or useful analysis.
I defer to JD Vance immediately threatening Europe if they make any move against Xitter… and Bernie Sanders speech covered much of the rest.
And she also had noone using millions of dollars to bribe voters to go vote, but only voters of a specific flavor. Somehow that was deemed legal, the usa has basically become a banana republic.
She didn’t? I believe that’s exactly what she came across as when she said she wouldn’t do anything different if she were to call the shots instead of Biden and also reminded everyone she signed off on most of his decisions. Sure, she lost votes because of sexism as well, but instead of fresh air she chose to bring stale coffin smell to the fart battle and lost to the stink Trump was all too happy to discharge. And that coffin did smell of a old white dude, let me tell you.
That being said, for such a gigantic loss against someone as obnoxious as Trump, there had to be a lot of factors in play. Sexism and stagnation of the party being just a tip of the iceberg.
She did try her darnedest too, though.
