I think centrism can win elections though. In my country, the UK, elections are usually won by whichever party captures the centre ground. Keir Starmer won in the UK this year by being centrist. Previously David Cameron and Tony Blair were pretty centrist, and both won multiple elections.

I guess ideally Biden should never have run for a second term, and they could have had proper primaries.

Realistically perhaps Britain just needs partners, with the US of course being a major partner (Five Eyes for example).

If we weren’t so closely tied to the US then maybe Starmer could be making a statement similar to that of Macron and Scholz today:

Germany, France vow close cooperation after US election… “We will work in this new context for a more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe…”

Fair points. Biden won enough men in 2020 though. Maybe Kamala was just seen as too leftist or too focused on women’s issues or something… I’m not saying she was those things, but maybe some people saw her that way.

Fair. Maybe voters cared about personalities though. And they thought Kamala was partly responsible for rising prices under Biden’s term, so maybe they weren’t as bothered by other policy areas.

Trump holds grudges so maybe he would insist on only meeting Starmer and not Lammy. Who knows.

True. Maybe Harris should have focused more on working class endorsements, union endorsements, etc. I dunno.

Perhaps these two factors contributed to this:

1. Harris is a woman and maybe some Americans just don’t want a female president
2. Harris maybe leaned too hard on celebrity endorsements, at a time when Americans are feeling worse-off financially, which perhaps made her seem out of touch to middle America

Maybe something that hurt Kamala was her use of top music stars… maybe average Americans feel those celebrities are out of touch with average people. I saw this on BBC News:

a Republican at one Trump rally… said their candidate had completely “reimagined” the Republican party from its country club voter stereotype to appealing to working class families, while the Democrats had become the “party of Hollywood”

And of course the people who run Lemmy.ml are the people who made Lemmy.

On the websites of many open source projects over the last 2 years there have been messages of support for Ukraine, but I guess that’s unlikely to occur with Lemmy.

Yeah fair enough. I probably won’t block them because I find it interesting to see other people’s views.

No I didn’t know until you tagged me. Seems like they’ve had a strange reaction to my post. I think what I said in that post is true but I will admit I’m wrong if somebody can prove so. Here are a couple of articles which seem to back up what I said:

Regarding the invasion of Crimea in 2014: “Incognito Russian soldiers appeared throughout Crimea… The Kremlin initially claimed the soldiers were local “self-defense” groups but later admitted they were professional Russian soldiers”.

Regarding the invasion of the Donbas in 2014: “A London-based digital forensics agency says it has gathered an enormous body of evidence that Russia’s military was deployed in the August-September 2014 fighting around Ilovaysk, in eastern Ukraine”.

If that’s true then both Ukrainians and Russians have impositions on their freedom, but at least Ukraine seems to have had democratic elections over the last 10 years, whereas Russia has been rigging their elections, perhaps since 1999 (or longer than that).

Anyway, I would definitely like for Ukrainians to be allowed to leave their country if they wish. But the blame for this invasion surely rests on Russia. The Kremlin launched this imperialistic invasion in 2022, building upon their earlier invasions in 2014.

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Are people in Russian-occupied territories free to protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? No. They would get put in prison, or worse. So they aren’t free.

I do think Ukrainians should be allowed to leave Ukraine. But you seem to be blaming Zelenskyy for the Russian shells, being fired by Russian forces. For some reason you don’t want to put any blame at all on the Kremlin - why is that?

liberated

Russia is imperialist and I don’t trust any of their “referendums” in the occupied regions of Ukraine, given that Russia rigs elections (that’s a video of ballot stuffing in Russia).

could you please also explain to me how being unable to leave your country where you can be kidnapped on a street at any day and sent to die is not considered slavery

I do think there is a point to make here. Ukrainians should be free to leave their country if they want. But anyway, I strongly disagree with your view that Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine is “liberating” anything or anyone.

you need to be serious about inflicting permanent harm on politicians

I don’t think you phrased that in the best way… I hope you mean punish them at the ballot box

Maybe Jenrick could do what Starmer did - make some radical statements to win over the party and become leader, then soften your stance to become more electable to the general public later on.

Maybe those views constitute more than the fringes when it comes to the Tory party.

The UK has also denied entry for people in similar cases. Some right-wing activists were denied entry in 2018.