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this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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You analysis is spot on.
Harris threw away an easy layup. Trump was as unpopular as Biden when Biden dropped out.
And the Democratic machine couldnt make a W happen because they are owned by AIPAC. They would have had to call the genocide for what it was.
Not sure I still understand the reasoning that some how wants to allow the non-voters to not own up to their mistake. If both parties were the same on the same issue of Palestine then that's an issue that cancels each other out, I am not saying this is not atrocious from both parties because it is. But the rest of Pro’s should have been more then enough to warrant an effort from the non-voters to make an effort to save their democracy, rights and freedom.
I have seen it time and time again after the election, “iT’s tHe MeSsAgInG”. If sound reasoning and logic was applied the red flags were very loud from the Trump camp that what he is visiting upon the US is what was going to be expected if he won. So no, I will always tell those non-voters that their inaction is what helped cause all of this and by a large factor.
I don't think Gaza issue was the deciding factor in the election, it's all the other stuff she should focus on.
I would agree it wa not the only thing but it was definitely one of the prominent ones.
It’s exasperating to have both: a) warned, extensively and explicitly, with detailed analysis and specific examples—not just months, but years in advance—that the Democrats' 2024 strategy was failing; and b) to have to keep explaining, over and over, to people who think they understand how things 'should' have gone, that Democrats did campaign exactly as they claim—and lost dramatically as a result.
Look you caught the bull by its horns, but I want you to bear with me. You think "some thing" about electoralism; and its one that wasn't borne out by reality.
Is it the thing which is wrong or you and your thinking? You wanted the election, the electorate, electoralism itself, to be something other than what it was: If you (and Democrats in general) keep approaching elections in this manner, we will never win another election.
You can either meet the moment and find voters where they are at, hear their issues, address them or say how you'll address them, and ask them to join your cause, or you can continue to tell them that they are wrong for what they think and do, and they better vote for you or else they'll get the fascist.
Which do you think grows a base and which one shrinks a base?
I still fail how this lesson is not something that the voter base themselves need to learn as well. Again I feel that the retrospective is being pushed to much on to the Democratic party and not the non-voters themselves. I mean the difference between the Democratic and Trump campaign was not just a slight difference of policies. We are talking the Trump campaign was loud and proud with their racist and fascists remarks.
If the Trump campaign was better and louder at the messagng then why was his messaging in of itself not enough to motivate the voters?
The two biggest issues for non-voters was 1) Gerrymandering (they felt their vote did not matter), 2) Kamala was not compelling enough with a side note of Palestine also being part of this.
Both of which the Republicans are for point 1) to blame and for point 2) way worse with Palestine being equal on.
But sure I guess blame the Democratic party because they did not nail it 100% while the other guy was like Hitler lite throughout his campaign. If the non-voters do not have the balls to own up to their play in this then you lessons have not been learnt and there is a good probability it will be repeated. Provided of course you get a chance at another fair election.
I guess you just want to keep not getting it then. Cus what you are doing, how you are thinking, acting, talking: Its why we lost the election.
You don't get it. But you also don't want to get it. You want to be "right" but your approach to politics has lost the popular cause of the people, and just, objectively loses elections.
You can either "be right", on your own terms, or you can win elections. You can't have both.
Here is the biggest hint of your lifetime: Democrats losing elections has nothing to do with Republicans.
I still fail to see your point tbh, thank you for sharing it though. I do always enjoy trying to change my perspective. For me though it just feels as if the non voters are essentially passing the blame on and not taking accountability for the shit show they find themselves in now.
Maybe just try and appreciate the deep cynicism of your perspective.
In the same way you are trying to blame non-voters for having nothing to vote for, you are not taking accountability for the shit show we find ourselves in.
Think about your rhetoric: Whose mind is changed because of how you think, and then you expressing it?
How many people did you (or the Democrats for that matter) convince with this perspective?
Republican bad; voters should [, , ] xyz: That's not at how elections, electoralism, or voters work.
You just simply have to come to terms with that. How you think the world works in regards to electoralism; its not how it works, and that not working was put on extreme display in November.
Do you want to win elections or not? Thats the first question to answer. Then, if you say "yes" to that first question, you then have to come to terms with the fact that your perspective, the dominant, mainstream, corporate Democrat perspective: it loses elections. It doesn't work.
Its not cynicism that brought me to my current perspective. It's a drive to learn from mistakes and be better from it. Something that non-voters I feel need to do as well. Let me demonstrate, if leading up to the election you were to write a pros and cons list, with Palestne being the only definite con for both sides. Given the rhetoric from both camps are you saying that the Democrats had more or the same cons as the MAGAt camp? If so I would be curious from your perspective what those other cons are? Ensure you are comparing them to the same rhetoric as the MAGAt camp during that time.
I just want you to appreciate that its, really, deeply, not worth my time to continue doing the of explaining why, that the perspective you refuse to move from: that its the voters fault; is part and parcel with the mechanism of how Democrats lose elections.
You just have to decide what you want more: Do you want to insist that you are right in what arguments and how you think about elections, or do you you want to beat MAGA and fascism?
You can't have both. The Democrats drove the USS YourExactApproachToElectoralism right into the cliffs. If you can't change your mind, and understand that how you are having this conversation was precisely is an extension of how the Democrats are managed as controlled opposition: we're fucked.
Just set up the framing right? Lets take it apart. You want this to be framed as a "Well Democrats were bad, but Republicans were worse™. This trope has been repeated endlessly for the previous 60 years. Literately, the entire modern political hegemony (starting with the southern strategy; basically the end of the Roosevelt social Democrats), has been couched in this rhetorical framing.
Look at what you are trying to do with your framing. You are trying to set me up as if I'm defending or care even one iota about Republicans. Buddy, I have not one lick of influence on anything any Republican could ever think or do. I couldn't convince a republican or the republican party of ANYTHING. I have 0 influence on them. My opinions or perspectives of the Republicans are utterly moot: because I have no carriage with them. They'll never come to my perspectives, I'll never come to theirs.
You have it burned into your head that this was a choice between two sides: but it never actually was, and it hasn't been since.. 1996? There has been no tangible center in the American electorate in at least 30 years.
Your job this election cycle, as an obviously intelligent and informed voter, your job was to get people off the couch and interested in voting. And your rhetoric, this rhetoric you are using right now: it does the opposite of that, and exponentially more so for low information voters. Literally, this presentation, that I, the voter looking to be convinced, "have to" do something, when you offer me, basically nothing other than "well the other team is pretty bad too": what exactly is it you think that does to voters?
Again, its a broken record, and its clear that you aren't interested in actually winning elections because you don't have the introspection necessary.
Hey thanks for talking about it though. I would argue it appears I am not the one set in my view point. You have not really presented anything to change my mind and have spent a great deal more time writing that monologue then it would have taken to prove my point. A simple task that all people should do when entering an election. The non-voters remain in my books the biggest disappointment in the US 2024 elections, when the other side was as blatant as they were in the racism, hatred and authoritarianism then blaming the other side for their poor messaging when they were the opposite is just poor form from the non-voters and as far as I am concerned just as much fodder for the leopards as the conservatives who voted to have their rights slowly stripped away.
You want the election to have been about Republicans versus Democrats so that you can blame non-voters or anti-genocide voters, whomever.
Democrats and those who repeat their arguments simply needed to do better. They needed better policies to run on and needed to do something other than "Republicans bad" as rhetoric. "Republicans bad" when a persons life gets just as worse under Democratic rule as it does under Republican rule falls flat.
Blaming people who didn't vote: You will lose us another election if you continue with this, and you've now been notified. You won't be able to deny accountability if you continue with this strategy to rhetoric.
The difference between the two parties was not just insignificant policy difference. You had one side literally boost hatred on a Haitian community, that was loud in their Nazi and authoritarian rhetoric. You are not applying the reflection needed to understand that when one side is like that and you don’t vote against it then you are also the problem.
Sure. And who did you convince with that argument that wasn't already voting for the Democrat?
You want me to be someone who didn't vote or didn't vote Democrat, but bruh. I've put more time and money into Democratic campaigns, working directly with candidates them elected, than you probably ever will in your entire life. I've been on stage with Katie Porter. I personally have dialed the number of almost every fucking veteran in Rashida Tlaibs district to do wellness checks during COVID. Rashida won her district with 70% support. She was extremely critical of both the Democrats and Israel. 🤔
Vote harder is a failure of electoralism. Blue no matter who DOESNT WORK as rhetoric. You WILL get another Republican elected if you keep at it. "Strategic voting" isn't strategic if it costs you the game.
IYou want to pretend you've got some kind of moral high hand. Blaming voters; not trying to understand them and address the real criticism that the Biden presidency was kind-of a joke and didn't really do shit for people: The insistence that we should just "vote our interests" by voting Democrat: it cost us our democracy.
and you are basically insisting on doing it again.
You again fail to see my point, which is logic based. Its not vote blue no matter who. Its a simple task of pros and cons and actually paying attention to the rhetoric of both sides. In my view this is where the non-voters actually failed and they need to learn from their mistake. The pros and cons for those that appreciate democracy and don't ascribe to the hate that the right pumped out would have been a better way to ensure as a voter you knew what was at stake.
No one is missing your point. You are simply too obtuse to realize its consequences. Its also obvious that you aren't incapable, but simply unwilling to understand this main point. You want the world to be an a way which it isn't and because of that we lost an election. And to be clear, you are in no manner unique in holding that perspective. Your argument, was the core argument that almost all of the DNC infrastructure was relying upon to convince voters to show up last November: and it cost the US its democracy.
Yeah, we know dude. We've been over this. Ad nauseam. Your world view is wrong. Like its just straight up wrong. As in, it has no basis in reality.
Your worldview results in wrong outcomes (based on the charitable assumption you actually wanted to win the election).
You want voters to be different than they are: but they aren't. You want elections to work differently than they do: but they don't.
Having a view that doesn't map to reality: thats at the core of the problem Democrats faced last November.
They didn't want to meet voters where they were. They didn't want to address voters concerns on the voters grounds. They didn't want to hear criticism. They didn't want the candidate to have to move to where the voters were. They wanted the voters to move to where the candidate was. They didn't want to convert non-voters into voters by addressing their grievances with the current state of things. They didn't want to address the fact that Democrats were deeply unpopular with voters and non-voters alike.
But thats not how the world works. And any one could have told you that the above strategy, and more general, approach to interpreting the world and understanding the outcomes and consequences of decisions, any one since Aristotle could have told you that this would obviously fail.
You can't just completely fail to enumerate the board, the pieces, and their positions correctly, fail, and then complain that its the board or the pieces who are wrong because you didn't want to even look to understand how the game was set up.
You are blaming the board and the pieces for losing a game.
Sorry, your points still don't sway me. To learn and move past what happened, the non-voters need to take a large portion of the blame. Otherwise you are only pandering to their apathy, without them acknowledging this simple error on their part then the US will repeat this same error in the future.
Edit: I will add I have seen more self reflection and growth from former Republicans who realise that they fucked up by supporting him in the first place. A concept you and those non-voters are failing to grasp.
Well, I mean, you've shown that you aren't interested in winning elections. And obviously, you understand at this point, the discussion is never really intended to work on you, in terms of rhetoric, so much as it is to put your deep, deep cynicism on display.
You don't want to win elections. Its not what you are into politics for. You've made that clear. You want some one to excuse your failure on. Winning elections isn't the goal of why you think what you think or do what you do. I've been successful in-so-far as making that self-evident, even if I can't convince you to move away from it.
And thats the fundamental difference, right?
I actually want to win elections. Which means I cant' simply play a blame game with people who stood aside, even if I deeply resent them for doing so. If I want to win this game, I have to have empathy and try to understand why those who didn't vote made that decision. I can't blame the board or its pieces. I have to try to understand them.
You talk about self-reflection and growth, but your mentality the toxic fundamental at the core of the failure which is the modern Democratic party. They don't want to understand voters or hear criticism. They don't want democracy within the party. Party leadership wants to manage the party in support of pro-corporate oligarchy, even if they lose elections.
There is no failure to grasp anything here. Its just, looking at the sad, deep cynicism which is represented by what is the mainstream Democratic view of things. If you genuinely cared about this Democracy, you would have put your effort into figuring out and understanding why the Democratic party is so deeply unpopular with voters. But you don't care. Its all a write off to you so you can morally wash your hands of the matter. As long as you've got someone to blame, you are good.
My main point was non-voters using self-reflection and realise they fucked up this time around, this is not me just trying to pass the buck as you and so many others are doing to the Democratic party. Sure I will agree the Democratic party was not perfect and all they would have done was continue the status quo. But as I stated earlier when a simple Pro’s and Con’s activity one would realise that the the status quo would have been better then the fascist BS and all the rights you have lost and are losing that is currently happening now.
Like I said I have seen better self reflection from those that once supported Trump than those that seemingly want to try and pass the blame entirely on the Democratic party without acknowledging their own failures.
You still fail to offer any points that can sway my mind from this.
Yeah we've been through this. l'm just using you to highlight how deeply cynical, toxic, and obviously counter productive your world views is.
It's a world view that will continue to allow rightwing grievance politics to persist, and even, help them gain traction.
You don't hold your view because you think it's going to help win elections or stop right wing nationalism: you're simply deeply emotionally attached to believing you are "right", even if that moral high grounds doesn't give you the outcomes you want.
You want voters who don't approach politics or elections to do their calculus your way, and if they don't, in your opinion that's their fault.
By carrying on with this, obviously counter productive approach to electoralism, you doom any chance you have of actually winning back voters to your cause.
You aren't an ally of what's right, your aren't even an opponent to that which is deeply wrong.
It's not a new way if looking at things, or even an interesting one, that you have. It's also an extremely predictable one, where we've seen Democrats focus their campaign around a basically identical rhetoric, to speculator and catastrophic failure, dooming us all.
This approach to politics, you approach to politics, results in Democrats to get their asses handed to them by right wing nationalists who are willing to understand why people feel so deeply disenfranchised by the system. They (rws) will speak to the deep pain and struggle people feel. Because people feel heard, they grow their base.
You aren't interested in growing a base or hearing or understanding why people largely don't vote. You just want to blame them. And because of this you're a destructive and toxic element within any kind of movement to try and stop rw nationalism.
It’s been nice sharing the differing views. Clearly a case of you believe one things and I another. Have a great day. Btw being an Australian means I am not suffering from this but I am interested in what caused it to protect against it our end. Thankfully our mandatory voting hopefully means the majority sees sense but wish us luck anyway.
Well the one thing I would strongly advocate for then, is that you make a concerted effort to understand why people feel the things that they feed and believe the things that they do, and demand that "your" politicians and political enterprises put addressing those issues in a material and substantial way front and center.
The denial of peoples lived experience is central to the failures of modern neoliberal ideologues; like you, they are disinterested in criticisms of their own approaches to politics, because it calls into question their entire ideology. In doing so they create the surface for right wing nationalist, reactionaries to come in, speak to peoples grievances, and misdirect that energy.
Not understanding and acknowledging that people do feel pain, are struggling, and maybe do have valid reasons for not participating in the political process is part-and-parcel to precisely how and why right wing movements have gained such significant traction.
I mean yeah once again thats your view point. I still stand by the fact that the non-voters in the US fell asleep at the wheel. Like I have said a few times before when the rights messaging leading up to election was as blatantly fascist and racist then what is currently happening in the US is hugely because of the non-voters fault and they need to take blame for their inaction in allowing it to happen.
To be clear, the point that I am making is: if the above is your point, then you both a) do not understand how elections function; and b) are contributing to the rise of right wing nationalism by giving them the opportunity to co-opt disenfranchised voters by blaming them instead of understanding why they dont vote.
In case you did not notice but right wing fascism is already there in the US. It’s too late for you guys, the only thing that can stop this is the non-voters losing more rights until they are personally affected, then they will wake up and realise their mistake. The only question that remains is will it be too late.
The US is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world that in order to have a democracy you have to participate and pay attention in order to preserve it.
Or, it's a cautionary tale that when the political system fails to support its people, they become disenfranchised and easily manipulated.
Keeping telling the non voters that they're wrong for not voting. I'm sure they'll find your obtuseness and unwillingness to understand very convincing.
You are a hole the boat when it comes to stopping right wing movements.