If they lose, or barely win, they need to go right to get more votes. If they win by a lot, they don't need so many leftwingers and can go right.
US 2024 Presidential Election
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
Why would they move left in that case? They would have received vindication of their right-wing strategy.
The only reason they might move left is because they cannot win any other way and they actually want to win more than they want to satisfy their capitalist, imperialist, militarist donors and personal agendas.
Because then they have the leeway to seriously discuss which leftist policy they want to pursue without fearing to lose all the centrists.
But they don't believe that moving left will get them more votes. They believe moving left will cost them even more. So whenever they are desperate for votes, they won't move left. Poor performance is always understood as "the right is more appealing"
You've messed up your quote there.
Anyway, you seem to be saying that the Dems want to be left, but have decided they can't, whereas others are saying that they want to be right, but have decided they can't.
Anyway, you seem to be saying that the Dems want to be left, but have decided they can't, whereas others are saying that they want to be right, but have decided they can't.
Really ?
After Obama in the 2016 election, when the Dems felt powerful, you had an actual competition between Sanders and Clinton and actual internal policy discussion. Sure, Sanders lost in the end, but that was as close as you ever got to having some left shift in the democratic party. But Trump won. 2020 Sanders he dropped out in April and the Democrats rallied early around Biden, who was particularly chosen to court undecided centrists. This time they unfortunately didn't have a proper pre-election because they had an incumbant.
When the Dems feel week, they move right. When they feel strong, they allow their wings to fight.
Realistically, the Afghan government was going to fold when the USA left sooner or later, and the USA leaving would have been an extended process which the Taliban would have realised was going to occur. Setting a date and attempting to negotiate with the Taliban to make withdrawal easier was not necessarily the worst idea.
However, Trump did hand the Taliban back 5,000 fighters who'd be captured and cut troop numbers to a level sufficiently low that they couldn't effectively support the Afghan forces, and failed to take action when the Taliban declined to uphold some of their parts of the deal. The fact that a load of the Trump administration's own staff have criticised his handling of the Afghan withdrawal should tell us enough, because they knew perfectly well he'd set the stage for the collapse that ensued.
Bernie is the perfect example to show how little Democrats care about left wing policies
Bernie was so rat fucked in that primary that it is baffling to me that you would use this as your example for how Democrats moved left. The Democrats did everything in their power to make sure Bernie went down in the primaries, regardless of how the polls were showing he would beat Trump while Hillary wouldn't. It is the perfect textbook example to show that Democrats would rather lose to Republicans than to win but having to implement leftist ideology.
Current day Bernie shows everyone how well "changing the Democrats from the inside" works. He has come to heel like a good lil Democrat lapdog. It's why this party needs to burn to the ground as they're supposed to be the left wing but they have way more in common with Republicans than they do with me...
Unfortunately I am only one man. It requires the not-VBNMW people being willing to take a stand against Democrats for actual change to happen but too many of them have decided that they're willing to let little things like genocide slide in order to make sure the """lesser evil""" doesn't win.
I'd vote for Democrats if they actually represented me but they don't so I won't. If Democrats lose in a few days, they've only got themselves to blame.
I didn't vote for Trump so I'm not responsible for him if he wins. The Democrats are responsible for failing to convince enough people to vote for them. I reject that stupid ass mental gymnastics bullshit that makes me responsible for the actions of a man I did not vote for, no matter how twisted into a pretzel you make yourself to somehow make it my fault the Democrats are garbage and therefore I failed them by not ignoring that and holding my nose to vote for them and their genocide.
Maybe the USA has moved rightwards. If the Republicans have moved right more than the Democrats have moved left, arguably that moves the centre of gravity right as well.
Maybe, but that's a big unknown. I suspect a lot of people don't bother to vote because they're not bothered voting. Some are profoundly apolitical. Also there are people happy to expound on politics, often passionately, but who don't vote. They don't do anything else either: campaign (even non-partisan), or get involved in any local / national issues, or in fact do a single thing to work towards political change. Maybe they'll occasionally help out a fundraiser for the local hospital. But "Nothing ever changes so why should I?" sure sounds a lot better as justification for inactivity than "I want to complain but can't be bothered doing something about it".
Sure, you can find a lot of people who agree with you on certain issues, but it's the aggregate that matters. Every position taken wins some voters and loses others, and you have to get the right blend of policies and ideology to tie up enough supporters. In bulk, not supporting Israel would appear to be a flat vote loser in the USA because its population is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestine by a substantial margin. There are people like yourself outraged by support for Israel to the point it's a deal-breaker. However, there are all the opposite people for whom not supporting Israel is a deal-breaker (some of which are also likely to be major targets for Democrats), plus all the people for whom supporting Israel is a one of a basket of pros / cons that might move them one way or the other.
You might find 70% of the country wants socialised healthcare. You might also find that half of those voters will never, ever support your party because they hate LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants, feminists, etc. and it doesn't matter how much you promise them "Hey guys, socialised healthcare: you want it, we'll really do it!". They'll still retort "Fuck you, American-hating f*****-lovers" and vote for the other guys. So are you willing to then compromise on those other things they hate? Tough ask. And what voters might you lose to do so?
This will be even more complicated by the amount of money swilling around politics, particularly from the rich. As they are so critical for funding, they also call a lot of shots to the detriment of general public will. But the cost of opposing them is that they kill your party and its policies. You can promise socialised healthcare and even if 70% of Americans would vote for that in theory, in practice you might be under 50% (a lot under 50%) once all their think tanks, media outlets, and paid politicians have flooded the airwaves and savaged the crap out it.
As disappointing as the Democrats are, they have to work with the circumstances and system that they're in. If they were wiped clean, whatever replaced them would be in exactly the same system, with the same voters and voter preferences, same billionaires, and end up pretty much the same. It might cause a significant reordering of the policy basket that a notional "Neo-Democrat" party ran on - for instance it could be more economically left but less socially liberal - but the inevitable end result would be that it still would have to make shitty decisions that would alienate voters it would theoretically want. Proportional representation could help deal with this and provide an outlet from stifling binary politics in a parliament, but the president is still going to be a winner-takes-all heap of grubby compromise.
Not the Democrats. Some Democrats. His supporters were also Democrats. That is why i called it a fight between the wings of the party. Sure, he lost in the end (after some underhanded moves ), but that was still the only major event that had a chance to push the democrats left. And it only happened because they felt strong, felt that they might be able to cut the centrist and undecided voters to push through left policies.
But after losing to Trump that stopped. And losing again this time will make sure there won't be any move to the left in the next election cycle either.
As for the democrats going under and be replaced ... I am not willing to live through ~60 years of Republican rule until a replacement is stable enough to challenge them with no guarantee that this replacement has more palatable policies.
Then you've accepted a world where The "Lesser Evil" can do whatever the hell they want, which now includes a literal genocide.
You might be ok with that (even if it's a reluctant ok out of fear) but I am not and I will never back down from that.
Sample size 1 demonstrates that third-party voters either don't understand trolley problems, american politics, or are delusional. Decent start, I guess.
If that's what you gotta tell yourself to justify voting for the leaders quite literally tying people to the tracks right in front of your face, then go for it.
Again, this isn't some natural disaster Democrats are dealing with the best they can; they are funding the rope, the tracks, and the trolley. You are actively choosing to support the people who are creating the trolley problem right in front of your face for the entire world to see without even having the decency to pretend like they aren't.
Does VA use a paper voter roll or an electronic one? Here it's weird, where regular voting uses a paper roll and requires you to vote at your correct precinct (at least as recently as 2022) but early voting uses an electronic roll and lets you vote at any early voting location in the same county.
My point was never that it's a good or acceptable thing, but that at least the damage is going to be minimal. Like saying that a car wreck could be a lot worse, at least everyone could walk away.
I mean a contingent election would definitely put Trump in power, but it requires no candidate get a majority of electoral votes. The other relatively straightforward way to install Trump without him winning the election would be to make him Speaker of the House and then remove Kamala and Walz (by impeachment or assassination). Nothing actually requires the Speaker be a member of the House.Read an article the other day.
That “Little Secret” Between Trump and Johnson? Here’s What It Could Mean.
The “secret” almost certainly involves a plan to install Trump in the White House if he loses the election—but this plan could be even worse than you think.www.thenation.com
Some of the language in the article makes me think it was written by a Democrat wearing a tinfoil hat, but following Scotus justice Scalia's death the Republicans stalled for over half a year without any good justification so I cannot dismiss it.
The apparent contradiction is one you brought up, not me: the idea that these voters going third party is advantageous to the Dems, because they're not voting Trump.
Except it relies on a strange assumption that the primary motivating factor for these voters is to simply see the Dems lose rather than any actual policy preference. An assumption i never made: I see their choice to vote third party as a principled one, and any impact on the Dem-Republican binary contest as a side-effect.
"Relevant others", being the Stein and Trump campaigns, do believe that third party votes cost the Democrats. It's not flimsy when Stein directly said so (no matter how many times you dismiss her own perspective as propaganda or familiarity bias). It's not flimsy when Republicans are pumping money into Stein's campaign.
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It's this sort of thing that should remind everyone how dependent political systems are on goodwill. Even the best systems have cracks, and when things degrade to a certain point, eventually someone decides that it might be worth sticking a crowbar in and yanking for all they're worth.
I note for instance the time, respect and attention Republicans have paid to Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has done precisely that. Hungary's still a democracy just yet, but one in which the ruling party has amassed so much power and infiltrated so many systems that every election is unfair, and the courts are rigged to back it wherever it matters. It would take a landslide to remove it, and even then, what's the possibility Orban just goes all in and announces a fraudulent result? Trump's already rigged the courts, and Project 2025 is nothing if not a plan to smash the neutrality of the executive civil service. The executive can then decline to provide oversight over the states, and they can make sure the right party wins.
Lina Khan was made head of FTC with Bernie and Warren advocatijg for her, and since then she's made a lot of billionaires angry by just doing the actual job all those before her were supposed to be doing. A whole lot of lobbying is being done to try and remove her, so imo she is most important asset worth protecting in this mess when it comes to enforcing rules against corporate power grabs, deregulation and monopolies. It involves everything from food/diet quality/safety to environmental protections, online, offline and everything in-between. Having that many wealthy enemies does cause worry, but it means she doing the right thing. And with the Chevron Doctrine recently dismissed/removed by the supreme court basically opening the floodgates for exponential corporate corruption opportunities, she may end up being the last line of defense.
(They have gotta trim down on the cringe thumbnails goddamn lol)
(They have gotta trim down on the cringe thumbnails goddamn lol)
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