US 2024 Presidential Election

[crimson5pheonix]

Funnily enough my immediate reaction to reading this was a little "oh, sorry". Just who I am (as a tangent towards this ghost town of internet of yore, I caught the 'Sorry Cop-o-type' in Disco Elysium right away when I played through that a couple of months ago, great game).

Dang, didn't know I was talking with a Canadian.

And my sympathies in regards to your family. I won't be so crass as to say you're 'lucky' that they're still at least at the cable news stage (as bad as Newsmax is, which is max), so I'll just say that try keep them from the internet side of things. You'll be shocked how quickly "liberal globalist agenda" turns to "The Jews".

Oh no, they put Rumble podcasts on their TV. Though being where they are, their internet is pretty bad and they can only do so much online. Thankfully.

But man,

This makes no sense. You mean the voters that you keep (rightfully) reaming the Democrats for trying to go after? Or hell, what is with this "this year"? While yes, she has done abjectly terrible this year (so terrible in fact that she is in real danger of losing to Robert fucking Kennedy), you say this like she or her party have actually done well, and Jesus dude, they have never done well. Screw the 5% threshold, it'd be a record setting day if they hit 2. They have no seats in the Senate, or the House, and hold less than 200 elected positions across the entire country. The uncomfortable truth you don't seem to be getting, is that they aren't a party, they are the idea of a party.

I mean to say those people who yell at third party voters constantly to tell them they're actually voting republican or that their vote won't matter, etc, convinced people who might have otherwise voted Green to vote Republican instead because mathematically it spites the Democrats more to do it. I'd say it's a bad strategy to purely spite instead of voting for something constructive, but centrists are really shrill and obnoxious, and make for very easy targets to spite. But like I said, it's copium more than anything, I doubt millions of potential Greens decided to vote Republican out of spite, though it does seem that way at least in Dearborn.

Because unfortunately,

This isn't true. The president picks who sits on the Supreme Court, who have the power to strike down such initiatives (like they rightfully did with the aforementioned SB1070), and that's before the fact that the president now has executive power to do whatever the hell they want now (due to said Supreme Court).

Technically true, if challenged in court and so on, but passing those initiatives now helps now. Abortion is a great example, congress never codified it, so it was always on shaky ground, and it was never codified when Democrats controlled the house, senate, and presidency. But you passed it in your state, and without having to go through the abstraction of a party. It can be struck down, it could be struck down at any time anyway even if it were passed at the federal level, even if it were made an amendment to the US constitution. All you can do is make it a law and ride it as long as you can. In short, voting for president never got you a law to protect abortion, working locally and making a direct democracy attempt did.

For as much shit as the Dems get for running a neutered, mealy mouthed campaign, where the hell was Stein? The left is so fucking starved of meat that even calling what was going on 'weird' was enough to set people off, all Stein had to do was basically walk out, go "look at these idiots" and dabbed, and steam roll the election. Unless you think that the key to success is to be a huge, million dollar political apparatus like the other two parties.

She did. She frequently talks, and works between elections every year. The meme that she appears every four years is carefully crafted by excluding her from any and all conversations unless there's something that when taken out of context (or occasionally in context, she's far from perfect) makes her look bad. Nobody hears from her because she's never "newsworthy" until it's relevant. And for the money, that kinda is the point of the 5% mark, getting more money to be able to pay to put her message out instead of being at the whims of a hostile media landscape. Maybe pull out of the spiral of "she can't win because she has no support, she has no support because she can't win".

Snip

The rest of your post is more aimed at Tippy than me, but there's something I do want to spring off of.

Dems moving left: Moving right failed now, and in 2016, and it hurt them in 2012, along with various midterms. Moving left (or at least pretending to) won them 2008 and 2020, and other midterms. When you poll people, they want leftism. When you let them vote themselves, they vote leftism. Leftism wins demographics they're supposedly chasing by going right. And for sure it staunches the flow of central demographics to the party. It is like the most obvious conclusion that can be drawn from decades of elections, but the party is wedded to third way-ism, which won 1992 where Bill Clinton got... 40% of the vote. It's an addiction the party needs to kick.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Harris (Biden) actually putting a stop to the Palestinian genocide for example, wouldn't have changed anything (election results wise), and considering how much the 'Israel is a fragile country surrounded by barbaric muslims' sentiment is prevalent in western society, the shitstorm this would've brewed within the mainstream media would've cost her as many votes as it likely would've gained her.

Erm...ok, maybe the latter part about losing other votes by not supporting genocide is true, but supporting genocide certainly did cost votes.

This might sound crazy but my definition of burning the system down is to help people by forcing politicians to work for the people rather than for big corporations and lining their own pockets. I know it's very unlikely that we'd get to the point of burning down the system that we'd actually dismantle Capitalism but that would be the ideal goal of burning down the system.

When Trump says he wants to "burn the system down", he's talking about burning everyone else around him while he gobbles up more power, influence, and money.

You either just plain don't read what I say or you have zero ability to understand what I actually say. I'm not sure which one would be worse...

Well...yes. But in the sense that Trump is saying that the system is bad and needs to be radically changed. Well, he's not wrong on that part, but the changes he's talking about (or not talking about but would do) are monstrous.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

Dang, didn't know I was talking with a Canadian.

I even like hockey and call soda 'pop'. You may be onto something.

Oh no, they put Rumble podcasts on their TV.

I read that and my heart rate actually shot up. I'm so sorry. My only hope is that you're more successful at averting that fall than I am. After it became clear they weren't going to listen to me, the only idea I had was getting my parents box sets of old TV shows in the vain attempt to give them something else to occupy their time, with obvious results (Columbo is amazing though)

I mean to say those people who yell at third party voters constantly to tell them they're actually voting republican or that their vote won't matter, etc, convinced people who might have otherwise voted Green to vote Republican instead because mathematically it spites the Democrats more to do it.

Again though, why go and ream the Democrats for chasing voters who will ultimately vote for Trump and then turn around and expect them to cater to voters who ultimately voted for Trump? Because the latter group did so ironically?

Especially with this attitude of "well, they said this candidate was useless, so I better vote for Mr. Ethnic Cleanse". It's just as loathsomely contemptible here as it is when 'centrists' try to claim that shit when being called out for being a Nazi, and am also hoping that this isn't the case for most of the left either (I actually thought you had included the Greens when you brought this up earlier and it miffed me until I reread that you were talking about centrists) because the idea that they would intentionally nose dive the plane out of some wild belief that they'll be able to take control and pull out before dashing upon the rocks and leaving nothing but wreckage and bodies like some fucked up game of chicken hurts my heart. But then again, in addition to being Canadian, I'm also a worrier and a cynic.

Technically true, if challenged in court and so on, but passing those initiatives now helps now.

I know, and in fact was quite proud of my state when I saw that too, and another small mercy out of all of this is that another prop that we managed to resoundingly bury would have dropped tipped worker minimum wage from $11.35 to $10.77, while normal state minimum is $14.35. And then I saw that that county Recorder race was going bad to the tune of 10k votes or so at the time (and called at 82% of ballots with over 100k lead), and the worrier in me came out, because while we passed them, they still only exist in that theoretical gray area where they would still need to both be ratified and then actually codified into constitution, during which time that heap of shit will have power over our ballots and may they just pull some horse shit and try and throw out enough ballots to shift the whole thing, to say nothing of our state judiciary also trying something (fun/not-so-fun fact, one of those same justices I mentioned earlier has his wife as a senator in our state legislature. They both won their retention/reelection bids). But like I said, I'm a natural worrier and hopefully wrong.

Same thing with the Dems moving left. I would love nothing more than for them to embrace some real leftist ideals and platforms, but the worrier and cynic in me doesn't really see why, especially from a purely 'numbers as written down' way of trying to secure votes among votes cast. Stein, I will admit to not seeking out and looking for, and that's on me, but it's still weird to me that you have to rely on whether or not she is newsworthy like we aren't living in 2024. Like I said, the left is so starved that "weird" made waves, you're telling me the Greens can't organize some big online/viral campaign or that they need the same big money that the other parties operate at to compete? Again, maybe I'm just far to jaded, but it really does feel like the same crap hat keeps the big two parties orbiting shit mountain has the Greens to catch any errant gutter balls. And this is coming from someone who voted for her last time she ran in '16.

 

[Satinavian]

Hope everyone here enjoys more Republicans winning if this is the lesson Democrats insist on taking away from this election.

I predicted that this would be the lesson, didn't I ?

There is no hint at all that there is a huge left potential that could be mobilized if only the democcrats would be a bit more left. Your Jill Stein got votes equal to the already withdrawn Kennedy Jr.
Right wing libertarian third party voters got in total nearly double the votes of left wing third party voters.

So obviously the democrats, when looking for new untapped voters will see that libertarians are double as strong as the nondemocratic left and that Republicans are stonger than themself.

All the nonvoters will be considered as unpolitical/apathic or as undecided centrists, not as secretly left.



So no, letting Democrats lose will not push them left. Nor will it lead to a collapse of the party and a new one rising in its stead. But sure, be free to waste your vote in the next ten elections between Reps and Dems as well.

 

[Kwak]

These are the successfully brainwashed idiots who voted in this coming nightmare...

 

[Casual Shinji]

I keep seeing this notion that the Democrats lost because they don't connect to the working class and the Republicans do. But how do the Republicans connect to the working class that isn't just lying and stoking up their racism? Do we need the Democrats to just start doing that, to lie and point fingers in order to get a leg in with the working class? It reminds me of how people keep saying that the Left needs its Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and Ben Shapiro; people who misinform, provide easy answers, and in the worst case call for violence against margilized communities. For what other reason are these guys popular - for "telling it how it is"? At what point did we start taking the onus off of the people who choose to listen to this shit, who choose to vote for hate?

The Democrats are fuck-ups, but no amount of fucking up could drive this many people to embracing fascism unless deep down they just want it, unless deep down they are just racist and hateful. These are people who just now knowingly threw their own daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives under the bus, and it's because the Democrats didn't have a clear enough policy!?

 

[Seanchaidh]

I predicted that this would be the lesson, didn't I ?

the sun will rise tomorrow if the Democrats lose an election

 

[Thaluikhain]

The Democrats are fuck-ups, but no amount of fucking up could drive this many people to embracing fascism unless deep down they just want it, unless deep down they are just racist and hateful. These are people who just now knowingly threw their own daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives under the bus, and it's because the Democrats didn't have a clear enough policy!?

You could argue that if the Democrats made being less evil more popular they'd have voted for that, and that the Dems should have.

But yeah, the voters have just taken the masks off and shown what's underneath, and that's on them.

 

[Seanchaidh]

 

[tstorm823]

There is no hint at all that there is a huge left potential that could be mobilized if only the democcrats would be a bit more left.

I agree that there's likely not huge left potential specifically, but I think there is potential out there for undecided or unlikely voters who would be more compelled to vote for an honest politician, and just aren't going to show up for a campaign that picks their stated positions in the campaign so cynically. Nobody believes Harris ran a centrist campaign because those are her genuine beliefs, and new people aren't getting in line because they want to be lied to.

 

[tstorm823]

But how do the Republicans connect to the working class?

Republicans recognize the actual dignity of work, the inherent value of serving your community regardless of what you receive in return, and show gratitude to those people who work hardest and sacrifice the most. Democrats act like people work only to get paid, that the work is a means to an end at best, and often see the work itself as degrading or even immoral.

When Republicans express appreciation or gratitude towards the working class, it is a common response from the left "well if you really appreciated them, you'd work to get them paid more", and that reduces the act of work to just money making, which turns every job into effectively prostitution, selling your body for money.

 

[Hades]

I voted for the best candidate, they came in 5th.


You do realize they are either trolls or represent less than 1% of the population, right?


Again, democrats don't even believe this, why should I? Trump is not a fascist or a dictator. It's literally the same as the other side saying Harris/Biden are socialists/communists. I'll give you $100 if there's not an election in 2028.

Its not about not having elections. Its about using the state's institutions to manipulate them for the desired result. Erdogan, Putin and Orban still have elections. That doesn't make them any less aspiring dictators or actual dictators.

Its also not ''literally'' the same since Harris and Biden aren't even left wing and so objectively cannot be socialists. But Trump is an authoritarian.

 

[Hades]

Republicans recognize the actual dignity of work, the inherent value of serving your community regardless of what you receive in return, and show gratitude to those people who work hardest and sacrifice the most. Democrats act like people work only to get paid, that the work is a means to an end at best, and often see the work itself as degrading or even immoral.

When Republicans express appreciation or gratitude towards the working class, it is a common response from the left "well if you really appreciated them, you'd work to get them paid more", and that reduces the act of work to just money making, which turns every job into effectively prostitution, selling your body for money.

Yeah I'm sure those struggling to make ends meet would vastly prefer the Republican gratitude over food and health care. Cost of living was literally the core theme of this election.

 

[Silvanus]

Again though, why go and ream the Democrats for chasing voters who will ultimately vote for Trump and then turn around and expect them to cater to voters who ultimately voted for Trump? Because the latter group did so ironically?

That's a good point.

'The Democrats shouldn't pursue Republican voters because it shifts them to the right and doesn't work anyway' (a sentiment I agree with) is not compatible with 'these voters, who should've gone Green if not for external factors, ended up voting Republican'.

 

[tippy2k2]

snip

The LESSER EVIL schtick wasn't convincing before Democrats decided that adding Genocide to the definition of Lesser Evil was acceptable.

You talk about how I can call both sides evil because it won't affect me because I'm a straight white male (even with Trump saying people like me are traitors too) but you all do the same thing with voting Democrats. You're not Palestinian so you voting for The Pro-Genocide Party is fine because their evil won't affect you. You're willing to burn an entire country worth of people to the ground as long as you personally aren't affected by it.

 

[tstorm823]

Yeah I'm sure those struggling to make ends meet would vastly prefer the Republican gratitude over food and health care. Cost of living was literally the core theme of this election.

Government action can impact where and how resources are allocated, but ultimately that food and healthcare does not come from money, it comes from people's labor. And people lose motivation to work if you don't respect them. When a politician suggests the government can provide, for the working class, that translates to "you're all going to work harder, and we're going to take the credit for it." And then people don't want to work, and then there's less food and healthcare to go around, and it gets more expensive, and the government throws more money at it which makes everything more expensive, and you spiral into inflation until the whole economy outright collapses.

Respect is not optional.

 

[tippy2k2]

I predicted that this would be the lesson, didn't I ?

There is no hint at all that there is a huge left potential that could be mobilized if only the democcrats would be a bit more left. Your Jill Stein got votes equal to the already withdrawn Kennedy Jr.
Right wing libertarian third party voters got in total nearly double the votes of left wing third party voters.

So obviously the democrats, when looking for new untapped voters will see that libertarians are double as strong as the nondemocratic left and that Republicans are stonger than themself.

All the nonvoters will be considered as unpolitical/apathic or as undecided centrists, not as secretly left.



So no, letting Democrats lose will not push them left. Nor will it lead to a collapse of the party and a new one rising in its stead. But sure, be free to waste your vote in the next ten elections between Reps and Dems as well.

This is something I strongly disagree with because every time Democrats at least pretend like they're going to do cool Lefty shit (even if they're lying through their teeth), they win.

Obama ran on HOPE AND CHANGE and won. Biden ran on cancelling student loans and helping overhaul our shitty college loan system and won.

Hillary ran on "I'm not Trump so settle for me!" and lost. Harris ran on being besties with The Chaneys and how Republicans will be in her cabinet and got curb stomped.

There's plenty of proof that people will show up if you even just pretend like you're going to do cool shit. Democrats just seem to refuse to believe it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The LESSER EVIL schtick wasn't convincing before Democrats decided that adding Genocide to the definition of Lesser Evil was acceptable.

You talk about how I can call both sides evil because it won't affect me because I'm a straight white male (even with Trump saying people like me are traitors too) but you all do the same thing with voting Democrats. You're not Palestinian so you voting for The Pro-Genocide Party is fine because their evil won't affect you. You're willing to burn an entire country worth of people to the ground as long as you personally aren't affected by it.

You know you're typing this on a device that was most likely built through slave labor, right? Possibly even child slave labor. And I don't want to make any assumptions on your eating habits, but buy anything with chocolate and... yeah, slave labor. Coca Cola? Even with Harris (Biden) putting a stop to Israel's apartheid, America would still be running on a system of foreign agony. Could that be ignored in the face of a stop to the genocide, or should Democrats still not be voted for? Not to present this as somekind of apathic 'get over it', but if you're this staunch in not engaging with something due to the evil that's behind it, you're really not going to be left with much to engage with in modern society at all.

And also, the people who voted Democrats were most certainly doing so because of an evil that would effect them. The evil that's on their doorstep right now.

 

[meiam]

I keep seeing this notion that the Democrats lost because they don't connect to the working class and the Republicans do. But how do the Republicans connect to the working class that isn't just lying and stoking up their racism? Do we need the Democrats to just start doing that, to lie and point fingers in order to get a leg in with the working class? It reminds me of how people keep saying that the Left needs its Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and Ben Shapiro; people who misinform, provide easy answers, and in the worst case call for violence against margilized communities. For what other reason are these guys popular - for "telling it how it is"? At what point did we start taking the onus off of the people who choose to listen to this shit, who choose to vote for hate?

The Democrats are fuck-ups, but no amount of fucking up could drive this many people to embracing fascism unless deep down they just want it, unless deep down they are just racist and hateful. These are people who just now knowingly threw their own daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives under the bus, and it's because the Democrats didn't have a clear enough policy!?

I think it literally boil down to a large share of the working class is made up of a lot of stupid people, and they see themselves in Trump/MAGA republican, because they say stupid thing, lie and are just awful human in general. "Telling it like it is" just mean reinforcing their stupid beliefs. They'd rather be lied to than have their beliefs challenge and rejected.

One of the strongest sign someone voted republican is low education, that's pretty telling. The world is slowly going toward being more meritocratic, that means everyone who neither work hard nor have any kind of natural talent or education to compensate is left behind. They know that the only thing Trump value is loyalty to him, and loyalty is easy, unlike hard work. So they plump for him, because they hope he'll bring back a system where to get ahead in society you just need to have attributes that are easy to achieve or already posses (loyalty to him, right color of skin, right sex, right religion) and that they can do. That's what connecting to the working class means, making society worse for the benefit of the bottom of the barrel of humanity.

I don't know how democrat can connect to them, everytime they'll try to make the world better, it'll push those people away because they don't want the world to improve. They'd rather be king of the garbage dumb than other people have better live than them, even if their lives also improve in the process.

 

[Silvanus]

Obama ran on HOPE AND CHANGE and won. Biden ran on cancelling student loans and helping overhaul our shitty college loan system and won.

Now, I'd say Biden did on those things (in small part, and didn't follow through).

But I distinctly remember during the campaign, before he became President and backtracked, the same voices were saying Biden was lying, a centrist or right-wing stooge etc, running solely on being not-Trump. This narrative about his campaign being positive only for him to backtrack afterwards is retrospective.

I think Harris' campaign was quite shite. And I think there wasn't much substantive difference between hers and Biden's: both were conciliatory centre-right milquetoast campaigns with a few mildly centre-left policies peppered in. It's just that when something is successful, like Biden's, people want their own priorities to take credit; and when something is unsuccessful, even if it shares the same DNA, they want to pretend it was an entirely different animal.