The reality is even worse. They’re going to “learn” all the wrong lessons. They will shift further to the right, like they always do.
Yep, every time Dems can’t get enough votes from the left to win, because they aren’t “left/pure enough” for them, what they learn is to shift to the right to find votes.
Whereas since voters on the right will always vote for the one with the R by their name even if they don’t think the candidate is “right enough”, their party learns that it doesn’t have to move to the left to find enough votes and stays to the right or moves even further to the right.
…you don’t win over conservatives by offering light-conservatism, but the democratic party have run the same playbook since 1992…
The only way to win over conservatives is a full-throated embrace of fascism. Turns them out like crazy.
I don’t think you understand their point. Republicans always turn out to vote for their candidate. Then they win (at least a good portion of the time) and they vote in primaries and move the party further right. For any evidence just look at the past 2 decades.
Whereas the left just decides to sit out and therefore Dems lose (or only win at odd times.) They can’t count on leftist/apathetic voters, so they go towards where they think they can get votes (ie. people who always vote and if they do convert enough they are profiting by gaining one vote for them and removing one from Republicans.)
Now everyone here is saying it’s soooo obvious that it’s a poor strategy but is there any introspection on behalf of the left/apathetic? How has withholding your vote or not voting in primaries gone? It’s been done for years and society has moved so, so far away from leftist goals no?
So their point is that it probably is a mix- surely the Dems need to actually run on popular policy and leftists/apathetic need to suck it up, vote in all elections, and vote for the best candidate. Pick your preferred candidate in the primary and then vote for the Democratic candidate in the general, no matter what (well- barring something egregious like…being anything like Trump.) Once Dems actually have power, you can keep pushing left. But if people just sit out, you’re not gonna be counted. Decades of that is proof.
Edit- maybe you mean you can’t win the center over with conservatism-lite. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But someone mentioned Bernie finished behind Harris in Vermont so I don’t know that it’s a maxim.
Yep, every time Dems can’t get enough votes from the left to win, because they aren’t “left/pure enough” for them, what they learn is to shift to the right to find votes.
And can you blame them? Who do you think is more efficient catering to, the right-wing idiot who went to vote for a rapist felon or the self-proclaimed leftist that didn’t vote to stop fascism because they didn’t like the alternative enough?
These last elections were already “right vs far right”, following ones are 100% going to be even worse. When the right wins, shifting left makes no logical sense.
No of course I can’t blame them because it’s the only thing that makes sense to do. That’s what I saying. I blame the people who won’t vote for Dems if they don’t perfectly align with everything they want or don’t pass their purity test.
Magats took over the Republican party because they consistently voted for whichever R won the primary, even if it wasn’t the one they wanted to win the primary. R’s have always done this, but Magats especially have been turning out to do this since 2008 when gasp! the Black guy won (they started out as the Tea party). On top of that they did a lot of activism. Parading around with their guns was the part they liked best about that. They took a name for their movement; the TEA (taxed enough already) party was a stupid name and they looked like idiots with their teabags, but it worked for them and they eventually got their demagogue.
The Democratic party can be moved to the left with this same strategy. Vote for the more left-leaning or whoever you like best in the primary, then vote for whoever has the D by their name in the general. When they learn that they can actually count on getting enough votes from their base, they’ll stop futilely chasing votes from the right. At the same time you have to do activism and keep the movement growing, which makes sure they clearly know what you want and creates pressure to influence their policies. You don’t give up after one election cycle because it takes time and work…
Ceding your power by not voting doesn’t make politicians care about you–it’s not like boycotting a business that wants to sell you something. Politicians want to please those who vote for them, not those who don’t. Learn from the magats. First you put the politicians closer to your views into power, then keep pressuring them to enact the policies you want. Not sit around and wait for them to enact the agenda you want first and after that you’ll vote for them. Think about how training a dog works.
Mindless sheep sycophant party that abuses the system to stay relivent VS super-diverse big tent party than “takes the high road” and it is still almost 50/50…tells you where the people actually stand and how badly the broken system empowers the shitty minority. Oh, before “huurrrrddduuuurrrrr but popular vote dduuurrrrrrr”…that is how many people of each ideology VOTED not how many there are. Glad I could clarify the obvious for you smooth brain twits that think you have a point.
The popular vote that trump won in addition to the electoral college? That popular vote? Democrats (the party apparatus) need to come to term with themselves and look in the mirror for answers as to why there’s a second trump term on the horizon.
Imagine thinking the DNC will ever push another Gore. If they were willing to do that we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
And this is one of the reasons why people shifted Republican in this last election.
If the Democratic party won’t represent Democratic ideals, then out of either anger or apathy, their base will vote for the party that can do it better, Republicans, or not vote at all.
I agree with a lot of people on Lemmy that the average American is an idiot, and our shortening attention spans coupled with our changing media diets isn’t helping with that, but I see these as features not bugs.
Americans in general like their shiny toys, and one of the best ways to capture their attention is by politicians giving concessions and offering things that will benefit their lives. Think carrots on sticks more than sticks themselves.
I will never stop hanging most of the blame on the Democratic party for leading us to today conclusion after Tuesday.
People didn’t shift Republican in this election. Trump got about the same number of votes as he did against Biden.
no, but everyone wants to pretend that everyone became ultra-super racist idiot trump voters over the course of 4 years because they listened to a lot of joe rogan, rather than listening to a bunch of CNN like good little vote piggies. see one infographic of a bunch of red arrows everywhere and then everyone loses their fucking minds and decides that the only way to win the next election is to become more racist. if only they tack to the right harder, then they’ll win, they just need to be more racist, see, and then it’ll work!
and the problem is that this is exactly the lesson they want to learn. it’s the lesson they have an interest in learning because they are also a right wing party. maybe it’s because there’s just gonna be more posters running around two days after the election because this is the top drama and it’s eating up time they otherwise would’ve spent talking about celebrity drama or whatever, but we can talk for years about how the democrats, anywhere else, would be a center-right party of neoliberal warmongers that are fundamentally unwilling to give positive material concessions to basically any of their voters. as soon as the election gets called, that all vanishes, suddenly they’ve run the most perfect campaign of all time, and really, it was the voters that were at fault, and if anything, they should be more racist. it’s not that the economy sucked, that they didn’t present an enthusiastic, optimistic, or hell, coherent, vision of the future. no, it’s because they just weren’t racist enough.
it’s 2016 all over again. the punishments will continue until morale improves, time is a flat circle, and I keep falling down the stairs.
do’h
There is no way to read or infer that from their comment without some serious preconceived notions. That person made a statement of fact. They did not say anything about their opinion on the goodness or badness of that statement of fact.
The only ones that need to learn are the vile pieces of shit that chose to throw their vote away or not even vote. A politician doesnt give them all they want so they sacrifice the planet. Lowest of the low. Same kind of trash as maga
Every single third party protest vote could have gone to Harris and she still would have heavily lost. She managed to even lose the damn popular vote by five million votes, despite Trump having a lower turnout than 2020.
This wasn’t because people voted third party, this was because at a time when incumbents have seen massive pushback across the globe from Covid inflation and Biden was unpopular across the board she ran as completely the same as Biden but even more Right on the border.
At a time when the politically disconnected working class families that make up the record trunout in 2020 were struggling with wage stagnation, erosion of Covid gains, and greedflation eroding their savings and pensions, four more years of the same but we’ll adopt even more Republican policies and look how many rich Republicans like us was never going to get the everperson off the damn couch.
More of the same is not a good platform for ‘progressives’ during economic hardship, even if it was out of their control and less hardship than most peer nations.
Even though Trump is a disaster for many of us, most people got though his first four years just fine, and don’t understand just how much damage he did or how much more he could do if the guardrails failed.
Getting the general public out to vote requires giving them something they want to vote for, and when the biggest thing you can point to doing or wanting to do more of is some clean energy related tax breaks that is a major problem.
Had the Dems impeached Clarence Thomas for his and his wife’s role in Jan 6, had Biden improved the immigration system like promised, had he provided free National Guard abortion clinics on federal land, had he made the FDA make puberty blockers and abortion medicine available by teleheath and mail, or indeed had any major victories in the last half of his term to show, we would not be here. Had they run AOC, Bernie, Waltz, or anyone at all who could articulate a platform beyond four more years of the same, we would not be here. Had Harris focused on how she could use left wing policy to fight the effects of late stage capitalism, we would not be here.
This election was an unforced error of the highest consequences, and one brought about by a political party that was so confident that until he dies of old age every politically disinterested Amarican would be so scared by the threat of Trump that they would maintain an unprecedented level of voter turnout without them having to actually do or promise anything.
Well said. As soon as Harris started parading Biden around on campaign events and talking about “we love you Joe” I knew it was over. It doesn’t matter that a lot of the circumstances were out of his control, to many people Biden’s term is associated with hardship. The Dems had a unique opportunity to sidestep the issue by having Harris position herself as a separate candidate, distancing herself from the Biden administration and pushing a narrative of her having different and new ideas for the country. Instead they tried themselves to the status quo in a moment where the everyman is suffering and it pulled them down like a boat anchor.
It’s a damn embarrassment, and the whole world is left weeping. Fucking hell.
I blame third party AND non voters. They and MAGA are all the same kind of scum who sacrificed your democracy.
Which do you think is better? Dems giving people what they want to earn their vote or trump winning?
Dems cant give people what they want because everyone wants different things.
What do you think is better? Preventing fascism or doing nothing and watching a fascist get into power?
Would you prefer they DID vote for Trump? I voted for Harris because she was the only real option but after what the DNC keeps doing (see: fucking Bernie in the primaries and then not even having a primary this year) I really can’t blame anyone for not voting. The Dems need to have their come to Jesus and remember that the people don’t owe them anything.
