They still put forth the mutually exclusive arguments, simultaneously. “Our protest couldn’t have had an effect, so we totally didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folk for a chance at saving Gaza” + “If the Dems had just given in to our protest, we would’ve voted for them and they would have won”
Both arguments are stupid on their own merits, but together, they paint a picture of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
I mean, they didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folks for a chance to save Gaza. They sacrificed us for absolutely nothing.
Actually, they sacrificed us for an even faster genocide of Gaza. So now everyone loses!
But it’s not their fault, and even if it was, America deserves genocide. /s
Based on news of Elon setting up fake pro-Trump liberal advocacy groups before the election do we know how much of these arguments are coming from legit leftists IRL vs manufactured consent? Just curious, when you say ‘they’ are these people you’ve talked to IRL or online?
There are a good number right here on Lemmy.
Others who scrubbed months of their comments immediately after the election.
Lemmy users is really not a group that represents voters in any category other than lemmy users.
If protest voters had voted for Harris, she still would have lost, because twenty million democrats stayed home. She didn’t lose because of protest votes, she lost because white middle class voters decided they didn’t want to bother, because the election won’t affect them anyway.
If 77 million people vote for Trump, and 75 million vote for Harris, that any single voter’s vote is only one vote does not mean that if they vote for Trump, it’s a morally neutral act. Not being the tipping point is not absolution for one’s actions or inaction. And doing mental backflips to justify a vote for Trump because they were ‘just one vote’ instead of taking some time to fucking reflect if Trump winning was the outcome they wanted to support would make them an utter cretin.
The core issue is that many Americans don’t seem to care if fascism comes to America. This includes protest voters, but yes, protest voters are only a small percentage of that much-larger category.
We’re probably making the classic mistake of homogenizing a heterogeneous group.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
They put forth both arguments simultaneously, regardless of whether they believe one or both. Or neither.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re not that stupid so why pretend?
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one” are the same statement: both point out that not enough people did the thing you’re so pissed about
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one”
“Had more people agreed with us, we would have had more people who agreed with us” is not anything but a statement of obvious, if wishful, fact, and is not what is being said; not in my summary nor in the arguments of the people I’m referring to. Nor does it make any sense as an argument, explanation, or point of any kind. Utterly vacuous.
The argument being put forth, and I suspect you’re well-aware of this, is that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
Your supposed to vote for the candidate that represents your views. Doing so should never be considered sacrificing anyone unless you candidate is the bad guy.
Decades of blaming third party voters is why we have two parties that don’t represent the people today.
There will be pain breaking that trend, but eventually it will pay off.
I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
Harris ran a much more progressive yet inclusive campaign then Biden but I don’t think people were ready to vote for a Black Indian woman.
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.
“Oh damn I lost the race I thought was easy again. Could I be a shit party with shit messaging and wet farts for fans? Nah its everyone else whos wrong”
When liberals lose, they always blame someone else.
This is what happens when your campaign entirely consists of cringe memes, preaching “civility”, and talking about how eager you are to submit to the wills of the opposition.
Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man.
Yeah, except for the fact that I know a lot who didn’t. It might be a shock to you, but there was a big push in left-leaning communities here on Lemmy and elsewhere on the web to either not vote for Harris or not vote at all. It was so fucking full-force in major leftist communities with so little interest in Trump that I’m convinced it was a targeted disinfo campaign. One that worked.
Lemmy and leftists communities aren’t even a blip on the graph. Go to a PA town and ask them what lemmy is. Or what communism is for that matter. They voted trump because his misinfo campaign was way larger than the one you’re complaining about. And also because the democrats suck.
I love when people ignore parts of my comments for the sake of their argument.
I can’t tell if you voted for Harris because you said you voted against the bad man but are being really defensive of the people who helped Trump win.
If you did anything but vote Harris, you did not vote against Trump in our shitty first-past-the-post system. Don’t kid yourself.
I voted against Trump. Voting for Trump wouldn’t be a vote against Biden. Reading further down thread with the attacks you have against another commenter, I don’t think you’re terribly literate at understanding people who disagree with you. It’s either that or disingenuous because you want to fight. Your pick.
If we’re going to start blaming people who let Trump win, let’s start with Joe Biden, who was too stubborn to drop out before the 2024 primary. Then, let’s move on to his aides, who kept his declining cognitive abilities from the public. Then let’s move on to any Democratic Party members who met with Biden before the 2024 election and were aware of his diminished capacity. Then let’s move on to the members of the DNC who decided to protect Biden from real primary challengers (they drove Dean Phillips out of politics for trying to run, by the way), despite the fact that 60% of Democrats wanted a different candidate.
Once we’re done blaming those people, let’s move on to blaming Harris, who did nothing to distance herself from Biden on Gaza despite knowing that it was polling very poorly with a base she needed to motivate. Then let’s blame her for adopting a flacid, middle-class oriented economic policy and abandoning the economic populism that worked in 2020. Let’s also blame Harris’ top strategists, Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter, who ran the same strategy of trying to flip moderate Republicans that lost in 2020.
Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters. And before you ask, yes, I voted for Harris. I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
How are these people any different than “I care about the economy” voters who never verified any of Trumps claims? Just a little mistake, nothing to hold against them.
and this is just week 1 of episode 2. it’s gonna get a lot worse and they won’t waste any time. they have to shovel all the shit they have planned before midterms while they still have congress.
if congress doesn’t flip and flip hard–like impeachment-ready and veto-proof hard, it’s ‘game over’. instead of a few decades to fix episode 1, it will take generations, if it is even possible to recover completely at all.
