I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don’t, you weren’t paying attention.
Plenty of us were critiquing Clinton’s campaign on those merits and were consistently talked down to in shocker the same way we’re being talked down to now. Shocker, she lost. I remember saying a few weeks before the election “We’re about to get Brexited.” I put my vote down for Clinton, because Trump is fucking insane, and that was clear before he was President. It was clear in the fucking 1980’s.
Being able to critique our leaders is supposed to be what is the difference between us and conservative voters. They’re the cult who unquestioningly believes all the bullshit that comes out of Trump’s mouth and diapers. I find it weird that people think we should be more like them in regards to our leaders like that would be a good thing.
The fact that one can win the popular vote and still lose is a yuuuuge part of what’s wrong with our fucked up voting system.
One single current supreme court justice was appointed by a republican president who won the popular vote.
There’s six of them.
I still tend to look back on GHWB as probably the most moderate, institutional-minded GOP POTUS of my lifetime, yet I see Thomas as probably the most radically right-wing and corrupt Justices of my lifetime.
Thinking about it now makes me want to ask, “how could that have happened?!” But then I think back and remember how it happened.
There hasn’t been a single time a republican has won the popular vote since like 1988 except the one time there was a fake war behind em.
Bush Sr. won the popular vote in 88 and Reagan won the popular vote in both 84 and 80. You’re right about 2000 and 2016 but let’s not exaggerate.
I’m pretty sure the war was real, millions of dead Iraqis would probably agree (if they weren’t dead).
I think you may mean the justifications for the war were fake.
Because the war was very, very real.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was poorly run, but she didn’t invent Trump or get millions of people to vote for him. Trump was set up by 25+ years of extremist Republican media - people like Limbaugh, Murdoch, O’Reilly - and enabled by the “liberal” mainstream media, who wouldn’t stop talking about his stupid shit for the 2 years leading up to the campaign, and are doing the same thing this time.
Just a reminder that Clinton had deep press connections and so acting like her elevating of Trump didn’t impact other media sources is a bit disingenuous. It was a campaign strategy to elevate Trump, and that included working with “friendly” journalists.
Did people forget that Correct the Record were literally keyboard warriors employed by the DNC to go and do exactly the kind of shit I’m complaining about online. Shitting all over progressives and forum sliding?
You forget the democratic party isn’t the progressive party. Look at New Hampshire. When Bidens not on the ballot people are writing him in. Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
It sucks, and it double sucks because fascism is looming and the Dems are pretending everything is status quo. They sit in a high tower thinking progress is something serfs will win all on their on and when they do they’ll be just as protective of the status quo. It’s delusional but we need these guys or we need to turn the 50% of Americans who don’t even want to be involved.
End of day we can criticize Biden but we don’t fucking have to keep on bringing up Hillary.
Democrats are a big tent you can’t just boot out the centrists or the neo-liberals and expect to win anything.
Wrong. You can expect the neo-liberals to fall in line in the exact same way they expect progressives to fall in line.
Progressives are not uniquely enlightened, and you cannot reliably expect them to be the “bigger man” indefinitely.
Trump was an outsider candidate that took advantage of anti-establisment sentiment. He was barely a republican before 2016. He won because Hillary was incompetent and the DNC didn’t pick up on the anti-establishment vibes, and picked the most establishment candidate possible. Yes Republicans have been attacking Hillary since Bill got elected, but that wasn’t news to Democrats that didn’t care.
I know this isn’t necessarily the point of the post, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to bring it up anyway—
I can’t help but fear that the 2024 election is going to be an example of the DNC “reaping what they sowed.” In 2020 it felt like the DNC did whatever they could to push Biden through as a candidate despite more youthful, progressive options (and Bernie, who wasn’t youthful, but was progressive and in line with what a lot of the US left wanted). In many wants it felt like they did this because Biden was:
- More moderate in willing to bend to the political interests of lobbyists
- An easier option to beat Trump
In some ways I understand why it happened, but I was terrified of the situation we currently are in back then. Fast forward four years and now we’re left with a very elderly Biden versus an even more extreme Trump; and now it’s not a sure shot that Biden is going to win. Instead of uniting as a party and building up a new candidate who truly represented the people’s interests in 2020 the DNC decided to kick the can. As a result of that can kicking we may be facing the end of American democracy as we know it in 2024. It’s sickening to me.
I thought Biden was to be an easy way to get Harris in. I didn’t expect him to last the whole term.
SHOULD’VE BEEN BERNIE
It’s a good point but there is plenty of blame to go around. The democrats have part of the responsibility, but the lions share sits with the republicans.
The democrats are also at fault for elevating Clinton. She was a poor candidate who was backed by the political establishment. The notion it was “her turn” had already played out with Obama and she lost handily. There were better candidates in the primaries.
The same problem is happening with Biden. He is a bad candidate but he is being waved through by the party out of a paralysing fear of trump.
But they’re all symptoms of the extremely broken US electoral system with first past the post, gerrymandering, electoral colleges and politically appointed and elected officials including judges all entrenching the absolute power of 2 parties.
In my opinion the solution would be at the grass roots with local plebiscites on proportional representation in elections to local and state government, and other positions. That would bring more meaningful change than most of the other propositions that get put on the ballots as it’d allow a route for political opposition to organise into new parties, capture funding and power and gradually build a base to fight and win other elections.
Unfortunately the 2 main parties have convinced the electorate that the status quo is vital. For example California is a “democrat state” and anything that undermines that is dangerous because the enemy might get in. It’s all bullshit. The rules are being set by the incumbents but actually the whole game needs to change.
The real problem is the cap on the size of the house of representatives. If we doubled the size, California would get about 60 more representatives and votes, while states like Wyoming might get one more vote. It would also reduce the cost of campaigning per candidate, because donors aren’t just going to give significantly more money just because more people are running.
