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.
Tribal thinking is a sign of lack of maturity. If you don’t think being, “better than TFG.” is a pathetic excuse for a party platform, you’re either a child or utterly incompetent at governing, or both.
Similarly, if anyone assumes someone attacking Democrats, a center-right party, MUST be coming from the right … they’re painfully ignorant of politics in general.
Too bad this country is full of immature children that managed to reach adult age… Regardless of how bad the Dems are, they’re still the only valid choice for someone making moral decisions. No, Biden is anything but perfect, but literally no one else can win that isn’t outright evil … partly because Democrats run a pathetic party and don’t actually fight for democracy.
Yep. That’s what makes it so downright abusive for them to dangle fascism over our heads like a threat if we don’t get behind their milquetoast bullshit half-ass glad-handing fascists fuckery. They know we don’t have a choice so they don’t even fucking try.
The job of a US politician seems to be convincing their donors and constituents that they will protect each from the other.
Campaigning on policy that benefits the voters goes against the class interests of the donors, but campaigning on “the other guy is bad” keeps the donors happy.
“Not Trump” isn’t a pathetic position, it’s a smart one. There’s plenty of Republicans that don’t like Trump (See 43% Haley in NH yesterday), and getting into specifics will only remind them that “Not Trump” is a liberal commie Democrat.
If you want to know what Biden is running on other than that, you can find it here:
That’s a nice list. Let’s see what Democrats actually do in office.
Oh what’s that? Sit on their hands and complain about how Republicans won’t play nice?
Again, pathetic party.
A lot of people are confused about this kind of thing and appear to imagine that winning an election means that you get to do everything you want. It doesn’t. All it means is that you can try and get some of the things you want done, and you better choose them wisely because you have limited political capital and a set window of time. That’s just the way it is, especially in such a polarized country. A better way to view political accomplishments is through the lens of what’s actually possible as opposed to what you really want. It’s childish to think otherwise.
Our country is basically in a low-level mostly non-violent state of civil war and people are crying because Biden can’t or won’t give them everything they want? Really? WTF is wrong with you? The plane is about to crash into the fucking mountain! All the lights are flashing bright red! We either come together and stop this thing or we’re all going to be in for a very bad time.
This is how democracies die. We either unite and stand together, or we’ll all “hang” separately.
Weird, I don’t see record oil production there. Record as in more than any country to ever exist.
Voters =/= DNC though
We got Trump because Clinton was largely uninspiring. She made herself this bland neolib that nobody actually wanted to vote for and then mocked Trump as a non threat.
Everything you said is true but I personally think the real reason it happened was because Clinton was a bad pitch and she would’ve lost to most Republicans at the time.
They should’ve gone with Bernie just that simple
She literally ran the same year as Jeb “Please Clap” Bush, and this was after a stint at Secretary of State where she had to do an “apology tour” for spying on other nations.
People were fed up with political dynasties that year, and the fact that the Democrats couldn’t read the room is why they lost.
The DNC literally hid behind being a private club to justify putting their finger on the scale for Clinton.
What’s that old saying? “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.”
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/
But here, where you have a party that’s saying, We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have – and we could have voluntarily decided that, look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the COurt well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.
Here is the Democrats pounding the law that the DNC is a private club, so nobody can say their own rules are fair but them. They never argued the facts about whether or not it was rigged, because they didn’t have facts to support that.
You know you can be a part of the DNC right? Like if it’s so important, have you engaged with it at all?
My state level Democratic party is where I spend most of my energy because they’re not nearly as trash as the national party.
But the DNC didn’t care about the primary votes and shoved her in because “we need a female president” or some shit.
I genuinely believe your average person both wants a female president and badly does not want it to be Hillary.
I’m astonished you people have maintained this level of delusion after Bernie has lost twice.
He had his chance, twice, and the voters did not choose him, twice.
Holy shit are you fucking clueless. The are like 50 articles like this one. The primaries were rigged, stupid.
Some More News made a really good point: If we can’t call out our own guy without being told we’re helping the other guy, how is that… good?
Who’s saying it’s good? First of all, there is no “your own guy”. You don’t have a guy. There is no “your own guy” anywhere here.
Not helping “the other guy” is an indispensable condition in maybe getting the “this guy” to acknowledge that the whole thing is not working and to stop pretending this is buisness as usual as opposed to a slow moving coup that needs deep reform to prevent.
I don’t understand how these conversations are the same as in 2016, or in 2001, for that matter. In Germany it took some minor electoral increases and a leaked mention of “mass deportations” and they set off thousands of marches country-wide, involving hundreds of thousands of people. Trump is openly talking about mass deportations to an adoring following, Stephen Miller is planning mass concentration camps and Texas is actively trying to kill migrants.
And we’re talking about whether it’s ok to be more or less rough with what you say of Biden online.
I say this from a place of profound worry and fear. What the hell, man?
I totally get it. Trump is evil and we need to elect Biden. And that being too hard on Biden or saying “I’m not gonna vote” is being incredibly risky with the lives of the most vulnerable among us.
But there is something deeply wrong with our system if it allowed things to get to this point. Ever since I became politically aware in the 90s the Republicans have been a threat to rights and life. When is that gonna end so we can have a real conversation?
Yes. There is.
Holy crap, are people only realizing this now? This is endtimes stuff. Fall-of-the-Roman-Empire stuff. This is the period people will read about in history books about when the era of the last Cold War superpower ended and the post-liberal democracy era started.
This ends when the US passes a new Constitution. If you’re very, very lucky there won’t be a massive violent conflict, a full-on dictatorship or a Mad Max-style postapocalypse to go through first.
It’s the boiling frog that I can’t get over. The fact that people are still talking like this is an election cycle. It’s not. You can’t have an election cycle with just one candidate when the other guy is actively running for supreme fascist ruler. There is no working democracy in the US, and given the state of the GOP there won’t be one again until the US gives itself some form of multiparty parliamentarism, or at least a heavily reformed electoral system.
If the conversation is not in these terms… well, see my “worry and fear” comment above.
It’ll probably never feel like it actually ended, the kind of tectonic shift that would feel like a concise end to the days when we have to prioritise safeguarding our rights over holding whoever’s in the watchtower accountable for their mistakes would take something like everyone currently in political leadership going thanos snap
Ah, yes, the fallacy where the Republicans are the de facto winners and the election is only up to what the Democrats do.
I mean, yeah, they ran a mediocre campaign, but there is a difference between “critiquing our leaders” and literally campaigning against them, and leftist in general have a hard, hard, HARD time with that one. Critique is for when you’re in power. You analize, you apply your newfound political power to create pressure, you postmortem what went wrong. Campaigns are for winning.
And every year we’re told it’s “not the time to critique the Democrats” because its “too close to an election.”
Dude, I’m pushing fucking fifty and this has been every year of my fucking life with this “this is not the time for critique” shit. When is gonna be a good time to critique them? Because it sure fucking feels like the argument is never or this wouldn’t have been going on since fucking Bill Clinton left the Presidency.
Okay, let’s break it down.
How about first half of the Trump presidency, when the Democrats needed to regroup, take stock of just how badly they screwed up and plan how to never do that again? I’d say that was a good time.
How about the first half of the Biden presidency, when the Democrats could actually pass legislation and position themselves to brand the nature of their term? That was a good time. Happy to engage then.
I know it sucks to not have an alternative. I get it. But going after the only side that is even vaguely functional because you think you’re holding “your guys” to account is not one of the set of options you have at the moment. Spend those good times to debate lobbying for deep, profound reform that unlocks the political system for more varied options, as opposed to making every election an existential choice between actual, explicit fascism and literally anything else.
Until you do that, these are your choices. Not liking the choices doesn’t change that fact.
How about first half of the Trump presidency, when the Democrats needed to regroup, take stock of just how badly they screwed up and plan how to never do that again? I’d say that was a good time.
That’s funny, because I was berated by people online for critiquing them at the time, too. Especially critiquing Clinton, how badly she ran her campaign, and how they had destroyed goodwill of progressives by putting their finger on the scale for Clinton. Sanders is a class act, and that’s why he stood behind Clinton.
Sorry, but I was still being assaulted with “BERNIE BRO!!!” during this time period, so you can take this perspective and shove it.
It really would have been a great time for the party to consider what happened, but they were busy doubling down on it being the voters fault and doing anything they could to shift blame away from their own mistakes. They were literally arguing in court it was their right to go in back rooms to smoke cigars to choose the candidate… come on…
Literally I have been talked down to every year of my adult life about this, because every year its too close to a mid-term election or a Presidential election.
So you still didn’t really address the elephant in the room which is progressives are never actually allowed to critique the party.
??
This wasn’t even the political climate during the 2016 election. It wasn’t the political climate immediately after clinton
In fact I remember people being VERY harsh on democrats during the 2016 election.
After an election seems like a good time to discuss what to do differently next time.
Post 2016 I was absolutely berated for thinking to critique what went wrong but sure I don’t remember what happened what is this gaslighting shit.
THIS. I feel this. If I could super-upvote, I would. The same argument is deployed towards anyone voting 3rd party. The argument that ranked choice voting is the solution to a lot of problems, is valid. But we are never going to get that either so long as we keep diligently voting for the less evil between two parties. Seems like “never” is the answer to the question of when a lot of imperative, necessary, vital change is going to happen.
Given this dynamic, I can understand how anyone who has been paying attention, becomes disillusioned with our system and votes immorally just to encourage some change, even if it’s making things worse. I don’t condone it, but I see it happening and I can understand why
Hubris may have lead to Clinton’s loss but Trump voters made him win. If the powers that be didn’t fully understand the hostility of voters that lead to Trump’s victory then maybe they are not as smart as they think they are but not actively malicious. Trump is actively malicious and surrounds himself with the same. The Democratic Party may have tipped the scales a bit for Hillary but they also must have thought she would get the most votes and was one of the most qualified candidates from either party. I’m not going to defend the two party system but only one is pushing for ranked choice voting, electing by popular vote, and reducing voting restrictions. Not voting or third party isn’t going to make this any better
Not voting or third party isn’t going to make this any better
I made this post because of bullshit ass assumptions like this. I voted for fucking Clinton with gritted teeth and the same for fucking Biden. I know the fucking stakes, I vote for fucking Democrats, but even in the response to this meme I’ve got chucklefucks assuming they know what’s on my mind or what I’m arguing here.
What do you assholes want from us, a pound of fucking flesh? You already have our fucking votes!
Really? I voted for Jill Stein, and none of the discussion on Reddit leading up to it was deterring me from doing that.
Seeing the results of the 2016 election, which again ended in an insurrection, is specifically why I won’t be voting third party for this one.
I’m an old, I’d been aware of Trump for a long time. I wasn’t willing to risk him trying to become a dictator, the guy had been a suck-up to dictators long before his run in 2016.
Being willing to critique the party for failing to match the wits of a fucking orange idiot didn’t set well with a lot of folks.
The conversations weren’t changing my opinions either, they were just frustrating and eye-rolling, just as they are now.
The issue here is that Bernie was leading polling (among dems,) and killed the NH primary’s popular vote by a landslide and Iowa caucus was the closest margin in Iowa dem history.
Despite this, the NH superdelegates pledged for Hilary. This performance was in spite of the DNC actively taking steps to harm Bernie’s campaign (cutting access to voter databases; fucking around with debate scheduled).
To be blunt, the DNC fucked America by not nominating the best possible candidate in ‘16.
And they’re doing it again. Biden has all the same weaknesses that Hilary has- and some extra besides. Meanwhile Trump has had 4 years to spin and retcon his bullshit to his base; the memories of his term are less fresh.
He’s weak with the millennial vote (and gen z.)
He’s soft on the black vote: (he opposed busing for desegregation in the 70’s, said he didn’t want his kids going to a racial zoo- or however he said it,); and then there’s the condescending bullshit he dropped “if you vote for Trump ya ain’t black”.
Soft on Latino votes; because his border policies also suck. His first two years he could have had motion but now he’s fucked on it.
Soft in Palestinian and Muslim votes. “Genocide Joe” is a far more apt nickname than anything else Trump has called him.
Biden has consistently opposed abortion (flip flopped in his ‘19 campaign for president. historically voting for restrictions on abortions, and voted to block federal funding for abortion providers.), and let’s be honest, if he wanted RvW as law; he could easily have gotten that done in his first two years.)
Biden is historically soft on LGBTQ rights- voting to ban gay marriage.
While improved from Trump; Biden’s economy still objectively sucks for the vast majority of Americans, 60% of whom are living pay check to pay check. (Which is actually up from Trump’s term; even if it is trumps fault, mostly.)
Inflation is still fucking most Americans; who are consistently being told it’s our fault (asking for wages) despite record-setting profits for corporations.
If you’re being honest with yourself, you’d understand a rapist insurrectionist who has proudly declared he wants to be a dictator is the only candidate that Biden could realistically defeat.
