I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
Exactly this! You can’t just “lesser of two evils” your way through life as you slide towards hell. “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a choice, it’s a hostage situation.
Choosing the bigger evil ain’t the way out of it though. Unless you are an accelerationist that believes things have to get worse before it can get better.
You can’t get out of a hostage situation by making out with either of the two bank robbers.
no one is making out, but you if it’s life or death you would listen to their demands until help arrives/opportunities arise.
This ‘logic’ (and metaphors are not logic) is why help isn’t coming.
then are people actually punching the robbers themselves?
The reality right now is the bigger robbers are now taking things even more brazenly.
By not voting, you are telling both robbers “both of you are free to do whatever you want”
God I hate the stupidity of blue MAGA.
I did vote. You don’t know me.
Your stupidity, and the reason you can justifiably be called blue MAGA, is that you don’t understand what the primary responsibility of the politician is, and instead blame the political parties failures on the voters. Because the Democratic Party can never fail. They can only be failed, right?
There is one group that can and should be blamed for identifying, and then happily handing power over to fascists. Hint: it isn’t the voters.
Blaming the voters is some Stockholm syndrome level bullshit to protect the campaign consultants and other unelected assholes that got rich off of this loss. That is who you are protecting.
I had some vote blue no matter who nitwit yelling at me the other day about this. i asked them what are we supposed to do when 2028 is Mitt Romney (D) vs Trump ®. They said you vote Romney.
People who voter shame others when both parties have crossed their personal morals are the reason the Democats don’t ever run on anything substative. They have forgotten they have to earn votes. They’re not owed.
And they have forgotten that when they lose, real people suffer deeply for it. The democrats sin of apathy is often worse than the republican sin of cruelty. At least the republicans are honest about how they want to screw over the country.
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That’s not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Cool. Neither party was palatable for a huge amount of people, wonder why.
If I’m offered a plate of tomatoes, which I hate, and a pile of shit as choices to eat, both are not palatable to me. But that doesn’t make them the same.
I voted. But for a lot of people it was like this,
You hear about a restaurant that only serves shit and tomatoes. So you don’t go. I understand that that isn’t really how that works but that is how so many felt about this.
I don’t wanna beat the analogy into the ground so I’ll let it go. But the point is, ones of them was going to be president. You will HAVE to deal with one of them. Refusing to vote is making the statement that you’re ok with the worst outcome, because of you weren’t ok with it you would have taken action to prevent that worst outcome. This is the general “you”, not you specifically obviously, since you voted.
I feel like a lot of people thought “I don’t like either, so I won’t vote” ignoring that they will be impacted either way, so it’s not a matter of who you like, it’s a matter of effecting the outcome to get the best result possible. Even if that isn’t perfect for you.
I voted and I’m still impacted. It was a fruitless effort.
Ok. So your take away is never do anything that might fail?
Yes but if the person handing you the tomatoes had been handing you tomatoes your entire life while promising chocolate cake you’d be a lot less happy about it. Especially if they also said “We’re not going to change anything and if you have a problem with tomatoes you need to take Econ 203 to understand why you’re wrong for being upset.”
Democrats need to get people enthusiastic to vote. Not getting shit on a plate is not enough to get people to vote.
I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn’t want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on “our team”.
And given the shitty system we have, any vote, or non-vote, that wasn’t for Kamala was a vote for trump (by way of it being one less vote he needed to win). Can’t walk into a chess tournament and start putting checkers on the board just because you don’t like chess…gotta change the game first or you just lose and get kicked out.
My crazy idea here is maybe the DNC should run candidates people actually like. There’s no way in hell if they ran a primary Kamala would have won the nomination given how unpopular she was as VP.
Find me one Kamala voter as excited for her candidacy as the average Trump voter was for him, and I’ll find you a dozen who were only supporting her because whe wasn’t the other guy. Same story with the Biden campaign in 2020 and Clinton before that.
They could have run a dead fish didnt matter for this election. “Boohoo, don’t like candidate” isnt a valid excuse this time. Sry, it’s the weakest argument outside “oUr PRoTEsT voTe DiDnT matatTer” (mathematically true I’d you ignore any that may have been swayed by their constant pushing of a single issue instead of of everything at risk).
What? Running a candidate people like is probably the most important thing in an election. And the DNC knew from polling that she was unpopular as a VP. Seriously what on earth are you talking about that having a candidate people like doesn’t matter.
The genocide(and poor national level performance) was the last straw for many people who have been lifelong democrat voters. After 30+ years of seeing dems bring ferocity and strategy and boldness to primaries only to sit in office, renege and fail on many of those promises even in times when they have a
supermajoritymajority. Then to see only a few dems actually screaming on the floors of congress. As well biden refusing to use the bully pulpit.I don’t believe any of them wanted this outcome. I do believe they felt their vote was only going to promote a regime that would continue the trend of genocide and protecting wall street over the needs of desparate citizens. Billions to kill and profit then pennies to the people.
I believe the fault lies entirely on the DNC and not the voters who saw no benefit in promoting the party over the other.
It’s wrong, a dem in power is worlds better, but i understand seeing it as pointless in the moment. There is no good answer, only a less wrong one…
To answer the question, pass useful legislation and don’t promote genocide. Legislation like universal healthcare, constitutional abortion(and other women’s healthcare), raising minimum wage, universal pre-k, Union support, decriminalize drugs(esp. Weed), and to reverse inflation to name only just a tiny few…
TLDR: 30yrs of “lesser of two evils” kills voter motivation. Blame the party not the people.
Edit: technically not a supermajority…
This was NOT the time to do this. This election was about the end of fucking democracy in the face of fascism and these abstainers wanted to pull teenage shit and fucking ended the country as we know it.
Now Gaza is getting wiped out because these abstainers couldn’t abstract what a p2025 theocracy was going to do?
People were screaming about this for months. THIS election was an existential fight right now at home, and they chose to pull idealist teenage shit.
I mean, I place more of the blame for “ending the country” on the fascists and the people who enthusiastically put them into power, but if you want to blame the handful of people who abstained then you do you I guess
Abstaining is an active choice. For someone eligible to vote, there doesn’t exist an “I opt out of any accountability for the outcome” option.
I agree, and I don’t care. It’s a distraction. These people didn’t move the needle an inch, and I think it’s ridiculous to worry about probably 0.5% of the electorate when there are tens of millions who actively support all this shit. Where is their accountability? Where is the accountability for the billionaires who have spent their fortunes attacking democracy? Those people are grinning ear-to-ear when they see their enemies trying to fight each other like this.
It’s not though. In many states you literally need to leave work to vote. A choice which can cost you your job.
Y’know what this thread has made me realize? All the dumb memes of “the left fighting the left” are bullshit. I can respectfully debate other people on the left with me. I can change their minds about some things, they can change my mind on some things, we can come to compromises. I don’t agree with the communist 100%, but I agree with them at least 70-80%, and would happily work alongside them to accomplish that 70-80%.
You know who loves infighting though? Centrists who have deluded themselves into thinking they are leftists. You can find comment after comment in this thread from right-leaning centrists, gleefully demanding that they were “right all along” and how everything is our fault for just not being as smart as them. There is no political group that loves infighting as much as them, even more than the fascists. They want to spend the next four years trying to find out all the ways they can assign blame to the left, instead of organizing and doing anything.
I can tell you as someone who lives in a deeply left state, in a very left city that there are absolutely unfathomable levels of infighting amongst the left. Almost my entire family and work are also very left.
I am basically surrounded by varying degrees of leftist people 24/7 and I have lost count of the times I have seen someone start to question the Ideological homogeneity of the left only to be “corrected” by several others around them. It’s almost cult like watching people stamp out individual thinking in real time.
Anyone who dares think about something even slightly differently is either yelled at to step back in line or they are immediately cast out from the group.
I have witnessed this first hand from several old leftist friends and I have talked to other moderate lefts who have seen the same behaviors over and over.
Hell even moderates on the right love watching you guys push out people who were on your side so they can welcome them in with open arms. Nobody converts questioning leftists into full blown right wingers quite like the left can.
The left only wants your vote if your vote is exactly the same as their vote.
The right doesn’t care how much you agree with them as long as you vote right.
Really funny after you remember the horrible phrase “vote blue no matter who” that the left loved to chant.
I swear y’all are your own worst enemies sometimes.
People do not understand the significance of BRICS at all and BRICS currency. There is a concerted, sophisticated effort to get as many precious metals, gold, and oil claimed by BRICS countries as fast as possible before the BRICS currency comes out (backed by those same materials).
Look at a list of the countries with the most gold (that they admit to having). The ones that aren’t BRICS include Canada and US for example. Look in Africa - the countries with precious minerals are the ones being fought over. Even Ukraine is being fought over partially due to minerals.
Putin owns Trump. https://lemmy.world/comment/13431373
And Trump even helped out China when he withdrew from the UN Special Counsel - now China is the president. Trump is also helping out China’s claims to the South China Sea by renaming the Gulf of Mexico and trying to lay claims to it.
Hamas imo kidnapped those people due to KGB or other encouragement, then Israel/Netanyahu refused to rescue them and used them as proxy hostages gainst Biden to secute money because they had a deal with Trump and Putin. See Reagan and the Iran hostages that won him the elections - same thing. Otherwise the ceasefire in May 24 would have been agreed to (because Netanyahu thought Trump was going to lose and got cold feet, and maybe in a better timeline he did). I doubt Israel realizes that Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and all the other Islamic BRICS countries are going to backstab them for that space which is pretty sacred to them.
Russia needs the US to become Nazis because that’s what they justified the Ukraine War on and that’s what they will use to invade us and Canada and Greenland for our resources. They need us to have a civil war and to be dying and poor etc before they invade.
Trump will also be starting massive drug trafficking and human trafficking organizations. He also expanded the death penalty.
Full BlueAnon territory here. Incredible the mental gymnastics y’all will go through to reaffirm your loyalty to the state and hatred of the state’s enemies, even when it’s blatantly acting against you.
It can’t be that the world is a complex place filled with many different factions each pursuing different interests. No, everyone is either with us or against us, and everyone who’s against us is secretly controlled by Putin. Trump? Putin puppet. Hamas? Putin puppet. Me, and anyone else who challenges your ideas? Putin puppet, I’m sure. The world is no more complex than a Saturday morning cartoon with one big bad pulling all the strings. There’s no need to ever study anything, let along actually try to see things from other perspectives (the very idea borders on treason!).
Let’s assume that your conspiracy theory is correct. Why then, is Putin’s puppet Trump committed to fighting Putin’s puppet Hamas? It’s a blatant contradiction, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not about making any sense. It’s nowhere close to being a serious analysis.
Every country in the world has it’s own culture and history and narratives and internal factions and motivations, but all of that has to be mashed down into good guys and bad guys within the scope of modern American politics. You would do far better to step back from the news and read an actual book.
I’ve listed NUMEROUS reputable sources. The first one in my old Russia post is a BOOK by journalist Craig Unger called American Kompromat- why don’t you try reading an actual book? What was the title of the last geopolitical book you read? Go on, list it. Lol. Or list a reputable book that refutes what I’m saying - give a specific title. I bet you can’t, because you aren’t informed and were projecting that.
I’ve also explicitly discussed how BRICS relates to Putin and Russia. They simply own Trump due to blackmail and massive propaganda networks, so yes, they are meddling in everything. Perhaps you’re projecting ypur inability to read through a complex geopolitical topic with links, significant reputable links lol. Like no, not superstitious thinking, there’s sources. Lol. Your first bit is like a toddler getting mad that they have to learn “stupid math” they will “never use again.”
It’s BRICS. Overall, BRICS needs justification worldwide to kick off WW3. So Iran and Saudi Arabia already wanted Jerusalem. They cannot just invade without the US and the West getting involved. But historically, if we look like Nazis and engage in Nazi stuff, that has been considered a good reason to invade a country. Not every country in BRICS wants to be aggressive- eg India is likely going to get really good economic boosts without being involved in wars much besides their own immense psyop campaigns.
So they need Ukraine to look like Nazis. They needed the US to look like Nazis and Germany with the AfD. Now all of Israel needs to look like genocidal PoS.
Now Saudi Arabia and Iran can point out to the rest of the world, all the neutral countries, and say hey look! Nazis, and they are invading Gaza and Canada and Panama and Greenland! We must act!
Like think - why did Trump never mention expansionism until now? Because Putin didn’t need him to.
Think - why are there GLOBAL PROTESTS over Russian election interference including in Georgia and Romania and today in Slovakia? We’ve had confirmed Russia collusion since at least 2016 in the US and last memo confirming this for both Russia and Iran was released on 12/31/34 via the Treasury department.
It’s not simplistic - it’s quite complex and the BRICS countries themselves are infighting, as I already said in my previous post. I also never stated there should be a 2 party thing, good guy or bad guy thing, or that I was a Democrat (I’m not, so I’m not BlueAnon or whatever stupid psyop phrase is trying to demonize normal, critical thinking Americans). There is simply a hostile foreign invasion happening and people deserve to know so they can stay safe and be informed.
If you dont want to be informed, then fine. ADDITIONALLY, I curse you and anyone like you to experience the full effects of Putin and Trump first, including being sent to Guantanmo and starving. May you live in the world you helped to create and wanted. My curse to you.
