• Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    So let me get this right.

    The Democrat party was upset we were putting up a president that was “too old” and showing signs of cognitive decline, especially since he was going up against another old man with even more cognitive decline.

    So the Democrat party gets the old man to drop out at the last minute and since there’s no time for a Democrat primary, they put up a black woman as the nominee.

    But because the black woman wasn’t the absolutely perfect candidate, wasn’t articulate enough on her policies, and didn’t hand the left everything they wanted on a silver platter, they opted to stay home in protest and let the old white man with even more dementia return to power in order to “send a message” to Democrats not to put up old white guys.

    And now they’re saying that the solution to the old white guy that they didn’t want to vote for was to put up an even older white guy who managed to get even less votes than her in his own home state.

    Please, make it make sense.

    And if you’re one of the 10+ million Biden voters who opted to sit home, you still fucking voted for this. “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” And you made that choice fully informed, knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.

    If your solution to the problem of “old white guy” is “even older white guy”, then just admit it. You didn’t vote for Harris because she’s a black woman and are just using the narrative as a convenient excuse so you don’t have to admit (to yourself, to friends) that you’re a closeted racist. Because nobody with three active fucking brain cells believes that the solution to anything is to sit back and allow Trump to return to power.

    "I don’t like Harris’s economic policies, so I voted for a guy who’s economic policy is “They’re eating the dogs!”

    “I don’t like Harris’s policy on Gaza, so I voted for a guy who promised to speed up the genocide even faster.”

    "I don’t like Harris flip-flopping on policies, so I voted for the guy who says he has “concepts of a plan”.

    “I don’t like Harris’s record as a prosecutor, so I’m going to vote for a guy who wants to have me deported because of my race.”

    “I don’t like Harris being endorsed by a Republican woman (the men are just fine, though), so I’m just going to allow all of them to return to power.”

    And all I keep seeing from the people defending this line of bullshit is that “They couldn’t vote for Harris because…”, or “Harris went too far to the right…”, or “Well, Liz cheney showed up that one time…”. Yet asking the questions of “So how the hell does allowing Trump to return to power help in any way? Better yet, how does allowing Trump to return to power not make the situation actively worse? What is Trump going to do to help me?” is met by silence, insults, and downvotes. Because they know what the answer is. It doesn’t. It makes everything worse. But they just don’t want to admit (again, either to themselves and/or to others) that they would rather allow an old white wanna-be dictator to return to power before they’d vote for a black woman. Everything else is just excuses.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      11 days ago

      you make a lot of really persuasive points. if only the campaign had communicated them.

      i think the chronically online politics sphere overestimates how much the average voter knows by about 100-fold and that’s why we get comments like this.

      when mcdonalds releases a new burger and no one buys it, we blame the product and the marketing. but when the DNC drops a new candidate, there is no room to talk about the candidate or the marketing for some reason—it’s all finger pointing and blaming one another for not “just getting” information that’s all but kept hidden from a population with >20% rates of low literacy.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        11 days ago

        I think the problem is less “the campaign” communicating and more… there is no way for them to reach the majority of the audience.

        There are plenty of memes about people realizing on election day that Biden wasn’t running. And… that isn’t that far out. Because people:

        • Refuse to watch commercials… ever
        • Get pissy when “politics” is brought up in their entertainment
        • Get even pissier when “politics” is brought up in a message board

        So republicans can more or less advertise directly to the fox news crowd and they have influencers like xqc and all of kick to get that message out.

        On the left side? We have fucking Hasan. A nepo baby who has somehow convinced people to equate “being a socialist and fighting for progress” with “donating subs to a super rich guy in a mansion” and whose own fans point out that he “Attacked both sides but attacked trump a lot worse”

        We need people who can reach out to the idiots. And we need people who can do so and actually say “Look. I fucking hate Biden and am wary of Kamala. They are going to be horrible for Palestine. But you know who is going to be worse? Fucking trump. So yeah, I would vote for Genocide Joe in a heartbeat if the alternative is trump and that is what we need to understand”

        John Oliver did a spectacular job of saying almost exactly that. But he is on HBO and has a much smaller audience.

        Aside from that? I guess we had Walz playing Madden with AOC a few times?

        It feels like Democrats are still running TV ads and phone banking. Whereas republicans are bringing out ALL the grifters to push their side.

        • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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          11 days ago

          really good insight and it sounds like a good opportunity for the DNC to find those channels rather than give up and court suburban conservatives.

    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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      11 days ago

      Well said. Every time someone says that Kamala “was not likeable” I just assume “I don’t want no women in office”

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Please, make it make sense.

      No.

      The voters are entitled to their vote whether it makes sense or not. Failing to vote for Kamala (or Hillary, for that matter) to stop Trump was objectively stupid, but it was their right to be objectively stupid if they wanted.

      The Democrats had two choices: they could capitulate to that stupidity, run a progressive, and have a chance of winning, or they could obstinately cling to neoliberalism and lose. You’d think their basic responsibility as a political party whose goal is to win would have them choose the former, but instead they chose the latter. Make that make sense!

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          But it’s not the Democratic Party’s right to do so. Calling people stupid instead of trying to win their vote is dereliction of duty.

          The Democrats have kowtowed to corporate donors (and the likes of AIPAC) to the point that they are failing to do their job, and they need to be held accountable for that.